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HOUSTON -- If police catch you violating traffic laws you will end up in municipal court.

Haurn Griffiths knows how that feels.

He is facing a judge after a cop says he made an illegal turn. “They got me. They did get me.”

But not all is bad for Griffiths.

He’s getting help from the $8 million computer system the City of Houston bought to make things run more smoothly.

The system is supposed to generate reports that court officials can use to alert police supervisors when officers didn’t show up for ticket hearings, but it isn’t doing the job.

It hasn’t generated those reports since it was installed two years ago last month, said Gwendolyn Goins with the Municipal Courts Administration.

In fiscal year 2005, judges dismissed 136,000 traffic tickets because the officer wasn’t present.

This fiscal year, with the computer system, judges expect to dismiss 250,000 for the same reason.

Here’s how the system works.

If an officer doesn’t show up to court, the ticket he issued will be dismissed.

It’s what happened to Josh Blackstone. “They just throw it out, they dismiss the whole case.”

11 News has learned that the city and computer programmers are in confidential negotiations to fix the problems without unplugging the whole thing.

A police spokesman says there could be other reasons for the no-shows.

He says officers are spending more time responding to calls for service this year than before.

Those are so called “acceptable excuses” that are more important, police say, than waiting in court.

Even though you may stand a better chance having your traffic ticket thrown out because the officer didn’t show up, you now also have a better chance of being pulled over in the first place. After several months of lower-than-expected traffic tickets being issued, last month HPD upped its traffic enforcement by 20 percent.