By Robert Phillips  
Deputy District Attorney (ret.)  

• Cross-Jurisdictional Authority 
• Issue, Background and Case Law  
• Penal Code § 830.1(a) and judicial notice of a peace officer’s authority to cite for offenses occurring in a neighboring jurisdiction. 

I received a complaint recently from an officer about a judge dismissing a traffic citation written for an offense that occurred outside the officer’s jurisdictional limits. The officer commented that writing tickets for offenses occurring outside an officer’s city or county limits is not all that unusual, and he didn’t understand why this ticket was dismissed.  

Fortunately, the judge in this instance cited his authority for the dismissal: People v. Landis (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th Supp. 12. Reading Landis both helped me figure out why the officer’s ticket was dismissed while also providing an important teaching point. 

Let’s Dig into the Relevant Penal Code 

The governing statute on this issue is Penal Code § 830.1(a). This section describes the authority of a peace officer, as listed in paragraph (a), to apply to three different situations. 

Subp. (a)(1) lists any “public offense” (including misdemeanors or infractions), Pen. Code § 16, People v. Tennessee (1970) (4 Cal.App.3rd 788, 791) committed, or for which there is probable cause to believe has been committed, within the political subdivision that employs the peace officer or in which the peace officer serves.” That’s a “gimme.” 

Subp. (a)(2) describes the situation that is relevant in Landis and is likely why the ticket was dismissed in the situation the officer who complained to me found himself. Under this subparagraph, an officer can act with full law enforcement authority to arrest for any “public offense” (which again, includes the writing of a traffic citation) if, and only if, that peace officer has “the prior consent” of the chief law enforcement official of that jurisdiction.  

Finally, Subp. (a)(3) provides an additional situation where an officer has full peace officer authority to act outside his own jurisdiction, i.e., “a public offense committed or for which there is probable cause to believe has been committed, in the peace officer’s presence, and with respect to which there is immediate danger to person or property, or of the escape of the perpetrator of the offense.” We don’t need to determine what this all means (to be an immediate danger or to escape) in that Subp. (a)(2) resolves all our issues. 

Jurisdictional Cooperation 

So back to Subdp. (a)(2): Whether you are aware of it or not, all the chief law enforcement officers in the state of California (police chiefs, sheriffs, etc.) have executed a document (renewed every year, if I’m not mistaken) providing for the “prior consent” called for in Subp. (a)(2). I know this document exists because I used to keep a copy of it in my file cabinet when employed as a San Diego deputy district attorney. The trial court in the Landis case made mention of this document.  

Specifically, the trial court judge noted that it had “seen written agreements in other kinds of court cases in which Orange County police agencies consent to cross-jurisdictional activity by officers of other agencies.” The trial court also observed that in traffic trials, the court “consistently takes the position that there is no legitimate jurisdictional issue where, as in this case, the court credits the peace officer’s testimony that the violation was observed to have been committed in his or her presence.” (See pg. 15 of the Appellate Court decision.)  

However, no such written agreement was proffered by the prosecution in the Landis case, and the trial court therefore did not take judicial notice of any such agreement or suggest that it might have given any evidentiary value to any such writing not before the court.  

Later in the Landis decision, the appellate court noted that “(w)hile the trial court may have been correct that cities within Orange County have in place consent agreements for cross-jurisdictional activity, absent evidence of such an agreement in this case, there is no basis on which to find (that the citing officer) had authority to issue the citation pursuant to Penal Code section 830.1, subdivision (a)(2)” (pgs. 16-17)  

Then, most significantly, the court comments in footnote 3: “If indeed such agreements exist, this problem can be avoided in the future by having the testifying officer present a copy of any such agreement at the hearing and request that the court take judicial notice of its existence and applicability.” 

The bottom line here is that — as suggested in footnote 3 — a prosecutor (or citing officer), whenever the cite or arrest at issue takes place in a different jurisdiction, must ensure that he or she brings a certified copy of this written agreement to court and formally request that the court take judicial notice of its contents.  

Your agency’s admin or legal office should have a copy. This must be done for each case. The trial court isn’t going to keep it on file and/or take judicial notice of it on its own initiative. Once this is done, end of issue. More importantly, end of problem.