In Spanish or English, a chance to clear up tickets

Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

For weeks, months and in some cases years they had avoided the courthouse, causing their traffic tickets to grow ever more expensive.

But during the past two weeks, a traffic warrant moratorium has drawn them by the hundreds to the Las Vegas Municipal Court for the opportunity to avoid the risk of arrest for unpaid tickets, to have warrant fees forgiven and to set up a payment plan for outstanding fines.

The moratorium, from Tuesday through Thursday last week and this, came about partly because of the lobbying of Alonso Flores, a local adviser to an agency the Mexican government created in 2003 called the Institute of Mexicans Abroad. The agency's goal is to improve conditions for Mexican expatriates.

Flores said he had seen a problem in the Hispanic community in the Las Vegas Valley, about 70 percent of whom are of Mexican origin. Many, he said, put off paying fines, unaware that their negligence will result in arrest warrants. Or they don't understand how to pay the fine, that they have to appear in court, or other parts of the process that unfolds once an officer hands you a ticket.

The lack of understanding might be due in part to not understanding English, or to assuming that the law is forgiving, or nearly absent, as it often is in Mexico.

"It's a chain of misinformation," Flores said.

So he met with court staff for two months this spring, asking them to develop printed materials about the court system in Spanish and to hold a moratorium for the first time since 2002, this time with a media blitz in Spanish.

Court spokeswoman Jill Christensen said Flores got to the court and the issue at just the right time. First, she said, organizations representing other groups such as the homeless had asked for the same thing in recent months. Second, court staff already had been thinking of ways to reach out to Hispanics, particularly those who don't understand English well.

At the same time, she said, the court has only recently begun gathering statistics on misdemeanors, including traffic violations, and those numbers don't yet tell much of a story when it comes to Hispanics.

Eight months of statistics on men with misdemeanors who had been released from jail on their own recognizance and then failed to appear for their court dates showed that 38 percent were Hispanic, she said. About 27 percent of the valley's population is Hispanic.

But the court has yet to fine - tune its data and cannot say how many of about 75,000 arrest warrants for unpaid traffic tickets have been closed or settled.

One thing's certain: Getting the word out on the moratorium through Spanish-language media such as Univision's television news produced results Tuesday at the court, drawing nearly 300 people.

Standing in the frayed-jeans-and-cement-dusted-T-shirt uniform of construction workers, cousins Maximiliano and Margarito Trujillo clutched a white slip of paper. They had come, in response to the TV news, to take care of $675 worth of tickets dating from June of last year. One of the two tickets was for Maximiliano not having a driver's license; the other, for having his license plate in the car instead of on it.

The lack of a driver's license turned out to be the most common reason for being ticketed among Hispanics interviewed for this story. Hispanics without legal immigration status cannot obtain driver's licenses.

The cousins also repeated a claim made by several others at the court - that they had set up a payment plan or intended to pay the ticket but then lost work because of the recent housing slowdown.

One day in December, a warrant for Maximiliano's arrest arrived in the mail.

"That complicated things a bit," he deadpanned.

So now he was hoping to clear things up and get back on a payment plan.

Nearby stood Martin Vasquez and Noemi Sanchez. Between them, the husband and wife had $2,300 in unpaid fines - Vasquez for driving without a license or insurance in 2003, and Sanchez for not having insurance in 2005. Vasquez works in maintenance for a golf course; Sanchez, as a housekeeper in a hotel. Together they earn about $3,000 a month, with $1,200 of that going for rent.

Vasquez, from Puebla, Mexico, has lived in the United States since 1989, but never imagined he could be arrested for not paying a traffic ticket.

"We thought arrest warrants were for more serious crimes, like robbery or assault," he said.

He also added that, in Mexico, the whole issue was moot, because in most cases, "you can pay off the officer."

Now he wanted to take care of the fines and avoid further problems that could affect their three children.

"We need more education about how the laws work here," he said. "We want to respect the law, just like citizens."