Judge Valarie Hill
Milwaukee Municipal Court, Branch 1
Milwaukee Municipal Court Judge Valarie Hill- BR.1
Milwaukee Municipal Court had 118,000 outstanding warrants related to tickets. In 2015, Milwaukee County Circuit Court had 17,000 outstanding warrants for criminal, traffic, misdemeanor, and felony matters.
Warrants are issued mostly because an individual has failed to do something regarding a court matter.
Efforts had been underway for well over a year for Milwaukee County’s two largest courts, Milwaukee County Circuit Court and Milwaukee Municipal Court, to hold a “safe surrender” event to eliminate some of these outstanding warrants.
Milwaukee Municipal Court and its three judges (Derek Mosley, Phillip Chavez and myself) were fully committed to this effort.
For a variety of reasons including, but not limited to cost, technology, human resources, logistics, etc., the combined court event did not come to fruition.
The length of planning without any foreseeable culmination in a viable event was a source of great frustration to the Milwaukee Municipal Court judges.
It was during a judges meeting in the Spring of 2016 where an update on the progress or lack thereof for the “safe surrender” event was being discussed that I suggested Milwaukee Municipal Court conduct its own version of the event.
The challenges to executing the project were mostly at the circuit court level whereas Milwaukee Municipal Court’s biggest concern would be logistics.
The judges were all on board and as such, we set about planning a pilot project to withdraw warrants. Because judicial calendars extend for a period of time into the future, the soonest we would be able to conduct the event would be several months out. All three judges wanted to participate, and we still had to conduct the court’s regular business during the event, which meant we would need to hold the event on more than one day.
We chose the first three Wednesdays in November 2016.
As the planning process moved forward we also thought we could give individuals additional help by also addressing driver’s license and car registration suspensions, so we added them to the types of matters we would allow individuals to resolve during this event.
In addition to the logistics of the event, our biggest challenge was to convince people to take advantage of this opportunity. We knew there would be skepticism about what we were attempting to do, and whether it was a legitimate opportunity to get a fresh start.
This meant we needed to communicate what we were doing in a manner that would reach a significant number of people and would be believable. Hence, the video that was posted to Facebook wherein all three judges donned their robes and promised to lift warrants, withdrawn driver’s license suspensions, and car registration suspensions without the requirement of payment.
In addition, there was a guarantee that no one would be arrested. The judges did exactly what they promised for the individuals who appeared in court to take advantage of this program.
Warrants were withdrawn and suspensions were lifted without the person having to do anything other than show up. No one was arrested. This was not an amnesty or forgiveness program.
It was an opportunity for individuals to handle their business with the court without the fear of being arrested or the requirement for money to be paid toward fines owed on tickets.
The only exception to this blanket rule regarding no payment being required was for individuals with building and zoning code cases and those matters were dealt with on an individual basis.
Individuals who appeared were offered options for payment if they had the ability to pay. Individuals who did not have the ability to pay received social service options.
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 and suspensions 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 them in the future.
Hopefully the most valued lesson learned from Warrant Withdrawal Wednesday was that if you get a ticket COME TO COURT!
