Posted on 08/17/2016 9:56:19 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Americans everywhere are struggling to come to grips with recent high-profile tragedies arising from violent encounters between police and civilians. For both police and many motorists, routine traffic stops have become nerve-wracking events.
This is the backdrop against which the trustees of Michigan State University have imposed a new ordinance that will increase the number of needless traffic stops on its campuses.
The measure takes effect on Aug. 15, and bans smoking or using smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes anywhere on MSU property. The ordinance applies even to personal vehicles on public streets that pass through the university. Violators can be charged with a civil infraction, and students can be suspended.
Michigan State has its own law enforcement agency. Its members are full peace officers with powers of arrest, just like municipal police departments. A spokesperson for the agency told The Detroit News that initially, officers will only be talking to smokers, with an emphasis on education.
What enforcement looks like will be worked out in time. Individual officers will have discretion over whether, how and upon whom enforcement actions will fall at any given moment. The potential for incidents that increase tensions between police and the community cannot be dismissed.
For this and other reasons, it is appropriate to question the priorities of MSU trustees. The ban makes them appear out of touch and more concerned about projecting a certain kind of image rather than the school's mission of educating students.
Given the tensions that exist between police and the cities they serve, it seems unwise to enact more laws that will increase opportunities for unnecessary community-police confrontations.
Beyond these immediate concerns, at what point do government efforts to control and micromanage the activities of a free people, including college students, become repellent to the very idea of a free society and what it means to be an American? Pulling over otherwise law-abiding drivers and fining them for engaging in a legal activity in their personal vehicles comes awfully close to crossing that line — if it doesn’t blow right past it.
Keep your hands on the wheel, obey the cop, be polite...that’s the mantra, no?
Keep your wrists on the wheel, hands and fingers extended. Be polite. Don’t be an ass. Be interesting to read the whole ordnance. From reading here I could have a cigarette in my mouth unlit. Not smoking and not smokeless tobacco. Or chewing on a swisher sweet. Sorry. Took a legal carry class night and we were playing with wording vs intent all night. And colorado has a strong castle doctrine. Denver however still sucks.
Hmmmm...
If one is arrested by the MSU police for a “serious” infraction, where do they spend their jail time?
Does MSU have a jail? If not, are they empowered by the people of EL-MI to incarcerate individuals in the jails of EL-MI?
Who then brings incarceration charges and on what evidence does the city of EL-MI bring the charges.
This is a lawyer’s DREAM!
PRECISELY!
I’d throw in about 70% of the non-smokers too.
They should just simply arrest whoever for smoking wherever.
Say you see an MSU student smoking in public outside of MSU. Run and tell the MSU police that the student is a smoker and if not currently smoking on campus, he will at some point or has certainly thought about it.
Kick him out and make room for some Muslims, blacks, latinos or Syrians.
Everyone knows smokers are evil, and 7,000,000,000 people die from second hand smoke every year. You can get eye cancer from simply seeing cigarettes!
These control freak bastards need to stay out of people’s lives.
I understand the sentiment, but they're real cops. MSU is effectively a city with 48000 students and another 8000 faculty and staff. Add in problems from alumni and others flooding the campus during the Bacchanalian revelries nominally called "football games" and "basketball games".
The police there are hired from the police academies and are highly competent compared to any other municipal police force. They have to deal constantly with drugs, assaults, rapes, riots (fortunately less frequently), property damage, theft, and hormonally challenged 18-25 year olds. They also have an extraordinarily diverse population with a huge non-US contingent of students, many from cultures where their families are the top of the heap politically ("Do you know who I am" types). Rather than rent-a-cops, the campus security there deserve the same respect given municipal police anywhere.
They're real cops--MSU police are a regular and highly professional police force. My buddy who works there tells me they cooperate with the E.Lansing police dept for jailing offenses. The Michigan constitution recognizes MSU and UofM as basically equivalent to municipalities but also with some additional powers. This was one reason they claimed to be able to prohibit concealed carry on their campuses for all individuals for several years after Michigan adopted the new CCW law. They've walked that back, but MSU clearly has power to adopt ordinances governing the campus and the police have the power to enforce those ordinances.
My friend there tells me it's a $170 ticket.
Also if you did this, it's the same as running from any other cop who tries to stop you. They are a police force. And they have the power to pursue you into E. Lansing, and the E. Lansing P.D. would pile on as well if you continued fleeing. The jury would convict you.
Yup agree, my car my rules. I wont be stopping for the smoking police
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