Article by:
Jonathan MacArthur, Esq.
As a 22-year criminal defense attorney, I am in constant contact with the criminal justice system and am witness to both its successes and failures. This month, I would like to identify a local problem, suggest a solution, and ask that you help me solve it.
The Problem
Many cities, North Las Vegas being no exception, use traffic enforcement to generate extra revenue for the municipal budget. Cities need money. You cannot fund police, utilities, public works, or pay city employees without it. In fact, fines and forfeitures provide almost $9 million of our city’s annual budget, more than twice what is required to fund its court system. Issuing traffic tickets is profitable. The first half of the problem begins once we look at which drivers are most often being cited and why.
Law enforcement routinely use traffic stops as a means of criminal investigation. A speeding infraction or a car with expired plates provides an officer with a convenient opportunity to inquire about the presence of weapons or contraband, or to check whether the occupants of the vehicle might have outstanding court warrants. If nothing unusual is discovered, the driver may only receive a minor citation, or even a warning. Discovery of something more meaningful may result in arrest. Moreover, local governments have no objection to this approach because, again, issuing traffic tickets is profitable and any reductions in crime are welcome. But when traffic enforcement is heavily focused in communities where law enforcement is trying to deter crime, the people who are cited for traffic offenses tend to be those who live and drive in the urban core. Y’know, the urban core where population density is higher, incomes are lower, and crime more frequent? The urban core is that polite term people say when what they mean is where more Black and Brown people live. If you drive south into Las Vegas as part of your daily commute, you know where the speed traps are. There’s 5th Street between Craig and Cheyenne. Or near the vicinity of Lamb & Centennial. And nowhere is tougher than Las Vegas Blvd. and Lake Mead.
Citations that I commonly see around the courthouse might include a Speeding 1-10 MPH Over accompanied by a No Registration or No Insurance. These are sticky because the fines can be substantial. A No Insurance ticket, for example, carries a mandatory $1,135 fine if one cannot provide proof of insurance that was valid at the time of citation. And, for the most part, people with expired registration or insurance haven’t renewed registration or insurance because they are having money problems. This has been especially true during the pandemic. And, when a working single mother can’t afford to renew vehicle registration, the resulting fine doesn’t make that any easier. I’m not arguing that vehicle registration isn’t important. I’m saying that people whose registrations expire in communities where there is a constant police presence are discovered quickly and often. Not so much in the suburbs. Traffic offenses occur there just as often, but there are far fewer police enforcing the rules there.
As a result, it’s not at all unusual for me to encounter clients with over $2,000 in outstanding traffic fines that they find difficult to pay. North Las Vegas Municipal Court offers payment arrangements (in exchange for a $40 service charge) that might result in $100 monthly payments. Maybe that sounds reasonable at the outset, but it’s going to require 20+ months of regular payments *and* fixing that registration or insurance problem, all while facing the same financial difficulties that made registering the car difficult in the first place. The second half of the problem begins when our driver misses a payment. The court issues a bench warrant and may impose an additional $150 fee, per citation, for having failed to meet the payment obligation. If our example driver pays $100 for ten months ($1,000) and misses only two payments (-$300) that year, she makes only $700 progress on the principle, and a 20-month problem now becomes a 36-month problem. And that’s assuming that she’s never cited for another traffic violation while living in her heavily policed area. The court extracts a lot of additional revenue from poorer people who are cited, accept payment plans, and sometimes miss payments. It’s similar to credit card debt, but one that is enforceable by arrest and jail time. In a very real sense, it creates an invisible system of servitude imposed on the poor to generate revenue for the city and it’s wrong. It’s a trap door.
I support my city, its budget, and its laws. But traffic citations are supposed to be a penalty that encourage safety compliance, not a reliable source of extra revenue. Because police presence is heavier in less wealthy communities, traffic citations not only serve as a regressive tax on those citizens least able to pay, but also a system that perpetuates the over-policing of communities of color. When reading police narratives, I will often find passages that say, “because the driver had parked in an empty parking lot located in a high crime area, I asked him to exit the vehicle and consent to a search of his person.” Do people who live in high crime areas have fewer rights than people who are fortunate enough to be safer from the blight of crime? We encourage this kind of zip code discrimination when we allow the city to generate millions of dollars from this practice. Moreover, improving the tattered relationship between law enforcement and communities of color is hindered when local government has a financial incentive to maintain the status quo.
The Solution
So, how can we solve the problem of turning police officers into tax collectors, while also ensuring that we have safe roads and responsible drivers? In short, we must remove the profit incentive. When cited drivers appear in court, they are typically offered a negotiation where certain charges may be dismissed and/or reduced in exchange for a plea of Guilty or No Contest and a fine. This process is encouraged by the knowledge that a plea of Not Guilty and a trial may result in higher fines or penalties in the event one is found guilty. Accordingly, a cited driver understands that they will probably save both time and money by accepting responsibility for the violation, even if they inwardly think that they were not at fault. A better practice would involve standardizing traffic fines to the reduced amounts commonly offered in plea deals. That way, a driver more interested in saving time could accept a plea, while those who would like their day in court would not have to fear a harsher penalty for having exercised their rights. In those cases, officers who issued the citation would need to appear and provide testimony in short traffic trials. That additional step of due process would result in smaller fines and a modest increase in one-witness traffic trials, resulting in less profit for the city. A finding of not guilty would not result in any fines. A finding of guilty would result in the same fine as a negotiated plea. As a result, traffic citations would cease to generate as much profit for the city budget. Traffic citations would still be issued to traffic violators, but it would cease to be a net revenue generator, allowing police to focus their efforts on crime prevention in lieu of more frequent traffic trial appearances. If the city requires more revenue, it will need to promote more commerce or sell the public on a tax like any other democratically elected government. Balancing the municipal budget on the backs of the poor is not a moral choice.
Yes, We Can Do Better
I am a candidate for North Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge. This year, all of us have the opportunity and duty to vote in favor of the society that we want for our neighborhoods, our state, and our nation. That duty begins with comprehending the problems we face, supporting the people whose solutions show promise, and holding our leadership accountable for the decisions they make while in office. If elected, I intend to bring more compassion, transparency, and accountability to the court that I serve and I would be sincerely grateful for your support in the coming Primary Election on June 14, 2022. Black Lives Matter.
Jonathan can be reached by email [email protected]. You can also visit his Web site at http://macarthurforjudge.com.