HOUSTON -- City of Houston prosecutors are dismissing hundreds of speeding tickets written by four Houston Police officers accused in a ticket-rigging scheme first uncovered by the I-Team.
"It is in the interest of justice and simply the right thing to do," said Randy Zamora, Chief of the Criminal Law Division for the City of Houston Legal Department.
An I-Team analysis of months of tickets and GPS records revealed how Officers Rudolph Farias John Garcia, Robert Manzanales and Gregory Rosa, listed each other as "witnesses" on speeding violations when they were never there. Instead, records show those officers were writing tickets at the same time at completely different locations, sometimes miles away. The motivation in the alleged scheme was to appear in court more often and collect more overtime.
"They lack all credibility and there's really not anything the state can do to rehabilitate that," said veteran traffic attorney Paul Kubosh.
Officer Farias killed himself in a police parking garage after the scandal broke, and the three other officers remain under an HPD administrative and criminal investigation. Ray Hunt, President of the Houston Police Officers' Union, said they remain innocent until proven guilty.
"The City Attorney has the prerogative to dismiss any ticket which is a class-c misdemeanor, just as any officer has the prerogative to write a citizen a warning for a ticket," Hunt said.
Prosecutor Zamora said citizens who have tickets by one of the four officers still must appear on their regularly scheduled court date to have the case dismissed. If motorists already pleaded guilty, the law allows them to fill out a motion for a new trial. They can find the form on the City of Houston Municipal Court website, and must submit it in person at the municipal courthouse, located at 1400 Lubbock, room G-48.
Zamora said if cases have been disposed of more than ten days ago, they are not afforded a new trial under Texas Government Code.
Since the first of the year, records show the four officers wrote more than 5,000 combined, with fines and fees totaling more than $350,000.
It's unclear how many of tickets written by the four officers are still open cases, but Kubosh said one thing is clear.
"We're talking a whole lot of money, we're talking a whole lot of money and it's a shame but it's just the result of people lying on traffic tickets trying to defraud the system," Kubosh said.
