El Paso's Trusted Law Firm for Traffic Citations | Traffic Tickets 915

Podcast Recap – Traffic Tickets 915 with Attorney Robert Navar

Overview:
In this episode, Attorney Robert Navar from Traffic Tickets 915 in El Paso, Texas, explains how his firm helps clients fight traffic tickets, remove warrants, and obtain occupational driver’s licenses. The discussion covers practical tips for traffic stops, legal defense strategies, and the benefits of hiring a traffic ticket lawyer in El Paso.

1. What to Do When Pulled Over in El Paso

• Safety First: Signal, slow down, and pull over at the next safe exit—especially on I-10.
• Stay Visible & Calm: Keep hands above the steering wheel, roll down windows, and avoid sudden moves.
• Be Cooperative: Provide ID, registration, and proof of insurance. Avoid arguing or admitting guilt.
• Sign the Citation: It’s not an admission of guilt—just a promise to appear in court.

2. Why Hire a Traffic Ticket Lawyer

• Avoid Court Hassles: Once hired, Robert handles all court appearances and paperwork.
• Defensive Driving Eligibility Issues: Courts often deny requests if:
  • Speeding 25+ mph over limit
  • Speeding in construction zones
  • Reckless driving or racing
  • No valid driver’s license or insurance
• Case Dismissals: Uses officer cross-examination, radar calibration records, and technical challenges to get tickets dismissed.
• Alternative Resolutions: Even if defensive driving is normally denied, he can negotiate eligibility with prosecutors.

3. Warrant Removal Services in El Paso

• Common Cause: Missing a court date results in a “Violation of Promise to Appear” charge plus a warrant.
• Robert’s Process:
  • Files paperwork to lift warrants immediately—no court warrant fees.
  • Prevents arrest during traffic stops.
  • Schedules pretrial hearings and fights the ticket from start to finish.

4. Occupational Driver’s Licenses

• Purpose: Allows legal driving for work, school, and essential needs during license suspension.
• Common Reasons for Suspension:
  • DWI Charges: Automatic 1-year suspension, even without conviction.
  • Out-of-state license suspensions (Interstate Compact laws).
  • Multiple speeding violations.
  • Driving without insurance.
• Duration: Issued for 2 years, renewable indefinitely.
• Fast Turnaround: Can often be secured in just a few days.

5. Why Choose Traffic Tickets 915

• Local Expertise: Deep knowledge of El Paso traffic laws and courts.
• Personal Service: Robert personally manages each case.
• Proven Track Record: Frequent dismissals and reduced charges keep records clean.

📍 Location:
Traffic Tickets 915
718 Myrtle Avenue, El Paso, TX
📞 Phone: 915-542-0388
🌐 Website: TrafficTicketsTexas.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

All right, I'm here with the biggest and best traffic lawyer here in El Paso, Mr. Navarro. How are you? It's good to see you again. Good to see you. Traffic Tickets 915. So I just want to kind of just pick your brain a little bit and just kind of see what services your law firm offers in terms of traffic tickets, warrants, and of course, occupational licenses. So we're just going to go down those three, if that's okay. Sure. Okay. So you do traffic tickets and... Somebody gets a speeding ticket here in El Paso, say they're just cruising on I-10 going towards the west side or whatever. They get pulled over by a police officer for going too fast. What do you recommend they do at that point?

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

Well, you know, nobody likes to see a police officer turn on their lights and their sirens and get behind you. You know, it's unfortunate and it's not a pleasant thing to deal with. What I recommend you do is as soon as you're able to safely to put on your blinkers and pull over. Now, if you're on the freeway, it's ideal to try to take the next nearest exit. Don't try to outrun the officer because they will call assistance and they will arrest you. A lot of people think, okay, well, if I'm in the fast lane, do I pull over to the emergency lane? If you're on a major freeway, especially here in El Paso, there's always traffic on I-10. I recommend you go ahead and just try to take the next exit. The officer will follow you. As long as you're not driving your vehicle aggressively, make any appearance that you're trying to escape the officer, it's better to go ahead and just exit off the freeway and put your blinkers on, of course. Try not to violate any other laws because I've seen officers will give you multiple citations if you're crossing double white line or something or if you're not using your turn signal make sure that you're using all your turn signals exit off the freeway pull into if you can the nearest street or business then go ahead and roll down your windows and make sure your hands are placed above the steering wheel because officers will approach you from the driver's side but they'll be at an angle. And the reason why they do that is to make sure that the occupant doesn't have any guns or firearms. So make sure your hands are visible at all times. And they'll probably ask you for some questions. They'll tell you the reason why they stopped you. And just cooperate with the officer. Don't be rude. If the officer says you are speeding, or he noticed you were following too closely or you failed to use your turn signal. Just don't argue with the officer because the last thing you want to do is upset them because they technically can arrest you. They don't usually, but you don't want to create any confrontation with the officer. Just say, okay, officer. Yes, sir. And they'll run your license to check to see if you have any warrants. They'll also ask you for proof of financial responsibility. If you can pull it up on your phone, that's okay. Just tell the officer, do you mind if I check my phone so I can pull up my insurance? And I'll say, yeah, go ahead. Just be cooperative at all times. Once they run your information, sometimes they'll give you just a warning. And most of the time, however, they probably will give you a citation. They'll ask you to sign the citation. And it's very important that you make sure that you go ahead and sign that citation. Now, signing that citation doesn't necessarily say that you're pleading guilty to the offense. It just means that you recognize that you've been cited for a traffic violation and that you promise to appear within 10 days to answer to the citation at the court. And they'll have an address on the citation. Just go ahead and cooperate with the officer, sign it, give it back to him. He'll give you a copy of it. And then go ahead and just be on your way. But try to keep the conversation to a minimal. You know, the officer's there not to be friends with you. He's not there to help you. Just keep it to a minimal. Don't admit guilt. Don't say, yes, you know, I know I was speeding. Or if the officer asks you, you know, your license was suspended. Were you aware of that? It's better to just say, no, I don't. I didn't know about it because there's other case law that I can try to get your ticket dismissed for that type of violation. So it's better just not to admit to anything. Just, you know, if the officer says, did you know that you were speeding? Just say, I'm sorry, officer, I did not know. And they'll say, well, I clocked you going X speed and this is a posted speed of X amount. And just say, okay, officer. Yes, sir. and just cooperate say yes sir no ma'am yes ma'am if it's a female officer and just sign the ticket and just be on your way give me a call and then my office will explain to you what the process is going to be and and we'll go from there we'll fight the case and once you hire me you don't need to worry about it anymore

