No, it’s not over. It’s FAR from over:
#MikeBrown – Rest in Power. #HandsUpDontShoot #FindingPeace pic.twitter.com/LSMdcnmbfU
— denise reese (@denice_ruptly) August 25, 2014
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Donate to the legal support fund to aid those arrested in Ferguson protests.
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Breaking the Cycle
A new kind of traffic ticket forgiveness will change the way tickets are handled in a small municipality not far from Ferguson. It might even have an impact on neighboring cities. That’s what Velda City’s Police Chief Daniel Paulino is hoping.
The average traffic ticket violator owes up to $1,000 in tickets in Velda City. The violators generate $250,000 in court fines. Most of them never pay it.
Paulino said the money is nothing compared to people stuck in the cycle of not showing up to court. He needed to find a way to break the cycle for people such as Sharon Reece.
She said she couldn’t show up to court because she had to work. “If you can’t take off work to go to court then, it’s another ticket,” Reece said.
“And they have another fine, and another failure to appear, and another warrant so they are right back in the cycle” Paulino said.Twenty thousand traffic ticket cases are stuck in a vicious cycle in Velda City. Four thousand people have active warrants for their arrest.
“We want to be one of the first to say we hear you, we’re listening, and this is what we will do right now to break the cycle,” Paulino said.
He convinced his city to start a new amnesty program for the month of October. You pay $200 for the court costs. Your warrants and tickets (not including DWI) are gone. You get a letter from the court to get your license back.
“People can still be held accountable, and the city can say you’re done with us,” Paulino said. He expects the program to help clear the court docket. But he said the most important impetus of the program is to show the people he serves and protects that the city is listening and care.
“I want to do the right thing,” Reece said. The right thing now means a mistake won’t follow you for years in Velda City.
Velda’s City “Break the Cycle” program runs for the month of October. Paulino said city lawyers from different cities are looking at the program as they try to come up with a long-term solution to deal with traffic ticket warrants.
