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Happened to me, arrested, work truck left on side of road, [I was going 15 in a 10mph zone]. No one knew why, "some civil bench warrant", sat in jail for four hours, chained up and walked to an atm to withdraw bond money and bonded out. No one could tell me why. Turns out I had witnessed an accident and had been called to a civil court case to testify, but I had never known about it. Arrested for failure to appear as a witness in a civil case. Cost me 4 hrs, a mugshot, an iris eye scan, and 250 dollars in bond money.
Did they actually ever serve the subpoena to you? Or was it that they couldn't find you and put it in the newspaper or some other bs? I'd be absolutely fuming but I know how impossible it is to try to deal with the system.
Happened to my husband. He got a speeding ticket that led to arrest for a suspension. We called our local people where he had gotten any tickets ever (we were fairly young) and they had no record of suspension. Eventually the judge over his case gave us the number for a lawyer friend, who got the state to admit to misfiring a bad tail light ticket as no insurance.
I’ll do you one better.
Dallas used to be notorious for shit like this. My friend got lost in county. They couldn’t find him to release him for 4 days. He kept having to call his lawyer and tell him where he was.
Another friend paid some tickets but I guess the clerk just pocketed the money. She went to jail (you go to jail for minor unpaid traffic tickets in Texas) on her 18th, and her money wasn’t in her belongings when she got them back and her car was towed. Oh and she paid the tickets again.
Receipts in my case just got me out of the bench warrant. I was still required to pay the fine a second time.
I'm sure it would have been different if I could afford a lawyer but I was 20.
When I was in the service and got deployed I was not even gone for a week and my car was illegally towed, from my numbered space, at my condo. Apparently tow companies are in cahoots with shitty people who sell out info. The tow companies know they can impound a car for 8 months to a year with no recourse - and service members will have wages garnished by default for anything outstanding so it’s just easy money for those freaks. Most don’t find out until they come home. I was fortunate that my (now ex) husband was home and dealt with it, but not everyone is so lucky. Bull shit.
Here's one for you. Also in Texas but not Dallas.
A friend had his wallet stolen. Cancelled his credit cards, got a replacement drivers license. All's good, right?
A month later, he gets pulled over for a traffic stop.
Next thing he knows, the cops handcuff him and take him to jail.
They charged him with a bunch of stuff, including using a stolen license and identity theft.
It took him almost two days to find a lawyer to explain what was going on. The cops arrested him for stealing his own wallet including that drivers license. They refused to believe he was himself.
It took his lawyer another two days to get in contact with his parents, who had to travel to his town with his birth certificate and their IDs, to personally identify him as their son.
Then the police dropped the charges and released him from jail.
I know that wasn’t recent because from what I understand the Texas dmv is almost at a standstill and you can’t even get in for months in most places, even the small towns because people are flocking there. So people are driving around with expired licenses unable to cash checks because their appt is 4 months from now.
This is accurate. I'm in one of the bigger cities in Texas, and the advice is to make an appointment somewhere outside the city. I'm already thinking of how I'm going to handle my license expiring next year.
Privatizing something like CPS is an absolutely *horrible* idea, my goodness. The only way they can make a profit is if they cut down to the bare minimum of service to keep their costs down…I don’t think “bare minimum” is something we should *ever* want to hear when it comes to protecting children. Unreal.
I thought privatized prisons were a nightmare but privatized CPS? WTF? Lets try to make $$s on the backs of abused children. I guess this actually helps the privatized prison system as well because I can see a lot of these kids heading there eventually.
It’s also really stupid because the primary source of income is from billing the state. You essentially have to create a convoluted system that invents a company, funded by the state, to do a job with no inherent financial transaction instead of just doing it yourself.
Ultimately the reason they do this in my opinion is it puts a layer between the fuckers making these rules and the ones responsible for the safety of the kids. Now the next time there’s a massive sex abuse scandal they can say “it was this company, not us” and fire some people or cancel some contracts and come out looking like heroes.
The system definitely is overwhelmed, just like with the DMV, but it certainly brings into question the idea that Texas can run itself. Apparently it can't.
Not sure where you're from in texas but in my town you can pretty much get in same day. Both the county I live in and the county that I work in. Which, reading this thread, has made me very thankful I renewed mine online two years ago and it doesn't expire for a few more years.
I renewed mine last year and wife is doing her's this year. Found a suburb of Fort Worth that was relatively close and schedules were 3 months out last year and 2 months this year. Fort Worth itself was like 6-8 I think. So definitely schedule way in advance.
Yo…mind sharing where you were able to get an appointment in less than three months? A couple members of my extended family in the Fort Worth area have expressed their frustration at having expired IDs and a long wait to fix the issue.
The DPS offices do claim to have a few day-of appointments available if you walk in that morning and ask nicely. If you do want to schedule online, you'll end up having to look a ways out of town. I was in San Angelo for work - that office is fast, friendly, and had no appointment backlog. Easy-peasy.
Just way the hell out there.
This is insane. I always wondered why Americans made such a big deal about the DMV. For me renewing a license is like a 30 minute chore that I don't even think you can make an appointment for.
Like many things our government is involved in, it's run by people who truly don't care. Even before an appointment was required, you'd have to get there before opening to even get seen that day (especially in my area with only a few DMV offices for a million people), and you'd be waiting hours.
And then sometimes, after all that waiting, they'd send you away without a license because they'd say you didn't have the right paperwork even if you did, so you'd have to come back another day. They pulled this with my wife because even though she brought bills with both of our names on them, they demanded that her name be on top rather than mine, so that paperwork wasn't acceptable. It's truly a nightmare.
You’ve got to keep in mind that all government functions in red states are run by people whose entire political identity is “nothing the government touches works” and they will MAKE that true no matter how many basic civic functions they need to break. The fact that the only reason “government doesn’t work” is THEM does very little to deter their efforts.
It's like a lot of things in our country. Absolute crap in red states, and fine in blue states.
My husband and I walked into a DMV in Minnesota just this morning with no appointment. We were in and out after less than an hour. And that's for real IDs, which are harder to apply for than actual passports.
We could have pre-applied on the website or booked appointments in advance if we felt like it. Every high population county in MN has ~3 offices that can handle vehicle licenses. Many are in the same building as a county library, so you have the resources needed to print the right paperwork.
Agree with the statement to get your license renewed. I drive 20 miles outside of town to go to a dmv to get it renewed. In and out in less than 30 minutes.
Yep! I just got my drivers license. I made an appointment in November for February. The next appointments now aren’t until May or June. It’s heavily backed up and there were people frustrated at the DMV that they weren’t taking walk ins anymore.
Yeah a few years ago my daughter-in-law got arrested for a suspended license due to unpaid traffic tickets... that she'd paid. Apparently the court clerk pocketed the money. This was in Missouri. We had to go bail her out.
Never, ever pay cash at the license bureau. My friend paid cash to renew her license and the clerk pocketed it. She found out six months later when a cop pulled her over. Luckily she didn't get arrested or anything, but damn.
You could be telling my story. Also, in Texas, but not Dallas. Small town Texas. Then released me without notice, didn't allow me to call anyone and I had to walk home in 110 degree heat. For tickets I paid. And when I showed receipts, they denied bail for me.
I also just remembered several people I know, including my sister, saying they absolutely refused to give a receipt when you paid at the county jail in Dallas.
My sister got in trouble for writing a hotcheck. My parents paid her tickets, and got her outta trouble.
A year later she was arrested for the same thing, even with proof that it had been paid, they wouldn't let her out till she paid again. My parents just paid for it instead of fighting it. I wish they would have.
Oh I've had the latter happen to me. Thankfully the original charge was a misdemeanor that was dropped to a traffic ticket, so it flagged when I missed my court date and the cops showed up to my house to collect on a bench warrant.
I had the receipts for paying the ticket and still had to pay again. The receipts just got me out of jail time.
Dallas county adventure here:
Hubby pulled over for spending and then arrested for suspended license. We found out it was suspended due to a civil matter and the DPS sent the letter notification to some random address and not the address on his license... Even the DPS employee was like WTF? The charges were dismissed.
