Thursday, December 11, 2014
Response To 12/10/14 E-Mail To The Gadfly
At the December 9th Committee Meeting, it was explained by Mayor Brown and Mr. Gabris that the "Peace & Good Order" Ordinance was requested by the Mullica Police Department in order to charge offenders under a local ordinance as opposed to state statutes. This would enable more fine money to stay in Mullica and actually downgrade offenses.
The Mayor explained that the League of Municipalities has a record of all the ordinances of the surrounding communities and the "Peace & Good Order" was taken directly from those established laws.
It appears that this was not a deliberate attempt to discriminate against or entrap any particular Mullica citizen.
The problem arose by assuming that all these ordinances were legal just because they were on the books. A lot of Municipalities have not updated their codes or are still using their ordinances unaware they are unconstitutional or against Attorney General directives.
The vague section of 170-7 that was referred to in the below post will not be in a revised Mullica Ordinance because such language was struck down as unconstitutional over 15 years ago in Guidi v. City of Atlantic City, 286 N.J.Super.243(App.Div.1996). The court held that the sweeping prohibition was unconstitutionally vague and overboard because "it does not give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly."
A prosecutor is prohibited from pleading defendants down to an unconstitutional code provision.
There are options that the Township can use to downgrade offenses but they are very specific and if used incorrectly a prosecutor could face disciplinary action and possible sanction by the State Supreme Court.
Our Committee members are not lawyers. Our police are not lawyers. Most people would assume that laws on the books are legal, which is not always the case.
In a rush to try to save taxpayers money, some mistakes were made. Our Solicitor should have reviewed the Ordinance but although she may not be an expert in criminal law, she would have seen some very obvious problems with it.
The Ordinance should have been reviewed by Mullica Prosecutor, Carol Goloff, who would have seen the many illegalities it contained. If this was done, a proper Ordinance could have been put up for a reading.
Yes, mistakes were made but I do not see this as an attack on the people of Mullica but just a sad oversight as Chief Thompson told the Press.
Louis Vitale
The legal parts of this response and other valuable information can be found at the link below.
http://ogtf.lpcnj.org/2012/2012135oK/WD.pdf
Related posts at
http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2014/11/new-behavior-ordinance-for-mullicans.html
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5 comments:
I agree our committee folks are not lawyers BUT they should have read this important ordinance way beforehand and then asked intelligent questions to their employees who drew it up and on first reading ask these questions to the solicitor who was present at the meeting and /or ask them to review before final reading.How about having a committee person help work with whoever drew this up on staff beforehand? No excuse for this except laziness or passing the buck.
If Larry was alive and still ran this site, he would never have apologized for such incompetence.
to 7;44 POST. While I agree Larry would not be so sympathetic to committee and employees Gadfly editor is doing something no one of us would do by running this website which fills a huge gap in the public information community. Larry Angel did the job as watchdog for many many years but his temper, nastiness, and at times downright meaness really hurt his image. This editor of Gadfly has none of those flaws and not only makes the website more respectable but also more credible whose posts can't be dismissed as rants.
Long time readers of the Gadfly can just imagine how Larry would have blasted everyone involved in this debacle. This ordinance would never have made it past the first introduction. It would have quickly disappeared and the well known whispering campaign would have begun to make Larry look like a liar and an evil nut.
This response was written to assure the Email poster that 170-7 would never be appearing in a revised ordinance as it is unconstitutional.
The whole ordinance was a cut and paste from other municipalities and not deliberately written to single out anyone.
If you read the article linked to the response, you will see that other towns have been using a vague code to downgrade all kinds of offenses in order to keep fine money in their towns.
The basic intention was good. From there, everything went wrong. 7:44 PM is correct that there is no excuse for this.
The committee and all involved have suffered humiliation and embarrassment.
The Blog brought the ordinance to the attention of the people.
The citizens spoke their minds and the ordinance was tabled. In the future, an experienced lawyer might be used to write ordinances.
The committee listened to the people and admitted their mistakes. This is a big improvement over past committees who would ignore the people.
We are all human,regardless of political party. There is no need to browbeat or name call people who admit to an honest mistake,no matter how big it is.
By the way, there is no evidence that the police dept had any involvement in the formation or review this ordinance, other than they requested local ordinances be written as opposed to charging people on state statutes.
To single out any specific person and blame them for this situation without evidence is unfair.
Anonymous good comments that include name calling or unsubstantiated accusations cannot not be posted unless signed by a verifiable name.
You will still have your freedom of speech but with accountability for your accusations.
The Gadfly Blog is trying to be an accurate source of information for the benefit of everyone and your opinions are valuable. Please try to write them in a printable manner.
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Thank you, 5:42PM.
Your appreciation for the site makes it worth the time and effort.
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