Posted on 09/20/2014 7:44:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Hunkered down in her south St. Louis County apartment with a mug of coffee and a thick novel, Carol Ray, 54, tries to enjoy a sunny morning off from work. But that’s hard when you’re a fugitive from justice who could be taken away in handcuffs at any moment.
On her kitchen table sit unpaid traffic tickets from the cities of Beverly Hills and Town and Country: $199 total.
Somebody with money could hire a lawyer with contacts in the court, exchange a few emails and pay extra to keep points off their license. With no more sacrifice than a Friday night at home with Netflix and a $10 bottle of wine, the tickets are taken care of.
But that’s not how it works for a customer service representative making $12.67 an hour. Beverly Hills has a warrant out for her arrest; Town and Country court workers said they may issue one as soon as this week. And Ray just got notice her drivers license will be suspended because she skipped court....
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
California may be a different ball of wax. Back East we have “revenue enhancement’” AT THE END OF EVERY MONTH. There is no such thing as “traffic school”.. it’s who ya know and how much is the bribe.
Spit spot…done
so, you take it to the next level for a trial de novo, administrative procedures go up a level for a judicial review or a trial de novo.
An Attorney can represent you for anything. The legal system is daunting to most. They rule the everyday.
Never ignore them. They will jail you.
If your guilty then pay up. If your innocent then show up.
It’s as simple as that.
If it’s a criminal offense we have now walked into the deep-end of the pool.
Advice changes some.
It really doesn’t matter what your excuse is, or why you feel you’ve been put upon, or whether the law is unjust or unfair. When you’re summoned to a duly authorized court, you go to court.
If they didn’t speed or park in the wrong place they wouldn’t have a ticket. If they showed up in court they wouldn’t have warrant. Problems solved.
I’ve driven for 38 years and never had a speeding or parking ticket and I didn’t have a court date I missed so no warrants. Look how easy that was. Now I don’t have to figure out how to pay for doing something wrong. I have no sympathy.
I bet she spends more than $199 a month on her cell phone and/or booze and/or cigarettes.
Had a $50 ticket for parking in street cleaning zone in Newark
When to court - judge knocked it down to $10 in costs
No lawyer, no sweat......
Actually I misread the article, these were “traffic infractions”....implying “moving” violations.
Nevertheless, the failure to appear/respond is the cause of this problem. I have sympathy for all people, including myself, when debts are uncomfortable. But I am not sympathetic to folks who get into their own soup (including myself when it happens) due to their own inattention.
Let me tell you about a personal experience I had with a traffic citation. While on active duty at Ft. Lewis Washington U.S. Army , I received a speeding ticket which I paid ( timeline 1986)I was on my motorcycle on an island somewhere in Puget Sound....forget the name of the island. Fast forward to 1991, I ran a yellow light in Pasco county Florida and was informed that my license was suspended out of Washington state? I had my drivers license from Massachusetts AND a license from Florida (in state because I owned property as the law was then )... I got arrested ...car towed, night in jail and went to court then released with a return date after my plea of not guilty. SO, I paid the towing and storage fee...got my vehicle and spent the next two days tracking down the paid ticket conformation because I did not physically possess the receipt of said PAID citation. I never had a drivers license from Washington state while on active duty my Mass. license is valid...the registry in Florida never notified me of my in state license being suspended by a state 2500-2800 miles away for an unpaid speeding ticket. After hundreds of dollars all I got was ......crickets......the towing contractor got paid...the court took money for the court costs...continued without adjudication was applied and everyone turned their back when I asked why I was not notified by mail when BOTH registries Massachusetts and Florida had my mailing addresses?? So all of you posting about “ don’t drive if you can’t pay a ticket crap “ should think twice before uttering such blind alliance to the slush fund known as traffic citations. I am an independent conservative .
still got to pay court costs, I had one recently and it was $75 just for the court costs and the fine would have been $25 dollars. Also, those costs are for each ticket and add up quickly.
You went to Court? Well bless you.
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I didn’t mean to be crass but folks thinking the courts can be ignored are idiots. They have no clue what awaits their own life when they disregard the rule of law.
The good news, once she is picked up on the bench warrant a public defender will be assigned.
The bad news, tax payers will pick up that tab..?
I sat about two weeks ago and listened to an interview of a reporter who spent several weeks in Ferguson, and he started to branch out to examine various other conditions in surrounding communities, around St Louis.
What he came to find was a separated community system, various city/town councils, and each one had a fairly large police establishment....reporting only to that city/town. One burb, after another.
It appears, that the chief money-maker for all of them....are speed-traps and parking fines. They weren’t using their local force to whittle down on crime as we’d all expect in our own communities....they were using strictly as money-makers.
Once you got entangled in one community, you onto some state-wide register, and if you missed making that payment (you are minimum wage character, or a out-of-work individual), because you don’t have that $150 or whatever, then various court additions get tacked on, and you absolutely need a lawyer to get out of jail-time, but your whole savings is wiped out paying the lawyer to stay out of jail.
I grew up in the south, and know the speed-trap game, and how some communities have no choice but gimmick laws to pay for their stupidity, city parks, or ball fields. But when society hits “pothole” after “pothole”, going through five or six towns to get to their minimum wage job, and get a ticket on the average of every couple of months, and worry about the points and cash for the lawyers who just grin as you hire them....you lose faith in the system.
This kid in Ferguson did some thing stupid and got himself six-feet under. But the community is saying this is just the last straw in dealing with a screwed up system. I think they just latched onto this to vent their frustrations over how things work. Frankly, I think it’s time to open up the budget book of these towns....review traffic and parking tickets....and start to ask stupid questions.
That would be nice, but it doesn’t work like that here in NJ. I already had an appointment to fix it, but it’s at the officer’s discretion whether to ticket or not, and this town’s police are particularly aggressive. Then of course a surcharge goes on your insurance.
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