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

awesome so okay so you get the citation they drive off They got the choice to go to the El Paso Municipal Court, handle it themselves, take defensive driving. I'm familiar with this process because I've done it before. You go to your arraignment date and then you either do a not guilty plea or you ask for defensive driving. And then you can take the class and then go to the court and turn it in. So is it more convenient to hire you? So I think you charge like 50 bucks. I was looking at your website. It's$50. Is it more convenient to just, I'm thinking it is because like if I had to go to court two times, you know, just to take care of this traffic ticket and then take the defensive driving class, I would say$50 is worth it that I don't have to go to the municipal court twice and take care of everything, right?

SPEAKER_00: 6:16

No, it's definitely worth it to hire me because here's the thing is that don't automatically assume that you're going to be able to do defensive drive. There are certain, restrictions, limitations that prohibit people from doing defensive driving. I could go through a few of them. One of those is if you're charged with going 25 miles or more beyond what the post speed limit is, the court's gonna tell you, no, you can't do defensive driving. And there are also circumstances where let's say if you're in a worker zone, Especially here in El Paso, we see a lot of orange cones. There's a lot of construction workers, and they reduce the speed during what they call construction zones. If you are charged with speeding in a construction zone, the court is not going to let you do defensive driving.

SPEAKER_01: 7:11

Got you. Is there a situation where you can get your license suspended for driving too crazy or something?

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

Yeah. sometimes if you're depending on crazy you know that's pretty uh vague term but if you're reckless reckless driving excessive speeding let's say you're racing uh you could possibly be arrested for that um i certainly don't recommend that you do that but you know everybody makes mistakes i'm certainly not perfect

SPEAKER_01: 7:38

um

SPEAKER_00: 7:39

but those are other situations where they definitely won't let you do defensive driving uh and um let's say uh let me try to think of another reason let's say you don't have a driver's license, which unfortunately that happens a lot of times for whatever reason. You had your license suspended, you didn't pay the reinstatement fees, the surcharges. If you go to the court and ask them to do defensive driving, they'll tell you, no, you can't, because they're gonna want to see, some courts even ask you to bring in a copy of your driving record before you do that. That takes time. They're gonna ask you to make sure that you have financial responsibility for six months, that takes time. A lot of people don't have financial responsibility. A lot of people don't have their driver's license. The court's not gonna let you do defensive driving. And then what's gonna happen is if you decide to just pay the fine, it's gonna go down as a guilty conviction on your record. And so it's just gonna create more of a problem for you if you ever wanna try to get your license from the DPS. And so I don't recommend you do that. I can take the case, and even if the court personnel, whoever they're telling you that you can't do defensive driving, they don't know the law. They're not attorneys. Most oftentimes, if I can't get it dismissed through technicalities or the officer, a lot of times what I've found is that the officer will say, yeah, I can recall the citation. But then what I do is I take the officer on what's called for dire where I question the officer and I ask him about the case. I said, you know, some of the things I'll ask the officer to see if he really recalls is where did this citation occur? What was the posted speed limit? What did your radar detector say? When was your radar detector last calibrated? Do you have records information to show that your radar detector was calibrated? They're supposed to have it calibrated prior to their shift and after their shift. And the other thing is that these radar detectors are supposed to be sent off to the manufacturer after one year. So I asked for all those records. And a lot of times the officer will just say, yeah, I recall, but they don't really recall. They're just trained to say that all the time. And so once I can point out that they don't in fact recall, or I've had cases where they got the posted speed limit wrong. They got the location wrong. I can get them dismissed for those. And let's say worst case scenario is the prosecution has dotted all their I's, crossed all their T's. The officers recall his memories as fresh as can be. He's got video footage. They've got their records showing as calibrated. I've tried every possible way to fight. I've looked at problems with the charging instrument itself, the complaint to see if there's any defects in it. If I can't get it dismissed for any of those reasons, even if normally you would not be eligible for defensive driving, I can work with a prosecutor and I can work out a deal to where because of my relationships with both the prosecutors and the courts, I can go ahead and get you defensive driving even though the law says you're not eligible to take the defensive driving.

