Tickets have mayor facing state court date

ALTOONA, Pa., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The mayor of Lilly, Pa., may soon appear before the state Supreme Court for allegedly using a police officer's name to issue three tickets, a prosecutor says.

Cambria County District Attorney Patrick T. Kiniry said he plans on appealing Cambria County President Judge Gerard Long's decision to throw out charges against Lilly Mayor John C. Gides regarding the ill-advised tickets, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said Monday.

Kiniry said the mayor acted inappropriately when he allegedly used a police officer's name and badge number to write three tickets while covering patrol duty for the sick officer.

While Long felt counts of forgery and public record tampering were inappropriate, Kiniry said the individual behind the ticket-writing incident must be held accountable.

"We're arguing legal concepts here, and we don't want this case to stand for the (notion) that a police officer's authority can be used by other than a police officer," he told the Post-Gazette.

A lawyer for Gides says his client was simply using his mayoral statutory authority during the 2007 patrol, the newspaper said.