Ok so I had one of the strangest encounters I’ve had in a while tonight and am looking for some advice or any info. Basically I had gotten pulled over tonight for speeding, now if it weren’t for the scenario I would suck it up and admit my wrong, but this whole thing seemed off. So I was driving down one of the backroads in my area, wasn’t paying much attention to my speed being it was a completely dead road for miles. Until I happened to catch the reflection of a police car literally hidden in the woods on the left side of the road facing oncoming traffic, I’ve seen them try to hide before but this for some reason raised my suspicion, especially when I noticed the car didn’t belong to the Township I was in. He pulled me over and on the ticket specified he was using a radar as means of catching me. So now he basically just admitted to me he’s running a speed trap outside of his jurisdiction, even specified the Township I was in on the ticket. Now I have a ticket that claims my offence happened in one town but I shouldon’t pay my ticket or appeal to another townships court? Correct me if I’m wrong here but I don’t think a township in which the offense didn’t occur has any jurisidiction as to placing guilt? So firstly if I do want to fight it which township would I go through, even weirder the Township that was his jurisdiction doesn’t have its own court, so now I have three different towns listed, first the town the offense happened in, second the Township who the office belonged to on the ticket, and third the other townships court. On top of this the officer did not write my current address on the ticket even though I specified my address change was on the back of my license. Basically what I want to know is first does that officer have anyou jurisdiction to run a speed stop in another town? Secondly given the unusual situation do I have a decent chance to fight it? If not I’ll suck it up and pay my ticket, but this to me just seems like it isn’t on the up and up.
What’s a “township”?
Seriously, that’s just a way of saying that territorial jurisdiction issues are determined by state law, AFAIK, (and sometimes local agencies have reciprocal agreements), so your question can’t be answered until you clarify your location.
(When you say “township” it sounds like you’re in Canada or something.)
And whether it’s a “speed trap” has little to do with anything.
What state are you in? This is entirely a function of state law. In some states, police officers anywhere are police officers everywhere. In others, they’re more limited.
Townships are the basic local government outside of cities in several great lakes and Midwestern states, and New Jersey. (The fact that the townships have their own courts makes me think Pennsylvania or NJ.)
The reason I mentioned that is he was actively looking for people to pull over in a municipality wI think which he is not employed.
Bingo, and I do live in New Jersey sorry for not specifing that in the original post.
You need to make phone calls or visits to the agencies listed on the cite rather than asking us. There could be a couple of different answers.
The first one off the top of my head is that towns often often contract with other nearby towns and villages for police work. So even though the officers squad/ citation book displayed the name of one town because of the contract or agreement he could still have authority in the other.
Towns also routinely do the same for using other townships court resources and dispatch facilities. Some going to far as to create their own metro like district among several townships. This results in a savings to tax payers.
I’ve seen little departments that had magnetic signs to go over the logo on the squad to change who they were working for. Seems a bit like Mayberry but that’s how it sometimes is in rural townships.
Anyway this is how it sometimes works in my state so the OP doesn’t seem strange to me at all. YMMV though. Make those calls.
Harrison Twp., MI has a fire department but no police department, instead they rely on the Macomb County Sheriff department.
So I looked up Township, and as semi-expected, the Canadian experience is diverse…
**In Canada, two kinds of township occur in common use.
In eastern Canada, a township is one form of the subdivision of a county. In Canadian French, this is a canton. Townships are referred to as “lots” in Prince Edward Island; they merely form census subdivisions and are not administrative units. In Canada, a municipality is a city, town, township, county, or regional municipality which has been incorporated by statute by the legislatures of the provinces and territories. It is also a specific designation for certain municipalities in Quebec (see types of municipalities in Quebec), Nova Scotia and Ontario. Certain areas of Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are designated as rural municipalities, while equivalent areas in Alberta are designated as municipal districts, and some in British Columbia are designated as district municipalities.
In western Canada, townships exist only for the purpose of land division by the Dominion Land Survey and do not form administrative units. These townships are nominally six miles by six miles (36 square miles, or roughly 93 km²). Townships are designated by their township number and range number. Township 1 is the first north of the First Base Line, and the numbers increase to the north.**
Law enforcement is not clear cut – it depends on local arrangements made by enforcement agencies. There might be two cities in one county, only one of them with its own police department, and the other depending on the county sheriff. In Great Lakes states, like Michigan, some townships have over 100,000 people and are well organized municipalities, and some have only a few cabins in the woods occupied only in summer, or maybe no inhabitants at all. How they are policed is an ad-hoc arrangement with a county or nearby city. In Great Lakes states, every inch of every county is subdivided into townships, usually square, of about 36 square miles. Any township can arrange for police patrol with any nearby agency.
For the OP, my guess is that that particular officer has reciprocity of authority, and was patrolling perfectly within his jurisdiction with the full knowledge and consent of the townshihp where the violation occurred.
So I found a bill in new Jersey called the Faulkner act, which basically states a group of municipalities, towns, cities whatnot, can share a jurisdiction, but only so long as both municipalitits have a population of less than 12,000 people. The town I was pulled over in has 22,000 and the officers township has 18,000. I would have made some calls already but it happened on a Saturday night and it’s Sunday today, so I have to wait til tomorrow.
Yeah, totally simply enough,not lol
Yep, I would have already had it not been Saturday night and today being Sunday.
Here in Ohio, all 88 counties are further divided into townships. Here is a good example, Huron County:
http://www.hccommissioners.com/html/townships.html
Nice, even squares, 5 miles on a side. Some counties are not as neatly divided due to gerrymandering. You either live within a city or village, or in the township. The town/village jurisdiction ends at the city limits. If there is not a major town or village within the township, it may have it’s own law enforcement. If there is a city within the township that dominates the population, they usually just defer to the county sheriff outside the city limits.
Townships cannot levy income taxes, so if you live there, no local income tax. Move a couple of houses down and cross the city limits, 2% tax. So people can be very determined to not let their area get annexed. They may try to make it up with property tax, however.
Townships used to not have building codes and you could get away with cheaper construction costs. Today they default to the county building department and they are harder to build on then in some cities.
Weird. I can’t imagine a state without townships, they are so integral to the local history.
Dennis
Legal advice is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I might be crazy but I bet the cop which gave you the ticket probably knows if he’s able to hand out tickets outside his city. The one who should complain, if anyone, is the law enforcement authority where the ticket was written since he’s eating there lunch so to say.
You assume cops, especially township and borough, follow the law. For ages we had a local community write speeding tickets based on radar even though by our state’s law such tickets were illegal/unenforceable. If anyone fought the ticket before the local magistrate, it got tossed. But since only about 1 in 4 got fought, the community treasury made out OK on the whole deal and it did slow people down. Its one of the reasons I stayed out of this thread until now; when it comes to speeding tickets mileage varies very widely.
And see Linndale, Ohio. I’m seeing a pattern here.
I’m not complaining like I said I don’t have an issue paying it. But you would be surprised how many cops barely know the law in their own Municipalities in smaller towns. I’ve had plenty of friends have court cases thrown out over the years simply because what the officer did was unlawful. I’d just rather avoid having any point on my license if I can help it.
I would answer but I’m too confused.