Who prepares the complaints in Justice Courts in your jurisdictions, the officer, the court, or the prosecutor?

Routine complaints (speeding, etc.) are prepared by the court. Unusual or more difficult complaints are prepared by our office at the court's request. Officers review and sign all of the complaints regardless of who drafted them.

Our county does it like Michaux's.

Have any of your local PD officers and deputies been told by the JPs that they need to file a complaint with every ticket for a Class C misdemeanor? I'm thinking principally of traffic tickets. I have had several calls from the field. Apparently JPs are being taught in their CLE classes that to avoid the SOL running, they should require officer to prepare and file the complaint when they file the ticket with the court. That is ALL tickets, even those who will enter a plea which is probably 85 percent of all tickets issued (just a guess).

Janette A

Our County Attorney's office provides all the standard Class C complaints on a CD for each JP office. However, I have written a few specialized ones as needed.
The issue of filing a complaint for each ticket probably has to deal with the Omni system or the like. The issue is that a ticket can get into this system and sit for a long time before the offender tries to renew his DL which would trigger his coming in to the court to clear the ticket. We have had several cases where there was no complaint signed at the time the ticket was filed and when the offender came in to pay (or go to trial on) the ticket more than two years had elapsed since it was written and the SOL had run. We had no option but to dismiss the ticket.
The Troopers do complain loudly about having to sign complaints, but that is the best practice. The only alternative is for the JP's clerks to be very sure before a ticket is sent in to Omni that there is a complaint on file, but the clerks do not like this added to their workload either. Alternative answers seem to be few and far between.

I have suggested to supervisors who have called about this new issue to suggest that they discuss with the court clerk the possibility that when a defendant fails to appear and is, therefore, going into the Omni system, that the clerk give the tickets to the issuing officer so he or she can prepare and sign the requirement complaint. That means rather than having to prepare several dozen complaints a month, most for tickets in which the driver appears in court, the officer only has to to the few that are FTA or who plead not guilty. I haven't heard how that idea is going over with the JP courts.

Janette A

I assume y'all are aware of SB 413, which requires the filing of a complaint if the defendant fails to appear as promised in the citation.

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/SB00413F.htm

I wonder if some JPs are confused about this new law.

Where did you get the standard Class C complaints on a CD? Is there one available for sale?

Does anyone have one of these disks with the complaints on them available? My thought is to give one disk to each department and they will be responsible for making their own complaints on contested tickets and tickets where they defendant failed to appear.