By Stephanie Froese

City police can now ticket by mail

Feb 3, 2011 | 12:07 PM

While getting the usual letters, bills and flyers in the mail are expected, what about something from the City Police?

Amendments to the Summary Offence Procedure Act allow police to serve summary offence tickets by mail. A summary offence ticket can be issued for something like dangerous driving. It is not a criminal charge.

Before this year the police could not issue these tickets through the mail.

“You had to serve it in person or in fact you would have to do a prolonged summons and then serve it on to the offender,” said Sgt. Bill Chow, with the Prince Albert Police Service.

Chow said it is a bit of a time saver, especially in Prince Albert and the outlying areas because there is a transient community.

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He said city police and RCMP currently deal with offenders in Prince Albert, who live outside the city and people living in Prince Albert, who have made an offence outside police jurisdiction.

“We would ask the RCMP to serve a ticket for us, RCMP would ask us to serve a ticket, so now we can just simply put it in the mail by registered mail and send it to the owner or the driver of the vehicle,” Chow said.

“If we have a person come in to us and say that you were driving erratically and will provide us with a statement and we have enough evidence in there to lay a charge … then we can simple write up the ticket, send it in to you by registered mail and you are deemed served.”

There is one stipulation to this new mailing system, the court date or voluntary payment date cannot be within 10 days of the day a summary offence ticket is sent.

sfroese@panow.com