SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
BROWNSVILLE — Cameron County officials proudly announced this week that their new court-date text reminder system, live since Oct. 1, works perfectly for anyone who already remembered to update the phone number the system uses to remind them. The program, which covers misdemeanor cases in the county courts at law, sends a text to whatever number was sitting in the clerk’s case file since roughly the Obama administration.
“It’s a great system,” said a county spokesperson staring at a bulletin board covered in returned mail. “If you updated your number, you get the text. If you didn’t update your number, the text goes to some guy in Harlingen who bought your old plan at a flea market, and he now knows about your hearing, which is almost the same thing.”
Officials Beg Residents Not to Block the Court Text Like the Spam It Looks Exactly Like
County Clerk Sylvia Garza-Perez issued a heartfelt plea for residents not to opt out of the messages, stressing that a random 956 number texting you about a misdemeanor hearing is legitimate government business and not, in fact, the same format used by fake border-crossing scams and cactus supplement offers.
“I know it says ‘You have a court date’ and your first instinct is to report it,” she said. “But please. This is the county. We spent real money making our texts look exactly like the scams.”
Residents without a cell phone, or those who prefer it, will continue receiving the traditional paper notice, which arrives three days after the hearing it was notifying them about, as God intended.
The Circle of Remembering
The system operates on what officials call “proactive compliance”: you must already remember the thing the reminder is for in order to receive the reminder. Officials confirm the county is exploring an expansion of the logic, including a flood warning system that only alerts homes that have already evacuated.
Anyone whose number has changed — which officials estimate at “basically everybody” — must call the clerk’s office at 956-544-0815 or 956-544-0867 during business hours, when both lines are busy with other people calling to update their numbers so they can receive texts reminding them to call.
