In an effort to enhance enforcement of the city’s noise ordinance, a procedure has been put in place that allows private citizens to file charges on persons violating the city’s noise ordinance.
Citizens may now file complaints for noise violations directly with the Nacogdoches Municipal Court. Complainants must complete the application for complaint and the complaint itself, agree to testify in court, and sign both in person before of a clerk of the Municipal Court.
“The complaint application has full instructions printed on it. On a fixed location, the actual address must be included”, said Nacogdoches Police Chief Jim Sevey. “On a moving violation, such as a vehicle, a license plate number and description of the vehicle is needed at minimum.”
These complaints must filed directly with the Municipal Court during their normal business hours. They cannot be taken at the police station or by police officers.
Police officers will continue to enforce the noise ordinance. The citizen generated complaint process is designed to allow private citizens to take some action when officers are not present.
Copies of the application are available in the lobbies of the police station and the Municipal Court. They may also be found on the Nacogdoches Police Department Facebook page.
Crazy Talk: As long as PD officers make a call every time they go to the bathroom and show it as a Call for Service, the PD will always have more calls than the SO. Add to that the fact that deputies often have to travel 20 miles or more to get to their call. And the SO does not send five or six cars to every call like the PD.
Yeah, they have 5 or 6 cars patrolling a sorority house party but call in to report your home being burglarized and you’ll be lucky to see one unit show up and hour or so later.
Well, there you go. Now everyone has their opinion.
How long does it take for an officer to tell someone to “turn it down”? Sheriff’s deputies do this all the time in the county. Local police have forgotten that other part of their motto, which is “to SERVE”.
I’m an SFA student and from Houston. I wrote a paper awhile back about the differences between a sheriff’s office and a police department. As far as what’s asked of a municipal department versus a county department. I was shocked at the difference in call volume between the PD and the SO. In some cases the SO deputy routinely went on 0-3 calls a shift where a PD officer averaged routinely around 10 calls a shift. If it’s just an option and the PD is trying to be more efficient, I don’t blame them for trying to think outside the box. That’s if it’s just an option.
They could really be efficient if they just stopped answering calls all together unless someone is dead or seriously injured. Stop taking theft and burglary reports at the scene, just call ’em in, blue form every accident unless someone goes to the hospital.
The way it was explained to me is this is an option. Police will still respond to complaints if requested.
This is the dumbest thing on the subject I’ve ever read. This is simply a way for the police to bow out from noise complaints. At best this will turn into a giant, he said, she said mess in the courtroom. Not to mention, the loss of the ability to call the police without the neighbors knowing who called. Well good job police. You’ve now transfered noise complaints into possible assaults.
Somebody will wind up getting shot over this stupid approach. Then the cops will screw up the investigation and the shooter will get off scot free.
The problem I see is that IF a noisy neighbor is actually violating my rights by being too loud, a self-serve style complaint process doesn’t make the noise stop. It only takes it to court. When someone complains about noise, they don’t want a court date, they want the noise stopped.
Exactly. This just pits the neighbors against each other. It’s not very glamorous, handling noise complaints, but it’s their job and the police should do it.
So I can see a huge problem here. How can they(the complaining citizen) prove the loudness or what is to keep them from turning in a person they dislike?