I believe cops get paid overtime to go to court cases if it's during their off time. A cop buddy told me in the past that some traffic cops bank and they'd go outside & give tickets at the weird stop sign merge from Memorial onto Houston while waiting for cases at the Lubbock courthouse. Sounds like you were downtown so Salinas probably wasn't doing that.

Edit: in 2021 there are a few Salinases in HPD whose pay ranged from $42K to $105K, with the highest being Daniel Salinas. I think this is just base actually

I'm not sure what giving multiple tickets vs just one does for the ticketing officer though.

He gets paid to show up in court, not by volume of offenses.

Diggity said:

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I'm not sure what giving multiple tickets vs just one does for the ticketing officer though.

He gets paid to show up in court, not by volume of offenses.

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That's true. The weekend after I got my first and only sport bike I got popped for going 98 in a 55 on the Westpark Tollway, failure to pay toll, no inspection, no registration, no motorcycle license and maybe no insurance since he said lack of license would void the policy I had just gotten. He cited me for all those EXCEPT speeding and seemed surprised that I didn't run.

I got an ez tag, inspection, registration, and an M endorsement and it all got dismissed on my court date; not sure if he approved it or the court/state, but I never rode (that) dirty after that.

Diggity said:

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I'm not sure what giving multiple tickets vs just one does for the ticketing officer though.

He gets paid to show up in court, not by volume of offenses.

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If it's just one ticket, you can choose defensive driving and not have to show up to court.

By putting multiple, he takes always that option.

that makes sense.

although if his volume that day was truly 150+ cases, I think he's in court all day regardless of this strategy.

my cynical side thinks there is some "bounty" in there for him, but I doubt it's memorialized.

htxag09 said:

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So what'd you do to get multiple citations?

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The primary charge was "Driving in a bus lane."
The secondary charge was " Driving view impaired by a crack in windshield."

The secondary charge was the one he always agreed to dismiss (Lawyer said this was a very common charge on his citations).

On the bus charge, I feel confident I would have won with a jury.

Depending on how well you know downtown, when I go home, I go down Fannin and then turn left to go out to the 59/288 interchange. On that day, I turned left from Fannin onto Pierce. If you look at google/apple maps, you'll see that one of the left turn lanes requires that you turn into the "bus lane." After that, there are some very faded diamond shape markers at best. No actual signage like when you go down Travis that says "Right Turn or Bus Lane Only."

So what he'd have to claim is that a reasonable person would know that even though you are required to turn into that "bus lane," within 2 blocks you need to know to get over 2 lanes to the left (both right 2 lanes had the diamonds) or you are required to turn right. All without any signage.

Diggity said:

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that makes sense.

although if his volume that day was truly 150+ cases, I think he's in court all day regardless of this strategy.

my cynical side thinks there is some "bounty" in there for him, but I doubt it's memorialized.

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This is where the second part comes in.

He agrees to dismiss all but 1 charge, which the prosecutor then offers to defer for 3 months and then dismiss.

So if you're me, the question is do you want to keep fighting, which means coming back on another day, or pay $150 and be done with it?

Most took the offer to be done with it (myself included).

It would be interesting to see how many of the 170 cases ended just like this.

Diggity said:

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that makes sense.

although if his volume that day was truly 150+ cases, I think he's in court all day regardless of this strategy.

my cynical side thinks there is some "bounty" in there for him, but I doubt it's memorialized.

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The bounty is the overtime they receive for being out writing tickets beyond their normal shift and for appearing in court. I had a different officer pull me over twice for the same offenses, speeding and window tint. I went through the whole process of verifying that my tint was legit. Went to court and told the judge that the tint was legit and that the officer just eyeballed it. He dismissed that ticket and I got deferred for the speeding. It happened again a few months later with the same officer. I told him that my tint was legit and that it was dismissed before and he just smirked and wrote the ticket anyway. These *******s know exactly what they're doing.