Jurisdiction

[srothstein]

gigag04,

What trdvet is pointing out is one of the flaws in Texas law. If you look at jurisdiction for the courts, the term is clearly defined based on the type of offenses each can here. But if you look for the definition of the word "jurisdiction" as it applies to an officer, there is no such animal. So, the arrest authorities say an officer outside of his jurisdiction may only do certain things but never say where his jurisdiction is to be outside of. There used to be the argument that an officer's jurisdiction is the state since he is licensed by the state. This still shows in CCP 14.01 where it explicitly states an officer may make the arrest and never places any limit on the geography. The term came into definition based on a court case in the 70's, which stated that an officer had authority in the county his agency was in. This was accepted and went unquestioned for a couple decades. Then the legislature changed the law to stop the out of county cops from running radar (CCP 14.03). But they never said what the jurisdiction was. And of course, a smart lawyer came up with the defense that the traffic stop was illegal because the officer was outside his city. The argument made was that when the legislature rewrote this law, they clearly intended to keep municipal officers in their cities only. The prosecutor never thought of arguing (I guess never thought because he did not mention it) that the legislature never defined jurisdiction because they relied on the case law definition. So, in the Kurtz case, the Court of Criminal Appeals again defined jurisdiction and limited it to the city limits. The legislature responded in the next session by adding in the part about having authority in the county.

Now we have the question next of what a school district officer's jurisdiction is, as well as a water officer (say LCRA Rangers) and a bunch of other agencies that are somewhere in between. Does the school district officer (or college officer) have authority only on the campus or anywhere in the taxing entity or anywhere in the county the taxing entity is in or state wide?

I would just claim my arrest authority came from 14.01 and see what the defense does then. I pointed this out to a former prosecutor once who agreed that it could make for a very interesting case when you can specify exactly where your arrest authority came from and it was not where the defense thought it was.

[gigag04]

Mr. Roth - I was finding the same in looking through the PC, GC, and CCP. That's as far as I could look with the time I had.

I know my friends that work A&M's UPD have jurisdiction in any county that Texas A&M holds property...which is all but like 3 counties in the state I believe. That makes them like state police of sorts...almost.

[marksiwel]

Mr. Roth - I was finding the same in looking through the PC, GC, and CCP. That's as far as I could look with the time I had.

I know my friends that work A&M's UPD have jurisdiction in any county that Texas A&M holds property...which is all but like 3 counties in the state I believe. That makes them like state police of sorts...almost.

I cant see that being an overstepping of power, not at all.

[trdvet]

Mr. Roth - I was finding the same in looking through the PC, GC, and CCP. That's as far as I could look with the time I had.

I know my friends that work A&M's UPD have jurisdiction in any county that Texas A&M holds property...which is all but like 3 counties in the state I believe. That makes them like state police of sorts...almost.

I cant see that being an overstepping of power, not at all.

How is that an overstepping of power?

Look at Univ. of Texas Police. They have campuses all over the state and all the departments have their own Chiefs but are under a central director in Austin. What if they sent an Officer from El Paso to help out for a month in Tyler? Is that not his jurisdiction? Whats happens if they send an Inspector from Austin to investigate a crime on UT property that happened in BFE?

Have you been to the Texas Medical Center in Houston? It isn't a campus but UTPD is out and about in and around there and they do traffic on occasion. UT Houston has property in surrounding counties (radiation centers etc) that the PD checks. Same as Metro PD having jurisdiction in the surrounding counties because the bus lines run there.

[marksiwel]

How is that an overstepping of power?

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

[sjfcontrol]

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

Why does a school need ANY police? And especially why should they have any power once off school property?

Why don't schools just use the regular police? (Or are school cops kinda like Paul Blart -- mall cop? )

[marksiwel]

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

Why does a school need ANY police? And especially why should they have any power once off school property?

Why don't schools just use the regular police? (Or are school cops kinda like Paul Blart -- mall cop? )

Almost every school has a "Police Department" now. There are ALOT of different police and police like agency's in this state alone. Heck even the IRS have guns now.
Why not use local cops? Because a normal cop could get pulled across the city/county to respond to a call, and the schools would rather have a cop or two who are there all the time. Thus my argument that we dont need them to have "Power" all over the county when we really only need them for the schools.

