If you ever have plans to go somewhere, and New Mexico is between here and there, go around. There is an odd law in that state, apparently remnant from wild west days, which makes it real easy for you to become a pawn in a criminal fraud (The law in question is unconstitutional, but not yet tested in the courts). I'm embarrassed to say that it happened to me.
Here's how it works. In the first place, car travelers use maps to know where they are...and sometimes GPS systems. Say, for instance, you, the significant other, and two dogs are cruising the mini-van, over in New Mexico, have just turned off of Interstate 40, onto US-84, headed south. After about 7 or 9 minutes on that wide and straight-as-an-arrow highway, you know that you are now about 6 miles south of Santa Rosa, on the eastern flatlands, and 101 miles from Clovis. Says so on the map. Highway looks like this:
"Geese!", you say to yourself (or something more colorful), "I was looking for speed limit signs, both of us were, but didn't see any...not until that 65 one, right back there, about 200 feet behind." No fraud just yet.
Next thing that happens, the cop tells you that you gotta sign the citation, and you have a choice: Number one, you can admit that you are guilty as sin, and promise to send them $80, or Number two (no pun intended), you can promise to come back to New Mexico, next month, all 1700 miles of round-trip, and try to convince a judge you did right. You look over the citation, and decide, as anybody wanting to get back to Texas would, that the practical thing is to plead guilty. It's only 80 bucks, right? Wrong. That's the hook. Sign that ticket, and you may become accessory to attempted criminal fraud, and trapped by an unconstitutional law to boot.
What the deputy didn't tell you is that the location of this "violation" he has scribbled in on the ticket refers to something you don't know about...something that don't show up on the map or a GPS thing...it's a "district" and a "mile post" number, some kind of cop-code for places, a foreign language to travelers. On my ticket he wrote "south on US-84", and then "District 2", "mile post 103". Sounds right, I guess. Cops do this all the time, and surely they don't write down wrong stuff...right? Also, about that "55MPH" speed limit business...you didn't see a sign, so you can't go back and look, or argue with an armed man about it, not on this deserted stretch of road...and speed limits ain't on maps, either.
OK, I was dumb. Nearly everybody is at least as dumb as me, though. Nearly everybody gets stopped for something, signs a ticket and pays a fine. Trouble is, in my case, the dumb part soon started to wear off (or grow thicker, it could be said). I noticed that the deputy had written down my name wrong...called me "Keith L. Albert" on the ticket...and that set me to thinking that maybe this citation ain't legal enough for a paying up. Was worth a try, anyhow, to write to the judge and see if he'd let a poor old fellow with a good driving record off the hook. After all, I never had a wreck, and no tickets in 40 years.
On the back of the Citation there were two addresses printed. One, in Santa Fe, Santa Fe County, where a dumb/smart person would send in their "penalty assessment" money. The other printed address is for a court, at which in my smart/dumbness I figured to write to the judge...and this court's address is in Red River, a little town in Taos County. Sure odd, it seemed, that I'd get a ticket in Guadalupe County, and here there were two additional counties getting involved in the deal, but New Mexico is odd, so I sent my letter. Four days later, and just two days before the time my responsible response to the citation had to be there, I got this message on my answering machine:
"Good afternoon.
"I am calling for Larry Keith.
"My name is K____ E______ and I am with the Red River Court, in Red River, New Mexico. I received a letter and a copy of a citation that he had gotten when he was in New Mexico. And I wanted to advise him that although the back of the citation he received in San Miguel County has our address printed as their remittance address, it is incorrect. They've had all their citations printed up that way.
"He needs to direct this letter and his concerns to the San Miguel County sheriff's office. If he'd like to call me and advise me of what he'd like me to do with this letter, I can either return it to him or I can forward it for him. So, please let me know.
"My number is area code 505-754 3464.
"Thank you."
