GOT A TICKET?

UPDATES BELOW:

FHP Trooper Paul Lawrence has been arrested for official misconduct (a felony) for writing traffic tickets.

Oh yeah. He was issuing those tickets to people without actually stopping them and giving them the ticket. He was just making the offenses up while using real people with real driver's licenses.

And just last year Trooper Lawrence was voted the Miami Ticket Attorneys' "Trooper of the Year."

What a "Tigeresque" downfall for the fifteen year FHP Veteran. (We're gonna patent that phrase: "Tigeresque downfall". Has a nice ring to it, and something tells us it's going to be used more than once.)

The title of the post links to the Herald story.

UPDATE: A reader writes

Anonymous said...

I was helping a friend who received one of these bogus tickets. He started getting letters from ticket attorneys and couldn't figure out why. He researched it and learned he was "ticketed" without ever being stopped - speeding and no seat belt. When we pulled a copy from the clerk's office, the ticket was obviously unsigned by my friend. Upon further research we learned Trooper Lawrence had given him a legitimate ticket in 2006 at the same location of this new ticket. We had set it for court when it was suddenly dismissed by the SAO. Unbelievable that this guy thought he could get away with this.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 9:15:00 AM

328 Million?

North of the Border is getting a new 328 million dollar courthouse tower according to the Daily Pulp.

328 million!

For those....$%^#@!s??

We say put em in tents and let them earn their way into a courthouse.

328 million for a group of blacked robed misery merchants to peddle their nastiness in the luxurious splendor of a new courthouse?

We can think of 328 million other deserving groups before they get that money. Spend it on rebuilding Haiti.

Spend it in Kamchatka.

Spend it anywhere but there.

Please.

UPDATE: A reader has a good idea:

Anonymous said...

Why don't they just build a muti billion dollar mega Court house for Miami Dade and Broward right on the boarder say US1 and Bicayne Blvd. Half of the buidling sits in broward and the other half sits in Miami dade.

The cafeteria can be positioned in the center so you can sit across from a broward Judge while he is in broward and you are in dade. County line food fights would be a plus.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:35:00 AM

UPDATE: A "ticket attorney" weighs in:

Many of us 'ticket attorneys' disliked Lawrence even though he did write a lot of tickets and probably got us a lot of business. It was always interesting to me that everyone he pulled over was going at least 25 or more over the limit and never had a seatbelt on. Every speeding ticket had at least one companion; seat belt, registration, window tint, etc.
And he seemed to be the 'poster boy' for hard working troopers at least to some of the hearing officer. They took his word as gospel. It was hard to get a tpr. Lawrence ticket dismissed becuase he had such credibility. Ha!
I hope more hearing officers and judges will realize that just because a trooper is standing there in his snazzy shiny boots, he's not always what he seems.