There may be a warrant out for my arrest

(DISCLAIMER: If my blog gets you thrown in jail, it's not my problem.)

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So, back in March, I received a $108 traffic ticket in the mail from the City of Bel-Ridge Police Department. Apparently, a "right-on-red" camera took two pictures of my car as I allegedly "did not make a complete stop before making a right turn on a red light."

You gotta be kidding me.

There was no way I was going to stand for such idiocy, so I did some homework on Missouri traffic laws. After reading up on the subject, I soon discovered that traffic camera tickets are NOT LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE in Missouri.

That's right, folks. It's all one big SCAM. Just more money in the pockets of the city!!

I've heard of people here in St. Louis who have gotten such tickets in the mail and have promptly tossed them in the trash, sometimes even at the advice of their own lawyers. You don't have to pay these tickets!! The police departments cannot legally go after you if you just don't pay!

What the cops are counting on is that you don't KNOW you don't have to pay. The ticket itself will even try to scare you, saying that if you don't pay by the printed due date, an additional $20 fee will be slapped onto your ticket, and a date will be set for you to appear in court. And if don't show up to your court date, a warrant for your arrest may be issued.

Oh yeah? I doubt it.

"But CSell, if they're not legal, why don't you just go to court and get it officially nullified?" Because I'm not going to give the City of Bel-Ridge Police Department the satisfaction of even wasting my time in a court room. Screw that. I have better things to do than to fight a ticket that's not even legal in the first place. They want me to send off $108 (well, $128 now) of my hard-earned money to some private camera company in Cincinnati, Ohio?

Over my dead body.

So anyways, I stashed the ticket in the back of my desk and forgot about it entirely. Then came the $20 fee and court date warning, about two weeks past the due date. It's a last-ditch effort to get you to pay your ticket out of fear, as aforementioned. I promptly ignored it.

Camera traffic tickets bring in tons of extra money to the City of St. Louis. Yet, St. Louis aldermen are even on record saying that there's nothing the cops can do to make you pay!! Ironically, intersections with traffic cameras tend to witness MORE ACCIDENTS, however, because people slam on the breaks in order to not get caught by them. So if some schmuck tells you that traffic cameras are supposed to increase road safety, that person is either uneducated on the subject or is a dirty, dirty LIAR.

At this point, the police department is either like "well crap, he's on to us" or they're like "let's go arrest his 'not-stopping-completely-when-turning-right-on-red' butt". Either way, I don't care, because I haven't heard back since the $20 fee notice, and I don't expect to ever hear from them again concerning this ticket. CSell: 1, City of Bel-Ridge Police Department: 0.

Spread the word! Don't be a sucker... don't pay the ticket!! KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!

Later, knuckleheads.

-CSell