Agreed. I was assuming they weren’t, per what the OP said.
I’ll amend my advice to agree with yours. Call the police department themselves, in case they are debt collectors. I’ve always been taught to never talk directly to debt collectors.
The fact the daughter is getting letters from somebody clearly shows that that somebody has connected her current persona, the one in Michigan, with the persona that got the ticket.
So continuing to pretend / hope that the two personas are different real people, or that this won’t catch up to her eventually is silly; that’s already happened.
All that remains is how best to clean up this mess. My advice:
Get the records corrected at the city / police. Get that info transmitted to the law firm. Whether they represent the city/PD directly or are a 3rd party debt collector is actually immaterial. They can’t fix this problem, and daughter dealing directly with them is of no value.
Any other actions or inactions the daughter does are just waiting for this problem to explode in her face.
My wife is a retired attorney who spent some years doing part-time legal aid as a charity gig. One of her lasting sayings from that sorry experience: “You can parlay a parking ticket into murder One if you don’t pay attention to letters from the Court.”
It’s not clear from the OP where the letters are being sent - are they actually being sent to the daughter’s current address or to Drum God’s address (because that was the address the daughter gave at the time she was pulled over)? If the latter, Drum God could send the letter back to the lawyer saying that the person named in the letter does not live there and has never lived there - which is perfectly true, since the person doesn’t exist.
This is the part that confuses me. Anyone can pay off her ticket, she doesn’t have to have the same name, etc. I don’t understand why they won’t accept payment. Especially this law firm that is asking for payment.
From the OP:
Clearly, now, they can find the citation and she can pay.
Should she? That’s a different question.
If the demands come from a collection agency, it may not be possible to contact the city and pay them off directly. Once the debt is transferred, it is owed to the collection agency, not the city.
When I have sent someone to collection I have no reason to discuss their situation. I have already attempted to collect what they owe me and failed. Once the account is sent to a collection agency I get only a pittance of the original debt. Even if they pay me the full amount, it is then my responsibility to forward the collection agency their percentage, and I’m not going to waste my time doing that.
I’m assuming that the OP is hearing from the collection agency, and it’s no longer the police department’s problem (and they may not be able to take money to settle the ticket even if they wanted to).
After a good faith attempt to pay the police (which was made back in the day), I’d say “Well, they screwed up and couldn’t even be bothered to do a minimum amount of work to take my money. Why should I expend more time and energy?” I’d drop it.
A question I don’t know the answer to is “How can the OP get the collection agency to stop calling him?” Would replying “There is no one by that (messed up) name here. Please stop calling.” do the trick?
We had a “Matt” who must have owed money to some store, and had our phone number before us. So we had a collection agency calling us monthly. We told them “There’s never been a Matt here.”
(I half expected their next line to be “Well, then you need a mat from American Exceptionalism Bath & Doormat Emporium, LLC!”)
But they slowed down to a call every four months, then none after a year or so.
Agree completely. If the OP had been a retail / commercial debt by this time its ignorable / ignored by everybody except what’s probably a bog-standard 3rd party debt collector who’ll eventually get tired of chasing a dead end.
The OP’s case is different because there may be an arrest warrant attached to it. Commerce will eventually do as you say and forget about it because that’s the cheaper = most efficient thing to do.
The law (or at least their computers) is/are vastly more patient and care nothing about efficiency.
The more I think about this, the more I think there can’t be a warrant attached, because if they sold the debt and are no longer a party to it, there is no legal remedy to settle the ticket. If you pay the collection agency their interest is ended, they have no requirement to report the debt satisfied. If you can’t pay the courts, there is no way to lift the warrant.
I wouldn’t worry about it, honestly. Tell the collection agency to pound sand and go on with your life.
Whatever you want to tell yourself. “She tried, they didn’t find the right info.”
Well, now they did find the right info; and have contacted you. So I’d say the chances on them closing the books on this are pretty good. I agree with Eyebrows_0f_Doom; stop trying to find a loophole and just pay the ticket. At the end of the day, it’s the right thing to do; regardless of how much the local municipality/cop screwed up.
Why do I keep thinking about the ending of the short story “Computers Don’t Argue”?
