City To Increase Pressure On Lawbreakers Who Owe Fines
Almost $840,000 Owed In Outstanding Fines And Assessments
By Jack Gurner
Reporter
WATER VALLEY – The City is turning up the heat on lawbreakers who owe Municipal Court fines and that could mean jail time for those who don’t pay up.
According to the latest figures available, there is approximately $840,000 in outstanding fines and assessments on the City’s books. Of that amount, $430,000 is fines owed to the City and $410,000 in assessments that will go to the State.
“We’re becoming more and more zealous in our collections of fines,” said Mayor Larry Hart. “We plan to collect fines by whatever means necessary. Where incarceration is required, we are committed to spending that money, whatever it costs.”
The Mayor explained that the City doesn’t have a lot of jail space locally and has to pay to house prisoners in other towns. “We’ve incarcerated people in the Lafayette County Jail and the Grenada County Jail along with our local jail here to demonstrate we are serious about enforcing the law. We’re serious about collecting our fines.”
Hart said that the shortage of jail space over the years has caused judges to lean more toward fines rather than incarceration. “People are oftentimes unable to pay the fines. That’s resulted in a situation where the judge works out some sort of payment plan.”
Hart added that Judge Trent Howell does a great job. “He has a tremendous volume of activity in his court docket. We keep him informed of what’s going on and what’s not going on and stay after these folks.”
“We are putting great emphasis now on mailing out notices, pulling these violators back into court for another pass before the judge to keep the judge aware of how far behind some have gotten with his payment plan.”
But, as the traffic builds in the court the problem of uncollected fines is compounded, according to Hart. “If we don’t pay close attention to it, things begin to fall through the cracks. So, we try to stay on top of things.”
Falling Through The Cracks
The Mayor cited some recent DUI appeals as an example of cases that he believed had fallen through the cracks in the system. He explained that when a case is appealed in Municipal Court, it then passes over to the Circuit Court.
“It becomes the City’s responsibility to follow that case over there if we want to continue to prosecute. We found when coming back into office that there is a substantial volume of cases on appeal over at the Circuit Court.”
Hart said that rather than burden City Prosecuting Attorney J. Katherine Ward with the added load, Aldermen hired City Attorney John Crow for the additional task of handling the appeal cases.
“John is prosecuting several cases over there now trying to get the backlog cleaned up. Then, in the future, we’ll keep those cases current that are appealed out of municipal court.”
“DUI is a thing to be taken very seriously,” Hart added. “All you have to do is check some of the horror stories that you hear about fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizens losing their life or becoming maimed by DUI drivers.
“Fines are very important in the DUI scenario,” Hart continued. “But the most important thing is to get them off the roads and off the streets.”
Initially there had been some question as to where the fine money would go. However, an Attorney General’s opinion to Crow dated Nov. 30 of last year stated that in the event a municipality is successful on a criminal appeal, the municipality would be entitled to the fine money.
“So, we found that legally the municipalities were entitled to fine monies that were coming off of actions over in Circuit,” Hart said. “In days gone by, that had been falling through the cracks and monies were not coming back to the City.”
“In some of the cases we will recover fines. At the same time it is costing us in attorney fees to prosecute over there, but I am still of the belief that it is money well spent even if we don’t recover substantial amounts of fines…we will in most cases…but, if we don’t it is still money well spent to have this discipline in our system.”
“I suppose there are times when people do get off lightly,” the Mayor added. “But, it is our intention over the next few years to turn that around. We want people to know that when they violate the law in our community there are going to be some repercussions.”
“This administration is committed to enforcing the law,” Hart emphasized. “That’s why as mayor I follow these cases from the time they occur all the way through the judicial system. I want our system to be well oiled and well disciplined.”
“I want our community to have a discipline within it because the vast majority of our population deserves a peaceful community in which to live.”
“You have a small percentage of criminal activity that is going to disturb that from time to time. And, those are the people who I want to see our system process and discipline. ”That’s my whole goal in law enforcement to provide our deserving citizens with a peaceful community in which to live and raise their children,” Hart said.
