Kip has a plan to improve the operations of the City Marshal’s Office, these plans are unique to the office and have been well thought out. These are changes we need and changes that you deserve.
- TEXT ALERT FOR COURT DATE REMINDERS: Lafayette City Court as with many of our area courts has seen a rise in persons needed for court not showing up. This is often times because a person has simply forgotten about an impending court date. By establishing a text alert reminder many of the failure to appear warrants can be eliminated. This reduces the need to track people down as wanted, arrests, and incarcerations. A person with a pending court proceeding would receive the following text one week before and one day before his/her court.
“Marshal Kip Judice is reminding you that you have a mandatory court appearance in Lafayette City Court located at 105 E Convent Street, in Lafayette, LA on
Tuesday November 3rd, 2020 at 9:00 AM. Failure to appear could result in a warrant being issued for your arrest. If you have already paid the fines associated with this matter please disregard this notice. If you have any questions please contact the Lafayette City Marshal’s Office at 337 291-8725. Thank you.”
- ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION: Incarceration for misdemeanors and traffic offenses is not the most effective or fiscally responsible solution to these matters. In fact what sets out as a debt owed to society for the violation by an offender becomes an expense to the tax payers for incarcerating and caring for the offender. Kip has a plan to institute a community service work force made up of violators from City Court, giving those under financial hardships an option to perform community service under the supervision of a deputy marshal. So instead of jail time the Judge will have the option to order the Marshal to supervise community service hours. These violators will be tasked with such things as mowing grass in right of ways, litter abatement, filing of papers for non-profit organizations and other services which would otherwise cost government money to have done.
- IMPROVING THE EFFECIENCY OF EVICTIONS: Working with landlords to schedule evictions at most convenient time the Marshal’s Office will adjust the times of the deputies assigned to insure the peace during these evictions. As Marshal Kip will petition the court to have eviction hearings early in the week to allow the most amount of time for the actual eviction to occur without carrying into a weekend.
- NIGHT COURT FOR TRAFFIC OFFENDERS: At the pleasure of the Court, Kip is committed to provide services to support a night court session periodically to accommodate traffic offenders who are employed. The implementation of night court will allow these violators to attend court and not miss work for traffic offenses. This would allow the violator to earn the necessary money needed to pay the fines without any work interruption.
- IMPROVE COMMUNITY RELATIONS: As the next Marshal, Kip will be active in the community and accessible to all people. He will have an open door policy and will meet with constituents at their homes or in the community where the problems exist.
- TRANSPARENCY: Kip is committed to an open checkbook. This is an accounting feature which posts all expenditures online so the public can view from the comfort of their home how the City Marshal’s Office is spending taxpayer monies. It is your money, you should be able to see this information.
- EFFICIENT OPERATIONS: As part of his commitment to fiscal responsibility, Kip will make sure that prior to extraditing a prisoner wanted by Lafayette City Court that the case is valid, not prescribed and that the prosecutor of City Court wants to move forward with the prosecution of this individual. Far too often a person is found out of state and returned to Lafayette at exorbitant taxpayer expense, just so that the charges can be dismissed due to lack of evidence, no witnesses or the case has expired.
- ENHANCED TRAINING FOR DEPUTIES AND STAFF: As a 35 year veteran of law enforcement Kip knows the importance of training and in this time training is essential to make sure we are getting the most of our staff. Kip will impliment training requirements that exceed all other agencies to set higher standards for professionalism.
