2-7-18
Friends-
The Fire Marshalls say the Family Law Center is unsafe. Given the many thousands of people who come through the FLC each month, it has become an extreme fire hazard.
The overcrowding at the Family Law Center, is caused by the same folks that caused the overcrowding at the Criminal Justice Center. Overcrowding at the FLC is caused by the County Criminal Court Judges and no one else.
The County Criminal Court judges mandate that the presumptively innocent accused appear for court approximately once a month. The judges make the accused come to EVERY Setting, including court settings where nothing is likely to occur. By mandating the frequent, unnecessary appearance of the accused at the FLC, The judges are personally responsible for creating the overcrowding and unsafe conditions.
Why do they do this? They do it for the same reason they systematically denied PR bonds. They do it to move their Dockets.
Making the accused come to court every 30 days, wears the accused down. People can only afford to miss so much work. So, after coming to court month after month, for no reason, people are far more likely to wave a white flag and plead guilty.
Causing the accused to come to the FLC every 30 days for court is creating overcrowding, just as it did at the Criminal Justice Center. There is one significant difference: Now the judicially-created overcrowding is endangering the lives of the accused, the lawyers and court staff.
There is an easy solution. The judges can fix the overcrowding overnight. All the County Criminal Court Judges need to do is waive the appearance of the accused at non-critical court settings. That would end the overcrowding at the FLC.
Will the County Criminal Court Judges do the right thing and waive the appearance of the accused at non-critical court settings? NO.
The judges will not waive the appearance of the accused, because that would take the pressure off of the accused to move/plead their cases. That would mean the Judge’s sacred dockets would not move as fast as they want them to move. The judges, apparently, would rather risk lives-our lives- than risk having their dockets not move as fast as they want them to move.
This is wrong.
Robb Fickman
Houston
https://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-Fire-Marshal-sounds-the-alarm-on-12559168.php