Ticket Deals

What is the name of your state? NC

What is the view on officers providing ticket "deals"? Such as, they were going to charge you with one offense but decide to issue you a totally different offense instead.

You mean instead of giving you a ticket for 20 mph over they just give you one for having a busted tail light?

Whats wrong with that?

Not a good comparison. A better one would be writing a seatbelt ticket instead of a moving violation.

The problem comes in when the driver decides he's gonna fight the ticket.

I used to do it once in a while, when circumstances dictated the driver should get a break. Sometimes I'd knock a few MPH off an excessive speeder. I don't do it anymore. I've had it come back to bite me a few too many times.

I was admonished by a Judge once. I stopped a speeder for 25+ over the limit, took pity on her pleading, and wrote the ticket for 15 over. You guessed it, the driver decided to go to trial. I had to testify that I saw her going 25+ over, but wrote 15. The Judge dismissed it, based on 'defective citation'. He told me I didn't have the authority to reduce citations. He did, and who was I to usurp his authority?

I stopped a driver for doing a U turn on a freeway off ramp.

The driver was a nice old guy, so I wrote him a $10 seatbelt ticket instead of a $250+ Wrong Way citation. The driver filed a service complaint on me, saying that he religiously wore his belt, and if he had done a U turn as I claimed, why didn't I cite him for that instead? Got a verbal reprimand for that one.

Never again. If I write it, I write what I see. No exceptions.

If there is one absolute truism I've learned as a cop, it's that the driver you give a break to, is the one that will complain the loudest.... or the civilian version, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished".

I agree with Curt here. The way I was trained is you either issue for what was observed OR you warn and admonish and release.

It is not the job of the police (in NY at least) to issue for things that you did not observe in an effort to afford the operator a "break." You may mean well, but you'll always get someone who will want to press the issue and say you made a false written statement.

More specific example

Let say an officer instead of going through the whole process of proving someone is illegally over the safe drinking and arresting that person for OUI, decides to give someone a ticket for another offense--say speeding because he/she is too busy at the moment to process the individual. Is that look lightly upon?

dc1806 said:

Let say an officer instead of going through the whole process of proving someone is illegally over the safe drinking and arresting that person for OUI, decides to give someone a ticket for another offense--say speeding because he/she is too busy at the moment to process the individual. Is that look lightly upon?

Click to expand...

Let's not.

No more "what if's".

Tell us what happened, and what you were cited for. Then we'll have the specifics we need to help you.

More info

I work for an agency as a dispatcher and overheard a co-worker talking about the situation and was simply curious about the community view on such actions. It is the first of such I have heard of happening and thought it was a little shady. I don't have the full details. I was curous about the consequences of providing a "deal" on the road. I would have taken the person in....I have never heard of someone being so busy that he/she couldn't at least call another officer to handle the situation.

Maybe I am still green....

The answer is simple, you just issue another ticket for the correct citation and dismiss the original ticket. This is what I used to do. When I found out they they were going to trial I just ammended the ticket or issued a new one when they appeared for the arraignment.

When this happened the judge always found them guilty and maxed the fine.

The only problem I have is that some officers abuse this. I have had reports of one town that has credit card machines in the patrol cars. The officer says he will reduce the ticket if you pay on the spot. Don't have any evidence to back up the report so it is just hearsay.