RJ editorial: CCSD police force is overstepping its legal authority
For the last several months, Nevada Journal's Karen Gray has documented how police with the Clark County School District have overstepped their legal authority by, at the minimum, routinely issuing tickets away from school grounds.
At stake is no less than the rule of law. If the CCSD-PD, or anyone, is allowed to break the law in one case, what's to prevent them or someone else from breaking it in another? In the long run, you can't have a society based on the rule-of-law 98 percent of the time, 67 percent of the time or XX percent of the time. It's either a 100-percent thing or it's nothing.
Fortunately, the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board understands this and has called the CCSD-PD out for its "big overreach."
The matter should have put to rest last month, when the state's Legislative Counsel Bureau issued a legal opinion denying school police authority to engage in traffic enforcement on roadways far from schools. The bureau specifically examined the force's "mutual aid" claims under NRS 277.035 and NRS 277.110. "It is the further opinion of this office that (the statutes) do not authorize a school police officer to enforce traffic laws and ordinances and issue citations on streets that are not adjacent to school property," the bureau noted.Read the rest here.
If the Clark County School District needs an independent police force, its officers should operate solely on or very near school grounds.
It's way past time for CCSD to rein in its school police force. The law demands it.
