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Roads from the Ashes: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier, by Megan Edwards

My Las Vegas Speeding Ticket

A few weeks ago, I was driving across Las Vegas to meet friends at the Golden Nugget. I wasn’t totally familiar with the neighborhood I was traversing, so I was proceeding, I thought, slowly.

Not slowly enough, apparently, because flashing lights and a siren materialized behind me, and I pulled over.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” I think it’s the first question all cops are taught. I was tempted to say, “I bet you do,” but instead, I said, “No.”

“You were going fast,” he said, and then I had to sit there interminably while he went back to his car and wrote me up. When I looked at my ticket later, I found that he was accusing me of going 42 in a 30-mile-an-hour zone. I don’t think I was, but this wasn’t an argument I could ever win. I figured I’d have to pay the fine, suffer the points on my heretofore unblemished record, and maybe go to traffic school.

“Maybe Elvis teaches traffic school here,” one of my friends said that night at the Golden Nugget. “Could be fun!” Yeah. Thank you very much.

While examining my citation later that night, I found that the policeman who had issued it had neglected to fill in the blank that would have informed me of the amount of my fine. Looking online was no help. From what I could figure out, I would have to go to the Las Vegas Justice Court to find out how to pay my debt to society.

Although there is a way to look online and check whether your ticket has been “logged,” mine never showed up. Sometime in November, on the day before “a bench warrant would be issued,” I drove to downtown Las Vegas, fed 250,000 quarters into a city parking meter, and headed into the Justice Court, where I had been warned I might spend several decades waiting to approach a window and a human being who would inform me of the next stage of my fate.

Six minutes later, I was at the window discussing my crime with a bored but polite employee who told me I had two choices. I could plead “Guilty,” pay $192, and go to traffic school to have the two demerits erased from my record. Or I could plead not guilty and come back to the courthouse in a month or so.

I was sorely tempted to knuckle under and write a check, but a combination of righteous indignation and some late-breaking information from a friend who’d been through the ticket mill forced a “Not guilty” from my lips when the bored employee said, “How do you plead?” She gave me a piece of paper with the date and time of my appearance on it, and another one explaining that when I came back, I’d have to report to the new “Regional Justice Center” to which the traffic courts would be moving. I walked back out to my car and drove off leaving at least fifteen years on my parking meter.

Thanksgiving came and went, along with many conversations about what would happen when I showed up at the Regional Justice Center. “You’ll wait all day, and when you finally get into the courtroom, they’ll treat you like a criminal,” one friend said. Actually, he said something more colorful than “a criminal,” but you get the idea. He also told me that about ticket-fixing services, and that he was planning to use one of them. “They go to court for you,” he said. “You don’t have to lose a day of work.” It sounded appealing, but as my day of reckoning approached, I hadn’t done anything.

On the appointed day, a kind friend drove me to the Regional Justice Center so I wouldn’t have to feed another half million into a parking meter. “Call me when you’re done,” he said. It was one o’clock, and we were both sure the whole afternoon would pass before I’d be dialing his number.

The dudes running the security checkpoint inside the justice center were less than polite. I figured they were just a warmup for what awaited me inside, but the lady at the information desk was friendly, even when the guy in front of me asked her where the sixth floor was.

“I always love questions like that,” she said to me after he had walked away. “It’s always so tempting to say, ‘Just below the seventh.’” She smiled and looked at my citation. “You need to go to the fifth floor,” she said. “That’s just below the sixth.”

I ascended, admiring the slick new building as I traveled. It has lots of windows, shiny stone surfaces, and nicely paneled elevators. The Stratosphere Tower loomed in the window next to my assigned courtroom, and I joined three men on a metal bench. My appointment was for 1:30, and it was still only a few minutes after one. While I sat there, I noticed that people were checking a flat panel next to the courtroom door. It turned out to be a color monitor listing everybody who was supposed to appear. I was actually relived to see my name flash onto the screen. At least I hadn’t shown up on the wrong day.

Nothing was happening in the hallway, so I decided to go inside the courtroom and see what was going on in there. I took a seat on a bench in the back. A couple of bailiffs were milling about, several other criminals like me were sitting in the audience zone, and a few clerks were shuffling papers and typing stuff on computers.

A couple of minutes later, one of the clerks matched us up with the right paperwork and rattled off a well-rehearsed spiel to each of us, changing the infraction and penalty to suit each case. A court interpreter translated for three men who didn’t speak English, and a guy accused of drunk driving kept hoping his lawyer would show up.

When it was my turn, my options were as follows. I could plead “no contest” or “guilty” and pay $140, part of which was “fine,” and part of which was “costs.” My infraction would morph from a speeding violation into a parking violation, and I would have no “points” recorded against me. Of course, I could also plead “not guilty.” In that case, I’d be assigned another court date, and if I lost, I’d have to pay $1192 and keep the two points.

Not surprisingly, the extortion worked. The only way I could win my case in a trial would be if the citing officer failed to show up. It would mean another trip to the courthouse and at least another month of thinking about it and boring my friends. So, when Judge Toy R. Gregory entered the courtroom and it was my turn to stand in front of him, I was almost happy to say “no contest.” After he accepted my “plea bargain,” the clerk gave me a slip of paper that said I could be arrested if I didn’t pay $140 by five o’clock. I descended to the fourth floor, found the cashier desk cheerfully festooned with Christmas garlands, and forked over the dough.

I was done by 1:30. My friend was shocked. He had wanted to buy me a beer at the end of my ordeal, and it was too early. Instead, we went to Starbucks, where we celebrated with a couple of lattes and a blueberry scone.

That’s my Las Vegas traffic ticket story, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the friend who said, “Fight it. If nothing else, you’ll get the charges reduced.” I still think it’s government-sanctioned extortion, but at least I paid a little less than I would have if I’d caved in at the beginning, and I don’t have to find out whether Elvis teaches traffic school. Even though I had to go to the courthouse twice, both trips were quick and efficient, and I was treated with respect.

Best of all, I never drove too fast! In fact, I must have been going very, very slow. So slow it counts as parking in a driveway.

RELEVANT LINKS:

Las Vegas Justice Court
Info about tickets and dealing with them

Check for Your Ticket’s Status Online
Can be helpful if your citation ever gets logged

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