Carpentersville cracks down on chronic ticket ignorers

Chronic traffic scofflaws, take note.

You have until Aug. 15 to pay off your outstanding tickets under a first-time amnesty program the Carpentersville Police Department has established.

As part of the program, outstanding ticket holders can pay half of what they owe to retire their debt once and for all. It only applies to tickets issued before Friday.

Police estimate the village is owed as much as $1 million in the last four years alone. The village expects to collect between 2 percent and 6 percent of what’s owed during the grace period.

“This is an opportunity for people to settle things before the consequences come into effect,” said Ed Dennis, project coordinator for Police Chief Dave Neumann.

After Aug. 15, scofflaws will be on the hook for the whole amount and maybe even more, because the village officials recently beefed up penalties for people who refuse to pay their tickets.

So if you accumulate five unpaid tickets or vehicle sticker citations after Aug. 15, police can put a Denver Boot on your car. Police are ordering about a half dozen of the devices at $500 a pop.

In addition to paying the $250 fee to remove the boot, you’ll still need to pay off all of your outstanding tickets. You’ll have 10 days to settle up before the village tows your car and charges you for towing and storage. You also could be subject to a $1,000 penalty.

“The whole idea is, don’t get booted,” Deputy Chief Dean Stiegemeier said.

After 10 unpaid tickets, police could report you to the Illinois Secretary of State for failure to pay tickets — and a license suspension could follow.

The village isn’t forgetting about those who racked up unpaid tickets before Aug. 15 and will mail 1,800 letters this week to remind people of their outstanding fines.

The village also is sending out 50 notices that tell defendants to appear in adjudication court to deal with their debts, Dennis said. The hearing officer could make a judgment against them in court, leaving the village to pursue its own collection activities. They too, are at risk of getting the boot or finding their license suspended, Dennis said.

Carpentersville previously used an outside collections agency that targeted people who had not paid their fines.

But pointing to the agency’s less-than-stellar fee recovery results, village officials chose not to renew its three-year contract when it came up in November, said Dennis. The percentage of fines the agency successfully collected fell from about 50 percent to 33 percent, a drop Dennis said was unacceptable. So authorities decided to go after chronic violators themselves.

“The whole idea is to gain compliance to make sure there is a consequence for people who get those tickets and ignore them,” Dennis said.

He said Carpentersville’s motivations behind the program are twofold: setting an example for law-abiding citizens and forcing deadbeats to pay up.

“Those people who pay their tickets shouldn’t have to wonder why other people get away with it,” Dennis said.