Speeding ticket question

[*Shinzon*]

Don't know where you live but, in NYC you are given the option to both pay and apply to have a hearing for a ticket. If you apply for a hearing, the City of New York will actually give you a 10-20% "discount" on the cost of the ticket if you pay online instead of going to the hearing. You might want to check out that particular city's policies to see if they have something similar, because it would be cheaper really unless you are dead set on fighting it and you know that you have a chance to win.

[jmc]

I'd imagine it also depends on how close to the end of the month it is and if they met quota.

Quota's are a myth >.>


Well not really, but in alot of large cities (Boston for example) there is no quota for moving violations.

[Acturus]

I recently got a ticket for going 36 in a 25. It was 11pm on an empty road, cop saw etc and got a ticket. Now it's only for $127 bucks, my question is would it be worthwhile for me to just pay it online or to go to my court date? My court date falls the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and it's in the middle of an afternoon and unless there is a good reason for me to go to it, I would much rather pay it online.

Being it's my first ticket and I'm 25 I'm not too worrried about my insurance because I can always take the day class to lower the point value on my license if it raises my insurance by too much. Anyone have a suggestion as to why I should rather go to the court date then just paying it online?

No good reason to go to court, given your story. You were speeding, got caught, and it's not a horrific offense (11 over). You aren't disputing the ticket, so why go to court, where you will be expected to dispute the ticket? Also, if you go to court, make sure you have your shit together. Cops/Judges/Prosecutors don't usually like it if you ask all of the dumb questions they expect you to have learned by visiting the internet. Yes the calibration is one of those things that can get a ticket thrown out, same with "I hope the cop doesn't show" and a slew of other gray lines that "ticket clinics" use to reduce fines, but they don't always do the trick, and it's a lot of work for such a minor offense.

It's your first ticket, and from my experience here in Florida, you can take the safe driver class to get a reduction on the ticket and the points reduced/removed (Florida is once a year, 5 times lifetime max for the class). The reduction in the ticket by taking the class is made up by the cost of the class, so you really just take the class to reduce/remove the points. Again, this is FL.

Your insurance should have dropped at age 25 to a more reasonable rate. A minor ticket like this won't jack it up much, if at all. If it does go up, call your insurance company and ask how long the record will remain on your file. My wife had a speeding ticket on her insurance when we got married, and it came off maybe 15 months later. Her portion of our policy was adjusted, and our rate went down slightly.

[Pringles]

Called the court this morning, the fees would be 65 dollars. Also talked to a friends friend who is a cop in the same jurisdiction as I got pulled over, he asked me about the cop who pulled me over. He told me from what he's heard about him, the guy is a pretty by the book guy and odds are he will definately be at the court date. He recommended I just pay it online, unless I really want to try and argue it out, but based on what I told him, he said my odds of getting out of it are slim.

Based on what he said and what was said on here, I'll most likely pay it online. Thanks for all the help and advice.

[Cream Soda]

Quota's are a myth >.>


Well not really, but in alot of large cities (Boston for example) there is no quota for moving violations.

I pulled this from yahoo answers

OH THANK YOU FOR ASKING ABOUT ONE OF MY PET PEEVES!!!!
Officially quotas are illegal, however most agencies get around that now days, and YES, they do have quotas. Only now they call them contact point systems or some other euphemism. They say they don't have quotas but if you don't have your contact points up at the end of the month or around evaluation time you will hear about it. And how do you get contact points? Each agency is different, but the one I worked for gave certain points for certain contacts, but tickets were heavily weighted.
You would get a single contact point for each ticket you wrote and one for each call you took. Now here is the game they play.
---If you are more interested in criminal work so you handle burglaries and thefts and assaults in depth you get one point for each case, even if it takes you 16 hours to investigate it. Burglaries and robberies take hours and hours to handle yet you only get one point.
---Then you have RADAR O'reilly who is a ticket demon. It takes 10 minutes to write a chincey seat belt ticket and 15 for a slipshod speeding pinch. So O'reilly writes 30 tickets in a day and gets 30 points while the crime fighter gets maybe 4-5 points for handling a burglary and a felony theft or robbery and 2 for a couple family fights.
Come promotion time who do you think they promote, the ticket demon with 4000 contact points or the competant criminalist who maybe has 300 because he does good police work??
Of course you already know why they do it. All that ticket money goes into the general fund and a % comes back to the agency to spend on new fancier RADAR guns, Lasers, etc.
---This never happened until the law changed about where the fine money went. It used to be 100% of all fine money went into the state school fund, then around 1980 they changed the law so that our ticket fines went into the general fund, not the school fund AND the department got a % kick back. That's when all this ticket pressure started. Constant pressure to write tickets to people on the interstates that go through our county so that we bring in money from out of town and because out of towners rarely fight a ticket. Of course they never admit that in public but they assign special traffic enforcement cars that only work those highways that out of towners travel and they tell you all to work those highways constantly.
---OH and here is another game they play. RADAR Oreilly writes 30 speeding tickets a day. There is NO way to write 30 competant traffic reports a day. He doesn't write ANY report or the barest on the ticket. Why? Because he knows that most people just pay off their tickets and don't demand trials. Even if the DA won't take any tickets by him to trial because they are poor risks he knows that even if they dismiss half of them he still has 15 tickets a day that get paid off, thats over a $1500 a day. And the admin LOVES him!
---Guys like myself who refused this game and fought it through the union and other ways got passed over for promotions and harrassed constantly. At evaluations they try to gig you for not having enough contact points until you make it clear you will grieve it with the union and go to court. Then they just magically decide to let you slide, but write BA on your evaluations (BAD ATTITUDE). Fortunately where I worked the good cops out numbered the traffic point players and the department never got their way completely.
Is it a conflict of interest? What it is is a damned crime in my opinion, its a blight on the honest cops who want to help people, but who am I but a duty diabled retiree.
And lest you think this is only here that this happens you are wrong. Almost 90% of medium and large agencies have contact point systems of one kind or another.
Oh yah and lest you think I am just a disgruntled trouble maker or a case or sour grapes, I served in a medium sized sheriff's department, 125 deputies, for 19 years and a police department for 3 years prior to that. During that time I worked as a primary response/ traffic deputy, a warrant server, judicial bodyguard and driver, felony flight return officer, detective and a very short time as a supervisor. During those years I received 23 commendations before a fleeing drunk driver hit my cruiser and shattered my knee, blew out two discs and broke my neck, ending my career.
Although I was thoroughly disgusted with the last administration of my department I was proud to serve the people of my community.
Source(s):
Disgusted retired cop of 21 years

[jmc]

I pulled this from yahoo answers

In all honesty.......... ive never heard of any system like that before.

As in, MA is a "Civil Service State" so promotions are based off a department wide test instead of that system.