May
Funny title huh? Think that it’s a joke well it’s not. Back at the end of 2006 the city had new City Code books printed. I became aware of this as did people in Animal Control. We both asked for a copy of the new City Code book. Click City Code Book Email 113006 to Chief Long to see the response from the City Clerk’s Office.
Now as a Law Enforcement Officer you need to have knowledge of the laws you are tasked with enforcing. But again it becomes a money problem, it cost money to print code books and apparently the City of Portsmouth does not think that it’s important enough to fund such a outlandish concept as providing the City Code to the very people that are charged with enforcing it.
The City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Police Department also do not provide copies of the Commonwealth of Virginia Criminal or Traffic Code Books to the Police Officers either. Some of us used the internet access on our personal cellphones to lookup the State codes on the Commonwealth Website Link to the Code of Virginia . The City of Portsmouth uses “Municipal Code Corporation - Virginia” which is a private company to publish the City code on the internet. Because of the way the site is setup it is not easy to use via a cellphone.
The Portsmouth Police Department provides a City and State Code Cheat Sheet for it’s Officers to use. Unfortunately all the cheat sheet provides is the Code section and the title of the code. It does not contain any of the text of the code. For some codes that’s ok, they are not that complicated, i.e. Speeding 25 in a 35 MPH zone but others are very complicated and you really need access to the text to understand the law.
The department installed Mobile Data Terminals (MDT i.e. Laptop computers) in most of the Uniform Patrol vehicles a couple years ago. These terminals are tied into the Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD), the Virginia Criminal Information Network (VCIN) and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The MDT’s are interfaced with these networks and are not allowed to have internet access for security reasons. Because of this restriction they are unable to use the MDT’s to query any of the resources available via the internet that provide access to the City or State code.
I find it remiss that again officers in the City of Portsmouth Police Department are not provided with the tools to accomplish their job and it comes down to money. It is extremely difficult to enforce laws if you are not provided with anything more then a “cheat sheet” to refer to. This issue puts the City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Police Department in a situation where there could be a liability concern. If an Officer makes an arrest which had he or she been able to read the code before making that arrest the officer might have chosen a different course of action.
