Grrrr... hubby got a ticket

[popcornbird]

Go to court. Its your best bet. Hopefully they can dismiss the ticket and charge you just $10 or so in fees. You won't have to pay the ticket if its cleared. Cops can be SUCH jerks at times. I know from my dad's recent experience with a cop/ticket. In fact, he FINALLY got it cleared by going to court yesterday, and only had to pay $10 to the court instead of the $500 ticket.

What happened was, about 2-3 months ago, my dad and I were driving home from a friend's house at night. A cop stopped us and said our registration stickers weren't updated. (The car was registered...dad just forgot to put the 2005 sticker, so 2004 was still up there. My dad showed Mr. Cop his vehicle registration proof, and it WAS updated. My dad told him we'd go and get a new sticker from the DMV the next day (which we did), but stupid cop still marked it as a violation...EVEN THOUGH we showed him proof of the vehicle's registration.

THEN, he goes to the front of the car and says, "Sir, you don't have a front license plate." Of course we would've had a front license plate if there were a place to put it. Not our fault that Toyota decided to make their new SUV front bumpers' *new style* fancy and plate-less. We didn't have a place to put a plate.

He marked those two very fixable things as violations, and comes and asks for my dad's license. When my dad gave it, it turned out that it was two days expired. YIKES! Apparently, we had a LOT of things going on that week, and my dad had forgotten his license was expiring. He marked down a third violation for that, and told my dad he can't drive home, and if there were no other licensed driver in the car, he would tow the car away. THANK GOD I was with my dad. The thing was, I didn't have my license with me. Didn't bring it cause I wasn't driving. The cop asked for my name and birthdate, and verified that I had a license. Once he saw that I did, he told my dad to have me drive home. That was my first time driving the SUV btw. My dad never let me drive it but he HAD to in this situation. Boy was I happy. Now I drive it all the time.

Anyway, after that incidence, here's what happened. I drove my dad to the DMV the next working day, and he immediately got his license renewed, and got the 2005 stickers. Then we drove to the Toyota dealer and had them 'drill in' a license holder on the front bumper. We put the license on, and went back to the DMV. Showed them we corrected everything. They said everything should be clear but we should go to court anyway, just to be on the safe side.

The next week, my dad went to court and got everything cleared. All was well...until last week, when the ticket STILL came in the mail and asked for $500 for those 3, already fixed unintentional 'violations'. My dad was SO upset. Yesterday, he went to the court again and found that they updated his record AFTER sending the ticket. They cleared things up again, and dismissed the ticket. He had to pay $10 in court fees, but nothing else. FINALLY that's over, and cleared, thank God.

The cop was a JERK. To treat someone who has had a California license for 30 years with a completely clear record with such disrespect was really disgusting. Even the court apologized for his behavior. We wouldn't have known what to do if it wasn't for our WONDERFUL neighbor (she's a lawyer), who despite her current hard pregnancy, still did all she could to guide us in the right direction. She, by the way, told us that most cops wouldn't mark a two day expired license as an offense because things happen, and 2 days is really nothing. The DMV has no problem renewing your license if its just 2 days expired. The stupid cop had a major problem...trying to find every mistake he possibly could. All is clear now, and we just had to pay $10, but it was a hassle, and would've been worse had my dad NOT gone to court. I would say your best bet is to go to court. That would probably cost you the least, money-wise.