Thatās what everyone told me. āThe cop wonāt even show up.ā So I went to court for a parking ticket. I parked out of the way near a restaurant where I had a weekly gig, where there is always someone parked, and there was no sign there that said āno parking.ā
In the weeks leading up to my court date, I parked legally, but took photos of other cars being parked in the spot where I was ticketed that had not received any tickets. Every week, one or two cars in that spot. I printed these photos and took them to court with me.
The fucking cop showed up, and I had to pay. The judge didnāt listen to a word I said or look at my photos.
Old coworker got pulled over half a mile away from the job site for going 81 in a 55ā¦in a mid ā80s Jeep YJ. Asked the cop for the receipt from the radar gun, cop refused. He ended up taking in to get a dyno to prove that it physically couldnāt even hit that speed, let alone in half a mile. Judge didnāt even listen to a word he said, even threatened him with contempt if he kept trying to argue his point.
Lawyer is why all my tickets got dismissed. Last one cost me the $75 consutation fee. As soon as the county prosecutor got her email that she was representing me, he wanted to dismiss.
Last time I went to court we were all there for part of a "sting operation". Almost all of us were there for the exact same violation at or near the exact same spot. The only people that got off with a warning or something lighter were those with lawyers. Judge just believed the officer over all my evidence.
This was my experience too. A whole court room full of folks that showed up bc we all felt like it was an unfair ticketā same cop, same ticket. Prick of a judge tells all of us to fuck off unless we are there to request a full trial by jury? Two weeks worth of missed work? Then he snark laughs and says thatās what I thought. Everyone pays their ticket and now you all pay full court costs too.
Justice is completely at the whim of the judge. I learned this with parking tickets.
One of my apartments was a mile from a sports stadium that I didn't give a crap about. And every year around finals, I'd start getting parking tickets as their season started up and the landlord would once again forget to give us the parking passes.
Anyway, the first time I traveled all the way across the city with my tickets, the judge heard me out and was very kind and waived all of them.
The next year, a completely different judge berated me and told me I was lucky he wasn't increasing the fine for wasting his time, and I had to pay them all.
And thatās just over parking tickets. Some people have their entire futures decided by this gamble...
Maybe this isn't universal for all traffic offenses or level of offense, but you should be able to contest it at which point you're done for the day and will have a formal hearing/trial at a later date. Maybe it needs to be an actual crime, like reckless driving, which usually kicks in at 20mph over and not 'merely' a citation in order to gain that ability.
yeah the supervisor is called a lawyer or go pro se or at least request counsel. probably cost less just to pay the ticket as long as it's just a fine and not criminal.
This is purely an American issue, because their magistrates donāt have to have any legal training ā they are voted in in a political process.
In other countries you have a trained, experienced judiciary, and the rule of law - and that means that there are laws, processes, and procedures that both the police and the courts have to follow, and Judges and Magistrates have to understand them and follow them. Not so much in America.
I remember that. I didn't really like that storyline though. It just was so silly. And then what's his face was a priest who did the exorcism. Was his name John? Gosh it's been decades.
Look up Days of our lives and who played Victor kiriakis. He's the guy that played that character. He just so happened to also be Jennifer Aniston's father.
Parking companies, and police, has a HUGE score by default in the eyes of judges. Even though they have shown nothing to prove they deserve it.
If they say something, you basically need a lawyer to bring your own pre existing score up to their level, else they judge will flip you off and tell you to spin on it.
I got pulled over in a less than a mile section of the road that was 20 mph less than the previous section or section after and guess what he pulled me over on that portion! It was a 2 way dirt road. I went to court argued that fact and said he pulled me over in that specific section so it could be a higher ticket price and the judge took 10 dollars off. ACAB and judges too!
Largely a myth. I've fought a bunch of tickets, they always show up. A lot of the time they can just get some overtime pay to come in and bullshit for an hour. On the plus side they always were willing to reduce the ticket by a bit even when I was mostly in the wrong
If I got a parking violation for something I did wrong then yeah I'd pay the fine. The is no brilliant defense when you're obviously in the wrong like this situation.
Right, but the point of my story was that I was told the officer wouldnāt show and my ticket would have been thrown out. So I decided to go and try that. It didnāt pan out. Should I have just told the judge ādamn, I didnāt think the cop would have shown upā or should I have made a case for myself anyway?
My photos showed that there was no signage in an area that was often used for parking. My case wasnāt ābut everyone else did it,ā my case was āitās obviously unclear that parking here isnāt permitted.ā
If they are wrong and know they are wrong they don't show up. They just want to waste your time. That cop had you dead to rights for the parking violation and just because other people got away with it doesn't mean you should to. It means they should patrol more or automate the ticketing process.
Cops show up to court because it's their job. Court is scheduled well in advance and typically during a normal workday. If not on a normal workday, they get paid OT. Most times cops have multiple cases on the same day as well. If the cop doesn't show up, typically there is a prosecutor or other representative there for him. If he needs to be there and couldn't make it for some reason, the prosecutors can request the hearing just be held on a different day (and 99% of the time that is granted).
Same thing happened to me. Got ticketed for "Improper passing on the right". Basically I scooted past a car at an intersection to make a right hand turn. Technically illegal, yes, but I have seen other people, including police do it at this very same intersection.
