PJ

Thanks for all your help. Come back soon.

meh. He wasn’t checking you for warrants. Trimet employees do not have access to warrant information (n.b. the Transit Police do). They were just checking a Trimet database to see if they had ever met you before and written either a warning, a citation, or an exclusion. The database is maintained for three years, but only the previous 12 months are searchable.

The citations are enforced by the district court for either multnomah, clackamas, or washington county (wherever the violation occurred). They are ‘violations’, so they are relatively meaningless as far as a criminal record is concerned. There are a lot of people that try to get back on their feet that discover that it will be considered a probation violation, also.

Warnings are just a way of documenting your identification so that there is a record of the interaction. Most fare inspectors will give you one or two “freebies” by writing a citation, but will start writing citations if they meet you too frequently.

Exclusions mean that you cannot ride or use the transit system, or sit in a bus shelter, or be on any Trimet property, for a period of time from 30 to 180 days. but that’s a whole other ball of wax.