Issue link: http://lawandordermag.epubxp.com/i/98779
Y ou have just graduated from the police academy. You have studied hard, are physically ft, can shoot well and drive a car like a road racer. The department���s general orders, policies and procedures are fresh in mind and you are confdent you know them all. The frst day out you are assigned to a Field Training Offcer, who tells you, ���Forget everything you learned in the academy.��� Wrong. That is likely coming from someone who does not know what you just learned and someone with no interest in learning it. It is not likely to be coming from someone who, by way of comparison, has found what is taught in the academy does not work. In fact, what is taught in the academy does work. The most professional, effective, committed and ethical police offcers both know their books well and apply that knowledge every day on the job. Fast-forward. That special day has arrived. You are being promoted to sergeant or lieutenant. You have just ended a month or more of long hours devoted to the study of the traffc regulations, laws of search and seizure, Alcohol Beverage Control laws, municipal regulations, the criminal laws, and your department���s orders. ���Well, that is it. No more books for me. I have succeeded. My studying days are through.��� All those books are now relegated to the capture of dust in your locker. Wrong. I guarantee you are going to forget much of what you learned. Slowly but surely it will happen. So what? The public you serve has a legitimate expectation that you know what you are doing and that what you are doing is lawful and according to your department���s policies. If you are a police supervisor of any rank, the ���so what��� is compounded. Now you have a squad, section, or platoon that has a legitimate expectation that you know what you are doing, and that what you are directing them to do is lawful and according to your department���s policy. You would be more effective as incident commander at the scene of a barricade situation, critical missing child, or multiple fatality accident if you knew chapter and verse how the directives read. At best, failure in these situations makes you look like the preverbal ���dumb cop��� or ���stupid sergeant.��� At worst, it can result in a violent offender going free or you fnding yourself under cross examination in a civil action trying to explain why you did not know what you were supposed to do. Recent court decisions concerning search and seizure can affect investigations. Changes in the law could determine if someone is summarily arrested. Updates in departmental policy can affect daily operations. Here is the point: It is not just what you might be slowly forgetting. It is also what you might not be learning. Court decisions can signifcantly change search and seizure procedures. In 1985, the District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed down what became known as the ���Douglas-Bey Decision.��� In short, this decision found that a warrantless entry into a defendant���s apartment by police, after another offcer had already made a valid emergency search of the apartment for victims or someone involved in a shooting, was illegal. In the case in question, the responding offcer, who had cause to enter the apartment, then left the premises. Sometime later, other police arrived and they recovered evidence used to convict the defendant. The evidence was suppressed and the conviction overturned. This case was so signifcant that the D.C. Police put out a Special Order on the case to make all aware of its implications. Nine months later, patrol offcers received a radio assignment for an unconscious person in a townhouse. They found a man who had been shot several times and was dead. They searched for additional victims, witnesses, evidence that may be destroyed and suspects. Finding none, they exited the townhouse and called for a police offcial and homicide detectives to come to the location. The homicide detectives and a police lieutenant arrived at about the same time and were briefed by the patrol offcers. Following the brief, the lead detective called for a mobile crime unit and started to enter the townhouse. The uniform lieutenant then informed the detective he would need a search warrant to enter the property. Predictably, words were exchanged requiring the attendance of the Criminal Investigative Division���s Watch Commander. In short, the CID Watch Commander knew, like the uniform police lieutenant, that a search warrant was needed and directed the lead detective to apply for one immediately. Fortunately, the only damage was to the lead detec- www.lawandordermag.com 39