If that ain't Mickey Mouse, it is certainly Goofy...Imagine it...a Sheriff, handing out Citations with the wrong response address actually printed on the things. Not only that, this was the first word I got about a fourth county being involved in the mess...San Miguel County. Amazing! In any case, I did call back and instruct Ms. K.E. (omitted her name because she seemed like one nice thing about New Mexico) to forward my letter to the proper person who should be getting it. My US mail "delivery confirmation" had me convinced that I was safely recorded as a responsible responder fellow.
Wrong again. Few weeks later, I get a bombshell dropped...letter from my own state, the Texas Department of Public Safety, "Driver Improvement Bureau". Says they are going to revoke my driver's license in 45 days, because New Mexico sent them this notice:
Our fine state has this "compact" with other states, whereby you get a citation in one, and they can revoke your driver's licence in the other. It ain't automatic, of course, but it might as well be...particularly if you get the ticket in New Mexico (for reasons I can tell you all about...that unconstitutional law I mentioned). Like I said, in a timely and responsible manner, I asked the New Mexico people (at the address they gave me) to hook me up with the right court or person for resolving the citation thing....and they failed to respond. Instead, they went to daddy, to the Texas Department of Public Safety...and told them that I was the guy doing the "not respond" stuff.
Having a citation thing with already a bad smell to it, this jolt from Texas sent me into detailed research on the matter. It became clear, quickly, that everybody, including me, were still figuring the deputy as an honest man. That's fatal error in this case. The fellow was running around in Guadalupe County, maybe visiting a girlfriend, and needed to write a ticket to an out-of-stater, so's he could enter on it a coded location within his home county, and establish a record, falsely placing him at the stated time on home turf, as though he was working.
Learned everything I could about this business, and wrote letters....to the Director of New Mexico's Department of Motor Vehicles, to the San Miguel County Sheriff, to the Manager of the NMDMV's Taxation and Revenue Office, and to Patricia Madrid, New Mexico's Attorney General. All stated the situation in gentle terms...just in case they wished to cure the illness in their system in a quiet way, internally. Didn't hear from any one of them...nothing...nada.
All these folks I have been addressing letters to must be figuring I'm just one more sleeze-ball, making an effort to evade responsibility for a bit of sleeze-ball misdemeanoring. Judges and bureaucrat people, especially those involved daily with criminals, become almost involuntarily cynical, and lull themselves into the "cops are always right, everybody else is wrong" psychology. If things get switched around, it rocks the boat. That unconstitutional New Mexico law frees up officialdom over there, cuts their legal responsibility to afford me a "presumed innocent" status.
Had a "hearing" on the Texas matter, on January 4th, over in Pasadena. Showed the Judge my October 1st letter, the confirmed delivery stub, and the transcript of that phone call...where the K.E. tells about Mickey Mouse doings with San Miguel citation addresses. What he didn't take the time to hear is about all the other letters I have written to officials in New Mexico...and that they have not even yet been responded to by New Mexico in a timely and responsible manner. In any case, his honor did say I could have another 60 days before they pry the driver's licence from my wrinkled old hands.
Lawyers say it would be the easy thing to just send in $80, and forget about it. If I pay the fine, however, the whole case will be closed, and that completes a cover-up of the fraud this Deputy guy so easily pulled on me (and probably other Texans). Since I know what's happening, and there is no sign yet that caring officials have any inkling of how out-of-staters are being victimized, I feel sort of obligated to joust at their windmills...to keep writing letters and web pages like this, for as long as I can. Whoever looks the other way, when crime is going on, becomes a part of it. If somebody don't help New Mexico clean up the officer's vicious assault on law-abiding, out-of-state visitors, the "Land of Enchantment" becomes the "Land of Entrapment".
You can read about and judge my case in "New Mexico vs. Larry". Check with me, before you plan a trip. My advice is that you stay out of New Mexico. Go to Kansas and turn left...Ski in Colorado. If you can't do that, don't sign anything.
