Township Help.

[Qlone]

Hi. Exactly one year after my post on here showing my George Washington Button find back in April 2017...this past April I was at a local township park hunting. I have been to this park man many tiems and all the other parks in this township and the surrounding townships.

I was finishing up for the day when I was approached by someone claiming I was breaking the law. The individual is heavily involved with the parks .
We debated the fact. I said Ive searched the posted laws on the website and there is no mention other than disturbance of turf.

I called the police department and he agreed that he couldnt find any rule either. Pointed me in the direction of the township manager. I finally got around to chatting with him and he said the township doesnt have the rules but it follows the same policy as the county.

now this is a whole nother case because the counry mention the issuance of a permit. I was actually told by the county solicitor and chairmannthat I should just go ahead in county parks if I wanted....later when I tried I got stopped let go then mailed a citation that was theown out!!!! where do I stand? I feel lied to bullied and would like to sue these incompetent *******s!

 

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[SD51]

Looks like you should get and carry the so-called permit for the next occurrence. Some people assume that all detectorists do is leave open holes and destroy the grounds. Don't be surprised if there is a new township ordinance that stops all detecting there. I've seen it happen once the township park supervisor became convinced that metal detecting should be banned!

 

[teleprospector]

Obtain any permits needed, my County parks one here is $5 year. Keep a small notebook and when the people come up to you pull it out and write down what they say as they are speaking, this usually trips them up, then ask them to sign and date it and ask who and where should we go next to solve this. This is old school stuff people aren't used to anymore, but it's how things got done before texting, cell phone's, email's ect. came out.
Also point out that you pick up all the trash while you are out there and cover all your dig spots.
Hope this helps,
Jon

 

[Woodsy]

I'm confused are we talking about laws or rules?

 

[Clay Diggins]

Doesn't really matter if the Township has a law or rule that's pretty much the end of the story ... unless you want to get political and get the laws or rules changed. It's their park and their rules.

 

[Dave Rishar]

Hi. Exactly one year after my post on here showing my George Washington Button find back in April 2017...this past April I was at a local township park hunting. I have been to this park man many tiems and all the other parks in this township and the surrounding townships.

I was finishing up for the day when I was approached by someone claiming I was breaking the law. The individual is heavily involved with the parks .
We debated the fact. I said Ive searched the posted laws on the website and there is no mention other than disturbance of turf.

I called the police department and he agreed that he couldnt find any rule either. Pointed me in the direction of the township manager. I finally got around to chatting with him and he said the township doesnt have the rules but it follows the same policy as the county.

We used to have a member here that would give out very good advice on this general topic. He's not around, so I'll cover for now:

Know the law. If what you're doing is not against the law, then it's not against the law. If it's not against the law, do not ask for permission to do it. Allow me to explain...

In a previous life, I was a corrections officer at a state prison. As you might expect, we had a wide assortment of rules and regulations and such that were scattered over a number of documents. Nobody could remember them all. Inmates, knowing this, would attempt to take advantage of situation. As a precaution, we were trained to simply say no to any request that we weren't absolutely sure about. (I personally worded it a bit more diplomatically: "I'm not sure about that, so for right now the answer is no. But I'll find out for sure, and if it turns out that the state is okay with it, then so am I.") When new officers would ask for advice, I would offer, "Close every door, lock every lock, and the answer is always no. You will piss some people off, but you'll never be in the wrong."

What I'm saying is that it's not uncommon for government employees to be trained to simply default to a "no" answer when asked if something is permissible, and even when it's not a trained response, it's a natural one. If you're asking me if you can perform an activity that I'm not familiar with, in an area that I'm responsible for, and I'm not engaged enough to bother tracking down written guidance, I'm just going to tell you no. It's the one answer I can provide that's absolutely safe for me. Even if you raise a stink with my boss and other people get involved and it turns out that I was wrong, my excuse for shooting from the hip like that would simply to say that my first priority is keeping the park pristine. What supervisor could fault me for being overly protective of the asset that I'm charged with protecting and maintaining?

After the individual heavily involved with the parks approached me, I would not have debated the issue with him. There is nothing to debate, and there is no winning that debate. It is only a question of how much I'm going to piss that individual off. In your scenario, I would have been finishing up for the day anyway, so I simply would have said, "I don't agree that this is against the law, but I'm leaving." Some will argue that I'm not defending my rights and I'm a bad person, etc., but from my point of view, one cannot ultimately win an argument with the government without lawyers involved. By walking away, I allowed this individual to flex on me and now he gets to leave thinking that he's important and powerful, but in reality I've given up nothing - I was leaving anyway, so I simply did what I was already planning on doing. If he wants to think that it was because of him, so be it. I would then continue to hunt the parks as I'd already been doing.

I would not have called the police. However, if I had and they'd told me that they couldn't find any rule either, that absolutely would have been the end of it. The worst case scenario for the "hostile park employee" situation is that the employee calls the police, and we've just established that your police couldn't find what rule that you were breaking, meaning that they'd have an awfully hard time citing and/or arresting you for something. As a bonus, while that employee is probably not going to actively listen to your explanation of why your metal detecting is legal, he/she will sure as hell listen to that police officer when they explain it to them.

I would not have talked with the township manager either, but since you did, his answer to you is interesting. He said that the township doesn't have the rules but it follows the same policy as the county. That is fine, and not unusual at all, but that has to be written down somewhere; otherwise, it's not a law. Which takes us back to the beginning of this post: Know the law. If that is written down, you need to abide by it. If it is not written down, it is not a law, and your township manager is talking out of his ass - not an uncommon situation with government employees in my experience.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

We used to have a member here that would give out very good advice on this general topic.....

Are you referring to me ? haha This is a "bee in my bonnet" doh !

Whenever it comes to nice manicured turfed parks: It will usually fall under "alter" and "deface" type verbiage. And .... let's be honest: What is the connotation of a man with a metal detector ?? HOLES !

We can debate them on semantics till we're blue in the face . Ie.: Arguing that we'll leave no trace, blah blah. Or ... we can simply hunt when such lookie-lous are not around. Which is exactly why most of my nice manicured park/turf hunting is done at night nowadays. So peaceful. So serene.