What Should a Person Do If They Miss Court?
If a person is released on bail bond and they miss court the first thing they want to understand is this that the court is going to issue a bench warrant that bench warrant is for any officer that sees you or it comes in contact with you to take you back to jail.So what you want to do is immediately call your bail bondsman. Your bail bondsman is able to help you in a couple ways. One thing you can do is put you back on calendar immediately and get the bail bond reinstated.
You see when you purchase a bail bond you pay for it, one of the benefits is that we can get you back in court without you having to go back to jail. So call your bail bondsman immediately… we can do that we’re going to be the same person we are when we got you out of jail. You see our objective is to keep you out on bond the entire time you’re going to court. The last thing we want to see you do is pay us for a bail bond and go back to jail really truly do not want to do that. So we can get your new court date if you missed court.
You know to the contrary if you released on O R you have no advocate for you the only really way for you to get back on calendar is to go back to jail to turn yourself in and go to jail. That’s why you know a benefit of a bail bond is so that we can help you know to continue on remain out of custody the entire time.
Now one of the biggest things we face when people do miss court is them listening to their friends out on the street. Them listening to “oh my gosh the bounty hunters are going to come for you the cops are gonna come for everybody’s going to come for you and you need to become a fugitive. And the biggest thing I want to say is that you can’t trust the bondsman.” That’s false.If you can’t trust us and we burn our faith with you or anybody else in the community, I’m done in my industry. My bail bond company is done, so I don’t want to lie to you, I want to tell you the truth the facts what I can do, because if
I help you and somebody else in your family or friend goes to jail you’re going to advertisement I have to be truthful with you honest with you and tell you the reality is what’s going to happen. So, the bottom line is if you miss court, call your bail bondsman, we can get you back on calendar.
Now there’s gonna be times that you failed to appear maybe you’ve had multiple failures to appear of your case is pretty serious and a judge wants you back in his courtroom, that we may not be able to keep you out on bond. They may say we’re going to increase your bond.That too, we can help you. So you’re out on a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond and you missed court and the judge is pretty hot at you for missing court and the DAwants your bail raised because they said “hey, you missed court once” yes they can raise your bail.
If they do that one of the other benefits that we can do, is if you are out on twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond and they raise your bill to 50 thousand dollars and this is something that everybody should know, I, as a bail bondsman, if you come to me and say I missed court,I can give you credit for that initial bond that you paid before so it’s 25,000our bond and they raise your bill that $50,000, I can give you credit for that bail bond that you’ve already paid for and then you would only have to pay the difference which is another $25,000. Granted, we don’t want to see that happen.I mean we’re not in this to just you know to make money at every turn every corner.
We want to help you, but there is times where the court is going to raise bail. So with that being said, the bottom line is this, we in the bail bond industry trust you to get you out of jail to have you go to court, You have to trust us, have faith in us, we are here to help you.That’s how we make a living… is by helping people, getting them out of jail while they’re going to court. So that they can go to court and resolve their matter and we want to help you through that process all the way.
You mentioned, “O R.” What is “O R?”
Well there’s two or three ways to the three ways actually get out of jail. One is a person can be released on an O R which is an “own recognizance” release or a citation and that’s where the court or the sheriff can release you on your signature… with no guarantee you know other than your promise to appear.
A bail bond is what we do and then there’s a property bond, where a person can put up property, which not and I’m talking about real property they have to have equity and real property and they can put that up to the court and you can be released from jail.
And that’s collateral…
Yes.
Thank you.