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It’s every punters worst nightmare. You’ve drawn the short straw as designated driver and you’re about to ferry your not-so-sober mates home from a day at the races.
And there’s a clamp on the wheel of your car.
That’s what happened to 13 racegoers yesterday after the Sheriff's Office launched a crack down in the car park at the Bendigo Cup.
Sheriff’s operations regional manager Roger Williams said the operation netted $19,000 in unpaid fines.
“It was an amazing result,” Mr Williams said.
“It was quite a successful day but it was disappointing as well – that’s not the option we really want to take.
Mr Williams said automatic number plate recognition cameras identified 21 vehicles whose registered drivers had a total of 185 outstanding warrants between them – totally to a value of about $70,000 in fines.
“Of those, 13 wheel clamps were used and 36 warrants were then paid in full, to the tune of about $19,000,” he said.
Others would be followed up in coming days, he said, with some doing community work or facing the magistrate.
“We’re trying to get the message out that when we do operations using our automatic number plate recognition cameras, the officers are forced to take action, but if people come into the Justice Service Centre there are a number of options we can work through to try and get warrants sorted out before it gets to the wheel clamp,” Mr Williams said.
In addition to the 12 wheel clamp, the sheriffs also put seven warning stickers on vehicles.
“We can clamp a car for one warrant – which is as low as $200 owed – but we use a fair bit discretion, we’re mainly looking at five or more warrants, so we used warning stickers for those with one warrant,” Mr Williams said.
“Many of those elected to pay on the spot as well.”
Mr Williams said some of the vehicles clamped yesterday were registered in Melbourne, but the majority were for local drivers.
There’s still someway to go, however, until the sheriffs collect all what’s owed them.
“In the greater Bendigo region we’re looking at about $3 million in owed warrants,” Mr Williams said.
He urged people with unpaid fines to visit the Bendigo Justice Service Centre.