Saturday, June 20, 2015

An actual arrest

One of the things the public does not know is that the tools available to officers has changed. In general there is a difference between fishing and prudence. Fishing is when there is no basis for a search. Searches are done in rare instances and arrests even rarer.

On the job I was performing I can only see the original charges and ask a peer to take a second look. In my case someone fell through the cracks. The original charge involved a sex crime and children. This is only the original charge. I have no idea what the actual conviction is. In these cases I write a query and ask for a look. The person doing the search gets the record and decides the next step.

In general my correspondence is rare and written at low levels. Rather than broadcast at a higher level. My style is
Let's look at this and see what is there. The queries are logged and sorted out by my upline who decides what gets referred for law enforcement. Law enforcement then decides if they are going to pursue an arrest and place a person in proceedings. They have limited resources and only the worst of the worst get picked up.

We were told all of this stuff was logged. Apparently it wasn't and my friends who arrest decided there is always room for a pedophile. This is also subject to their attorneys discretion.

They did bring the guy in. They wanted to know why I did not call them ASAP. The sheer volume on that project did not
Allow for it. Officers refused to work those cases and it got dumped on me. Sometimes it is only intelligence and a person may be on trial for something. It allows our guys extra moments of heads up.

There are plenty of stories about people who fell through the cracks. My point is our tools have been scaled back. There is some legitimate concerns about fishing. This should have been dealt with by allowing only those with a record of proper usage access. In my case I never used those systems and consulted with our experts. Our experts do this every day. I do cooperate with our uplines but I work through the channels.

There are other cases where I am making the call. These involve older cases and in my case I follow the due process procedures. On one case I held it up for a week for a legal review. I only use those charges that are clear and can be readily defended by our attorneys. Sometimes I might miss one and that is why I consult with our experts.

4 comments:

Ducky's here said...

You realize you are describing a brutally dysfunctional agency.

beakerkin said...

The description is accurate. For a change I want to discuss fishing vs informed reason to search.
Law enforcement and privacy is a serious issue.
In the past we did not curtail fishing and are suffering the price now.

If I have a person who is charged with pedophelia it is perfectly valid to look at the larger record. Is this a pattern? What was the outcome of the case? A person with money laundering charges is an excellent candidate for enhanced records search. A single DWI is not.

The systems were moved to specialists. This causes delay and a loss of accuracy. A better policy would have been to leave the tools in select hands with strict guidelines. Require a supervisor to okay the search, but flying blind really hurts nobody.

In the end this person may or may not be deported. The quality of his legal team and the judges temperment are key factors. He will be monitored by the enforcement wing.

One really stupid policy is to avoid arrests at the
Federal Offices. Arrests there are safer for all parties, but the Obama policies are never about common sense concerns.

Ducky's here said...

Why would anyone willingly come to a Federal office if there is a high possibility of arrest?

beakerkin said...

But they do. They eun the risk of us checking.
This is the most annoying part of the Obama changes. Even a pro immigrant officer draws lines at criminality