If you are scheduled to appear in Johnson County traffic court on the morning of Feb. 6, you might want to bring a book.
A very long book.
For reasons that officials are still trying to sort out, more than 900 traffic cases have been scheduled to be heard at the 8:30 a.m. docket that day in the traffic division at the Johnson County Courthouse in Olathe. “There is likely to be a wait of several hours,” Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said in a written statement.
A typical traffic court docket would schedule 250 to 350 citations, according to the district attorney’s office, and about 40 percent of those ticketed would show up. The issue involves the Kansas Highway Patrol’s digital ticketing system.
At the request of the district attorney’s office, the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration, which oversees the ticketing system, had set limits on the number of cases scheduled at any one time, according to Howe’s office.
For an unknown reason, that limit was removed, the district attorney said.
(Read more: KC Breaking News, Sports & Crime |)