Bexar County commissioners authorized $11,480 in refunds Tuesday for motorists who paid dashing citations issued via an automatic visitors enforcement system that the Texas legal professional normal later decided lacked authorized authority.
The citations had been issued in February and March 2025 via a free standing camera-equipped lidar, or gentle detection and ranging, system utilized by the Precinct 3 Constable Workplace underneath Constable Mark Vojvodich. The system used distant sensing and cameras to {photograph} autos and license plates, permitting citations to be mailed to motorists and not using a conventional visitors cease.
In February, Lawyer Basic Ken Paxton concluded Texas legislation doesn’t authorize constables to make use of automated traffic-enforcement techniques to problem dashing citations by mail. The opinion discovered dashing citations require an interplay between an officer and an alleged violator.
Precinct 3 magistrate Julie Bray Patterson, whose court docket handles the fee of citations, informed commissioners the system operated for roughly six weeks and generated 516 citations earlier than issues about its legality prompted county officers to halt processing the citations and search steering from the Texas Lawyer Basic’s Workplace.
“As soon as our workplace heard {that a} request from the district legal professional’s workplace had been made to the Lawyer Basic’s workplace as to the legality of those tickets,” she mentioned. “We stopped processing them, we stopped it proper then.”
Nonetheless, 57 motorists had both already paid the quotation outright, accomplished driving security programs or entered deferred disposition applications. Patterson mentioned they’d anticipated an opinion to be given by the AG by final August.
“That didn’t occur, but it surely got here earlier this spring,” she mentioned. “ What that opinion mentioned was that the tickets that got on this specific method, they’re not authorized.”
Following the ruling, Patterson mentioned her workplace started working with prosecutors to dismiss all 516 citations generated via this system. The county is now additionally making an attempt to reverse convictions for 31 motorists who paid the citations outright, inflicting the violations to be entered on their driving information.
“We’ve reached out to the Texas Division of Public Security, earlier this month to request that these convictions be reversed, they haven’t answered but,” She mentioned. “We wish to be sure of us aren’t penalized for one thing they shouldn’t have gotten a ticket for within the first place.”
As soon as that course of is full, the county plans to pursue expungement so the citations not seem on drivers’ information.
How did it occur?
For Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores, the refunds addressed solely a part of the issue. She questioned how the system was deployed with out oversight.
“I’m simply baffled, how this occurred within the first place,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores mentioned. “I simply don’t understand how a legislation enforcement elected official or company is doing one thing, and it seems it was unlawful.”
Patterson mentioned she couldn’t reply for the constable on how the choice to make use of the cameras unfolded, her workplace was not concerned within the resolution making course of. Vojvodich was not current on the assembly and didn’t reply to requests for remark by time of publication.
Clay-Flores questioned Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody on whether or not he was conscious of the choice from the constable to make use of the digital camera system. Moody largely targeted his response on paying again the charges and reversing the consequences on drivers’ information.
“I believe that is ministerial at this level,” Moody mentioned. “We simply have to ensure that if tickets had been issued utilizing a system that has since been dominated that it may well’t be utilized, that we make these people complete. That’s what we’re going to do right here.”
Clay-Flores pushed again on that notion, citing the monetary burden of a quotation on constituents created by the ticketing system.
“I believe that is greater than ministerial. I believe that is big,” she mentioned. “It’s not simply, ‘I’ll simply erase it,’ It might have price somebody to take the day without work. … Everybody doesn’t have nonetheless a lot cash tickets price, everybody simply doesn’t have additional {dollars} laying round.”
Larry Roberson, chief of the county’s Civil Division, informed commissioners the difficulty goes past using the system itself.
“That gear was procured and carried out with out the court docket’s information, so the court docket wasn’t conscious, and I believe that’s the larger problem,” Roberson mentioned.
The gear was given to the constables workplace without spending a dime by the seller, commissioners had no alternative to weigh in on the legality of the matter, Roberson mentioned. He added that authorized specialists within the court docket had already recognized there was no authority to implement the cameras.
“The authorized specialists sort of perceive, ‘Hey, look, there was no authority to try this, there was already an current AG opinion that had addressed this problem in one other a part of Texas,’” he mentioned.
