Town Ordinance Question

[Only the Facts]

Here is a Question for Everyone,

So I'm a Sheriff Deputy in a rural county in Indiana, and I have a small town in my county that has several town ordinances. If I want to write a ticket for a violation of said towns ordinances, I should only have to get a ordinance ticket book from the towns court, maybe a listing of the ordinances, and then its happy hunting right?

1. As a sheriff's deputy I already have arret powers within the town I believe.
2. As long as I write the ordinance on the proper violation form, and go to the town court, I'm good right?

I know this might be a very strange, slam dunk question, but I have a friend in another jurisdiction where this is becomming a hot button topic. Thanks in advance.

[MetroOff519]

Here's my interpretation: Unless your department has some type of agreement with the town, I don't believe you can write for a town ordinance in any town in your county. You have arrest powers state-wide, for state offenses and state traffic infractions, as do all sworn police officers.
However, I work in Indy and can't write a Speedway town ordinance, but could write a state infraction in the town of Speedway (or any other town jurisdiction).

[towncop]

MetroOff is correct. You, as a county deputy or a state trooper, CAN'T write citations based on a city/town ordinance (unless there is some sort of agreement, which I've never seen). So, even following your above steps, no, you wouldn't be good.

[55-502]

Detain violator, summon the Town Marshal to issue the UTT. Lot's of time and work for a town ordinance though.

502

[Only the Facts]

So in a "Uni-Gov" environment, pre-merger, could a MCSD deputy write a Indy city ordinance?

[SW Indiana]

I ran into this issue once and asked the pros. his opinion on it and he said we could. (town ord. speed viol.) I also asked the staff attorney at ILEA his opinion as well and he said yes too. I think it's just simply going to be up to your local prosecutor or whoever handles the local ordinances....I know the one that I did write went through and was paid by the violator.

[K9krazy21]

Don't think that you can write an ordinance for a town being a sheriff's deputy. I know that In my 5 years on the Sheriff's Dept. We couldn't write town ordinances even though one town in the county didn't have a marshal..

[MetroOff519]

So in a "Uni-Gov" environment, pre-merger, could a MCSD deputy write a Indy city ordinance?

Yes, because of how Uni-Gov was drawn up and written, MCSD was able to write Indianapolis ordinances. MCSD could write them in IPD's jurisdiction and vice versa.

[Ten Six]

MetroOff is correct. You, as a county deputy or a state trooper, CAN'T write citations based on a city/town ordinance (unless there is some sort of agreement, which I've never seen). So, even following your above steps, no, you wouldn't be good.

I am a sheriff's deputy and my county has that type of agreement with a city in my county. I can write city ordinances within that city. It isn't common practice and I've never done it but I empowerd to do so.

[SW Indiana]

I am a sheriff's deputy and my county has that type of agreement with a city in my county. I can write city ordinances within that city. It isn't common practice and I've never done it but I empowerd to do so.

With my situation, I am not aware of an agreement with the city in our county, but I just write city ordinance speed tickets. As I stated above, our prosecutor and judge say we can write ordinance violations. Mr. Braun at ILEA also stated we could. It''ll vary from county to county I'm sure..each county prosecutor or city attorney that handle city ordinances will have their own interpretations on the law.

[Groove]

So I'm a Sheriff Deputy in a rural county in Indiana.

Well that narrows it down to 88 out of 92 counties. Sorry to break topic, just thought that statement was kind of funny.

[BigBlock]

Interesting... I always thought this worked the same way as the other layers of the jurisdictional cake: you can always enforce the rules of the higher layers, but the higher layers can't enforce the laws/ordinances of the lower layers. For example, a Fed not being able to enforce traffic/misdemeanor laws or a Trooper not being allowed to enforce city/county ordinances.