SPEAKER_01: 11:02

Okay, that reminds me. So like if somebody misses their court date and they get a warrant, it's basically the same process but you just got to get the warrant removed, right? What's the process of removing a warrant before you can fight that ticket?

SPEAKER_00: 11:13

Well, What happens is, and it happens and it's okay. We get busy in our daily lives with work, our significant others, our family, we will forget. There's strict deadlines as to when you have to come into court to answer to the citation. Now, when I say answer, you either plead guilty or not guilty. If you wanna take defensive driving, Uh, oftentimes the court will tell you you're not eligible for whatever reasons, or they'll say you have a lot of paperwork that you need to present to us before we'll even consider it. It's very time consuming. Let's say you just don't want to deal with all that. And then you forget about it. What happens is the court will issue what's called a violate promise to appear, which is a separate charge. And what that means is that when you sign that ticket, you promise to appear within a certain period of time, which is usually 10 days, you violated that promise. And so the court will issue another citation, plus the judge will issue a warrant for your arrest, which means that you can be arrested at any time for that warrant. And those warrant fees usually are about$350 to$500. Now you can pay that at the court if you show up to the court and pay that, but they're going to want cash, a money order. That's a lot of money to pay. If you call my office... I have paperwork that I can file for you. You don't have to pay that warrant fee. I can get that warrant fee lifted immediately so that you don't have to worry about if you get pulled over again, oh, shoot, the cop's going to arrest me because I have a warrant, or if you're getting threatening letters. The city's now hiring this outside firm to start sending letters threatening people that you're going to be arrested, that you're adding a bunch of surcharges and collection fees. Disregard those notices, disregard it. Just call my office. Don't pay the court a dime. I will get your warrant lifted immediately. And I will go ahead and set it up, your case for a pretrial. I'm gonna file my motions for discovery. I'm gonna look at all the case, the facts, the circumstances, the citation, the charging instruments, the discovery, the body cam footage, the video cam footage, everything that I can possibly do to fight that ticket. I will handle it. You don't need to worry about it anymore at that point. And more times than not, I will get that case dismissed.

SPEAKER_01: 13:43

That's pretty awesome, man. That's pretty awesome. So I know you also do occupational drivers. As a lawyer, you do occupational drivers licenses as well,

SPEAKER_00: 13:51

correct? Right, right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01: 13:52

Okay. So what are some of the reasons why somebody would get a license suspended that they would have to get? Is an occupational driver, it's temporary, right? An occupational driver's license?

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

How long does it last? It's temporary. When we first get the occupational license, they'll last you a period of two years. However, if after or when you're approaching that two-year period, if you still need the occupational license, I can extend that for another year. And if you still don't have a regular driver's license after that next year, I can go ahead and extend it again. So I can get it extended for you as many times as you need, but you need to call my office after those initial two years so that we can get it extended. And unfortunately people do need occupational licenses. And those are for primarily, we see a lot of people get their license suspended because they were driving while intoxicated, which is an automatic one year suspension. Even though you have been convicted of the crime, the DPS doesn't care. they will suspend it anyway. And they have the legal authority to do that because of the state legislatures. They said, if anybody's charged with a DWI, they can automatically suspend it. And so we can get you the occupational license for those. Other things that people get occupational license for is let's say your license got suspended because you moved to the area from another city or state where your license was suspended there. And because of what's called the interstate compact laws, the state of Texas is not going to let you get your license reinstated because of the problem that you have with the other home state where you came from. So we can get you an occupational license for that. Let's say you got multiple citations because of speeding. The DPS may suspend your license for that as well. We can get you an occupational license for that. We've seen a lot of people also get their license suspended because they were found guilty for driving a motor vehicle without what's called financial responsibility, what we commonly refer to as insurance. The DPS will suspend your license for that. So I can get you an occupational license for that as well.

SPEAKER_01: 16:11

Well, that's great. That's a nice little, you know, so this is Traffic Tickets 915. It's a nice, in the heart of El Paso, downtown El Paso. If you need help getting a traffic Ticket dismissed or an occupational license, give these guys a call. It's Traffic Tickets 915 at 718 Myrtle Avenue. Your website is trafficticketstexas.com, and the phone number is 915-542-0388. So go ahead and give them a call if you have any questions about traffic tickets, warrants, or you're interested in getting an occupational driver's license to get back on the road. Robert, thank you so much. Thank you

SPEAKER_00: 16:48

very much. It was good talking with you, Dave.