Indiana police department lets people pay off parking tickets with donations to animal shelter

published 30 July 2019

For a few days in July, cash wasn't welcome at the clerk's office in Muncie, Indiana.

When officers from the Muncie Police Department visited the Muncie Animal Care and Services Shelter earlier in the summer, they found that the facility was close to running out of supplies for the more than 350 cats and kittens waiting to be adopted. That sparked an idea: instead of having people pay for their parking tickets with cash, why not let them pay in donations of cat food and litter? Parking tickets are $25, and violators were asked to drop off up to $25 worth of cat food or supplies.

This offer ran from July 15 through 19, and the police department said donations came flooding in, with many coming from people who didn't even have a ticket. Ashley Honeycutt, the shelter's office manager, told CNN she is "incredibly grateful" to the police department and community for their "overwhelming" response. There are always a lot of kittens born this time of year, she added, and it's hard for shelters to keep up, so she encourages "everyone to help their local shelter out."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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