Request By:
Mr. Robert M. Kirtley
Daviess County Attorney
Courthouse
Owensboro, Kentucky 42301
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Your question for an opinion: "Can the Daviess Fiscal Court enact an ordinance authorizing constables to have blue, flashing, revolving or oscillating lights on their vehicles?"
Such flashing, oscillating blue lights are authorized for all state, county, or municipal police vehicles and all sheriffs' vehicles used as emergency vehicles. KRS 189.920(2). All vehicles not specifically authorized to use the blue lights are prohibited from using them. KRS 189.950(2) and 189.910(1).
A vehicle used by a constable in performing his official duties does not come within the "emergency vehicles" authorized to contain the blue lights under the above statutes.
Thus under the present statutes a constable is not authorized to have blue, oscillating lights on his official vehicle. Commonwealth v. Bradley, Ky., 516 S.W.2d 644 (1974).
New legislation would be required to include constables under the term "emergency vehicles."