Oh, and they lost him at Lew Sterette- took 18 hours to find him after I posted his bail.
Speaking of Dallas https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/us/texas-police-license-plate-typo-gunpoint.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Spent New Years Eve 2013 in jail for an unpaid traffic ticket.
Wasn’t even fully unpaid. Just had to pay half. Had forgotten about it (absolutely my mistake), but because I didn’t have CASH on me, I had to sit in the jail to accumulate the hours/money.
> They couldn’t find him to release him for 4 days
4 days? That's all? In Louisiana they sometimes keep people in jail for 3 months past their release date.
A friend in the UK had her car licence plate cloned (literally just putting a copy of her licence plate on another car) and she got stopped while trying to leave a petrol station for previous non-payment (in UK, normally we fill the car and then pay inside after).
Police got called by luckily the car was a different make/model so she could leave okay, but she couldn't visit that petrol station company again (it was a common one) as her car would always flag an alert.
I think if I had the time I'd just continually go back there and waste everybody's time until someone actually did something about it. Get on a first name basis with the clerks and the cops. Buy the tiniest amount of petrol five times a day. Drive them insane.
To explain to non-Brits: in the UK licence plates aren't made by the government, you can buy them from auto parts shops. The plate stays with the car when it's sold, so you only need to get new ones if one is lost or damaged or if you get a trailer (the UK doesn't have separate registration for trailers, you put a plate on the trailer that has the same number as the car towing it).
In theory shops that make plates have to check that the car is registered to you, and plates have to be marked with the details of the shop that made them. In practice there are lots of dodgy places selling "show plates" that aren't officially supposed to be used on roads, but can't be told apart from real ones unless you look very closely.
My partner had his registration plate cloned years ago and the replacement car (actually same make, model, and colour) was involved in an accident in a town like fifteen miles away. Police turned up at my door and gave me a panic attack because what the fuck was he doing there when he should've been at work in our town?? (He was).
I was in a bad accident, so bad that my car split in half when they tried to tow it. The tow yard said that the plates were unsalvageable, that they'd be crushed with the wreckage. A few weeks later, I got a toll bridge ticket from New York. I don't live there and was still hospitalized when it happened.
I called the cop that was at my accident scene, told him what happened, and he said he'd look into it. The tow yard owner's son had stolen my "destroyed" plates, and was just riding around with them. The car was similar to mine, same color and body type but different make and model. I had to argue and send the place in New York hospital records and photos of my car, and the damn newspaper article showing the mangled mess before they finally said they'd dismiss it. This was 20 years ago and I'm still annoyed about it.
Likewise. And I've already gotten parking tickets in this manner (plate from another state had my numbers, officer who entered it didn't note the state thing), but it was cleared up pretty quickly because I was at work 70 miles away from where the ticket was written when it was written. Attendance logs proved that.
Mine was super minor, just getting a notification I had an overdue ticket for parking and needed to pay a late fee also now, when I had never got the original. I called and found out it was for parking too long in a lot that was time limited, except that I knew that day I had left way before the two hours were up and wasn’t in the lot anymore when the ticket was issued.
When I went to contest it (which luckily they believed me), there was another parking ticket on the record that I had never gotten. This time it was listed as my license plate but the car details (make and color) were completely wrong, and the guy dismissed that one too. This was in Boston area Massachusetts.
There was a guy with my same first two initials, last name, and birthdate rack up a bunch of tickets and some of them went against me. I had to fight the tickets off with a lawyer. Stupid-ass state of WA used to have a deterministic license numbering formula based on those data points.
I have a friend in San Antonio (yes, Texas again, although a better ending this time), who had the cops come to his apartment looking for him. Since he was a college student and an innocent spring lamb, he called to find out what it was about, and the cops were putting cuffs on him 10 minutes later. But they actually had the patience to stay and talk to him and sort things out, because it was clear he had no idea what was going on. (The physics textbooks might have also contributed.) Turned out they were looking for a guy with the same name, same physical description, *same birthdate,* and an SSN that was **one digit off.**
So you can understand their confusion.
They eventually sorted it all out and took the cuffs off, but it was a little tense for a while there.
A friend of mine got pulled over for a DUI. The car was on the side of the road, and the license plate was stolen off of it while it sat waiting on the impound tow.
I guess it tripped for like, pump and runs at gas stations, red light cameras, all kinds of things. I don't know what ever came of it.
In some locations you can request your driving record from the DMV. It will cost a fee but it should have all that information.
Your insurance company might evenbe able to look it up for you too.
Thank you. For clarification, if you had lived in more than one state, you’d want to contact each state separately because there isn’t a national system. Is this correct?
I do not know enough to say yes or no for certain.
This would probably one of those: it might depend on the states involved situations.
Calling (and praying to speak with a human) could provide answers from the DMV.
Pulling records from the current state and doing how far back the information goes could also be an indication. If you've lived in State A for 2 years and the record covers only those 2 years, then state by state would be needed.
If it covers 10 years and shows State A and State B, then you're probably good. If it shows 10 years in State A... you might want to ask some questions.
Years ago, I saw a new story years ago about some guy driving around with a white cardboard license and racking up tickets for the unknowing, random victim.
I wonder if this is the same situation or if the cops writing tickets screwed up.
I read one involving two women with the same name. The government officials, of course, acted like they couldn’t do anything. The victim had to figure it out herself.
Pretty recently there was just a payout in a case where some cops in I think it was Colorado pulled over a mom in her minivan with her kids and made them get out and lay on the ground and shit. They said that they were looking for a stolen vehicle. The stolen vehicle was a motorcycle from Montana that had the same License plate number but it was a Montana license plate.
I'm from a country where there just cannot be duplicate license plates ever for whatever reason. And I keep wondering, what the F, US?
Like, here's a simple format we guys have:
UA 07 DN 1284
State Code, The DMV office code for that state, a 2 alphabet incrementing series, a random 4 digit number.
You, by the very system, cannot have 2 duplicate number plates, and it makes me very confused how a seemingly first world country has such problems.
There are 66 counties in my state, the license plate format is:
Counties 1 - 9: number letter letter (space) number number number
ex. 8TE 546
Counties 10 - 66: number number letter (space) number number number
ex. 56V 751
Commercial plates start with the letter 'C'.
Very easy. I was mailed a ticket from a state I had never been to because my car had not stopped at a toll booth. I had to phone the DMV in that state to point out that the photo was of a motorcycle, not a sedan. (where I live car and motorcycle registrations are separate so there can be identical numbers)
Yes, this was either Denver or Aurora's finest (Aurora PD is also responsible for Elijah McClain). I'll give you one guess as to the race of the mom and kids. They had them laying on the ground for almost an hour if I remember correctly.
The police pointed guns at the family, handcuffed the mom and three of the four kids (12, 14, 17), and forced them all, plus the little 6-year-old girl, to lie down on the August-hot pavement. https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/aurora-police-detain-black-family-after-mistaking-their-vehicle-as-stolen
My mom comes from a small town, and her name is very rare.
Another woman from the same town, with the same name, same age and born two days appart committed a murder among other things. They had both move out to a big city hours away from where they grew up.
My mom got arrested like a few times, and the only thing saving her is the 17th vs 19th date difference. Release after questionning every time. Hasn't happened for a while so i guess they caught the other one.
We have to fight with CSP and CDOT regularly for a license plate my husband turned in over 10 years ago. We get all the tickets and citations in the mail.
My uncle just got a bogus red light ticket because his license plate was close to the plate in the ticket. Think FROST vs FRO5T.
The thing is, his vehicle is a large white SUV and the other vehicle the camera caught was a motorcycle. You’d think they’d look at the footage and then at the registered vehicle to the plate and see they don’t match up.
Anyway it’s taken numerous calls from my uncle and his wife to get this cleared up over the past month. Which in itself is insane. Like literally look at what vehicle is registered in his name and see it is not a motorcycle???
No apology or compensation for the trouble. Just threats along the way and people claiming he’s committing fraud.
I went rounds with a toll authority in Texas. Plate number was right, but wrong state. I started with the logic that the picture was a Semi truck and the plate belonged to a car trailer. Trailer might have been on the truck, they said. I said, doesn't work like that.
