Your are cruising down LBJ (635) at 80 miles/hr. You are coming up on a Dart police car.

You.....

1) Slow down because you still are a little "iffy" on whow much power they have over anything that doesn't pertain to the HOV lane.

2) You keep cruising and act like you don't even see him.

3) You hit the pedal to show him that he's no REAL cop and he can't pull you over.

Just curious.

 

I personally would go with choice 1.

I'm gathering that you received a citation from a DART officer. I just looked it up on their website and it says:

DART Police officers are vested with all the rights, privileges, obligations, and duties of peace officers in the state of Texas, which means that DART Police officers have the power of: arrest, serving arrest warrants, issuing citations, search and seizure, and filing criminal charges.

 

hmm..... the little taurus' with yellow lights on top of them? haha...

def. number 3

you gotta also think, that most of their job revolves around (predominately) the rails and bus system. keeping ruffiants and hobos from stabbing folk and that sort of thing, so they sort of need some authority there....

 

Wow, so those guys REALLY DO have that kind of power?!

 

News to me also, but I'd have gone with choice #1 as well.

-Andy

 

I would go with #3 as long as I was close to home, so when he calls it in they dont find me.

 

William,

Do you have a link to the part of their site that describes this? I'd be curious to see if they have all that power on regular streets and highways in Dallas that are not under Dart control (75, I-30, 635, Tollway, etc).

I just assumed that they could only give you tickets or arrest you for the following:

No passengers in your car, while driving in the HOV lane.
Speeding in the HOV lane.
Crossing the HOV lane line.
Not paying for bus/rail fair.
Committing a crime on Dart bus/rail (theft, assault, etc).

It will really bug me if they have the same power as the Dallas Police on all city properties.

 

http://www.dart.org/DARTPolice.asp?z...TPoliceHistory

 

yup... looks like they are out of jurisdiction when a matter does not fall into DART territory.
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/tntoc.html
a little off topic.. but the link is all dallas transportation codes.. pretty handy when you get pulled over for some BS reason.