Thursday, September 26, 2002
Page 3
More Branches of Superior Court Now Handling Traffic Citations on Phone, Internet
By LORELEI LAIRD, Staff Writer
More branches of the Los Angeles Superior Court will process traffic citations by telephone and online, the court reported yesterday.
Effective yesterday, drivers with citations in the Alhambra, Burbank, Pasadena, Citrus, Glendale, Pomona and Rio Hondo courthouses can call (213) 742-1928 to obtain an extension, pay traffic fines, request a Trial by Declaration, arrange court appearances or speak to an operator, according to a court news release.
Residents of Torrance and Lancaster can call (213) 742-8860. Those drivers may also visit www.lasuperiorcourt.org to pay traffic tickets, enroll in traffic school, request extensions and obtain citation information in English or Spanish.
Automated traffic-citation processing is available by telephone from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and weekends from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Operator assistance is available 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Both services are offered in both English and Spanish.
The seven courthouses join the Beverly Hills, Airport, Chatsworth, Culver City, East Los Angeles, Inglewood, Long Beach, Malibu, Metropolitan, San Fernando, San Pedro, Newhall, Santa Monica, Van Nuys and West Los Angeles courthouses, which began offering the service in early 1999.
A third and final group of courthouses, in Downey, Whittier, Los Cerritos, Compton, Santa Anita, South Gate and Huntington Park, is scheduled to offer the telephone and Web services by the end of this year.
Superior Court Public Information Officer Allan Parachini said the courthouses are joining the system a few at a time because each of the county’s 24 former municipal courts had a different traffic citation system when they merged with the Superior Court in 2000, posing technical as well as organizational problems.
“Each municipal court had its own way of doing things, so that posed a problem for making uniform processes,” Parachini explained. “So it’s taken us a while to sort that out.”
Parachini said the system is being funded from the court’s existing information technology budget. He noted that surrounding counties such as Ventura have already established similar systems.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company