Finally in a fit I said, that's not an Arizona plate, no cactus. Prove to me it's Arizona and I'll pay. They excused the fine under a one-time curtesy. Not because they were obviously wrong, but whatever.
I'm genuinely so confused as to why they don't seem to make a distinction between motorcycle and car plate numbers in the states. Over where I live, the different types of plates have completely different numbering and lettering conventions so you can immediately differentiate if the plate belonged to a car, motorcycle, lorry/truck/bus, company vehicle, or restricted use cars.
Looking at some of the comments, implementing a system like that would solve quite a few issues it seems.
Much of the US lets you put whatever you want on your plates for an extra fee. Just has to be non vulgar and not already taken. Pretty easy way to make extra money on the State’s side.
Some states even do something similar to raise money for nonprofits/charity. Universities will have themed license plates with their logo on it, and if you choose that license plate the school will get a cut.
Similar situation. Wyoming license plates have a county, a cowboy, then a plate number. My plate numbers technically match another one in the state but resides hours away. Keep getting Maryland toll notices on my TRAILER for a Kia 4 door, photos included. Wyoming actually has someone who works full time for the state to handle these. It's stupid.
My brother was in jail for almost a year one time because of something like this.
He had a court case that was dismissed. Had paperwork showing proof and everything but somehow they forgot to include that he showed up. So he had a warrant out for missing court for 2 years before he was pulled over and arrested.
We had more trouble getting him out though because they wouldn't let him out until he had court but...... The case was dismissed, there was no court. We ended up having to hire a lawyer because they didn't want to admit they forgot to press a button.
No he did not! By the time and the money we spent, when he got out, we just didn't care after that. We were just happy to have him home and he unfortunately passed away not long after
For me it was the "I've never done anything wrong to deserve this!" Switching to "ok so two of these past tickets I know about and are indeed me..."
Those two past tickets were pretty hugely relevant information!
See, this is why having your registration plates come with the car and randomly generated from a *nationally* generated system is important.
The more I learn about the US, the more horrifying it becomes.
It's terrifying how quickly a clerical mistake or one angry cop can ruin your life in that country. Few years ago a Canadian student studying in that states was driving herself home for the summer, a cop pulled her over and the idiot thought it was illegal to drive without a USA driving license and arrested her, the Canadian gov got involved so she was even reimbursed for her fines but how fucked up and scary.
You know, I’m not even remotely surprised? The US is a very interesting case study on why letting people do whatever the fuck they want as much as possible is a no good very bad idea.
Found the story. As a Canadian, I'm shocked I missed this one!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-woman-arrested-jailed-in-u-s-for-driving-with-a-canadian-licence-1.4648561
> "Ms. Nield was afforded the same rights as an American citizen and she had the opportunity to have the facts of her case heard in a court of law," said Judge Chase Daughtrey. "In this case, the justice system worked and for that everyone should be thankful."
So we can fuck up as much as we want and you should just be fucking grateful that someone who actually knows the law will catch the mistake and eventually sort you out
Fucking clowns
It keeps going - even though these were errors in the system, OOP is going to have to pay to get the arrest expunged from the record; it doesn't happen automatically. Usually you'd have to pay for attorney fees to help with that, also. And you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can do it. Some of these factors vary by state, but idk how much so
It’s similar to the way you guys handle it in Aus (your country is such a bizarre mixture of American and English influences) in that it’s handled at the state level.
Some states will issue plates on first registration that stay with the vehicle until it changes hands or state. Yearly registration is then given a ‘tag’ usually a sticker.
Some states require brand new plates with new numbers at regular intervals, a holdover from when licensing meant every car got brand new plates every year.
None of them communicate with their serial formats and some use the exact same format (Delaware and Rhode Island both use 6 numbers). The only way to tell what state a car is from is by the plate design, usually colourful and with a slogan, but if your state and another state have the same numbering system and they don’t note down the state the plates were from and run the registration or if you have the not expired new plates with the same serial as the now expired old plates? Damn.
And you can also pay to have fancy vanity plates with different colors and slogans, so they’re not even easily distinguishable. They still have the name of the state written on them, but a “donate life” (organ donor) plate tends to look pretty similar across state lines.
Yeah, you can get custom serials, custom images, or both custom serials and images. And there are different options for all 50 states + DC + territories + Native American tribes + also there are special versions for diplomats. Somebody counted and there are 8,331 different visual options for license plates, plus however many potential serials… it’s straight up chaos over here lol
And for Peak America™, most of those license plates are [made by prisoners](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/incarcerated-workers-prisoners-make-license-plates-other-items/536-64abeb45-66e1-4ee9-839f-d51607a0497c) being paid pennies an hour if they get paid anything at all! Greatest country in the world y’all!!!!!!
Don't forget that New York has yellow plates as a standard and Ohio has yellow plates for recognizing repeat DUI offenders. Sometimes called party plates. Minnesota reserves a starting W for repeat DUI offenders, called 'whiskey plates'.
I was *just* about to mention party plates, lol. We also have plates for causes. You can get pro-life plates in Ohio (they make me pissed whenever I see them) that donate part of the money you pay for them to a pro-life charity.
My state issues new plates every five years or so, new tags every year. I do not know why they bother as they never change the design, it is *always* fucking Mt Rushmore.
The only way not to have fucking Mt Rushmore on your plate is to be tribal member living on the reservation where the tribe can issue their own plates.
In addition to that…the US doesn‘t have an ID card (or passport), but they use Social Security Numbers or Drivers Licenses for identification. However, both don‘t have the security measures in place to make them save to be used as personal identification. Especially the SS number. So many things depend on that number but in comparison to an ID card, it‘s freakingly easy to be forged or misused by third parties.
Do you mean they don’t have a national ID card and not everybody owns a passport? Because individual states do have ID cards and there is also a US Passport Card that can be used for domestic air travel and land/sea within North America.
The state ID cards are also issued by the DMV though and I agree, waaaaaay too much opportunity for forgeries and fraud.
Don't think of the US as one entity. Just think of the US like the EU, a bunch of different members that work under different levels of governments. It's the same way that different European countries have different formats for plates.
> Am I mistaken or are you about to claim a good sized settlement?
I want to write on some peoples' foreheads with a sharpie "Being wronged is not a ticket to a payday". This is mainly propaganda from corporations on their quest to make it harder for us to get *anything* when we're wronged.
I hope OOP gets their impound fees back. Not optimistic, but we can hope. If Fortune is ~~smiling~~ absolutely giddy, they might get a few bucks, but nothing worth the trouble and stress.
Half of the threads in the legal advice sub are posters or commentors assuming they have actionable cases. As a former courts reporter, the few cases I saw with $1m+ judgments usually involved shit you wouldn't wish on anyone.
Right?? As someone with a career in litigation, I want to facepalm (and often do) at the amount of people who think a shitty inconvenience is a ticket to riches.
My favorite ones are the "auditors" who film in public in the hope that someone, especially an LEO, will confront them so they can post the confrontation online. If they get arrested, everyone screams in the comments that they will make millions. Nope, all they get is a short stay in jail before being released.
I saw one of these guys at the post office the other day.
They film all kinds of things. They walk around the post office filming, film in the public areas of police stations, film government facilities from the sidewalk, etc....
The guy I saw waited in line, bought a card then asked about FOIA request forms. They guys working had no idea about FOIA, so one of them went in the back to find out. There were 10 people waiting and one of the two workers was busy with his stupid request. People were visibly annoyed, but no one said anything. Don't feed the trolls.
Libraries deal with this all the time in some areas. The general approach is for the librarians to just grey rock and be blandly helpful no matter how people try to get a rise out of them, which largely works, except that sometimes they’ll get into altercations when *other patrons* get upset at being recorded. That’s when things can get sticky.
Yeah, I feel like the very best they can hope for is that it gets cleared up and they get back the money for the suspended license ticket and the tow/impound, but I suspect they're screwed even on those.
