Bylaw Enforcement Officer - Development of The Field

Development of The Field

Municipalities are under ever-increasing pressure to provide services quickly and cheaply, and many city governments see bylaw officers as attractive cheap alternatives to police for enforcement of non-criminal or less serious issues. As well, police departments themselves are under increased pressures in everything from staffing and finances, to the requirement to conduct police work within an increasingly complex legal framework brought about by increased litigiousness in society and more onerous limits & guidelines imposed on the police in order to protect individual rights and freedoms. As such, police departments are frequently unable or unwilling to perform duties related to the enforcement of non-criminal statutes or municipal bylaws.

Many cities are finding themselves in situations where the police have stopped performing certain duties which they performed in the past. Failure to regulate certain activities in their municipality then creates problems and generates complaints and public frustration. This commonly results in the relegation of this task to bylaw officers.

Because the field developed in such an unusual way, essentially to accommodate changes and professionalization of policing, municipal employees of this class began taking on tasks historically performed by police officers, but without any policing powers or protections under the law. Meter Maids initially serviced parking meters, which had been a fairly new phenomenon in North American cities of the 1950s. Eventually, as traffic police officers only rarely enforced parking meter regulation, the cities required Meter Maids to write parking tickets. By the 1970s, most large municipalities had Meter Maids, who, through the course of the 1980s & the 90's, transformed into Parking Enforcement Officers and were asked to enforce many more regulations than just those pertaining to meters. In recent history, Parking Enforcement Officers are increasingly taking on other duties, and municipalities (for the reasons mentioned above) are amalgamating specialized enforcement into general duty bylaw enforcement.

Because changes of this sort were unplanned, employees performing various classes of bylaw enforcement (parking, animal control, inspection work) frequently performed a duty of an officer of the law or as a person of authority. Since most bylaw officers were not sworn peace officers (and many are still not), the limits of their authority and exact definition of their powers have occasionally faced challenges.

Many provincial and state laws are being changed to help clarify status of non-constabulary bylaw officers. In British Columbia, when the new enabling charter was amended, (called 'Community Charter'), sections specifically referring to bylaw officers were included, including the power of bylaw officers to enter upon private property and investigate without warrant, something police are unable to do. The rationale behind such provisions (approved by the courts) is that bylaw matters are of significant importance to the public welfare (such as verifying that a building was properly constructed or that garbage is not illegally disposed of), yet violations carry only summary convictions (fines, or in most extreme cases, very very small jail terms if the issue is extremely serious and the person does not pay the fine) and are not as serious and deprecatory to a person's reputation and well-being as criminal offences. As such, the courts have determined that such powers are not unreasonable limitations on a person's Charter right of not being subject to "summary searches."

Many provinces have also standardized training for bylaw enforcement officers. The Alberta Municipal Government Act has no requirements for training of Bylaw Officers in Alberta. But formal training is available through the Alberta Municipal Enforcement Association and other organizations. If the person is also appointed as a Community Peace Officer then they are required to go through a 6-week training program at the Alberta Staff College or complete training that has been approved by the Solicitor General’s Office depending on what Provincial Acts are being enforced. The Justice Institute of British Columbia and other private training companies offers specialized courses to those wishing to attain certification in the field.

Sometimes, the enforcement of particular bylaws may be conducted on contract by a private company. Such companies are either highly specialized in a single area of bylaw enforcement (such as animal control in the case of the SPCA), or provide security guards, who are then specially trained to handle specific tasks, usually limited to traffic or parking enforcement. The most recent trend is to recall many of the services previously contracted out and put systems in place to conduct such services in-house. As such, contracting-out is not a great concern in this field.