Ever been to a tiny speed trap town? I have, and I’ll tell you exactly how I think she got the ticket. Most of these one horse towns have the divided highway going right through the middle of them, where it turns into Main Street or the like . It’s not unusual at all for the speed limit on said divided highway to be in the 65-70 range, and equally, it’s not unusual for the speed to abruptly change to 30-35 or so in the city limits.
My guess is, she followed the law, saw she was out of town, saw the sign up ahead saying 65 or whatever, and accelerated back to highway speed. Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite made it over the line where that was OK. No hell raising, no intent to go 65 through town, but still in technical violation of the law. Which is what those shitbag little towns rely on. Brigands with badges.
I’m still wondering, if the name on the demand letter wasn’t hers, how’d the collection agency find her? She’s been able to renew her license since then, register her car, right?
New Rome, far west side of Columbus, OH. They even ticketed unmarked state police vehicles sent there to check out reports. I don’t know how you disband a town but the police department became a bad memory. Don’t know about the Mayor’s Court.
For the record, I’d sure stay the hell away from Speedtrap, TX, until at least the statute of limitations has passed.
In my experiences with being ticketed in Texas, the ticket they had her sign before she drove away from the stop was a promise to appear in court for speeding. Not showing or paying results in an additional failure to appear charge with its own fine attached to it. Even if they sent it to a collections agency I doubt they’d cancel the warrants.
It she gets stopped again in Speedtrap, or close enough to there, and they make the connection they’ll probably also make an arrest.
The names being out of order isn’t really a silver bullet. They had a signed promise to appear in court, her CO DL# and all three names plus the plates and probably some audio/video. If they wanted to make the connections and update the warrants I’d bet they could. I dont know if they would for a few hundred bucks though.
When yall called down there to pay did you give the name as it was recorded or the CO DL# they would have recorded with it?
Missed the edit window.
I’ve never seen them go straight from 35 to 70 or the opposite before in texas. Not that I’ve noticed anyways. There’s usually a 50-55 zone in between at least.
Let me address a couple of issues here.
I’m really not looking for a loophole here. My daughter is a grown woman and will do as she wishes – just like before she was a grown woman. I’ve just been curious if those out there thought this might come up to bite her later. She isn’t going to pay the ticket. That’s just the fact of the matter.
The letters from the law firm come to my house because that was the address she gave the officer at the time of the stop. That is where she was actually living at the time. She had a CO address and license because her ex-husband was posted in Colorado Springs. She came home when that didn’t work out so great.
The town of Speedtrap is almost exactly as described. It has a rather busy two-lane highway through town. The speed limit is 70, then drops to 35 and comes to a stop sign in the middle of town. Then it proceeds for about two or three blocks at 35, then has a gentle curve to the right (IIRC). At the end of the curve is the sign for 70. My daughter went around the curve at 35, saw the 70 sign and sped up. Then the pretty lights came on. She wasn’t blasting through town.
As I recall, the name and info on the actual citation that she signed was correct. She responded to the citation as instructed. She sent the money order along with the plea form, etc. It was all returned when they said they had no citation for her. We did not know at the time that the name had become garbled – it was correct on the actual citation. The problem with the name became apparent when this third party got involved.
She has had no problems with getting driver licenses in Texas and Michigan nor with registering vehicles in both states. The car she drives now is not the car she had at the time and is registered with different plates in a different state.
I’m actually on the side of the cops. I think my daughter (now 30 years old) should be accountable for her actions. She has gotten a lot better as she has matured and grown. I also think that the City of Speedtrap should be accountable. She did the crime and she attempted to pay the fine. I don’t see where she has an obligation to help the city clear up its clerical mistake, provided she does not lie to them. She hasn’t lied. She paid. They sent it back. She’s done.
Hang onto all the paper especially the refusal to accept payment, ignore the demands and make sure you always maintain “there’s no such person here”.
I once had something similar-ish when a city refused to accept payment for a parking ticket. I had to go before the judge and she was not amused with the city. The ticket was thrown out, albeit on other technical grounds. I had the impression that the refusal to accept payment would have sufficed as a reason for the court to throw it out.
Wait, so you have to actually pass a speed limit sign before that number applies? That’s really dumb: I always assumed it was, like your daughter, applicable once you could reasonably read it. (And that goes for when they get slower as well as faster.) I mean, when you see “SLOW: CHILDREN PLAYING” are you good to keep zooming along until you pass the sign? Obviously not–just doesn’t seem consistent if you ask me.