strange situiation

[LdiJ]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? IN

Background:

I live in Indianapolis, Indiana and police wise its a bit of an unusal situation. The entire county is considered to be Indianapolis and is now (newly in the last few years) handled by one police department. However, there are a handful of independent towns/villages within the county that are independent, and have independent police forces, mayors, independent schools systems etc.

Something really strange happened today. My daughter was driving me to work (because she needed my car) and we got pulled over for not having out seatbelts on. We actually didn't realize it at first, because we assumed that the officer was after someone else, and stopped at a fast food place because I wanted some breakfast. I went inside a subway to get my food and the officer ticketed my daughter while I was in there. The employees of the Subway told me that the officer was ticketing about one person every 5 minutes for the past two hours.

Anyway...when I came out my daughter had gotten a 25.00 ticket for no seatbelt....no big deal. She actually questioned the officer because he was an officer from one of those small towns within the county, but he stated that he had jurisdiction to cite anyone in any part of the county. We assumed that was accurate. However, when we actually looked at the ticket it instructed us to pay the fine to the small town/village that the cop was from.

That small town/village is about 15 miles away from where my daughter was given a ticket. I can certainly understand why cops in any part of the county could have jurisdciton to cite people in any part of the county. That is not illogical to me, but its illogical to me that they could issue tickets to be paid to their small town/village if the infraction did not happen in their small town/village.

Like I said, according to the employees at the Subway the cop had been ticketing about one person every five minutes...15 miles away from their own area. Does that make sense?

 

[dave33]

You need specific knowledge of the juristiction line. It is possible he is outside his juristiction which could make the ticket invalid.
On the flip side, many states towns etc.. have an understanding with neighboring areas which would make the ticket valid.

Sounds like you may need a lawyer to figure this out.

One part of me says it's not worth it, the other part says, on principle look into it. goodluck.

 

[HighwayMan]

I can only compare to my own knowledge and experience where police officers have more "jurisdiction" than most people realize or give them credit for.

I tend to doubt there is any issue with the officer doing the enforcement - and you seem to agree. The court issue is a strange one though. If I write someone a ticket/summons of some sort wherever I happen to be working they get returned to the local court, not a court that has nothing to do with that area.

I don't know how big these courts are, but my first thought would be to go to the court in question and speak to someone about the circumstances and see what they have to say about it. I've seen courts "transfer" cases for adjudication to the appropriate court when the wrong court info is put on the ticket, but that's a rare occurrence.