Process Of Getting A Citation From Police

If a police officer wrote down the wrong information on your traffic ticket, such as writing the wrong birthday, would you still have to pay the fine?

The best approach, in my opinion, would be to go to the court, or call them and ask if they have any record of your citation. The post office doesn't always deliver mail correctly, and the courts dont always send out notices correctly. You still have to appear at the court on or before the date on the citation and you need to be able to prove that you appeared.A problem may occur if the court didn't receive a copy of the citation--even though they are supose to, they might not want to schedule an arraignment date for you, if they refuse you can talk to the DA's office and they may be willing to dismiss the case due to the court not receiving the citation. It is easier for them to do that than to try and find out what happened.If an arraigment date is set, it is often on the same day as you go in, you can tell the judge at the arraignmen that you received a notice made out to someone with your name but with a diffrent birth date, and ask that the ticket be dismissed. Don't lie but try to avoid admitting that the ticket is actually yours.In California there is a procedure for a trial by declaration, where you fill out a form and tell your side of the story on the form. I have never used it, but it gives you the opportunity to note that the ticket was to the "wrong" person because of the birth date error, without the court being able to ask any follow up questions, such as "but did you actually have an encounter with the police person"If the “trial by declaration” goes against you, you can ask for a trial before a judicial officer (judge or commissioner depending on the jurisdiction). There is a relatively short time to request this new trial so do it as soon as you received the notice of an adverse decision at the trial by declaration and either deliver it to the court clerk with a copy for the clerk to receipt and return to you or send it certified mail. A trial date will be set for a hearing, and the police person will have to come in, There is a possibility that the ticket issuer may not appear either order to avoid embarrassment or for some other reason in which case the judicial officer will almost always dismiss the case for want of prosecution.If you go trial and admit that the ticket was in fact handed to you, the birth date wouldn't be enough to get it dismissed. However, an error in citing the offence -- wrong code section -- clearly would, and a wrong location likely would.

Do police officers have monthly ticket quotas?

There is an old joke among police officers.Citizen: "Do you have a quota of tickets you have to write?" Officer: "No, I can write as many as I want." And this is true to some extent. But it is also true that there is an unwritten policy that if you do not write any citations, you must not be doing your job. Some officers just do not like writing citations. They don't like making traffic stops and will only do so if the driver has done something so obvious, and in front of other civilians, that the officer feels obligated to stop the driver for safety reasons. That still does not mean that he or she will write a citation. In my agency, those of us in patrol had to keep a "Daily." This would be a formal document that showed the times, addresses where we went, written in code, of what we had done.On the back were boxes for how many traffic citations, criminal citations, parking citations and felony and misdemeanor arrests we had made on that day.I frequently commented that the form didn't represent how many people we stopped from committing suicide. Or how many domestic disputes we settled or how many missing children we found. So that "daily" never really adequately represented what my day really involved and often, by the numbers, could look as though I did nothing at all.However, if you are working the "Traffic Unit" then writing citations is an intregal part of your job and if you write no citations, you are going to be asked why.So as is frequently the case, each police agency has different policies. I am sure there are some that do require a certain number of citations.

If I get pulled over by the police and just get a warning, does it still go on my record?

On my department, in most cases where you are given a warning, the deputy makes a log entry with the date, time and location of the stop, who he stopped, what they were driving, including the make and license plate and what the person was warned for. “Stopped Joe Smith MW/011659 re 22350 vc W/A”, and the deputy goes on his way. However, other deputies and agencies are not routinely aware of that information.The Watch Deputy and Station Dispatcher routinely see that information when they clear the call out of the system, and there is a permanent record kept, but other officers don’t go looking it up. About the only time he would be looked up, is if there was some kind of investigation. For instance if you called to complain about the deputy, or if the deputy was shot at some point and they wanted to see where he had been and who he had stopped.As far as Mr. Natti’s statement goes, other officer’s show up, sometimes, because the officer requested backup, or assistance, sometimes they were rolling by, so they stop out of courtesy. Nowadays, the cars often have computers in them that show where other units are in real time. If an officer sees a unit is stopped nearby, they may roll by to check on them. The radio frequencies are often unique to an agency. On my department, we have several frequencies reserved. However, only the SRC dispatcher and the Watch Deputy and Station Dispatcher can usually hear what is actually said. On top of that, most car plates are run via computer, not over the air. It’s been that way since at least the early 1990’s on my department. In 1988, we ran cars over the air, but sometime between then and the early 1990’s our department switched.