Casey Campbell served two tours in Iraq, but the fight of his life is in California.
After driving without a seat belt and no front plate, he got a $25 traffic ticket that jumped to $300 with assessments and surcharges. Unable to pay in full, the ticket rose to $600, and then $819 when he missed a court date.
The state automatically took his driver's license and turned the ticket over to a collections agency. Police later impounded his car when he drove to work on a suspended license. Unable to make a living, Campbell ended up broke and homeless.
"It was $4,000 for two citations," Campbell said, standing on a street corner in West Los Angeles. "And once the ticket went to collections, the judge said there's nothing he could do. It just snowballed. At a certain point, there's just no way to get back on your feet."
Campbell isn't the only victim of California's effort to wring more money from traffic scofflaws. Residents owe state coffers $10 billion in unpaid tickets. Currently 4 million Californians -- 17 percent of the state's adult population -- have a suspended license for failure to appear or pay.
It’s gotten so bad that Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing an amnesty program for those owing money.
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