I've been listening to all of the chatter about health care reform, and decided to start looking into some of the basic facts & figures involved.  Lets start out with the US Budget  2009.  (thanks to Wikopedia for these numbers)  The year 2000 numbers are in RED.

• US Budget for 2009 totals $3.1 trillion  ($1.8 trillion)     
  
• Estimated receipts for 2009 are $2.7 trillion ($1.9 trillion)
  
• Estimated 2009 Deficit = $400 billion ($100 billion Surplus)
  

Starting from 12PM clockwise, Costs & Percentage of our National Budget is

• 21% - $644 billion - Social Security  (22% - $396 billion)
  
• 13% - $408 billion - Medicare    (11% - $198 billion)
  
•  7% - $224 billion - Medicaid  (8% - $144 billion)
  
• 12% - $360 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/mandatory   (14% - $252 billion)
  
•  8% - $260 billion - Interest on National Debt  (12% - $216 billion)
  

• 17% - $515.4 billion - United States Department of Defense  (16% - $288 billion)
  
•  5% - $145.2 billion(2008*) - Global War on Terror (Zero - nada)
  

---

Total  2009 -  83% 0r $2.56 trillion      (Total  2000 -  83% or $1.49 trillion)  
Surprised !!

Me too.  The whole rest of our budget is approximately $500 billion (17%) and comprises ALL other spending from NASA ($17 billion) to the Dept of Education ($59 billion).

Now let's see if we can figure out where to apply some savings?  I thought I would compare 2009 with 2000 before 9/11 and when the budget was balanced

TrafficCourtPros.com has announced today the launching of a new web service that provides free, yes truly FREE!, warrant and inmate search capabilities nationwide.

This web service will provide the ability for Users to search for Warrant information, inmate searches and other online resources on a state and county basis throughout the country.

The service is being rolled out immediately, and content is being added to it on a continual basis.

Need to find a warrant or look up a case?  Free warrant searches are available everywhere.  The only question is how hard is it going to be?  This article describes how you can perform warrant and case searches on the web for free, and at a cost.

Like many free things, searching for warrant and legal case information on the web and elsewhere may not cost any ducats, but there a cost in time and effort.  Nonetheless we have had great results using simple searches on the web looking for this information in places like Dallas, Texas and San Diego, California.

Here is a summary of what I found.  In general the warrant search process is quite simple;

• Identify the county or city in which the violation took place
• Go to the county's home website
• Drill down to the Justice / Court page
• Hunt around for an online case resources
• Submit a query

If there are no online resources, then;

• generally the Court Clerk of the specific court can provide these records.
• Go to the county's home website
• Find the Court Clerks informational web page
• follow their instructions

Finding Warrants is Different Everywhere
I just reviewed hundred, if not thousands of court and sheriff's web sites across the United State trying to find and collect links to free warrant searches for the publishers of www.TrafficCourtPros.com.   I suspected that it should be free, and after all the info is public info, and people looking for are trying to take care of court business.  

But it turns out that although the info is public, and can be found by gong to court in person, the access to this info varies tremendously throughout jurisdictions in the US.  Here is a report on my experiences trying to collect free warrant search resources.  

During my search, I learned that traffic court warrants are generally issued by a specific court when a defendant fails to meet a commitment to that court.  For example, when given a simple traffic ticket, the officer will have you sign the ticket.  A signature on a ticket, or “promise to appear”, is your commitment to respond to the ticket per the court's instructions.  If you, as many of us have, then fail to take care of this ticket within the court's timeframe, the court can and will usually add to the problem a warrant (FTA – Failure to Appear).  

This warrant is added to the original infraction issue, and now you have a real problem, which can be accessed by getting the criminal case information from the issuing court. At this point your ticket, which was only a simple traffic issue, has been compounded with a warrant, and is now defined by most courts as a criminal issue!  It doesn't mean that you are a bad criminal, it just means that the court has moved this issue into their criminal docket.  And it does mean that you need to take care of the issue, before things ratchet up, and you get in serious difficulties.

How Bad a Trouble are You In?
Now you've lost the ticket, you don't remember ever getting a notification for the court date, and you're down at the DMV getting your car registered.  Maybe you step up to the line, and the Clerk says 'sorry we show that you have a license hold because of a Failure to Appear way back when'. You say 'excuse me?', and the Clerk says, ' Oh and by the way, we also show that your license has been suspended (another charge from the court) due to these problems.'  


At this point, you start to sweat a little, so you say thank you very much, and slink out of the DMV hoping that they aren't following you out to your car to put the cuffs on.  These turn of events happen all the time to people.  Gone are the days when a traffic ticket in Texas can be thrown out the window on your way back home to San Diego.  If you don't take care of your problem in Oklahoma, they, through the long arm of the web can have things like your license and your job, current or future, put in serious jeopardy.  

What to Do
Now let's use the above example to illustrate how to find out what your problems are and how to fix them.

Once you need to take care of the problem, where do you start?   First off, drive home, slowly, observing all traffic laws, but not too slowly, the CHP are looking for those types also.  Park the car in the driveway, better yet the garage, because the sheriff won't know you're home when he comes to serve the warrant (just kidding, they rarely do this for misdemeanor warrants which your's is at this point, we hope).  