[srothstein]

Why does a school need ANY police? And especially why should they have any power once off school property?

Why don't schools just use the regular police? (Or are school cops kinda like Paul Blart -- mall cop? )

Schools need police because we have criminals in school and as parents. They prefer to have an officer on campus. They could use city or county officers, if the agency would agree to station them just at the school, and some do. Luling PD, for example, has one officer assigned to the schools alone. Of course, the high school has less than 400 students and even if he does go across town for some reason he is less than 4 minutes from the school.

But every school district in Texas is legally allowed to have their own police department. The interesting fact is that every university or college is also allowed to have their own police department. That includes private schools like Rice and religious schools like Baylor and Our Lady of the Lake. All of these departments do have full police powers and are certified peace officers.

When we talk about what is the jurisdiction of these officers, we are really asking where they are allowed to write traffic tickets. For everything else, all cops in the state have the same authority statewide.

And I apologize to all for how far off topic this has drifted, especially from the subject of firearms. I should not have gotten this deep into this subject, though I do find it interesting, and I will no post more on this area in this thread. If you want to learn more about who are cops and who can have them, read Chapter 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedures. To learn more about cop's AND CITIZEN'S arrest authorities, read Chapter 14 of the CCP. You might find it interesting.

[KD5NRH]

Why does a school need ANY police?

Because they're a ridiculous drain on the local police if they don't. They still are even with them, (I'd venture a guess, based on what I hear on the scanner, that 60-75% of the crimes in this town involve the 20-30% of the people in the area who are Tarleton students with out-of-town permanent addresses.) but at least the stuff that happens on campus or in student housing can be dumped back on the cops the university pays for.

[gigag04]

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

Why does a school need ANY police? And especially why should they have any power once off school property?

Why don't schools just use the regular police? (Or are school cops kinda like Paul Blart -- mall cop? )

It's so they can take your guns away for any reason they can conjure up while they're not writing students tickets.


There...we are back on guns now (big time kidding)

In all seriousness, some universities are bigger than the surrounding cities. Take Texas A&M for instance, it has an undergrad population of 40,000 plus. If you add in grads, faculty and staff you're the same size as my city that I work for.

I can't speak for others but the guys I know with A&M's UPD are actually squared away guys with good tactics. Think about the response necessary for an on campus shooter at A&M.


Anyway...I too am done on the topic of schools.

[CompVest]

My take on jurisdiction is that if the LEO doesn't have enough to keep him/her busy in their jurisdiction then they are doing their job right as crime is down! However, that means they need to keep theirselves in their own jurisdiction so they can keep the crime down!

[roberts]

Schools need police because we have criminals in school and as parents. They prefer to have an officer on campus.

When we talk about what is the jurisdiction of these officers, we are really asking where they are allowed to write traffic tickets. For everything else, all cops in the state have the same authority statewide.

That makes Mark's point even stronger that school police jurisdiction should be the campus and adjacent streets. They can arrest for felonies and class A/B misd anywhere in Texas so restricting their jurisdiction doesn't limit their power to protect the school, the students and the employees. But it sounds like they're not doing that if they're giving someone a traffic ticket for cutting across a nightclub parking lot on the other side of the county.

[marksiwel]

Schools need police because we have criminals in school and as parents. They prefer to have an officer on campus.

When we talk about what is the jurisdiction of these officers, we are really asking where they are allowed to write traffic tickets. For everything else, all cops in the state have the same authority statewide.

That makes Mark's point even stronger that school police jurisdiction should be the campus and adjacent streets. They can arrest for felonies and class A/B misd anywhere in Texas so restricting their jurisdiction doesn't limit their power to protect the school, the students and the employees. But it sounds like they're not doing that if they're giving someone a traffic ticket for cutting across a nightclub parking lot on the other side of the county.

DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER!

[MD2595]

Officers outside their jurisdiction can not enforce traffic violations. They have to be in their city if they are local police, or county if they are SO or Constables office.

Where are you getting this misinformation?

[MD2595]

How is that an overstepping of power?

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

You sound totally paranoid with that statement. I wouldn't worry about it until I heard about the abuse of such authority.