St-Laurent, CA — In regards to the different ways the police state attempts to extract revenue from the citizens it ostensibly claims to protect, nothing seems to be off limits. To illustrate just how far police will go to separate a citizen from the product of their labor, a man was given a $149 ticket for singing “Everybody Dance Now” while driving.

While this may seem like a story out of The Onion, it is entirely true. On September 27, Taoufik Moalla was on his way to the store to buy some water when a song he loved from the 90’s came on. As he happily sang along to the 1990 C&C Music Factory hit, he noticed a police cruiser behind him with its lights and sirens on.

“I was thinking they wanted to pass, but they called on the speaker ‘Please go to the right side,’” Moalla explained. “I stopped and four police came, two on each side, and checked the inside of the car. Then they asked me if I screamed. I said no, I was just singing.”

For singing in his car, four police officers surrounded him and demanded his license and registration. After running his paperwork, police then came back to the car with a ticket for screaming in a public place while driving his car. Seriously.

“I don’t know if my voice was very bad and that’s why I got the ticket,” he said jokingly. “But I was very shocked. I understand if they are doing their job, they are allowed to check if everything’s okay, if I kidnapped someone or if there’s danger inside but I would never expect they would give me a ticket for that.”

Moalla said he wasn’t singing too loud, “just if you are happy and you like this song,” reports CTV News.

Likely not wanting any of the four officers—who were extorting him for singing—to get violent, Moalla said he kept his cool during the stop, allowed them to write the ticket, and is most assuredly going to fight it in court.

“I said okay, thank you, because I know I can contest the ticket. They were doing their job.”

As CTV reports, he’s done just that and is currently waiting for a court date, which he said he was told could take as long as a year to take place. He said he simply plans to tell a judge how he got the ticket.

“Imagine if the Canadiens won a game. All the fans are going to scream out of their cars. They’re going to sing. Are you going to give them all tickets?” Moalla asked as he applied logic to the situation—unlike the officers.

And there you have it. Because of the tendency of the police state to make laws which criminalize normal behavior, an innocent man will have to go to trial to prove he wasn’t harming anyone for singing in his car.

Canadian police are somewhat notorious for these ridiculous violations. As TFTP reported last year, Tommy Boucher was at the Jean-Talon Metro station in Montreal when he was approached and fined for an act that is completely legal between two individuals—hugging.

Two Société de transport de Montréal (STM) inspectors approached Boucher as his arms were open, wearing his usual attire — a green shirt that read, ‘free hugs.’

“I was arms open wearing my green free hugs t-shirt offering free hugs to the passers-by and two STM inspectors approached me asking me if I had my permit,” Boucher wrote on his blog.

Because a man—who was simply trying to spread love and peace—did not have a permit, he was issued a citation for $101.

Tommy Boucher in his green t-shirt ready to give out free hugs. Image: http://mybrainwillexplode.com/