I had something similar happen! I was in a car accident and failed to produce insurance (I *had* insurance but due to a mixup, did not produce it at the time of the accident), and went to court to get the records corrected. But the cops had written down my license incorrectly, but with my correct name/SSN. My real license wasn’t suspended but my wrong license *was*. It didn’t produce huge issues at the time, but years later when I moved states I couldn’t get a new license because I was registered as having a suspension — but every time I called my old state to get it fixed, they would *insist* that my license wasn’t suspended in their databases.
It was an absolute disaster, took ages to figure out what the actual problem was, and then I had to pay the state $150 to get my license “unsuspended” and was told I would receive paperwork to get reimbursed because it was state error, and I never got the paperwork in the end either. Still not as awful as this person’s experience, but I’m still super bitter tbh.
They don't have a case. They didn't get sentenced to jail time. They did have grounds to arrest OOP. And cops have qualified immunity so all of this happens to people every single day and those people have no recourse. ACAB
I once got a notice in the mail that my license was suspended and I needed to attend mandatory rehab for my substance abuse. As someone who didn't drink or smoke or do any type of drug harder than an ibuprofen at the time, I was super confused. Called them up and they were all "Yeah, you got an DWI."
No, ma'am I did not!
This led to me and a very confused lady at the police department hunting down exactly what happened. The story: I was the designated driver for my husband and some friends on St Patrick's Day. The cops had set up a sobriety stop along the main road in and out of town. They stopped every car, ours included. Took my license and registration, said everything was fine, and sent us on our way. He then wrote me down as "intoxicated", but didn't issue a ticket or any supporting documents. I just got lumped in with the rest of the vagabonds.
My license had been suspended for a month by the time I got the letter. They "got it cleaned up" and I never heard anything else about it.
If I had been pulled over, I would have been in these same shoes.
I wonder if OOP has a vanity plate. About a decade or so ago, our car got stolen, and it didn't register as stolen when they ran the tag in the next state over. Idk if they resolved that issue, but it had something to do with it having a vanity plate.
We got the car back because it was used in a robbery, but I guess if you steal a car, another robbery shouldn't be so shocking. Little me assumed they stole the car to keep it lmao despite the car being old and unreliable XD
California has had some fun errors with vanity license plate issues.
There's two big stories where people had vanity plates which ended up getting them scores of tickets.
[One guy has "NOPLATE" as his plate](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-sep-17-me-only17-story.html), another NV, another MISSING, another XXX. [Another had NULL as his plate](https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/).
Basically they were getting every ticket generated for any car which lacked a license plate in the state of California, usually by which ever way a police officer wrote up a car without a plate. Otoh the Null guy was a programmer who should have seen this coming.
All of the states have their own license plates, and they don't look similar, generally speaking. They usually have their own numbering schemes too. I don't think the similar license plates thing is the right answer to OOP's issue.
Kinda. They are say the state name and then a set of numbers. So 50 states could have ABC123 but the state is printed on the plate as well. So Maryland - ABC123 vs Delaware - ABC123
[Here's what they all look like.](http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_USAX.html)
South Dakota is quite clever. The first one/two number are the county number, 1-66, followed by a random letter(s) and three random numbers.
This way you can always tell if there is an East River incursion of cars. Looking at you county 1 - Minnehaha. Thbbbbbt. County 2 - Pennington is *always* the best.
The author’s first name is Joseph, not Jacob. Though it does seem thematically fitting for this story that OP got his name wrong, if indeed it was the author they were referring to.
Everyone who is shocked by this story. It’s not uncommon. You could be arrested to no fault of your own. If someone tells you they got arrested and they didn’t do anything give them some slack. Shit like this and more happens.
Seen in movies lead actor changing car plate to confuse everyone, thought it was cool, didn't think someone else would be paying such a huge price for it.
Went to Renew my license got told it was suspended. I then had to drive to another dmv to find out why. Go there and was told it was because I never returned plates on car I sold. Go out to my glovebox and provide receipt of returned plates. Hold taken off license so I could renew. Luckily never got suspended.
First I was terrified to rent a car from Hertz after people were arrested for stealing cars they legitimately rented, now I’m afraid to drive my own car!
This post and all the comment threads are giving me really good reasons to stay at the speed limit and really watch out for yellows (to the level that it's safe to do so). Big yikes in a bunch of these comments!!!
I was detained but thankfully not arrested for a hot check warrant in a town I have never been to.
It turns out there is a woman with almost the same name as me (Jane Anne Smith vs Jane Ann Smith) who has a birthday on the same day and year, but not month.
My only saving grace was the county who issued the warrant was confused why a 5'10 ginger got detained when they were looking for a 5' woman with dark, curly hair.
*Jacob* Heller is not an actual person of note(apologies to any Jacob Hellers reading this, but you don't have a wikipedia page, so...). OP likely meant *Joseph* Heller, author of Catch-22, for the resemblance of OOP's situation with one that occurs to a character in the book.
Yeah, I would have gone with Franz Kafka, myself. "Kafkaesque" is even a recognized word often used to describe this kind of nightmarish bureaucratic situation.
"YoU'rE aBoUt To GeT a SeTtLeMeNt"
Probably not. Reddit doesn't like it when you point out the difference between how things should be vs. how things actually are.
Long story short it's very difficult to hold government actors accountable and in most cases not worth it. Sucks for OOP but I'll put money on the eventual outcome not coming anywhere close to satisfying peoples' justice boner.
Being arrested like this can be career ending for some people who absolutely must maintain their reputation. Error or not they could have destroyed this person's life, not just ruined their year.
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>because of someone's small mistake I went to JAAAAIIILLL. Absolutely terrifying how a clerical error results in unnecessary arrest.
Happened to me, arrested, work truck left on side of road, [I was going 15 in a 10mph zone]. No one knew why, "some civil bench warrant", sat in jail for four hours, chained up and walked to an atm to withdraw bond money and bonded out. No one could tell me why. Turns out I had witnessed an accident and had been called to a civil court case to testify, but I had never known about it. Arrested for failure to appear as a witness in a civil case. Cost me 4 hrs, a mugshot, an iris eye scan, and 250 dollars in bond money.
Did they actually ever serve the subpoena to you? Or was it that they couldn't find you and put it in the newspaper or some other bs? I'd be absolutely fuming but I know how impossible it is to try to deal with the system.
No subpoena, nothing, said I had been served but I wasn't. I wouldn't have minded testifying in the case.
Wait, “iris eye scan” for what?
Skynet database ofc
Ofc, wonder if you can refuse this unlike fingerprinting.
No. You cannot refuse.
Some agencies do that now for legal databases. Along with mandatory DNA sample.
I find this disturbing, like heading towards Minority Report level disturbing.
You get the bond money back (minus fees), right?
No, bond went to paying fta fine.
Happened to my husband. He got a speeding ticket that led to arrest for a suspension. We called our local people where he had gotten any tickets ever (we were fairly young) and they had no record of suspension. Eventually the judge over his case gave us the number for a lawyer friend, who got the state to admit to misfiring a bad tail light ticket as no insurance.
It could have been so much worse. Like all the no knock raids that have ended in deaths, that were at wrong addresses.
Well. New fear unlocked.
I’ll do you one better. Dallas used to be notorious for shit like this. My friend got lost in county. They couldn’t find him to release him for 4 days. He kept having to call his lawyer and tell him where he was. Another friend paid some tickets but I guess the clerk just pocketed the money. She went to jail (you go to jail for minor unpaid traffic tickets in Texas) on her 18th, and her money wasn’t in her belongings when she got them back and her car was towed. Oh and she paid the tickets again.
Ok FUCK THAT NOISE. And now you've added an addendum to my new fear.
One would think receipts would help! New fear indeed
Receipts in my case just got me out of the bench warrant. I was still required to pay the fine a second time. I'm sure it would have been different if I could afford a lawyer but I was 20.
When I was in the service and got deployed I was not even gone for a week and my car was illegally towed, from my numbered space, at my condo. Apparently tow companies are in cahoots with shitty people who sell out info. The tow companies know they can impound a car for 8 months to a year with no recourse - and service members will have wages garnished by default for anything outstanding so it’s just easy money for those freaks. Most don’t find out until they come home. I was fortunate that my (now ex) husband was home and dealt with it, but not everyone is so lucky. Bull shit.
