On the same page
A good method to keep local police forces in touch
A state Superior Court ruling last week drove home the need for municipalities to formalize the relationships that their police departments have with other law-enforcement agencies so that everyone is on the same page and knows who is doing what for whom. That is good governance.
Absent from the court’s 18-page opinion, however, is Moon Township police Sgt. Doug Ogden’s assertion that he goes to great lengths to make sure the West Hills DUI Task Force operates correctly. He said that includes having obtained official buy-in from the 15 municipalities whose officers participate in the task force. Sgt. Ogden’s diligence is reassuring; it shouldn’t take a court case to ensure that interagency police work is managed professionally.
The case unfolded like this: Molly Hlubin, a New York resident, was arrested Sept. 29, 2013, at a DUI checkpoint in Robinson operated by the task force Sgt. Ogden coordinates. He was one of the officers who interacted with Ms. Hlubin, who subsequently was convicted of two counts of drunken driving. Before her conviction and in her appeal, she questioned the legality of the checkpoint. Among other arguments, she claimed that the police departments composing the task force lacked the formal agreements — as defined by a state law called the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act — needed for operating the checkpoint.
The court conceded that the task force lacked the kind of arrangement specified in the ICA — an ordinance passed by each municipality that enumerates the aims, limits, logistics and duration of the interagency effort. Still, the court ruled that the checkpoint was legal because another state law, the Municipal Police Jurisdiction Act, permits one officer to comply with another’s request for assistance.
Ms. Hlubin’s attorney, Michael Steven Sherman, expressed concern that the ruling could have the effect of blurring municipal boundaries and allowing officers to operate across jurisdictional lines at will without approval of their municipal government bodies. That is a discomfiting prospect; the last thing Pennsylvania needs is a proliferation of supra-municipal police agencies.
But that is unlikely. Attorneys Ira Weiss, an expert in municipal law, and Rich Miller, who provides advice on labor and employment law to municipalities and the Pennsylvania Municipal League, said local governments still have the authority to set limits on their police departments’ collaboration with other law-enforcement agencies.
Issues such as civil liability and payroll logistics also serve to tie officers to their home departments. Officers who participate in the West Hills task force do so on their own time. Their 15 home municipalities pay them, then the municipalities are reimbursed from grants Sgt. Ogden obtains.
Sgt. Ogden said all 15 municipalities have agreed in some manner, many through resolutions, to permit their officers to take part in the task force. Any one of them, he added, can rescind authorization at any time. Sgt. Ogden clearly knows what he is doing, and his professionalism is admirable.
Still, the 15 may want to consider formalizing that arrangement in the manner specified by the ICA, and other municipalities whose officers participate in interagency efforts may want to read the Hlubin case and make sure they dot the I’s and cross the T’s, too.