Noise ordinance controls party people
Sara Al Harthi
In 2002, The Kent Police Department issued a law for noise ordinance. With student coming back to school from vacations in the fall semester they usually celebrate by having parties.
To reduce the noise, the City issued this law to provide proper enforcement guidelines for unlawful noise ordinance. The police are allowed to rake actions for violation even if citizens have not complained about the noise.
Nicholas Shearer, The Chief of Police with the Kent Police Department said that it is important to have a noise ordinance law in a college town.
“Our noise ordinance is written in the way it’s enforced. Anytime between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., if you’re creating noise that can be heard beyond your property line the It is a violation of our noise ordinance and Our police department takes proactive enforcement.” Shearer said. “If we get a call between those hours and we come and respond to the call and if we can hear the noise, we issue a citation on the noise.”
Shearer further explained that, the Kent Police Department would still take actions even outside of the noise ordinance timings. People can make charges against the person who is making the noise except that the person who made the charges may be required to sign as a witness to the violation.
Unlawful noise by Kent’s ordinances is unclassified misdemeanor and it has a maximum fine of $500.
Shearer said that there are not as many noise complaints during summer time as most students leave for summer vacation, but he said that they get calls regarding the fireworks on July 4th.
“The first and the last month of any semester are the worst times in terms of call volume, but we do get them throughout the year.” Shearer said.
Halloween is a big holiday in Kent and students tend to have big parties and invite a lot of people to them. Lewis explained that they get a lot of calls from residents around that time. Also, St. Patrick’s Day is a big time of the year as Shearer said.
“There’s nothing that prohibits people from going out and doing things. Again, we would definitely discourage that as it does bring up more risk factors in terms of spreading the virus and that is something that obviously we would try to limit,” Shearer said. “We would discourage people going out for Halloween, but we cannot prohibit it.”
There is an unlawful noise ordinance and a nuisance party ordinance. There are various things that could cause a party to become a nuisance party. For example, unlawful noise, underage drinking, littering, disorderly behavior, fighting and public urination.
“If any two of those things is present it becomes a nuisance party.” Shearer said. “So, what we’ve done during Covid times is we really strictly enforce it and the law allows us to do is shut the party down. So, if we have any two or more of those things where we can shut the party down and make everyone leave. Obviously, it’s one of those things where we do everything we can to try to discourage large gatherings. We don’t want to see them happen, but we have to operate within the law.”
Shearer said that The Kent Police Department is hopeful that people will honor the health recommendation and won’t be having big parties on Halloween.
“We fairly strictly enforce our noise ordinance when we respond to a call and we observe the violations between those hours,” Shearer said. “We do take enforcement action”
Party hosts have the option to provide a telephone warning in the case of loud noise or any nuisance activities allowing them to voluntarily shut down the party through The Party Registration Program. The program is a cooperative effort between the residents of the city of Kent and the Kent Police Department.
The program is temporarily suspended due to Covid-19.
Destiny Shall, the leasing manager of Campus Pointe Apartments said that they get an average amount of complaints during the weekend.
Shall said that she can’t stop residents from having parties.
