Town Gets Ready to Send Party Fines to Collection Agency

By Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

The opening salvo in the Great Party War has been fired ? or would have been fired were it not for a software glitch.

The Tempe, Arizona, Police Department plans to start automatically forwarding all past-due “loud party” fines to Progressive Financial Services, an Arizona-based collection agency, according to a story filed today by Arizona State University?s online newspaper. The program was geared up to go in January, but software coding issues have proved a safe haven for loud partiers.

Those most affected by this new system, Tempe’s loud partiers, worry about the citation system. “You can’t hold any function with a small gathering or group of friends,” Cheyne Carnahan, and Arizona State University junior told the school’s online newspaper. Of course, one person’s “small gathering” is another person’s “get off my lawn!”; and “group of friends” can often be mistaken for “the entire population of the universe.”

Fines will depend on the number of officers called out, starting at $250 for one or two officers, and ranging up to $1,000 if seven or more officers are called. “It’s kind of useless to have an ordinance without any teeth,” Sgt. Dan Masters said.

So now in Tempe, unpaid fines for too many verses of “Freebird!” too late at night could end up having an adverse affect on one’s credit later in life.