 Howdy, my name is William Rumley, I'm the director of the Fort Worth Municipal Court and today we're going to spend some time with Judge Danny Rogers to talk about municipal courts. So Judge Rogers, just to start off with, give everybody an idea, what is municipal court? Municipal court exists to handle class C misdemeanors, tickets, traffic tickets, city ordinance violations, that sort of thing. That's our primary responsibility. We also serve as magistrates for the city. So we see one way or another people that are arrested by Fort Worth PD. So those are the two major things that we do. So what are some examples of some violations that someone may come to court specifically? Probably the most frequently issued is a ticket for no insurance, no driving insurance, speeding any sort of traffic offense. On the code side, you could talk about leaving your trash cart out too early or leaving it out too late or accumulating junk in your yard and not taking care of it. So those two things, primarily traffic, but a significant number of cases also that come out of code enforcement. So for those not familiar with municipal court and municipal court judges specifically, what happens in the courtroom? I won't tell you that it's like television because it's not like television. But a person gets a ticket and they certainly have a right to request a hearing to come and talk with a judge. I say that all the time. Come talk to us. So they can come into court. They can, we have what's called a plea docket, which is an opportunity for someone to come in and we can explain the whole process to them in court, allow them to ask questions and maybe they resolve their case at that point. If not, we'll push them forward to another opportunity to have a trial that have an absolute right under Texas law to have a trial either by a judge or by a jury. Some people are surprised that we do jury trials, but we do jury trials frequently. So it goes through the whole process and then they're innocent until proven guilty. It is a criminal case. The entire burden of proof is on the state. So it's a full-blown court process. Just the fact that it's a Class C fine-only offense doesn't limit the options in regard to a trial. So related to that kind of with citations and you talked about Class C fine-only. So why do sometimes do we hear that there are warrants and people arrested through the municipal court? Well, I like to say that a person has to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get arrested on a Class C offense. The legislature set it up specifically and they're called fine-only, which means that that if a person responds to the ticket, the worst thing that should happen to them is that they have to pay a fine to the city plus the court cost. If however they neglect to appear in court, if they neglect to respond to notices that we send to them, the court does have the power and authority to issue a warrant to have them either brought before the court or in some cases taken to jail. But it requires the defendant to not do several things. There are a lot of safeguards built in and we don't like sending anybody to jail on a Class C offense. So kind of springboarding from there, Judge. Just briefly, can you talk about Fort Worth Municipal Court as a safe harbor court? And so what does that mean and what are the things we're doing related to those hoops you talked about or safeguards and what are we doing then if somebody has a warrant? What should they do? Okay. The law requires that if a person gets a citation and they do not respond, by respond reach out to the court, come in, request a hearing, the law requires that we send them what we call a courtesy notice to tell them, hey, we haven't heard from you on this. It's required to send that to them prior to considering issuing a warrant. So hopefully that gets their attention. If not, the case can go forward and the court can look at that for whether or not it's eligible to have a warrant issued. That would be the first instance. And then from there, let's say they do appear, we do set something up and for whatever reason they don't appear at their hearing, they don't appear for their trial. Those can also lead to the issuance of a warrant for a person failing to appear. A warrant can also be issued after a case has been resolved or we say adjudicated and they don't either pay it or they don't do their payment plan or they don't do community service. If they don't do that next thing that the judge required them to do, then there can be a warrant issued for that. So one way or another, the defendant has not done something. As a safe harbor court, let's assume someone has tickets. They have warrants. What our safe harbor means is that they can come into our courthouse even though they have warrants. We are not going to have them arrested on those warrants to give them an opportunity to come in and talk to the court, to a clerk or to a judge. Hopefully resolve those cases and move them forward. If they do that, we are not, even if they don't resolve them, if they make a good faith effort, we are not going to have them arrested. We are not going to do anything to them except tell them you need to take care of this sooner rather than later. Whereas the safe harbor does not extend beyond the courthouse. We don't put anybody on the front steps to arrest them when they walk out the door, but when they go back out of the courthouse and they're driving or wherever just in the community, they are subject to being arrested if we have not somehow resolved that warrant. Absolutely. So in relation to just appearance, you know, with COVID and those types of things, we've added some capability. If you physically come in, would you talk about that for a moment? We do have what we call virtual courts. If you go to our website, then you can see how you can link in. We have what we call a virtual walk-in where a person can link in basically from any sort of smartphone, a computer, a tablet. Any of those things can link in and actually see a judge and talk with a judge. We consider that an appearance as well. So they can come in that way and request that their case be set. They can request a whole myriad of things. Just to find out about what can they do. So we have that access available to them, literally from anywhere in the world that they have a smart device that they can link in. So that counts as an appearance. Excellent. And then just, I guess, as kind of wrapping up here towards the end. So what would your advice be to somebody who received a ticket? What should they do? Well, the ticket, ticket literally if you get one of the electronic tickets, it's four pages long. And I always tell people to read it, but I know that they don't. But read the part that says on there, contact the court. That's what I tell everyone. Please contact the court. There are very specific instructions on the citation that tell them how to contact us. They can go to the city of Fort Worth, web page in the municipal courts. That tells them how to contact us. They can walk into our courthouse Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. See a clerk, see a judge, you know, contact us. Anything, our goal is to move it forward and to help them explain to them all the options that they have so that they can resolve the ticket. So that it doesn't turn into a warrant, it doesn't hang over their head. We just, as I said, want people to come see us. If they'll come see us, we'll figure out a way to move it on to the next step. Excellent. Well, thank you, Chief Judge Danny Rogers for spending a few moments talking about municipal courts. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you.