City police officers soon may have more ability to arrest people for violating laws like aggressive panhandling and noise ordinances. A new report out of City Hall is recommending that city commissioners exempt Lawrence from a state law that limits when people can be arrested for a municipal offense. When it comes to municipal laws — basically laws that are on the city’s books but not the state’s books — police officers are limited in their ability to arrest a violator without a warrant unless one of four conditions are met: the person refuses to sign the ticket consenting to show up in court; the person is unable to produce identification; the person is not a resident of Kansas (that’s because you can’t extradite someone from another state on a municipal offense); or the police officer has probable cause that the person will cause physical harm if not arrested immediately.
Scott Miller, an attorney for the city, said that can make it difficult for the police to arrest an individual who keeps violating the same municipal law over and over again. He cited the city’s noise ordinance and the city’s aggressive panhandling ordinance as situations where broader authority may be helpful.
For example, an aggressive panhandler (see the link for the legal definition) can be given multiple tickets but cannot be arrested unless one of the four conditions is met.
“That frustrates people who keep calling in the complaints, and it frustrates police officers who keep dealing with the same complaints,” Miller said.
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