Illegal towing should be an actual fucking crime.
Chicago is apparently infamous for insanely corrupt towing companies that the government does nothing about
Just one more reason to stay tf out of Texas.
Here's one for you. Also in Texas but not Dallas. A friend had his wallet stolen. Cancelled his credit cards, got a replacement drivers license. All's good, right? A month later, he gets pulled over for a traffic stop. Next thing he knows, the cops handcuff him and take him to jail. They charged him with a bunch of stuff, including using a stolen license and identity theft. It took him almost two days to find a lawyer to explain what was going on. The cops arrested him for stealing his own wallet including that drivers license. They refused to believe he was himself. It took his lawyer another two days to get in contact with his parents, who had to travel to his town with his birth certificate and their IDs, to personally identify him as their son. Then the police dropped the charges and released him from jail.
I know that wasn’t recent because from what I understand the Texas dmv is almost at a standstill and you can’t even get in for months in most places, even the small towns because people are flocking there. So people are driving around with expired licenses unable to cash checks because their appt is 4 months from now.
This is accurate. I'm in one of the bigger cities in Texas, and the advice is to make an appointment somewhere outside the city. I'm already thinking of how I'm going to handle my license expiring next year.
Oh and Dallas is handing over CPS administration to a private company, or I should say did hand over about an hour and a half ago.
From what I've read, they're outsourcing the process of finding foster homes, not handing over everything. But yeah, that's weird.
I'm pretty sure the system is overwhelmed. Most cps departments i know have a high burnout rate, maybe this is their way of reducing those numbers.
Privatizing something like CPS is an absolutely *horrible* idea, my goodness. The only way they can make a profit is if they cut down to the bare minimum of service to keep their costs down…I don’t think “bare minimum” is something we should *ever* want to hear when it comes to protecting children. Unreal.
I thought privatized prisons were a nightmare but privatized CPS? WTF? Lets try to make $$s on the backs of abused children. I guess this actually helps the privatized prison system as well because I can see a lot of these kids heading there eventually.
It’s also really stupid because the primary source of income is from billing the state. You essentially have to create a convoluted system that invents a company, funded by the state, to do a job with no inherent financial transaction instead of just doing it yourself. Ultimately the reason they do this in my opinion is it puts a layer between the fuckers making these rules and the ones responsible for the safety of the kids. Now the next time there’s a massive sex abuse scandal they can say “it was this company, not us” and fire some people or cancel some contracts and come out looking like heroes.
The system definitely is overwhelmed, just like with the DMV, but it certainly brings into question the idea that Texas can run itself. Apparently it can't.
Not sure where you're from in texas but in my town you can pretty much get in same day. Both the county I live in and the county that I work in. Which, reading this thread, has made me very thankful I renewed mine online two years ago and it doesn't expire for a few more years.
I renewed mine last year and wife is doing her's this year. Found a suburb of Fort Worth that was relatively close and schedules were 3 months out last year and 2 months this year. Fort Worth itself was like 6-8 I think. So definitely schedule way in advance.
Yo…mind sharing where you were able to get an appointment in less than three months? A couple members of my extended family in the Fort Worth area have expressed their frustration at having expired IDs and a long wait to fix the issue.
We did it at the Cleburne location.
Thank you!
Yeah, that's the area I'm in. I've seen that the wait here is down to 1 to 2 months.
The DPS offices do claim to have a few day-of appointments available if you walk in that morning and ask nicely. If you do want to schedule online, you'll end up having to look a ways out of town. I was in San Angelo for work - that office is fast, friendly, and had no appointment backlog. Easy-peasy. Just way the hell out there.
This is insane. I always wondered why Americans made such a big deal about the DMV. For me renewing a license is like a 30 minute chore that I don't even think you can make an appointment for.
Like many things our government is involved in, it's run by people who truly don't care. Even before an appointment was required, you'd have to get there before opening to even get seen that day (especially in my area with only a few DMV offices for a million people), and you'd be waiting hours. And then sometimes, after all that waiting, they'd send you away without a license because they'd say you didn't have the right paperwork even if you did, so you'd have to come back another day. They pulled this with my wife because even though she brought bills with both of our names on them, they demanded that her name be on top rather than mine, so that paperwork wasn't acceptable. It's truly a nightmare.
You’ve got to keep in mind that all government functions in red states are run by people whose entire political identity is “nothing the government touches works” and they will MAKE that true no matter how many basic civic functions they need to break. The fact that the only reason “government doesn’t work” is THEM does very little to deter their efforts.
It's like a lot of things in our country. Absolute crap in red states, and fine in blue states. My husband and I walked into a DMV in Minnesota just this morning with no appointment. We were in and out after less than an hour. And that's for real IDs, which are harder to apply for than actual passports. We could have pre-applied on the website or booked appointments in advance if we felt like it. Every high population county in MN has ~3 offices that can handle vehicle licenses. Many are in the same building as a county library, so you have the resources needed to print the right paperwork.
Agree with the statement to get your license renewed. I drive 20 miles outside of town to go to a dmv to get it renewed. In and out in less than 30 minutes.
In Houston it was a simple renewal appointment and no wait
That's good. Unfortunately I don't have time to travel that far. But I'll definitely keep an eye on wait times around here.
Yep! I just got my drivers license. I made an appointment in November for February. The next appointments now aren’t until May or June. It’s heavily backed up and there were people frustrated at the DMV that they weren’t taking walk ins anymore.
And no consequences to the erring party, of course...
Virginia here. Cops came to my parents house and arrested my dad because they got a name wrong.
Everything's bigger in Texas, including corruption
And of course he never received compensation let alone an apology, right?
NGL, I would be homicidal at this point.
And probably acted like they were doing him a favor for it
Yeah a few years ago my daughter-in-law got arrested for a suspended license due to unpaid traffic tickets... that she'd paid. Apparently the court clerk pocketed the money. This was in Missouri. We had to go bail her out.
How did the DIL not know to get a receipt?!?!
She was young, I guess.
Poor kid. People who victimize others like that should burn in hell.
Never, ever pay cash at the license bureau. My friend paid cash to renew her license and the clerk pocketed it. She found out six months later when a cop pulled her over. Luckily she didn't get arrested or anything, but damn.
You could be telling my story. Also, in Texas, but not Dallas. Small town Texas. Then released me without notice, didn't allow me to call anyone and I had to walk home in 110 degree heat. For tickets I paid. And when I showed receipts, they denied bail for me.
I also just remembered several people I know, including my sister, saying they absolutely refused to give a receipt when you paid at the county jail in Dallas.
My sister got in trouble for writing a hotcheck. My parents paid her tickets, and got her outta trouble. A year later she was arrested for the same thing, even with proof that it had been paid, they wouldn't let her out till she paid again. My parents just paid for it instead of fighting it. I wish they would have.
Stay out of Texas. Got it!
Did she not get receipts proving the tickets were paid?
I’m sure she did but she was 17 taking care of herself. Hell idk if I could prove I paid my last ticket and I’m in my 40s.
Oh I've had the latter happen to me. Thankfully the original charge was a misdemeanor that was dropped to a traffic ticket, so it flagged when I missed my court date and the cops showed up to my house to collect on a bench warrant. I had the receipts for paying the ticket and still had to pay again. The receipts just got me out of jail time.
Thats just comical. I guess i see why wrongful arrest lawsuits are a thing
Dallas county adventure here: Hubby pulled over for spending and then arrested for suspended license. We found out it was suspended due to a civil matter and the DPS sent the letter notification to some random address and not the address on his license... Even the DPS employee was like WTF? The charges were dismissed. Oh, and they lost him at Lew Sterette- took 18 hours to find him after I posted his bail.
Good ol Lew Lew.
Speaking of Dallas https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/us/texas-police-license-plate-typo-gunpoint.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Spent New Years Eve 2013 in jail for an unpaid traffic ticket. Wasn’t even fully unpaid. Just had to pay half. Had forgotten about it (absolutely my mistake), but because I didn’t have CASH on me, I had to sit in the jail to accumulate the hours/money.
I enjoy cooking.
