Milwaukee Municipal Court Judge Valarie Hill- BR.1
Briefly, Milwaukee Municipal Court is the largest municipal court in the State of Wisconsin. In 2015, 72,000 cases were filed with the court.
The court has three branches which are presided over by Judge Derek Mosley, Judge Phillip Chavez, and myself, Judge Valarie Hill. Judges Mosley and I are African-American and Judge Chavez is Mexican-American.
The court is also only one of two courts in the state that operates on a full-time basis.
Milwaukee Municipal Court is the only court in the state with “walk-in hours” which is where a citizen can walk in without a scheduled court appearance and see a judge about their case the same day.
The majority of cases handled by Milwaukee Municipal Court are tickets issued by the Milwaukee Police Department for traffic and local ordinance violations.
The court also handles juvenile tickets, parking cases, health, and building code violations.
As a result of the nature of the court, when a citizen does not show up for court or pay their fines, warrants are issued for the citizen to come resolve their business with the court.
The one thing we know about warrants is that there are too many people with outstanding warrants in the City of Milwaukee.
Warrants are generally issued because of a failure to do something such as appear in court or a pay a fine. Warrants are issued by circuit/state court for serious offenses such as misdemeanors and felonies.
Warrants are also issued by municipal/city courts for minor civil offenses (tickets) such as retail theft or disorderly conduct. Warrants can be barriers to employment and housing and citizens with warrants sometimes make bad decisions like fleeing when a police officer attempts to stop them. Failure to resolve warrants often snowballs into bigger problems.
Lifting or resolving warrants that are issued by Milwaukee Municipal Court is a relatively easy process but most people don’t seem to know or understand that. To the average citizen, a warrant is a warrant and it means you are going to jail.
At Milwaukee Municipal Court, you can walk in the door without fear of being arrested on the warrant for which you are appearing.
Myself and both of my colleagues routinely allow citizens to leave the court without being arrested even if they don’t get their warrant lifted. People also believe that you have to pay the fine in full to get the warrant lifted. At Milwaukee Municipal Court for cases other than building and zoning code cases, if you have the ability to pay, the court will work out a payment plan with you that can be as low as $20 (twenty dollars) every 3 (three months).
If you don’t have the ability to pay, the court will provide some other option for you to resolve your case such as community service.
The only way the court can offer citizens any of these options is if they show up to court.
The court does not have a crystal ball and we do not know an individual’s situation until they show up in court and tell us.
The judges would rather work with people to resolve their issues than have people get arrested. A citizen does not have to wait for the court to hold a special event like the one conducted in November to withdraw warrants.
The event, known as Warrant Withdrawal Wednesday or W3 was important because it allowed thousands of warrants, driver’s license suspensions, and car registration denials to be withdrawn and also because it gave the judges a chance to educate those who attended about how they could have avoided the warrants and suspensions in the first place and how they can avoid warrants and suspensions in the future. Hopefully the most valued lesson learned from Warrant Withdrawal Wednesday was that if you get a ticket COME TO COURT!
Judge Valarie Hill
Milwaukee Municipal Court, Branch 1