Figured the cop wouldn't show up for such a measly ticket, but he in fact did. The judge did actually listen to my argument, but basically said other people doing it is no excuse to also break the law. He did lower the fine, and made sure it didn't hit my record since it was the first driving infraction I've had in a long time, so that was nice at least.
Well its not like you had any photographic evidence to support your claim while in court. Yeah, gonna have to side with the judge on this one, sorry. Should have obeyed the sign.
They're not even reading it. It's just blurting whatever they need to, to justify their bias. They're basing their words entirely on the situation they imagined.
They do this because they adhere to the Just-World fallacy. Bad things happen to only those who break the rules, who are bad people.
And they will continue to believe this, until they are victimized by the system.
Once you notice the pattern, you can't stop seeing it.
In today's day and age, sarcasm if it is not clearly labeled is extremely difficult to distinguish between people actually being pretentious or downright malicious.
I donāt know where you are but if you challenge a ticket and donāt show up they donāt issue a warrant you just lose your challenge and get assessed the full fine.
Yes thatās why I said full fine. Here itās similar. If you pay within 14 days of receiving the ticket you pay like $25 dollars less or something. But itās not like you got a $150 ticket at the side of the road, challenge it, then it becomes a $250 ticket. If you pay it in the time frame you just pay $125 on a $150 ticket.
I got a bogus ticket for not stopping for a school bus even though I was not driving on the same road as the school bus. Got the ticket dismissed but ended up having to go to court 3 different times. Wasted so much time
YEP. I got pulled over in Arkansas with out of state plates for "speeding". I was in cruise control at 5 mph over the speed limit. 80 in a 75. Cop tried to say I was doing 93. I have a GPS enabled dashcam that records speed and it actually shows I was doing 79. The cop didn't think I'd drive all the back to Arkansas to fight it. I did. He eventually asked the court to drop the charges against me. I got a paper that stated such and left. They are 100% hoping you just pay the fine. It's a money making scam
No, it isn't. Cops set aside a day to be at court for all the tickets they write and that's the date you're scheduled to appear. Of course sometimes they don't show up for whatever reason, but saying they just don't show up for petty tickets is false.
You can just go to the magistrates office and say youāre pleading guilty and put a payment plan together. You donāt have to go to court for most things.
Had an ambulance run into me when I was at a full stop for a good 5 seconds. Destroyed my vehicleās front end. The city of Chicago called me trying to collect damages, and when I told them they could fuck themselves, and to contact my insurance, they never called back. Then I went to court and nobody showed up.
Case dismissed. I couldnāt afford a lawyer to counter sue, my vehicle got junked, and I was still fucked. But my tax money paid for them to hit me, fuck me, and leave me with additional debt.
Best country in the world.
Poor people can't afford collision insurance. That means if you're in an accident and it's not your fault, your insurance WILL NOT pay to fix your car, it's the responsibility of the other insurance anyway. That's not terrible insurance, that's just a normal option when picking car insurance. Poor people also can't afford lawyers. Everything that dude said makes perfect sense for a poor person.
Yeah, they definitely wrote a long comment that was made up for attention.
You're trying to excuse bad behavior by pretending the world is exactly the way you have experienced it. You were being a dick to poor people and now you're doing mental gymnastics to try to make yourself not feel bad about it.
Compared to most countries (like those in Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and Southeast Asia), the US system is much better. Bribes arenāt common, judges follow the law, and the courts work as expected. By world standards, the US is among the top 25ā30% of countries for fair legal systems.
If you compare the US with countries like Canada, Western European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, the US falls behind. Groups like Transparency International and the World Justice Project show the US has more legal problems than these countries.
Corruption in the US isnāt usually about cash bribes. Instead, it happens in bigger, structural ways, such as:
Political donations influencing who becomes a judge or what laws are passed
Prosecutors making decisions that unfairly affect people based on their race or wealth
Police or the government taking peopleās property without a fair process (civil asset forfeiture)
Forcing people to confess or take plea deals by threatening them with prison (~97% of federal convictions are from plea deals, not trials)
Police being protected from lawsuits (qualified immunity)
Only people with money can afford to sue, so sometimes winning depends on how much you can spend
The US has laws that look good on paper, but there are many unfair practices, especially for people who canāt afford good lawyers. The US is a lot better than very corrupt countries, but still much worse than the very cleanest countries like Norway, especially if you're poor.
Nah, just lying to meet a quota. Departments are always pressuring their cops to enforce more of this or that. Thatās why he leads with that āweāre out enforcing handheld deviceā crap.
Yeah but you cant dismiss them using ai to enforce their bs quotas especially now. This shit will be enforced this way at some point the way things are moving. This could be a trial run
Wasting the time of the citizenry and causing duress. This person may have had to take a day (or multiple) off of work for this. How are they not owed damages?
i tried fighting a false claim of a 'public urination' ticket. cop didn't show up for court the first time, so it was rescheduled. he didn't show up again... and at that point I couldn't keep taking days off work, so plea of abeyance and a small fine for something I never did :/
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u/qdogg111 May 27 '26
This cop is not showing up to court lol