Image: Defense.gov

Bryan Whitman was “one of the Pentagon’s top spokesmen” during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to The Washington Post. These days, as one of the highest ranking civilians in the DOD’s public affairs office, he “personally advises the Secretary of Defense.” In his downtime, though, Bryan Whitman has apparently taken it upon himself to be the neighborhood parking pass vigilante that no one asked for.

It all started on April 4, when a local nanny in a neighborhood near Capitol Hill found the following note on her front windshield:

I know you are misusing this visitor pass to park here daily. If you do not stop I will report it, have your car towed and the resident who provided this to you will have his privileges taken away.

The nanny, in fact, was doing nothing illegal at all, but Whitman wasn’t about to let a silly thing like the law interfere with justice. So two days later, he stole one of her license plates. He let another two days passed. The nanny, however, continued to park undeterred. So he stole the other license plate.

The nanny then had the plates replaced and secured with “hefty allen bolts,” so in late April, when Whitman tried to swipe them once again, he was forced to walk away empty handed. What’s more, the nanny’s employers had also sprung for a surveillance camera. Which is why we know every absurd detail of what went down a week later. From The Washington Post:

He returned just before noon, and the charging documents describe in detail how determined he was to unhinge the plate: Parking near the nanny’s van, walking back and forth from his car to hers, crouching behind it, leaving, returning, crouching more, walking back to his car, driving away.

The process, from beginning to end, took 47 minutes.

Once the couple finally recognized who it was creeping on their lawn, Whitman’s noble cause of wildly inconveniencing a law-abiding nanny was thwarted at last. Not that that stopped him from parking in front of the couple’s house on the same day as his arraignment.

The Post notes that “Whitman — who according to two former Pentagon colleagues makes at least $150,000 — has lived on First Street SE in Capitol Hill for about 20 years, court records show. Beyond a fenced courtyard, a brick staircase leads to the front door of his tidy rowhouse, valued by city tax assessors at nearly $900,000.”

For his crime of passion, Whitman will pay $1,000 and perform 32 hours of community service. The nanny now parks two blocks away out of fear for her own safety. Neighborhood justice for you, folks.