Let's give civic-duty props where they are due: Ryan Dan Wheeler had a traffic ticket he needed to pay, and he manned up and went to the Santa Fe municipal court to do so.

Why he would do so while he had a suspended license, not to mention while he had coke and a syringe in his pocket, well, is a question perhaps best left unexplored.

The small town's court is in the same building as the police, and one officer recognized Wheeler from a drug bust in February, the Galveston County Daily News reports. The cop knew that Wheeler still had a suspended drivers license.

Since Wheeler had driven to the courthouse -- again, questions, questions -- that gave reason enough for the officer to detain him. And when he did....

In his pocket was coke, a syringe and other "drug paraphernalia." Maybe not what you or I would tote into muni court to pay off what really must have been the world's most important traffic ticket, but there you go.

And then they went out and inspected his car. Where they found "a scale and materials often connected to drug sales and what police believe was a drug pipe."

If the dude just had a stamp, a check and an envelope, all this might have been avoided.