The term we always used for it was feathery.Charles L. Cotton wrote:When I was a COP, we had a term for that kind of ticket, but I can't use it here.
Chas.
But DPS (under pressure from TXDOT) is trying to quietly crack down on registration violations. The reason is, of course, the money. As with the TXDOT "love your state" campaign to get people to renew on time, the state loses a lot of money when people improperly use the farm registration. It is done at a discount over normal registration to help real agriculture develop and pay.
One of the most misused farm registrations is on horse trailers. Most dealers will automatically put the farm registration on them, even if you are using the horse for purely recreational purposes. They assume a horse is an agricultural animal in this state (and in most cases it is).
One of the little known things you can do to be legal with farm registration is buy a 72 or 144 hour permit. You can get short term permits from the county tax assessor to act as a regular trailer for that time.
And, Russell, DPS almost always has the violators sit in the front seat of the car while they write the ticket. It is a departmental culture thing that overrides the officer safety aspect. Part of it comes from having to transport prisoners the same way when they do make an arrest, so I guess they get "trained" that it is not that bad. Our officers also transport that way, but we usually ride two to a car if they think there will be arrests. We also have no problem calling for a local unit to transport if the prisoner is giving us any trouble at all.