Go in the house relax for a bit, gather your thoughts and let's figure this out.
Next step is to try and figure out where your problem occurred and which court you need to contact.  First thing I would typically do is, go through that huge pile of unopened mail you have somewhere and try and find some of the old correspondence that the Department of Motor Vehicles actually did send you.  

Our attorney says:

  “If you have a traffic citation, and did not receive anything from the court or DMV, you probably need to update your address at the DMV.  Failure to have a current address on file with the DMV or court is not a defense to anything.”

If you can find the letter – probably a courtesy notice, then actually open the letter, and you will find most of the information you need to resolve your issue.  You may have options to pay, sign up for traffic school, or demand a trial.  

This letter will tell you the actual original charges and the contact information for the court in question.  But let's say you can't find any of this information, and it truly was a couple of years ago when we were last driving too fast thru Texas.

Find Out Who's Putting the Hurt on you
Getting info from the DMV is difficult. And if you have a warrant or failure to appear problem, you really need to contact the court.  Warrants come from court cases.  DMV may have info on drivers license holds and warrants, but the court has the real info.

 The DMV Driver Safety Office is generally the best place to look for information on the status of a driers license and for a list of holds on a license.  

Find the Court
If you are not sure what division of the court your case may be in – there is help.  

An excellent resource for understanding how courts work in other states is the National Center for State Courts .  This web site provides an overview of how every state's court system works including information on how to contact virtually all of the Courts in that State.  One of the very cool (just because you are naturally inquisitive) things they provide are the State Court Structure Charts.


This very strange flowchart from the State of Texas show us, for instance, that Traffic Infraction cases can be held in Municipal, Justice of the Peace, Constitutional and or County Courts.  In Texas' case potentially well over 2000 different entities.  At this point, many people with problems in Texas, just throw up their hands and turn themselves into the nearest Sheriff.  But not us!

Let's say we do remember where we were pulled over for that simple speeding ticket.  It was , now think, Irving? Or was it in Dallas itself?  Let's go back to the the, National Center for State Courts  website and look for the County court in Dallas.



Let's go to the listing for Constitutional County Court page, and viola! There in hyperlinked glory is the Dallas County Website.

After a bit of searching on their pages and a little drilling down we finally get to, Dallas County Online Record Search page.  Now is this our page?, we see that there is a Criminal Background Search.



Are we a criminal yet with an actual background? Who knows, let's try it out it's Free!  It turns out that every county in the country has many criminals small, big and indifferent named John Smith.  So let's see what kind of trouble John is in in Dallas.  Page thru this initial page and subsequent links until you get the actual submission page.  Add in John's name, Date of Birth if you know it, other fields as appropriate and press the Submit The Search pushbutton.  The results look like (there were too many John Smiths, so I used my brother's name).  You can drill down into each name for the details of their court case.  Luckily none of these people were my actual brother (I think?).


So the big city / county resources are often quite good, but smaller areas cities and counties often are not as well integrated.  So after our DMV search, we found that we also had a problem in the City of Irving, Texas.  The process is the same.  Go find the city's home page, hunt around until you find the court page, Irving Municipal Court, and read the instructions.



n Irving for example, it appears that you must appear at the Municipal Court to handle a warrant issued by the City of Irving.  It also appears that their Warrant Clerical Section can provide information about warrants over the phone.

Unless you're hankering for a trip back out to Texas, now is the time to consider hiring a local attorney to represent this matter for you.  For a convenient way to hire local Attorneys in the area of your problem try TrafficCourtPros.com.

Other Online Resources
Our Texas example was a tough nut to crack, because of the size of the state, and vast number of legal jurisdictions.  I'm also told that traffic tickets and other legal matters are a major source of revenue in Texas, so they don't necessarily make it easy on us scofflaws.  But many other states have much better online resources.  For example;

California
has excellent online case and warrant search resources.  For a complete listing of California's resources go to TrafficCourtPros.com warrant search page.  One of the best free warrant searches is San Diego's Sheriff Warrant search page.



And the results.



It turns out that Warrants in San Diego County California are issued and tracked by the Sheriff's Department.  Below is an example of a County Court Case Search in San Diego.




Washington
Has a statewide system that can be accessed via their Washington Courts website.



Ohio
Has great county based case search resources.  Below is example of Franklin County's system.  CourtView 2000 is an excellent web based court record system used widely throughout the country.



So That's How Free Warrant Search Works

So in general the process is quite simple;

• Identify the county or city in which the violation took place
• Go to the county's home website
• Drill down to the Justice / Court page
• Hunt around for an online case resources
• Submit a query

IF there are no online resources, then;

• generally the Court Clerk of the specific court can provide these records.
• Go to the county's home website
• Find the Court Clerks informational web page
• follow their instructions

As we said at the beginning of this blog, searching for warrants may be free, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take work!  If all of this is a little too much effort there are many many warrant search resources on the web.  Most if not all charge a fee, and many are a scam. So try them out if you like, but caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).  Below is a link to one of these companies that we have heard good things about.


GOOD LUCK, and take care of your problem!!  You'll sleep better at night.

Now that you know exactly what your problem is, How do we fix it??

That's a story for another day, but for information on fixing your legal issues please feel free to try our web publications including TrafficCourtPros.com and TrafficCourtBlog.com

Thanks,
Chris P. Lamb - Client “Zero”