KHOU 11 News – by Jeremy Rogalski
More than 6,000 speeding tickets will be dismissed “in the interest of justice,” according to City of Houston prosecutors. Those tickets were written by four officers allegedly involved in a ticket-rigging scheme to collect more overtime.
“In the interest of justice and fairness, it’s the right thing to do,” said Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland.
McClelland said out of an abundance of caution, it is better to throw out thousands of speeding tickets than to have one tainted citation go forward and someone found guilty because of it.
Officers Rudolph Farias, John Garcia, Robert Manzanales and Gregory Rosa have issued a combined 6,150 outstanding tickets, according to the Municipal Courts Department. Records analyzed by the I-Team show on some of those tickets, the four officers listed each other as witnesses when they were never there. The motivation for the alleged scheme was to appear in court more often and collect more overtime.
“If there’s any perception that these citations may be tainted or someone questions the legitimacy or credibility of those, it is better to dismiss them,” McClelland said.
Officer Farias killed himself in a parking garage after the scandal broke and the three other officers remain under criminal investigation.Chief McClelland would not say how long he expects HPD’s internal investigation to take. He would not directly answer whether that probe has expanded beyond the officers already under scrutiny.
“My instructions were, ‘Don’t leave any stone unturned, look at anything and everything you have to to determine were there policy violations or violations of the law,'” he said.
The number of cases that could be dismissed might actually increase. According to Randy Zamora, chief of the Criminal Law Division of the City Legal Department, citizens can request a new trial if they settled a ticket by one of the officers in the past 10 days. To do so, they can fill out a motion for new trial formand take it in person to Room G-48 of the Municipal Courthouse at 1400 Lubbock.
Zamora said if you a have a pending ticket by one of the four officers, you still must appear on your regularly scheduled court date in order to get your case dismissed.