Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 03/14/18> There may not be a trial after all
Back in the fall a good friend of mine received a speeding ticket from the local county law enforcement, he was scheduled for a hearing this past January and as luck would have it; we had ice and snow that day which forced the courts to be closed for business. His case was rescheduled and he was set to be in court next Tuesday, the 20th.
A couple weeks ago James went down to the court house and requested a copy of all the paper work that has been filed in his case that is pending, for the sum of $1.00 he received one piece of paper, which was a photo copy of the speeding ticket that the officer wrote James. This presents a big problem for the prosecution because there is no reference to any code or statute listed on the ticket, and there is no other paper work filed in the case that is charging him with an “offense”.
This is how corrupt these folks have gotten in these courts, they don’t even bother to file the appropriate paper work. They just assume that no one will ever look and force their hand to play by the rules. Well, James did look, and he is forcing their hand to play ball by the rules.
James filed a motion on March 1st with the clerk of the court for a “show cause hearing” on why he is required to appear for court on the 20th when he has not been officially charged with any crime. As per the law, James was required to deliver a copy of the motion to the district attorney’s office, which he did in person and got a receipt signed by the lady at the front desk of the DA’s office. On the afternoon of March 2nd James received a phone call from the assistant DA asking him just what he is trying to do.
James got a call last Friday from the asst. DA again, the asst. DA informed James that the charges are being dismissed and by this Thursday, his speeding charges will be dismissed and he can check on line and see that his case will be removed from the docket for the 20th, and showing that the outcome of the case will be “dismissed”.
Well, if the DA does in fact dismiss the charges, which are non-existent, it will be a victory. Honestly it was a disappointment for me to hear this, but it does show that if you hold them accountable they will back down. They know that they are screwing people left and right and are willing to give up few “marks” to keep their fraud intact.
I really wanted to see the reaction of the judge and the asst. DA when James would have entered his plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity” at his hearing. Filing the motion for the show cause hearing took that away, the end result though is a positive one for James, his other attempts at trying to “beat” his speeding tickets have never worked in the past and this attempt did. Yea, James!!!
Just to give you an idea on just how big a racket this traffic court is let me give you some numbers for the cases that are to appear today, March, 14th in this court. For the 8:00AM docket there are 201 appearances hearings, I added up the total fines for just the first 50 cases on the docket, the average fine works out to be $181.10 per ticket. If you multiply that out by the 201 cases it totals $36,401.10 , that is pretty good lump of money for a couple hours worth of work, because most people will opt to pay the fine online and never even make an appearance in court. The 1:00PM docket has 261 cases on it, so if we use the same $181.10 that afternoon session total comes out to $47,267.10 ; the total day’s revenue potential is $83,668.20.
I took the opportunity to check and see what next week’s docket schedule has listed; there are 2,547 appearance cases listed, if you multiply that by the $181.10 it comes out to $461,261.70. I won’t go as far as to say that this is an every week average but let’s say that it was only 26 weeks out the year, the total in fines would be close to $12 million a year in this one court alone, rest assured that this has nothing to do about making the roads “safer” and everything to do about being a substantial revenue stream for the county precinct.
You can easily see when you look at the numbers that letting a few people like James off the hook is not even a drop in the bucket. The potential exposure that a jury trial case could bring with the likes of James could end up exposing just how corrupt this system is though.
I think that I may end up doing a little comparative analysis of the different JP courts in the county and see just how they all compare when I get the chance. I took a look at one other precinct court docket for next week and it had less than 500 cases for the whole week. I can’t believe that where we live in the county that we are 5 times as bad of drivers as in another precinct, or are we just being targeted?
Well that’s all for this edition, until next time,
@sultnpapper
All photos are property of @sultnpapper
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its all stacked up for sure. gotta find the crime to justify. justification demands its own resolution. now the purse drives it all.
be smart if you fight..or they chew you.
glad your friend got out....but this is not the norm. a strap down the beast overlord dominance. we are but paupers. may we not find trouble...for i could not defend me nor could i defend the fancy pants dancers wishing for action. so be it...lets eat bbq!!
Dilly Dilly to being smart with the fight and to BBQ.
Ha... not worth the effort, just let 'im go. That would have been fun to see if it was carried out, but that's totally ... expected, I'd say? I feel around NYC they do a slightly better job with documentation, it seems more difficult to squirm out of these things. Nicely done on his part though. You gotta hold them accountable.
The courts try and string you out if you want to fight the ticket, they know that most people won't miss 2 or 3 half days of work to make the appearance hearing, then the pre-trial conference and finally the trial. So they price the tickets at a level that it stings your wallet but you will pay without a fight. When he filed the motion for a show cause hearing on why he should even appear since no charges had been filed it got their attention pretty quickly. He took the offensive position rather than a defensive one, and that had to scare them in the DA's office.
I never paid attention to just how many tickets that little court was running through there until I sat down to write this dose, the numbers of tickets and dollars are astounding for a little precinct JP court.
The devil is in the details, NYC may be better, but until you actually look who knows for sure?
That's true. It's certainly worth a look. My observation is based on one data point: me being ticketed for double-parking and trying to fight it with a really poor reason (I was wrong and in violation of that law. doh...). Granted they had a whole online process to make it easy to send, and easy to swat away.
I am glad you updated us on this matter, as I was also interested in the outcome. To me, it is just as laudable and entertaining as if it had gone to court. GO, JAMES! LOL!
As were you, I am astonished by the revenue stream from all this. Making almost half-a-million per week from traffic tickets, especially in ONE jurisdiction only, is almost unbelievable... wow...
I about fell over when I started running the numbers on that court , I have often referred to the cops as "highway robbers" but it might needed to be changed to bank robbers. When I get some time I am going to look into these courts a little further.
Only the ai will put a stop to all of this.
How do figure that one, if you don't mind me asking?
The AI will be hard coded, only actual an actual offense will trigger it. Only keep the best interest of the people.
I guess I am missing what capacity the AI will be functioning in? As the police? or Judge? will it be in the vehicle itself?
Just goes to show you that you can beat them at their own game. The whole system is rigged to scam money from the unsuspecting public. Here it is worse. They use radar guns and accuse people of doing more than the speed limit and then take their licence and suspend it for 6 months! Then you can fight with the police to get them back for a measly $200. I have a dash camera that also shows the speed you are travelling. So when I get stopped I can prove I am doing the speed limit and I also get a nice photo ofthe police with badge number. I still have my licence!
Some type of recording device is highly recommended when dealing with the police for sure.
Well, I'm glad it worked out for him -- although I was skeptical ... and interested in the outcome. As for why your part of the county seems to host more bad drivers, is it possible you live in a place just affluent enough NOT to have the political pull to get someone in trouble ... but yet not inclined to put up a fuss when paying a fine will just make the whole thing go away?
Ticketing people who clearly can't pay just puts more burden on the system. Ticketing someone who can call up his friend "the mayor" (or who plays golf with half a dozen lawyer buddies every Saturday) ... might not pay off well. But somewhere in there is a happy middle-ground where people can pay (rather than miss important job-related appointments, etc.) and will (because it's not going to take food off the table) ... and so the cash just keeps rolling in.