Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle called a Student Senate-sponsored noise ordinance amendment a “knee-jerk reaction to erroneous assumptions,” in a statement released yesterday afternoon.
The ballot initiative would change the noise ordinance so that officers would need to first receive a citizen complaint before taking action and would also alter punishments for violators. The Know Noise Task Force, a committee formed early this quarter by Ohio University’s Student Senate, drafted the amendment.
If the city auditor approves the amendment’s language, the group will need 494 valid signatures to be eligible for the November elections.
In his statement, Pyle said all residents should oppose the amendment.
“I strongly urge Student Senate to reconsider their actions in supporting this initiative, and if the initiative makes it to the ballot, I strongly urge all Athens citizens, both students and non-students alike to vote against the proposed changes,” Pyle said.
Pyle expressed concern that the initiative could cause a rift between student and non-student residents.
“This isn’t the student body declaring war on the town in any way,” said Christopher Wimsatt, the Know Noise Task Force’s press secretary.
The group’s proposed changes, which include a mandated warning, are trying to address inconsistency in enforcement, Wimsatt said.
“When two people can get two completely different sentences for the same crime, that is not consistent,” he said.
Pyle said mandatory warnings would remove necessary police judgment.
“As of now, the decision to warn or cite is entirely at the discretion of the officers, where it should be,” Pyle said in the statement.
Know Noise Task Force Executive Director John Calhoun said he plans to contact Pyle to discuss the subject and potentially negotiate a compromise. If a compromise could be reached, the task force could go through City Council with a modified version of the amendment instead of relying on a ballot initiative, he said.
“If we can’t come to terms … and we have to take this route, we should probably ask for some more things the students want,” Calhoun said.
Pyle commended police officers’ enforcement efforts and said the new policy has helped achieve “voluntary compliance” with the current law. Officers issued 105 citations in 2010 — three times more then the 34 issued in 2009.
“We predicted that citations would rise in the first months of the enforcement policy, but we also predicted the citations rates would fall after voluntary compliance was achieved,” he said. At the current rate, Pyle said, officers are on track to issue only 72 citations in 2011.
Student Senate President Jesse Neader said he understands both sides of the debate, but stands with Calhoun and the task force.
“I don’t want to sit here and criticize (Chief Pyle), but it certainly puts a damper on any dialogue that we would have in the future,” he said.
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