When you get a traffic ticket, it’s only natural to investigate every opportunity to get out of it. After scouring the Internet for advice, you may have come across some “conventional wisdom” that you can get out of a traffic ticket if the cop doesn’t show up in court.
There are two problems with this notion: For one, it assumes that it’s automatically easier to get a case dismissal when the police officer doesn’t show up. While this can be true in a lot of cases, it’s still up to a judge whether or not your case should be dismissed at all.
The other problem with betting on a police officer being a no-show is that most cops actually do appear in court. This is because appearing in court is part of their job – so much so that many officers schedule time during the week to meet their court dates.
For a police officer, missing a court date can mean receiving poor performance evaluations and losing certain benefits, so they have every incentive to appear in court and defend the ticket they wrote! Still, this isn’t a guarantee that an officer will show up by any means. Some won’t appear for a variety of reasons, including illness, an emergency, or because they left the force before your court date.
How an Attorney Can Help
If you plan on fighting your traffic ticket in court, prepare to go up against the police officer who wrote it. While people can sometimes successfully advocate for themselves in this situation, it takes a lot of skill, experience, and a ton of luck to get a dismissal on your own.
Having a professional attorney on your side takes a lot of the luck out of the equation. Our lawyer at Stites Law has many years of experience fighting for clients who needed to challenge traffic violations. By applying our personalized legal approach to their cases, we’ve been able to help more than 125,000 drivers facing traffic violations.
For more information about our legal services, please contact us online or call (212) 729-0472">(212) 729-0472.
