Impounded car returned to loud-music lover

PITTSFIELD – A 20-year-old Clinton man, who apparently enjoys driving to the accompaniment of loud music, got his car back Wednesday from an impoundment lot after appearing in Somerset County Superior Court and paying $310 in fees.

Steven Welch’s 1994 Ford Mustang was seized on Nov. 1 when he was cited for disorderly conduct for playing his amplified car stereo too loud. The vehicle was the first and only car seized by Pittsfield police under an effort that began last summer.

Welch had received two previous warnings, according to police. The action was part of a crackdown on loud car stereos by Pittsfield police and a decision by the Somerset County District Attorney’s Office to take a hard-line stand.

“We’re not seizing vehicles to own or forfeit them,” Somerset County District Attorney David Crook said Wednesday afternoon. “The state requires us to prove a loud and unreasonable noise. The car is evidence, just like a home stereo is evidence, and we have seized those countless times.”

Welch works at the Wright Woolen Mill in downtown Pittsfield and travels back and forth on a route that takes him down Higgins Road in West Pittsfield. According to Pittsfield Police Chief Steven Emery, a Higgins Road resident complained to police on Oct. 5 that Welch’s radio was waking her family up early each morning as Welch drove by.

Emery said Welch was warned that day, but the resident called police the next day and said that Welch had deliberately slowed down going by the house.

“We gave him another warning,” said Emery.

“On November 1, the officer observed the loud music himself on Forest Street,” the chief said. “[Welch] was ticketed and his car seized and the knob taped at the level it was on when he was driving.

“The car then became evidence,” he said. It has been stored since at a Pittsfield impoundment lot.

Emery said that the radio level “was ear-piercing. I don’t know how he could drive it like that.”

The car’s radio system had been augmented. “It was right full of speakers,” he said.

Emery said the officer used the state’s disorderly conduct law to charge Welch, not the town’s local noise ordinance. “It is the same law we use for loud parties,” he said.

Emery said that word of the car seizure apparently had an affect on local drivers, however, since noise complaints have dropped dramatically since the incident. “Complaints have dropped from three and four a week, to nothing,” said Emery.

He said his department had given out at least a dozen warnings since the crackdown began in midsummer and had cited two people, including Welch, for disorderly conduct.

Initially pleading not guilty, Welch changed his plea Wednesday morning and paid a $50 fine for disorderly conduct and restitution to the town of Pittsfield for car storage fees of $260.

Outside the courtroom Wednesday morning, Welch complained that the punishment did not fit the crime. His attorney, Robert Washburn of Skowhegan, called the vehicle seizure “an abuse of police power.”

Crook said he was aware the vehicle seizure was “an inconvenience to Mr. Welch” but added that the noise was also an inconvenience to those who were forced to listen.

“We have one case now, a rape case, where the vehicle involved was owned by one woman who lent it to someone else,” Crook said. “Because we are looking in that car for DNA evidence, it may be six months to a year before she gets her vehicle back.”

He said that if Welch had demanded a court hearing, the state would have brought his car to the courthouse so the judge personally could hear the radio and determine if it was too loud.

Welch also said that he was not allowed to get his personal belongings, which included his checkbook and his father’s hunting rifle, from the vehicle, causing him a hardship.

Emery explained that Welch could have obtained his items at any time.

“I told his attorney that all he had to do was call me and I would have accompanied him to the car and he could have had all his stuff,” the chief said.

“You know, the first thing I’m doing when I pick up the car is turning that radio down,” Welch said, after paying his fines at the court clerk’s office.

Emery confirmed that when picking up his car, Welch looked at Emery, gave him a big grin, took the tape off the knob and turned the radio off before starting the vehicle.

“He’s not a bad kid,” said the chief. “He’s just a kid, a kid who likes loud music. It’s ironic that he isn’t even one of the local kids that we’ve had all the trouble with.”