ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – Troopers have a new policy of refusing to plea bargain tickets.
State Police enacted the policy September first, partly out of ethical concerns and partly because of a belief that refusing to plea bargain will make drivers take traffic offenses more
seriously.
Troopers write close to a million tickets a year and almost half of all speeding tickets in New York.
The new policy leaves drivers with two options: plead guilty and pay the fine, or go to trial.
Republican Assemblyman Tom Kirwan of Newburgh is co-sponsor of a bill that would force troopers to go back to making deals with motorists. The bill passed the Assembly and the Senate and awaits
approval by Governor Pataki.
Kirwan said the new policy is simply impractical. He said it will cause such a court overload that you’d have to increase town justices by threefold.
Others believe the predictions of serious problems in the court system from the new policy are overblown.
Well doesn’t that just suck. Fuck it, I changed my mind, free Bucky and let him shoot some more cops.
I wasn’t serious, but this is hardly the type of thing that will get people who already hate and mistrust the state police to think any better of them. If you want to make NY safer, stop plea bargins on violent crime, not BS traffic tickets. This makes the state police look like nothing more than an armed tax collection branch.
You mean they aren’t? Besides, I think I just saw at least four “leaving buffalo” threads here this week, which means everybody is going to pay .001% more taxes this year.
I am confused, is this article like a year old?
Do the troopers decide who does what?
I thought that was up to the court system not the cops.
The cops are law enforcement not judicial.
I did the same in Arkport. Coolest trooper ever, he convinced the judge to throw out my license plate ticket because I drove 2+ hours to fight it. This type of thing never flys. What about the small towns that have no police force, and rely mostly on troopers to give tickets/collect revenue? It costs the town money to run the court, but all the ticket revenue would go to the state. Those towns don’t usually give out a lot of parking tickets either. I remember everyone saying this would happen, and I’ve went to court and had tickets reduced since then.
small towns get revenue from traffic tickets, state is supposed to get any speeding ticket revenue. Problem is, it pissed the small towns off, so they kept pleading it down (ie:65 in a 45 gets plead to a parking ticket and no points, goes from moving to non-moving violation and small town keeps profit). So the state finnaly caught on and is trying to make is so the smal towns CANT plead the tickets down and it forces them to give any and all revenues from Moving violations to the state.