Former Indianapolis police officer Judd Green says he got tired of seeing elderly women waiting at bus stops with no place to sit.

So he built them benches. And then he sold advertising space on the benches. And now his company, Mini Billboards, has them all across Indianapolis.

But that doesn’t sit well with city officials, who say the benches are ugly and illegal.

So they’re planning to take Green’s benches and hundreds of others down this summer. All 800 of them.

“We’ve received nothing but complaints about them,” said Kyle Walker, deputy director of the Department of Public Works. “Most of them are a public nuisance and unsafe because they are right next to the street.”

Walker said the benches violate an ordinance that prohibits putting signs on city streets and another against placing obstructions on the sidewalk.

Green, 63, a former hostage negotiator who retired from the Police Department nine years ago, scoffs at the claim.

“I am providing taxpayers a public service at no cost to them, something the city should be providing,” he said. “The elderly, the handicapped and hard-working people appreciate a place to sit when they take the bus every day. It used to tick me off passing these poor people while I was on patrol.”

Green said he tells his customers that he thinks the benches are in compliance with the city’s setback rules. “We keep them out of the public way,” he said. “Sometimes the city disagrees with us on that.”

The benches are easy to overlook — they are, after all, just benches — but they line busy streets where buses run, including Keystone Avenue and Washington Street, advertising roofing companies, drive-ins and tax services. Most of the signs are made of wooden planks with concrete feet to weigh them down. City officials contend that they’re schlocky. “They aren’t pleasant-looking,” Walker said.

The only legal benches in the public right of way are those maintained by IndyGo in its bus shelters. The agency needed a special zoning exemption to install them. It has 218 shelters with benches and 4,000 bus stops altogether.

This month, code enforcement workers began slapping orange “Prohibited Sign” stickers on the illegal benches. More than 300 benches have been tagged, and 500 more are targeted.

Starting May 11, DPW workers will round up the benches on flatbed trucks and haul them to four city parks. Indy Parks can then paint them and reuse them in parks.

Walker said the city doesn’t mean to deprive commuters of a place to rest. But he said that until the City-County Council writes a comprehensive ordinance, it will remain illegal to place the benches on city property.

“We will begin exploring how we may legally replace these so we don’t inconvenience people who were used to them being there,” Walker said.

Carla Crosby, 48, said she found the city’s rationale confounding.

Each day, Crosby walks two miles to her Eastside bus stop at Washington Street and Franklin Road, where a Mini Billboard bench awaits her.

“It’s a long walk, and I appreciate being able to rest my feet,” said Crosby, a thrift storecashier. “I don’t see how this bench is hurting anyone.”

Jennifer Prince said the benches actually increase safety, rather than hinder it.

“If you are waiting for the bus with kids, this is where you park them so they don’t go running into the street,” said Prince, a Downtown resident who takes the bus each day to her job at a fast-food restaurant on Crawfordsville Road on the Westside. “They’re also helpful if you have an armful of stuff. You can set it down rather than tiring your arms.”

It was citizens, however, who jolted the city into taking action on the signs.

Greater Allisonville Community Council Vice President Bob Lehnen said his group had planned to remove the benches in its neighborhood until DPW offered to get involved.

He said the benches are a blight and reduce property values. One of the area’s 32 benches is in a drainage ditch on 82nd Street, he said.

“It would have been a tragedy to have someone waiting for an IndyGo bus on one of these illegal benches and be injured or even killed because the bench was in an unsafe location,” Lehnen said.

Once the benches come down, hundreds of businesses that have bought advertising space stand to lose money. Indiana Quality, a window and roofing company, won’t be among them.

“We ended our contract a few months ago and have actually been getting a free ride because some of the ads are still up,” said office manager Nicole Brewer.

Indiana Quality had a one-year contract with Green to advertise on 10 benches, paying $1,250 a month for all of them.

She said the city never called to tell her the ads were not allowed, even though the company’s number is on the bench.