Arrests are increasing due to unpaid traffic tickets
The number of students arrested for not paying fines for various traffic violations is rising each year.
Capt. Steve Milne of the USU Police Department said he and the rest of the department are making more arrests than ever before because people aren’t paying for their citations.
The crime is called “a failure to appear,” Milne said.
A warrant for arrest is issued to the police when people don’t pay their traffic tickets, Milne said. The person can then be arrested and have a cash bail of a few hundred dollars.
Milne said it’s a sad thing when students get pulled over for a fix-it ticket, don’t pay it and get pulled over again, then end up having to pay hundreds of dollars.
If people aren’t able to make bail, then the maximum amount of jail time they can serve for the offense is up to six months, Milne said.
Milne gave an example of a scenario in which this could occur: Students go to Las Vegas and receive a ticket for speeding, but they don’t pay for the ticket because they won’t be in that area again. A warrant is then put on the statewide database for that person. If the person gets pulled over in Logan, then that person will have to pay a lot more and will go to jail.
“It’s going to cost you a lot more,” Milne said. “You will be booked into jail.”
Milne said the biggest thing he wants students to do is to take care of their tickets.
“Take care of your obligations,” Milne said. “You can avoid a lot of hassle.”
According to USU Police Department records, eight people have been arrested since Sept. 1 for such warrants. At this time last year, there were 18 arrests, and 20 for the entirety of 2009. So far in 2010, there have been 26.
“This is becoming more and more common,” Milne said.
Milne said once someone was stopped by a police officer for nearly hitting a pedestrian. The officer then checked the person’s information and found the person needed to pay a $500 bail for not taking care of a previous incident in Layton, Utah.
“So that went from a warning the officer was going to give, to being booked into jail,” Milne said. “If he couldn’t post bail then he’d go before a judge.”
Milne said a man was stopped in Logan for failing to use his turn signal. The man had been pulled over in Riverdale, Utah and didn’t have proof of insurance. All the person had to do was show the judge his insurance card and it would’ve been dismissed, Milne said. Instead, he went to jail with a $565 bail.
While in jail, a person’s car will be impounded Milne said. The person may have to pay an impound fee to get the car back upon release.
It’s a different story if the person has a failure to appear in a different state, Milne said. He said if the police department stops someone with a failure to appear in a different state the department will contact the state, explain the situation and follow their instructions.
“It varies from state to state,” Milne said. “But if it’s just in the state of Utah, you’re going to be going to jail.”
According to a representative of Travelers Insurance, when people get a failure to appear it does not automatically raise their auto insurance rates.
Milne said if people realize they have unpaid tickets, they should contact the police department in the area because a lot of agencies work together to resolve them.
– blaze.bullock@aggiemail.usu.edu