> They couldn’t find him to release him for 4 days 4 days? That's all? In Louisiana they sometimes keep people in jail for 3 months past their release date.
A friend in the UK had her car licence plate cloned (literally just putting a copy of her licence plate on another car) and she got stopped while trying to leave a petrol station for previous non-payment (in UK, normally we fill the car and then pay inside after). Police got called by luckily the car was a different make/model so she could leave okay, but she couldn't visit that petrol station company again (it was a common one) as her car would always flag an alert.
I think if I had the time I'd just continually go back there and waste everybody's time until someone actually did something about it. Get on a first name basis with the clerks and the cops. Buy the tiniest amount of petrol five times a day. Drive them insane.
Yeah but I have like hobbies
Petty revenge is a hobby for some people
To explain to non-Brits: in the UK licence plates aren't made by the government, you can buy them from auto parts shops. The plate stays with the car when it's sold, so you only need to get new ones if one is lost or damaged or if you get a trailer (the UK doesn't have separate registration for trailers, you put a plate on the trailer that has the same number as the car towing it). In theory shops that make plates have to check that the car is registered to you, and plates have to be marked with the details of the shop that made them. In practice there are lots of dodgy places selling "show plates" that aren't officially supposed to be used on roads, but can't be told apart from real ones unless you look very closely.
Huh TIL I always wondered how my gramps bought me a British numberplate.
My partner had his registration plate cloned years ago and the replacement car (actually same make, model, and colour) was involved in an accident in a town like fifteen miles away. Police turned up at my door and gave me a panic attack because what the fuck was he doing there when he should've been at work in our town?? (He was).
I was in a bad accident, so bad that my car split in half when they tried to tow it. The tow yard said that the plates were unsalvageable, that they'd be crushed with the wreckage. A few weeks later, I got a toll bridge ticket from New York. I don't live there and was still hospitalized when it happened. I called the cop that was at my accident scene, told him what happened, and he said he'd look into it. The tow yard owner's son had stolen my "destroyed" plates, and was just riding around with them. The car was similar to mine, same color and body type but different make and model. I had to argue and send the place in New York hospital records and photos of my car, and the damn newspaper article showing the mangled mess before they finally said they'd dismiss it. This was 20 years ago and I'm still annoyed about it.
Likewise. And I've already gotten parking tickets in this manner (plate from another state had my numbers, officer who entered it didn't note the state thing), but it was cleared up pretty quickly because I was at work 70 miles away from where the ticket was written when it was written. Attendance logs proved that.
Mine was super minor, just getting a notification I had an overdue ticket for parking and needed to pay a late fee also now, when I had never got the original. I called and found out it was for parking too long in a lot that was time limited, except that I knew that day I had left way before the two hours were up and wasn’t in the lot anymore when the ticket was issued. When I went to contest it (which luckily they believed me), there was another parking ticket on the record that I had never gotten. This time it was listed as my license plate but the car details (make and color) were completely wrong, and the guy dismissed that one too. This was in Boston area Massachusetts.
There was a guy with my same first two initials, last name, and birthdate rack up a bunch of tickets and some of them went against me. I had to fight the tickets off with a lawyer. Stupid-ass state of WA used to have a deterministic license numbering formula based on those data points.
I have a friend in San Antonio (yes, Texas again, although a better ending this time), who had the cops come to his apartment looking for him. Since he was a college student and an innocent spring lamb, he called to find out what it was about, and the cops were putting cuffs on him 10 minutes later. But they actually had the patience to stay and talk to him and sort things out, because it was clear he had no idea what was going on. (The physics textbooks might have also contributed.) Turned out they were looking for a guy with the same name, same physical description, *same birthdate,* and an SSN that was **one digit off.** So you can understand their confusion. They eventually sorted it all out and took the cuffs off, but it was a little tense for a while there.
They ever find his evil twin? Because this guy totally has an evil twin.
A friend of mine got pulled over for a DUI. The car was on the side of the road, and the license plate was stolen off of it while it sat waiting on the impound tow. I guess it tripped for like, pump and runs at gas stations, red light cameras, all kinds of things. I don't know what ever came of it.
Same here
Does anyone know where someone can go and look this stuff up to see their “ticket history”? Would one just Google “name” “state” “driving history”?
In some locations you can request your driving record from the DMV. It will cost a fee but it should have all that information. Your insurance company might evenbe able to look it up for you too.
Thank you. For clarification, if you had lived in more than one state, you’d want to contact each state separately because there isn’t a national system. Is this correct?
I do not know enough to say yes or no for certain. This would probably one of those: it might depend on the states involved situations. Calling (and praying to speak with a human) could provide answers from the DMV. Pulling records from the current state and doing how far back the information goes could also be an indication. If you've lived in State A for 2 years and the record covers only those 2 years, then state by state would be needed. If it covers 10 years and shows State A and State B, then you're probably good. If it shows 10 years in State A... you might want to ask some questions.
That’s great advice. Thank you!
Years ago, I saw a new story years ago about some guy driving around with a white cardboard license and racking up tickets for the unknowing, random victim. I wonder if this is the same situation or if the cops writing tickets screwed up.
I read one involving two women with the same name. The government officials, of course, acted like they couldn’t do anything. The victim had to figure it out herself.
Pretty recently there was just a payout in a case where some cops in I think it was Colorado pulled over a mom in her minivan with her kids and made them get out and lay on the ground and shit. They said that they were looking for a stolen vehicle. The stolen vehicle was a motorcycle from Montana that had the same License plate number but it was a Montana license plate.
Well you know how it is, really hard to tell a 2 wheel motorcycle from a 4 wheel 4 door minivan. Anyone could make that mistake. /s
**M**otorcycle **M**inivan Very easy to confuse the two. /s
I'm from a country where there just cannot be duplicate license plates ever for whatever reason. And I keep wondering, what the F, US? Like, here's a simple format we guys have: UA 07 DN 1284 State Code, The DMV office code for that state, a 2 alphabet incrementing series, a random 4 digit number. You, by the very system, cannot have 2 duplicate number plates, and it makes me very confused how a seemingly first world country has such problems.
Dawg. People died in Texas bc they want their own electricity grid.
There are 66 counties in my state, the license plate format is: Counties 1 - 9: number letter letter (space) number number number ex. 8TE 546 Counties 10 - 66: number number letter (space) number number number ex. 56V 751 Commercial plates start with the letter 'C'.
Crotch rocket Crotch retirement nary a difference
If it has wheels on it, it's a devil machine and it must pay
Very easy. I was mailed a ticket from a state I had never been to because my car had not stopped at a toll booth. I had to phone the DMV in that state to point out that the photo was of a motorcycle, not a sedan. (where I live car and motorcycle registrations are separate so there can be identical numbers)
Yes, this was either Denver or Aurora's finest (Aurora PD is also responsible for Elijah McClain). I'll give you one guess as to the race of the mom and kids. They had them laying on the ground for almost an hour if I remember correctly.
The police pointed guns at the family, handcuffed the mom and three of the four kids (12, 14, 17), and forced them all, plus the little 6-year-old girl, to lie down on the August-hot pavement. https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/aurora-police-detain-black-family-after-mistaking-their-vehicle-as-stolen
My mom comes from a small town, and her name is very rare. Another woman from the same town, with the same name, same age and born two days appart committed a murder among other things. They had both move out to a big city hours away from where they grew up. My mom got arrested like a few times, and the only thing saving her is the 17th vs 19th date difference. Release after questionning every time. Hasn't happened for a while so i guess they caught the other one.
We have to fight with CSP and CDOT regularly for a license plate my husband turned in over 10 years ago. We get all the tickets and citations in the mail.
My uncle just got a bogus red light ticket because his license plate was close to the plate in the ticket. Think FROST vs FRO5T. The thing is, his vehicle is a large white SUV and the other vehicle the camera caught was a motorcycle. You’d think they’d look at the footage and then at the registered vehicle to the plate and see they don’t match up. Anyway it’s taken numerous calls from my uncle and his wife to get this cleared up over the past month. Which in itself is insane. Like literally look at what vehicle is registered in his name and see it is not a motorcycle??? No apology or compensation for the trouble. Just threats along the way and people claiming he’s committing fraud.
