Fort Worth’s city courts have $132.6 million in outstanding fines

The municipal court system has been unable to collect the biggest chunk of the criminal and parking fines that come through its office, to the tune of $132.6 million out of $143.3 million owed.

“I find the report embarrassing. I think it is embarrassing to the city. I think it is embarrassing to taxpayers that we have this much money owed to us,” Councilman Dennis Shingleton said. “We need to do something here.”

Deidra Emerson, director of the municipal court system, noted that cities of Fort Worth’s size typically “have a large number of uncollected citations.”

In the criminal court, of $125.8 million owed since 2005, only $8.4 million has been collected, with $1.7 million in fines dismissed. The rest — $115.6 million — is outstanding.

In the parking cases, $17.4 million is owed from the same time frame, with only $179,085 collected and $282,229 dismissed. The rest — $16.9 million — is outstanding.

“If I had a ticket, I frankly wouldn’t pay it, because you can’t demonstrate that you have a success rate of capturing those scofflaws,” Shingleton said.

“How do you justify that to the citizens?”

Emerson said the cases reach a point where the money is hard to collect because people have moved or can’t be found. The collection process follows state law, which includes having an in-house collections process, issuing warrants, using the city’s marshal service and participating in a statewide outstanding-warrants system, she said.

Councilman Jungus Jordan asked that the city look at bolstering its enforcement process, not just in the municipal courts but also in the red-light-camera program.

“If I were a police officer or a code enforcement officer and I issued a ticket and was just getting laughed at, I would be concerned,” Jordan said. “What I would like to see, not pointing fingers or anything else … but what do we need to do to put teeth in our enforcement programs?”

This story was originally published March 24, 2015 at 6:55 PM with the headline "Fort Worth’s city courts have $132.6 million in outstanding fines."