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Police officers can now act as the complainant for noise violations after Moscow’s City Council voted 5 to 1 to adopt a noise ordinance Tuesday.
Two versions of the amendment were available for the council to choose from. The major difference between the two was whether or not a police officer could act as the complainant. The Council adopted the version that allows police officers to act as the complainant.
The newly adopted amendment allows police officers to use their discretion when deciding whether a resident is violating the ordinance. Officers no longer have to wait for a citizen generated complaint to act. The 48-hour stipulation has also been removed. The previous ordiance required officers to have to visit a residence twice within 48-hours before a ticket could be issued. Now officers can cite a violator within 48-hours of the initial complaint.
During the Council meeting Council member Bill Lambert said the Council had a lot of citizen input on it.
“This thing has been hashed over many times by many of us,” Lambert said.
Moscow resident Garrett Clevenger disagrees with the new amendment. Clevenger said the City Council passed a law that was overly broad.
“The Idaho appeals court said in a noise ordinance ruling that cities cannot pass laws that are unconstitutionally vague and overly broad,” Clevenger said. “The way our noise ordinance is written is unconstitutionally vague and overly broad because there is no set level of decibels.”
Assistant Chief of Police for the Moscow Police Department David Duke said the ordinance will help the police enforce noise levels.
“We can take action if the noise is not abated,” Duke said.
Duke said he thinks peoples’ major concern is their First Amendment rights.
“We have had several opinions from legal counsel saying that it will not violate the First Amendment,” Duke said.
Duke said the noise ordinance will take effect after it has been advertised.
“It cannot be effective until after it has been published,” Duke said. “We usually publish it in periodicals to let people know.”
Duke said that the Moscow Police Department has training sessions where the emphasis will be on having officers answer complaints generated mostly by citizens.
“We train our officers to educate before they cite, unless it is an egregious violation that is not acceptable for the time of night,” Duke said. “Our main emphasis is going to be to ask the people to stop the violation.”
Duke said the city will have to wait and see what affect the ordinance will have on noise complaints.
“There might not be less complaints,” Duke said. “But we will be able to take more action now.”
Duke said the city decibel limit is 55 decibels in a residential area. The limit is enforced between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
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