July 23, 2021
By: Dwayne Page
The Tennessee Highway Patrol has had an office in the courthouse for several years but doesn’t pay rent to the county.
Although the county commission has no desire to evict them, at least one county commissioner, Bruce Malone has inquired for several months why the office is provided rent-free to the THP.
During a committee meeting Thursday night, THP Lieutenant Billy Prater addressed the county commission about this issue. Lt. Prater explained that the THP does not pay rent to any county in this district for the use of office space where that county receives revenue from adjudicated court cases stemming from citations filed by the THP against traffic offenders in that county.
“The Highway Patrol typically does not pay counties for office space. Usually the counties are tickled to death to get to have the Highway Patrol use an office. Granted we are not there during office hours. We are in and out. We work the road. We’re pretty self sufficient in our cars but we still have to submit case files and paper work to headquarters in hard copy form so we must have somewhere we can print and compile our case files and store what hard paper supplies we have. That’s the case with any office we have. We are in and out of that office all hours of the day and night including weekends and holidays. It’s a convenience to us. I know two of the three troopers assigned to DeKalb County live in DeKalb County. They stop by that office a lot during their off time and drop something off or pick up something they need. I live at Centertown and my Sergeant who is over DeKalb County lives in north Carthage. This is a central point for us. We meet over here a lot,” said Lt. Prater.
“Everything we cite in the General Sessions Court, whether its on a state highway, a county road, or city street, everything goes through General Sessions Court and if they (defendants) are convicted and ordered to pay court costs, the county reaps the benefit of that,” he continued.
“I have done some checking with (Circuit Court Clerk) Susan Martin and she gave me some numbers that I want to share with you. Out of each citation that is required to be paid there’s a total of $69.50 that goes directly to the Trustee of DeKalb County. My question to her was ‘can you tell me over a period of time how much revenue is generated by highway patrol tickets that are run through court’. She could not because her software and program that she uses to file could not generate that but she was able to give me the breakdown on the court costs. I asked if the percentage of the number of citations that troopers write which are paid is at least 50% and she responded that it was closer to 90%. I did a little calculation and in 2019 THP issued 1,974 citations in DeKalb County. If I take that 10% out, its 1,777 citations and according to my math, we generated that year out of THP citations $123,501 based on the number Ms. Martin gave me. I realize there could have been some adjustments and court costs may have gone up since. Of course, COVID hit us in 2020 like it did everybody else plus we had the riots in Nashville so our citations in DeKalb County dropped down to 985 in the year 2020. Deduct that 10% and that’s 887 citations which based on her knowledge and average of the tickets generated $61,646 in court costs that went straight to the county. To date (this year) through July 17 THP has written 875 citations in DeKalb County. Minus the 10% so far this year through the citations and court costs $54,766 has been generated,” added Lt. Prater.