Volume 100 Issue 41
Monday, March 7, 2016
www.studentprintz.com
Hattiesburg, state checks motorists Joshua D Starr News Editor
A particularly burdensome process for the state’s judiciary and law enforcement branches is set to change with the September enactment of an insurance verification law passed in 2015. The law will allow law enforcement officials to check if a driver has valid auto insurance through a new system that links insurance information to a vehicle’s registration number. The system is intended in part to curb the high proportion of uninsured motorists in the state. According to the latest estimates of the Insurance Research Council, an organization dedicated the research and analysis of public policy matters, Mississippi ranks third in uninsured motorists at a rate of 22.9 percent. As the state waits for the new system, the Hattiesburg Municipal Court has continued to take the full weight of the city’s responsibility to ensure that those operating motor vehicles abide by state law. At the beginning of each traffic court session, Hattiesburg Municipal Court Judge Jerry Evans announces that the proof of auto insurance provided to the court will be verified. He warns the room that those who provide false information to the court will be detained and can face the state’s most severe misdemeanor punishment: a $5,000 fine and/or one year in jail. Evans said almost every session one or two people leave the courtroom following his announcement. About a year and a half ago, the Hattiesburg Municipal Court was tipped off to a trick being employed by a computer savvy segment of the population who have falsified insurance information in an attempt to skirt a significant fine levied on the uninsured. Since then, the court began dedicating resources to call insurers to check the legitimacy of insurance information. “A student at USM, her mother [...] I guess was in a hurry and mistyped [the card] — it said ‘certified diver,’” Evans said. “It was obvious it had been photoshopped, so that caused us to have to start checking them. And we started finding that it was not uncommon for people who were coming to court, especially younger people who knew how to do it.” Evans said there is an obvious motive to providing falsified insurance to the court. He said people try to take advantage of the state’s insurance statute in order to avoid the $500 fine plus court costs and to avoid getting insurance.
ON CAMPUS
Myrlie Evers-Williams to visit university for lecture David Tisdale Southern Miss Now
Joshua D Starr/Printz Hattiesburg Municipal Court restricts its parking lot to government personnel and its roads to legal drivers.
“If they come in and show that they have proof that they had insurance at the time, the statute mandates that we dismiss it,” he said. Evans said in the past, the court was catching more than 10 people per month with fake insurance, though the number has dwindled. He said he makes the announcement to give those tempted a chance to reassess. Still, some take their chances.
present to us.” HPD Chief Anthony Parker said hattiesburg police currently take insurance documents at face value. “[The officer] looks at the card and if it seems valid he takes it as proof of insurance,” Parker said Gary Chism, chair of the Mississippi House Insurance Committee, said that under the current system, due to time constraints, Mississippi law enforcement agencies are unable to
The caveat is don’t photoshop an insurance card and take it to the court trying to beat the system because it’s not going to happen in Hattiesburg. Judge Jerry Evans “Some people just sit there and think it’ll just slide through and we’re not really going to go call their insurance company, but we in fact do,” he said. While the municipal court vets each card, Hattiesburg Police Lt. Jon Traxler said the current system restricts police as HPD officers are unable to check every insurance card they receive. “If we had a way, a national database that that was tracked through, that would be just like a driver’s license,” Traxler said. “Mississippi does not have that. We have to take what they
check the legitimacy of insurance cards provided to them. There’s really no way they can do that,” Chism said. “At night, there’s nothing for them to verify it with.” Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said he state legislature has tried for at least the last six or seven to address the issue of uninsured motorists not buying the mandatory liability coverage. “To address the issue, the legislature has asked the Department of Insurance to consider data dumps by which insurance companies would dump data to the highway
patrol or some other entity on who had insurance and who did not, which have been done in several other states,” Chaney said. Chism said Mississippi outsourced data acquisition to a private vendor. He House Bill 946, the legislation that allows for the new system, will give police the ability to catch more uninsured drivers before they reach the courts. The testing period for the system began March 1. “A police officer would be able to key to in your tag number and [the system would show] whether you have valid insurance,” he said. “By Sept. 1, something will be in place.” Chism said under the new law, being an insured driver will remain a secondary offense, which, unlike primary offenses, cannot precipitate a traffic stop. “Whenever they pull you over for either a ticket, an accident or at a roadblock, they can instantaneously tell whether that card you just gave them is valid or not,” he said. Evans said after talking presenting his discovery to other municipal court judges at judicial conferences, the risk of accepting false information apparently does not concern them. He said Hattiesburg Municipal Court, however, has a responsibility to deter insurance falsification. He said though everyone occasionally does something stupid, they should avoid testing the Hattiesburg system. “The caveat is don’t photoshop an insurance card and take it to the court trying to beat the system because it’s not going to happen in Hattiesburg,” Evans said.
The widow of a civil rights movement icon who continues her husband’s work advocating for racial equality and social justice will be the guest speaker for The University of Southern Mississippi’s 2016 Armstrong-Branch Lecture. Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairwoman of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute and scholar-inresidence at Alcorn State University will speak at 7 p.m. March 8 at Bennett Auditorium on the USM’s Hattiesburg campus. Admission is free and the event is open to the public. Medgar Evers was a prominent leader in the Mississippi civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s in Mississippi, serving as the state’s first field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Assassinated outside his home in Jackson on June 12, 1963, his murder prompted President John F. Kennedy to seek a comprehensive civil rights bill, which was later signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Myrlie Ever-Williams worked alongside her husband in the civil rights movement. She was one of the first African-American women to run for Congress, worked as an executive in the private sector for Selligman and Latz, Inc. and Atlantic Richfield Company and was later elected chairperson of the NAACP. In 2012, she became the first woman and layperson to give the invocation at a presidential inauguration. In 1998, she founded the Medgar Evers Institute, later named for both her and her late husband by its board of directors in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Evers’ assassination. In addition to her work at Alcorn State, she is an active author, lecturer and educator.
Myrlie Evers-Williams