I rent a small unit next to my house. Yesterday, I received two pieces of misaddressed mail from the City municipal courts for my tenant. I put them in his mailbox unopened, but the letters made me curious.

I looked him up, and it turns out he has two municipal court warrants for his arrest. One is for an unpaid speeding ticket, the other was for an expired license (or something like that; separate incidents). The point is that these are fairly minor, but the total fines were close to $1000, which is greater than his monthly rent.

This is none of my business, so I should STFU. This is pretty much what I'm planning to do.

However, I don't want to see my tenant get arrested (and possibly miss rent). Rent has not been a problem in the past, but I don't know if he has an extra $1000 just lying around. The courts obviously know where he lives; it would probably not be hard to pick him up. If he contacted the court, he might be able to negotiate these fines down (pay $400 or $500 and get it dismissed, or come up with a payment plan to pay gradually).

Anyone saying anything? Or in the words of the great Fonz, "heyyyy, sit on it!"

tiny threadsaver:

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they're ****ing speeding tickets.

as long as he pays you your gold coins, he's fine.

if he stops paying you your gold coins, kick him out.

I like that you're putting your rent collection squarely on the scales of justice where it belongs.

Staying out of it seems right. Keep it simple.

There's like no chance he will have to pay the full $1000.

Yeah, its absolutely none of your business. He pays his rent, thats all that matters.

How did you get this information?

No action is warranted!

The expired license is likely not a separate incident - as far as I know here you can't renew your license if you have unpaid traffic tickets. An expired license would certainly get you pulled over if it was noticed but who issues arrest warrants for this crap?

My city has an online database you can use to search for municipal court warrants. It was shockingly easy and took < 60 seconds.

Huh - I will go investigate to see if LA has this!

https://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/onli...criminalindex/

Looks like in LA you can search for criminal defendants for LA Superior Court, but it cost money, FTL.

The only thing to do is prepare yourself for the chance he's bad with the rent at some point, but I assume any good landlord does that already. Beyond that this is nothing but a notice he might be a dumbass.

I found this, but it's not official:

http://publicrecords.onlinesearches....a-Warrants.htm

I know we have it here because I've looked myself up (no warrants!). I also think it would help with notice requirements. I only assume they don't have it because of the massive size of the LA criminal justice system.

Thanks, but is that site legit at all? Also it costs money imo.

Use the County Sheriff's web site if you're looking for FTAs etc.

Towns/cities/states who want their moneyz, that's who.

The warrant doesn't mean, "Round up the SWAT team and break down his front door..." It just means, "Next time we pull this guy over and run his plates/license, he's getting a free ride downtown."

this

citizens arrest, obvious imo.

To be honest with you, there's only one man who can handle this job

coincidence, I just read something like this on fb from a friend. This seemed like the best response:

"Well if it's in warrant status from failure to appear then you've lost the ability to challenge certain processes. Not sure what county you're in but you could always get a traffic ticket attorney. For the cost of the ticket (or less) they will take care o the ticket for you and you don't have to do ****. And, they keep if off of your record. Just do a google search of traffic attorneys in your area and shop around for the best deal."

I dunno how you can casually bring up the fact that you know he has warrants though, haha.

Stay out of this! When his lease is up, you can check if the warrents are still outstanding and if they are and your worried about him being able to pay rent, just don't renew his lease, and have him move out when the term is over.

Sounds like the universal opinion is say nothing. After thinking about it though, I'm gonna head over there this weekend to have a word with him.