I will make this short. I live in Houston, In 2005, i drove my aunt to Laredo to see her grandkids. Got pulled over in La Salle county and was given several tickets. I obviously never showed, so i have a failure to appear. I owe about 1,000 in fines to La Salle county. Now i'm not able to renew my license until this is paid off. Unfortunately i also owe Galveston about 1,000 from when i was way younger (no inspection, registration, and they tacked on two failure to appears) What are my options, if any, besides paying in full? Has anyone had a situation similar to this? My goal is to get these tickets reduced... if possible. I really didn't wanna post this here because of the comments that i'm sure will follow.. any serious advice is really appreciated..
You tried contacting them to see if there is anything you can work out with them? Otherwise, you've gotta pay up.
Yeah, im afraid i might have to. I was hoping a traffic lawyer could get it reduced or something. The 2 failure to appears that Galveston tacked on is kind of obsessive to me, i mean they are $338 each!!
If your tickets are in the City Of Galveston there is a Warrant Officer who only works with warrants M-F during the day. Call 409-765-3700 and ask to speak with someone about municipal warrants and he will be able to answer your question. Alot of times they are able to work with you as long as your not some low-life.
Yes they are... Thanks!! lol and i'm no low-life.. i was a lot younger and didn't think it would come back to bite me in the ass
Currently the City of Galveston has over 2.5 million dollars in outstanding warrants. Since it is so bad (mostly out-of-towners who figure they will never need to pay) the city is enforcing some ridiculous FTA penalties. In years past you could hide from a city ticket forever but now with DPS having a Surcharge Points System in place it's catching up to everyone
Seems like its way overdue so I doubt they will work anything out with you. I got 2 tickets over the summer driving my girlfriend to school, one in Utah and one in Colorado. Didn't go to either court date, paid late, and had no extra fines. The county in Utah where I got the ticket only had an office open once a week so I don't think they cared, just got lucky
I think there is some leeway in trying to negotiate traffic and parking tickets. One time many years ago, I parked my car on a street in Austin and I left it for like 7 days without returning to the car. When I came back there were 7 parking tickets since I was parked illegally. Each ticket was about $25. So I marched myself over to Austin Police Dept and I successfully convinced the person in charge of ticket appeals that I was an idiot. So she reduced my charge to only 2 tickets. So maybe go to the traffic violation appeals clerk and make a case as to why you should pay a reduced fee.
That's a lot of $$$ Galveston officers love writing tickets though. I'm guessing a lot of counties rely on the money from ticket fines. I'm not even sure where that money goes but that's my guess. I deal and communicate with HPD daily and a lot of officers tell me they barely write tickets. I had one tell me straight up that he doesn't write tickets, said he leaves that to the a-holes
from my understanding if you are able to speak with the DA they will usually combine all tickets as one and allow you to take defensive driving and get them all dismissed which usually cost about 200 bucks or so if i am not mistaken. I would give that a try first but that might require you to show to the court to speak to them, and unfortunately reason i know is because i was in similar situation which totaled out over 3k in fines and only payed under 300 including the defensive driving class and all got removed from record.
were your fines in different counties or cities? I don't see myself traveling to La Salle but Galveston wouldn't be too much of a hassle....actually it would but it would be a lot easier
i was hoping they would show me some leeway but i couldn't speak to anyone "important" over the phone. It would be a lot easier if i could be there in person.
Don't lump US all into that group! LOL We have a traffic unit that specializes in traffic citations, there are far to many other things to deal with in G-Town once you get off of broadway or Seawall and head into the hood. Galveston is unique in the fact that we deal with a tourist community on the main streets and a very low-income gang community just a block away. But good luck with your tickets down here, I'm sure someone will be able to work with you and at the very least set up a payment plan so you can eventually clear everything up.
lol my apologies! That makes sense as far as the traffic unit goes. It's crazy to think what Galveston was before the great storm. I still love the place now...i just think it has soo much more potential as a city, damn hurricanes. Thanks a lot for your advice
If you have so many unpaid tickets, isn't there a possibility that you have several warrants out as well? So you have bigger issues than not being able to renew your license. If you get pulled over or if police randomly run your plates can't they arrest you?
Do not mess around in your own state, remember that. If you are going to Florida and get a ticket there, if you don't pay up, they will not chase you down in Texas (That's why so many places now arrest you for traffic violations if you are from out of state unless you pay them right there.)
