Houston mayor Purcell a no-show in traffic court

PALMER — What started with a bang ended with a whimper Thursday when the ticket against Ron Johnson was dismissed.

Johnson, 71, was the motorist Houston Mayor Roger Purcell pulled over in January. The incident caused a bit of a furor in the tiny Valley town, fueled in part by Johnson publicizing his ticket and Purcell sticking to his guns.

Thursday, neither Purcell nor the officer who co-wrote the ticket — Charlie Seidl with the Houston Police Department — showed up at court. Thus Johnson’s ticket, as well as four other Houston police tickets, was thrown out.

“No officers are here to prosecute the case so these are all dismissed,” said District Court Judge Greg Heath.

Johnson had come armed with a sheaf of evidence and he asked if he could show them to Heath, telling him that his case was exceptional since it was Purcell who pulled him over.

“Well, maybe that’s why he’s not here to prosecute them,” Heath joked, before declining to see the evidence.

After court, Johnson said he was disappointed Purcell wasn’t there.

“I wanted to see him face to face in the courtroom but he didn’t have the guts to show up,” Johnson said.

Reached by phone afterward, Purcell said he was also disappointed.

“I was all prepared to ask the judge to double the fine,” he said, noting that Johnson was in the Parks Highway’s Traffic Safety Corridor at the time and thus fines could be doubled.

Purcell said neither he nor Seidl new they had a court date. They hadn’t gotten notice.

“I was dumbfounded when I got the call today,” Purcell said.

For his part, after court, Johnson said he hadn’t received a notice either.

Purcell said that pulling over motorists is not something he does on a regular basis. In fact, he’s only ever done it once — to Johnson. And, he said, the situation was egregious.

Johnson was cited for passing on a double yellow line. Purcell said road conditions were treacherous at the time, so treacherous, in fact, that school had been canceled.

“I mean come on, it was right after that snowfall and he was speeding in a double yellow. We had already closed the schools down for two days,” Purcell said.

Johnson, for his part, disputes that he was speeding and says in fact Purcell was driving at around 40 miles per hour. He said he’d been out of state and was used to passing people in that spot at about Mile 45. While he was gone, they’d apparently changed the road striping.

He said when he saw lights flashing in the grill of Purcell’s BMW, he thought at first it was an undercover car.

“I figured, ‘Damn, state troopers done impounded a car from another drug dealer,’” Johnson said, recounting an incident in Tennessee when he talked to a state trooper driving a seized Jaguar.

For his part, Purcell isn’t backing down. He said Houston City Code gives him the authority to act as a law enforcement officer when the police aren’t around. He also said the lights on his BMW are legal and that he has them to respond to emergencies in which he might be called on — as many elected officials are in extreme situations — to help direct disaster response.

“I’m abiding by our code and this man broke the law,” Purcell said.

He said it’s unfortunate that five tickets got thrown out and he intends to straighten out with the court system the notification snafu.

“We don’t want the public to think they can just appeal something and it’ll be dismissed because that is not the way we do things,” Purcell said.

Johnson also had a message he wanted conveyed to the public: If there’s an unmarked car trying to pull you over, take out your cell phone and call 911. Dispatchers should be able to tell you if the driver behind you is a sworn police officer.

“I won’t pull over for an unmarked [car] again,” he said.