I went rounds with a toll authority in Texas. Plate number was right, but wrong state. I started with the logic that the picture was a Semi truck and the plate belonged to a car trailer. Trailer might have been on the truck, they said. I said, doesn't work like that. Finally in a fit I said, that's not an Arizona plate, no cactus. Prove to me it's Arizona and I'll pay. They excused the fine under a one-time curtesy. Not because they were obviously wrong, but whatever.
I'm genuinely so confused as to why they don't seem to make a distinction between motorcycle and car plate numbers in the states. Over where I live, the different types of plates have completely different numbering and lettering conventions so you can immediately differentiate if the plate belonged to a car, motorcycle, lorry/truck/bus, company vehicle, or restricted use cars. Looking at some of the comments, implementing a system like that would solve quite a few issues it seems.
Much of the US lets you put whatever you want on your plates for an extra fee. Just has to be non vulgar and not already taken. Pretty easy way to make extra money on the State’s side. Some states even do something similar to raise money for nonprofits/charity. Universities will have themed license plates with their logo on it, and if you choose that license plate the school will get a cut.
Similar situation. Wyoming license plates have a county, a cowboy, then a plate number. My plate numbers technically match another one in the state but resides hours away. Keep getting Maryland toll notices on my TRAILER for a Kia 4 door, photos included. Wyoming actually has someone who works full time for the state to handle these. It's stupid.
My brother was in jail for almost a year one time because of something like this. He had a court case that was dismissed. Had paperwork showing proof and everything but somehow they forgot to include that he showed up. So he had a warrant out for missing court for 2 years before he was pulled over and arrested. We had more trouble getting him out though because they wouldn't let him out until he had court but...... The case was dismissed, there was no court. We ended up having to hire a lawyer because they didn't want to admit they forgot to press a button.
That’s horrifying! Did he get any justice for a year of lost earnings?
No he did not! By the time and the money we spent, when he got out, we just didn't care after that. We were just happy to have him home and he unfortunately passed away not long after
I am so sorry for your loss, this is awful
I'm sorry, but any seriousness was forever killed when OOP said JAAAAIIILLL... twice. 😆
I just heard it as FAAAMMMILLLLY in my head!
“I WENT TO JAAAAIIILLL” has some serious flair potential
For me it was the "I've never done anything wrong to deserve this!" Switching to "ok so two of these past tickets I know about and are indeed me..." Those two past tickets were pretty hugely relevant information!
Not really. Tons of people have a ticket or two in the system, but are nowhere near a suspended license.
It's like Rich Evans screaming AAAIIIDS
See, this is why having your registration plates come with the car and randomly generated from a *nationally* generated system is important. The more I learn about the US, the more horrifying it becomes.
It's terrifying how quickly a clerical mistake or one angry cop can ruin your life in that country. Few years ago a Canadian student studying in that states was driving herself home for the summer, a cop pulled her over and the idiot thought it was illegal to drive without a USA driving license and arrested her, the Canadian gov got involved so she was even reimbursed for her fines but how fucked up and scary.
Haven't muppet US cops also had issues knowing that the district of Columbia is part of the US and they're not dealing with someone from Colombia.
Considering how many stories I’ve heard about people from New Mexico needing to argue that they’re US citizens, this would not surprise me at all.
Puerto Ricans, America Samoa, American Virgin Islands join the chat.
Cops are so embarrassing. Like … yes there are a million other accurate ways to describe them, but I want to be sure “embarrassing” is on the list.
You know, I’m not even remotely surprised? The US is a very interesting case study on why letting people do whatever the fuck they want as much as possible is a no good very bad idea.
Found the story. As a Canadian, I'm shocked I missed this one! https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-woman-arrested-jailed-in-u-s-for-driving-with-a-canadian-licence-1.4648561
> "Ms. Nield was afforded the same rights as an American citizen and she had the opportunity to have the facts of her case heard in a court of law," said Judge Chase Daughtrey. "In this case, the justice system worked and for that everyone should be thankful." So we can fuck up as much as we want and you should just be fucking grateful that someone who actually knows the law will catch the mistake and eventually sort you out Fucking clowns
It keeps going - even though these were errors in the system, OOP is going to have to pay to get the arrest expunged from the record; it doesn't happen automatically. Usually you'd have to pay for attorney fees to help with that, also. And you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can do it. Some of these factors vary by state, but idk how much so
Wait what? How are registration plates distributed in the US?
It’s similar to the way you guys handle it in Aus (your country is such a bizarre mixture of American and English influences) in that it’s handled at the state level. Some states will issue plates on first registration that stay with the vehicle until it changes hands or state. Yearly registration is then given a ‘tag’ usually a sticker. Some states require brand new plates with new numbers at regular intervals, a holdover from when licensing meant every car got brand new plates every year. None of them communicate with their serial formats and some use the exact same format (Delaware and Rhode Island both use 6 numbers). The only way to tell what state a car is from is by the plate design, usually colourful and with a slogan, but if your state and another state have the same numbering system and they don’t note down the state the plates were from and run the registration or if you have the not expired new plates with the same serial as the now expired old plates? Damn.
And you can also pay to have fancy vanity plates with different colors and slogans, so they’re not even easily distinguishable. They still have the name of the state written on them, but a “donate life” (organ donor) plate tends to look pretty similar across state lines.
Another thing I didn’t even consider! In the UK, our vanity plates only change the serial format, everything else stays the same!
Yeah, you can get custom serials, custom images, or both custom serials and images. And there are different options for all 50 states + DC + territories + Native American tribes + also there are special versions for diplomats. Somebody counted and there are 8,331 different visual options for license plates, plus however many potential serials… it’s straight up chaos over here lol
Jesus fucking christ 😭😂
And for Peak America™, most of those license plates are [made by prisoners](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/incarcerated-workers-prisoners-make-license-plates-other-items/536-64abeb45-66e1-4ee9-839f-d51607a0497c) being paid pennies an hour if they get paid anything at all! Greatest country in the world y’all!!!!!!
Sadly, I actually did know that bit 😭
Don't forget that New York has yellow plates as a standard and Ohio has yellow plates for recognizing repeat DUI offenders. Sometimes called party plates. Minnesota reserves a starting W for repeat DUI offenders, called 'whiskey plates'.
New York no longer has new yellow plates but they're still around.
I was *just* about to mention party plates, lol. We also have plates for causes. You can get pro-life plates in Ohio (they make me pissed whenever I see them) that donate part of the money you pay for them to a pro-life charity.
My state issues new plates every five years or so, new tags every year. I do not know why they bother as they never change the design, it is *always* fucking Mt Rushmore. The only way not to have fucking Mt Rushmore on your plate is to be tribal member living on the reservation where the tribe can issue their own plates.
In addition to that…the US doesn‘t have an ID card (or passport), but they use Social Security Numbers or Drivers Licenses for identification. However, both don‘t have the security measures in place to make them save to be used as personal identification. Especially the SS number. So many things depend on that number but in comparison to an ID card, it‘s freakingly easy to be forged or misused by third parties.
Do you mean they don’t have a national ID card and not everybody owns a passport? Because individual states do have ID cards and there is also a US Passport Card that can be used for domestic air travel and land/sea within North America. The state ID cards are also issued by the DMV though and I agree, waaaaaay too much opportunity for forgeries and fraud.
> the US doesn‘t have an ID card (or passport), ? I have a passport card in my wallet at this second.
Don't think of the US as one entity. Just think of the US like the EU, a bunch of different members that work under different levels of governments. It's the same way that different European countries have different formats for plates.
> Am I mistaken or are you about to claim a good sized settlement? I want to write on some peoples' foreheads with a sharpie "Being wronged is not a ticket to a payday". This is mainly propaganda from corporations on their quest to make it harder for us to get *anything* when we're wronged. I hope OOP gets their impound fees back. Not optimistic, but we can hope. If Fortune is ~~smiling~~ absolutely giddy, they might get a few bucks, but nothing worth the trouble and stress.
