07-14-00

Dumb Crooks^TM

A man walked into a bank on Pico Blvd in West Los Angeles and when he came up to the teller, he showed her an army .45 and demanded money. He started to fill his jacket pockets with his left hand while holding the gun in his right.

The man directly behind him looked over his shoulder and saw that the hammer was down. He drew a .38 revolver and placed it in his back saying, "You cock that gun and you're a dead man. Put the gun down and get your hands up."

It turned out that the man behind him was an FBI agent waiting to cash his paycheck. Just wasn't the robber’s day.

A band of burglars in Russia decided to use walkie-talkies to pull off their best heist ever. The radios, they figured, would allow them to monitor the police as well as coordinate their own activities. It never occurred to the mental athletes that the police might be listening in.

They were.

When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

Copyright ©2000 Dumb Crooks
Used with permission

Juvenile Homicide Statistics

From National Criminal Justice Reference Service http://www.ncjrs.org/

Legal Issues - Search and Seizure

Based on a tip from an informant, officers believed the defendant would be in possession of cocaine on a certain date. The officers began watching the defendant’s house, and when he left the house with a companion in the evening, the officers followed them.

The defendant stopped briefly at three different apartment complexes before returning home, and the officers concluded that this activity was consistent with delivery of drugs.

When the defendant returned to his home, officers blocked his car in the driveway and approached the men with drawn weapons. They noticed a brown pouch containing white powder lying on the car’s dash.

After advising the defendant of his rights, the officers conducted a “protective sweep” of the house, then brought the defendant inside to interrogate him. While handcuffed and inside the house, the defendant signed a written consent to search form.

Officers found drug paraphernalia on the premises, and the defendant admitted that the substance in the car was cocaine. He also showed the officers where other controlled substances were located in the living room and bedroom.

The defendant later moved to suppress all of the evidence seized at the house, contending that the protective sweep was illegal, and that it tainted his consent. The trial court denied the motion, but the court of appeals found in favor of the defendant. The State appealed.

Holding: “A ‘protective sweep’ is a ‘quick and limited search of premises, incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others.’” While a person may have a strong privacy interest in his or her house, police officers also have a strong interest in assuring that the house in which a suspect is held does not contain others who may be dangerous.

In order to justify a protective sweep, the searching officer must have “a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene.” The sweep is not a “full search,” but only a cursory inspection of places where a person might be found.

Under these standards, the protective sweep conducted of the defendant’s house was illegal. There was no testimony from the officers that any reason existed to believe that third persons were inside the home, or that any persons who might be in the home posed a danger to the officers or others.

To the contrary, one testifying officer admitted that he thought the defendant’s driveway was a safe place. Nothing in the testimony of any officer justified a protective sweep. Consequently, the sweep was unlawful.

Regarding whether the illegal sweep tainted defendant’s consent to search, it is important to determine whether the consent was voluntary. In order to be effective, consent must not be the product of “duress or coercion, express or implied.”

All of the circumstances must be considered in determining whether consent is voluntary. Relevant factors in this determination include: the age of the accused; his or her education and intelligence; whether they were advised of constitutional rights; the length of the detention; repetitiveness of any questioning and the use of physical force.

The defendant in this case was handcuffed when he was asked to give consent, and he had been arrested at gunpoint. The guns were not drawn when the consent was given, however. Officers had entered his home illegally to conduct the protective sweep before asking for the defendant’s consent.

On the State’s side, the sweep did not yield any incriminating evidence, and the officers had no evidence other than what they had seen in plain view in the defendant’s car. The defendant’s companion was questioned by the officers at the arrest scene, but they concluded that he was not involved in the crime and released him.

The defendant was given Miranda warnings twice before signing the consent form, and he was warned repeatedly that he had the right to remain silent during the officers’ questioning. The defendant’s willingness to continue answering questioning and to take officers inside the house and point out drugs to them, demonstrate that he chose not to assert his rights at the time.

Taken together, the circumstances support the voluntariness of the defendant’s consent. Although the sweep was illegal, any taint from it was sufficiently attenuated by the voluntary consent given by the accused. The evidence was properly admitted.

COMMENT: This is the first case in which the Court of Criminal Appeals has defined the limits of a “protective sweep.” Most important is the Court’s warning that “the protective sweep is not an automatic right police possess when making an in home arrest.” Officer should bear in mind that reasonable suspicion must justify the sweep.

From the Chaplain

Years ago, my family and I spent almost two years in Africa as missionaries. I came home wanting to tell everyone I saw how blessed they were!

I witnessed starving children, so many it still grieves me to think about it. Not only were they hungry but the only medical care most of them had was that of the local witch doctor. Very few had a bed to sleep on. Many had no clothes at all. And there were so many diseases, I couldn’t begin to name them all.

We had a native preacher who walked several miles a week to borrow a Bible so that he could prepare his lesson for the next Sunday. He had none, and that was the closest. Today, as many as one third of the world does not have access to one!

Since that time, many Christians have been killed, some we knew and loved, along with their families, simply because they believed in Jesus as the Son of God instead of Mohammed. Today, as many as three billion people in the world cannot attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death.

Americans are in the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, money in your pocket, in the bank and change in a dish on your dresser, you are richer than 75% of the world.

We sometimes spend too much time complaining—about our jobs (but most of us have one), about our government (and we live in a democracy), a larger, better house (all of us have a place to live) and---well, you get the picture! So, count your blessings!

Psalms 7:17, I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High.

Cyber Space

The new Records Management System (RMS) is almost ready to go!

The past four weeks, we’ve been busy writing and customizing the new RMS system to meet our exact needs. The most impressive thing about the system is the ability to generate our own forms, entry screens, reports, etc. when we need to. The system is fully customizable, and can be modified (to allow more data in a file, to take data out we’re not using, to make form letters, or anything else we think of) anytime we decide there is a need.

The program runs under Microsoft Access, which is part of the Microsoft Officer suite. This means that the RMS package can use Microsoft Word, Excel, and even Outlook to interface with….spell checks use the Microsoft Word spelling program!

I think everyone will be quite happy with the new system. Since it is Windows based, it offers a similar screen and functionality to programs you should be used to: Outlook, Excel, and Word.