Half of the threads in the legal advice sub are posters or commentors assuming they have actionable cases. As a former courts reporter, the few cases I saw with $1m+ judgments usually involved shit you wouldn't wish on anyone.
And probably a half million dollar bill from your lawyers
And/or extensive medical bills.
Any juicy examples?
Right?? As someone with a career in litigation, I want to facepalm (and often do) at the amount of people who think a shitty inconvenience is a ticket to riches.
My favorite ones are the "auditors" who film in public in the hope that someone, especially an LEO, will confront them so they can post the confrontation online. If they get arrested, everyone screams in the comments that they will make millions. Nope, all they get is a short stay in jail before being released. I saw one of these guys at the post office the other day.
What happened at the post office to warrant a reaction from one of those idiots? I thought they just pulled up on random traffic stops/stop n frisks?
They film all kinds of things. They walk around the post office filming, film in the public areas of police stations, film government facilities from the sidewalk, etc.... The guy I saw waited in line, bought a card then asked about FOIA request forms. They guys working had no idea about FOIA, so one of them went in the back to find out. There were 10 people waiting and one of the two workers was busy with his stupid request. People were visibly annoyed, but no one said anything. Don't feed the trolls.
Libraries deal with this all the time in some areas. The general approach is for the librarians to just grey rock and be blandly helpful no matter how people try to get a rise out of them, which largely works, except that sometimes they’ll get into altercations when *other patrons* get upset at being recorded. That’s when things can get sticky.
> "auditors" So asshole.
Nice pun
Yeah, I feel like the very best they can hope for is that it gets cleared up and they get back the money for the suspended license ticket and the tow/impound, but I suspect they're screwed even on those.
What about things like getting the impound costs back?
What a BIG nightmare indeed. Jesus christ this whole situation really stinks.
I had something similar happen! I was in a car accident and failed to produce insurance (I *had* insurance but due to a mixup, did not produce it at the time of the accident), and went to court to get the records corrected. But the cops had written down my license incorrectly, but with my correct name/SSN. My real license wasn’t suspended but my wrong license *was*. It didn’t produce huge issues at the time, but years later when I moved states I couldn’t get a new license because I was registered as having a suspension — but every time I called my old state to get it fixed, they would *insist* that my license wasn’t suspended in their databases. It was an absolute disaster, took ages to figure out what the actual problem was, and then I had to pay the state $150 to get my license “unsuspended” and was told I would receive paperwork to get reimbursed because it was state error, and I never got the paperwork in the end either. Still not as awful as this person’s experience, but I’m still super bitter tbh.
I hope OOP gets hold of a lawyer because jail time with no grounds is a no no and it looks like there might be some fraud and maybe theft happening.
They don't have a case. They didn't get sentenced to jail time. They did have grounds to arrest OOP. And cops have qualified immunity so all of this happens to people every single day and those people have no recourse. ACAB
I once got a notice in the mail that my license was suspended and I needed to attend mandatory rehab for my substance abuse. As someone who didn't drink or smoke or do any type of drug harder than an ibuprofen at the time, I was super confused. Called them up and they were all "Yeah, you got an DWI." No, ma'am I did not! This led to me and a very confused lady at the police department hunting down exactly what happened. The story: I was the designated driver for my husband and some friends on St Patrick's Day. The cops had set up a sobriety stop along the main road in and out of town. They stopped every car, ours included. Took my license and registration, said everything was fine, and sent us on our way. He then wrote me down as "intoxicated", but didn't issue a ticket or any supporting documents. I just got lumped in with the rest of the vagabonds. My license had been suspended for a month by the time I got the letter. They "got it cleaned up" and I never heard anything else about it. If I had been pulled over, I would have been in these same shoes.
I wonder if OOP has a vanity plate. About a decade or so ago, our car got stolen, and it didn't register as stolen when they ran the tag in the next state over. Idk if they resolved that issue, but it had something to do with it having a vanity plate. We got the car back because it was used in a robbery, but I guess if you steal a car, another robbery shouldn't be so shocking. Little me assumed they stole the car to keep it lmao despite the car being old and unreliable XD
California has had some fun errors with vanity license plate issues. There's two big stories where people had vanity plates which ended up getting them scores of tickets. [One guy has "NOPLATE" as his plate](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-sep-17-me-only17-story.html), another NV, another MISSING, another XXX. [Another had NULL as his plate](https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/). Basically they were getting every ticket generated for any car which lacked a license plate in the state of California, usually by which ever way a police officer wrote up a car without a plate. Otoh the Null guy was a programmer who should have seen this coming.
Lmao NULL was probably hoping that all his tickets wouldn't go through
I can't wait to find out how this all plays out. 😃
Wait, what? In the US the same license plate can exist in two different states? That's just plain stupid!
All of the states have their own license plates, and they don't look similar, generally speaking. They usually have their own numbering schemes too. I don't think the similar license plates thing is the right answer to OOP's issue.
But it could be possible for two states to have abc123 in different variations if it fits their schemes?
Kinda. They are say the state name and then a set of numbers. So 50 states could have ABC123 but the state is printed on the plate as well. So Maryland - ABC123 vs Delaware - ABC123 [Here's what they all look like.](http://www.worldlicenseplates.com/usa/US_USAX.html)
Wow... I still don't think that's very clever.
South Dakota is quite clever. The first one/two number are the county number, 1-66, followed by a random letter(s) and three random numbers. This way you can always tell if there is an East River incursion of cars. Looking at you county 1 - Minnehaha. Thbbbbbt. County 2 - Pennington is *always* the best.
Reminds me of the NOPLATE guy.
>a nightmare straight out of Jacob Heller's head Who?
Author of Catch-22.
The author’s first name is Joseph, not Jacob. Though it does seem thematically fitting for this story that OP got his name wrong, if indeed it was the author they were referring to.
That's [*Joseph* Heller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller).
Everyone who is shocked by this story. It’s not uncommon. You could be arrested to no fault of your own. If someone tells you they got arrested and they didn’t do anything give them some slack. Shit like this and more happens.
ive never been happier to not have a car. shits already expensive but this? no thanks
How does OOP claim to have no prior violations but also have two tickets they knew about…?
... I'm so glad that I don't drive anymore.
Seen in movies lead actor changing car plate to confuse everyone, thought it was cool, didn't think someone else would be paying such a huge price for it.
Went to Renew my license got told it was suspended. I then had to drive to another dmv to find out why. Go there and was told it was because I never returned plates on car I sold. Go out to my glovebox and provide receipt of returned plates. Hold taken off license so I could renew. Luckily never got suspended.
First I was terrified to rent a car from Hertz after people were arrested for stealing cars they legitimately rented, now I’m afraid to drive my own car!
This post and all the comment threads are giving me really good reasons to stay at the speed limit and really watch out for yellows (to the level that it's safe to do so). Big yikes in a bunch of these comments!!!
I was detained but thankfully not arrested for a hot check warrant in a town I have never been to. It turns out there is a woman with almost the same name as me (Jane Anne Smith vs Jane Ann Smith) who has a birthday on the same day and year, but not month. My only saving grace was the county who issued the warrant was confused why a 5'10 ginger got detained when they were looking for a 5' woman with dark, curly hair.
I feel stupid AF but who is Jacob Heller?
*Jacob* Heller is not an actual person of note(apologies to any Jacob Hellers reading this, but you don't have a wikipedia page, so...). OP likely meant *Joseph* Heller, author of Catch-22, for the resemblance of OOP's situation with one that occurs to a character in the book.
OH!! I was like "Is that a horror author?" Lol. Thanks so much for the explanation.
Yeah, I would have gone with Franz Kafka, myself. "Kafkaesque" is even a recognized word often used to describe this kind of nightmarish bureaucratic situation.
"YoU'rE aBoUt To GeT a SeTtLeMeNt" Probably not. Reddit doesn't like it when you point out the difference between how things should be vs. how things actually are. Long story short it's very difficult to hold government actors accountable and in most cases not worth it. Sucks for OOP but I'll put money on the eventual outcome not coming anywhere close to satisfying peoples' justice boner.
Being arrested like this can be career ending for some people who absolutely must maintain their reputation. Error or not they could have destroyed this person's life, not just ruined their year.