09-07-01

Dumb Crooks^TM

August 13, 2001 -- A gun-toting thug got shot in the foot when a livery cabby resisted a robbery attempt in Queens, police said.

Cops said Damien Vernon, 19, approached a Red Carpet Car Service cab on the corner of Farmer's Boulevard and 114th Avenue in Jamaica at about 9 p.m. Saturday.

Vernon hopped in the cab, pointed a .357 handgun at the front seat, and demanded money from the 43-year-old cabby, police said. The driver resisted and struggled with Vernon, police said. As the men fought, Vernon's gun went off, hitting him in the foot, cops said.

Vernon fled, and was being treated for a gunshot wound at Long Island Jewish Hospital when cops arrived and arrested him, police said. The Queens resident was charged with robbery.

The driver was not injured.

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Lowering Pursuit Stress—Robin Melton

In the Officer Survival section of a recent issue of “POLICE” magazine, an informative article discusses the issue of “Lowering Pursuit Stress.” It involves the all important technique of learning how to make the pursuit-induced adrenaline dump work. At some point and time, we all experience the adrenaline charge, but need to be able to “dump-it” as soon as possible. How much adrenaline can a high-speed pursuit generate? One study quoted on the Discovery Channel’s “High Speed Pursuit” special stated that officers engaged in extended vehicle pursuits have adrenaline levels that exceed those of soldiers engaged in combat!

While a stress-induced adrenaline overload can be a lifesaver in a situation where super-human levels of strength and endurance are required, it can be a life threatening hindrance during vehicle pursuits. Accompanying tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, as well as diminished capacity of fine motor skills can all work against you. This also includes diminished short-term memory which affects your decision-making skills.

Embarrassingly, you may find that your macho male bass voice has turned into a neutered soprano, again, the effects of the adrenaline rush.

It is extremely difficult to control adrenaline level in vehicle pursuits. One officer stated he had listened to audiotapes of the pursuits and the way he was screaming, one might think he was running behind the vehicle instead of driving a patrol car. It is not uncommon for departments to employ officers who have had similar adrenaline overload problems during pursuits.

The officer knew he had a problem, and realized not only was it a threat to him, but to others as well. Looking for ways to get “under-control” and being involved in martial arts, he turned to a concept of stress control through controlled breathing, that martial artists have used for thousands of years. It is also referred to as “Combat Breathing” in police training circles.

You breathe in through your nose for a count of four, hold your breath for a count of four, then exhale through your mouth for a count of four, and start the cycle over. Breathe deeply and methodically, completely filling and emptying your lungs. This simple technique lowers your stress level, and your blood pressure, and lessens those nasty negative effects of adrenaline overload.

Although a lot of police classes teach the Combat Breathing technique, few instill it into the reactive side of your brain. The trick is teaching yourself to remember to do this when you get into a pursuit. One way is every time you hear a siren, practice breathing this way. You will then make combat breathing a subconscious part of your survival/tactical arsenal that works automatically.

How? Convince yourself that you are as smart as a dog! WHAT? Remember in high school science you learned about Pavlov’s dogs? The Russian scientist who experimented with digestion and found his dogs would salivate when he rang a bell, even though no food was present. The way he conditioned them to do this was to ring a bell right before feeding time. After a while, if they heard the bell, they began to salivate in expectation of being fed. It’s called “conditioned response.” Some may disagree that we are as smart as Pavlov’s dogs, but I believe we are! It may be impossible to teach ourselves to remember to breathe in a pursuit situation, but if conditioned, it will become a subconscious process.

Bell rings…dog salivates…siren blows…combat breathing.

You can practice this if you turn your VCR volume up while watching pursuit tapes, T.V. Cop shows, etc. You can also make a recording of a siren, going through all the different tones. Five to ten minutes a day for a month will make an incredible change in your ability to control your stress. Wouldn’t it be great if the police academy taught this? It would only take 5 minutes of practice at the end of every training day. Rookie officers would be much calmer during pursuits and calmer when it ends.

This will work, not just in a pursuit situation, but anytime that you must travel code three to a call. All it takes is practice…

Remember…Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale through your mouth for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, repeat….

Hope this helps!

Legal Issues - Search and Seizure

An officer placed the defendant’s trailer home under surveillance after receiving an anonymous tip that the defendant possessed a substantial amount of marijuana.

The officer saw the defendant, an adult man, and a small child leave the trailer and drive away in a pickup truck.

The officer followed the defendant’s truck for a considerable distance, and into a neighboring town. He called for assistance from the local police to stop the defendant’s truck.

A local officer responded to the call and followed the defendant for about two blocks. During that time, the child, who was seated in the middle of the front seat, “looked back” at the officer several times.

The officer later testified that the child “looking back” indicated that the child was not wearing a seat belt, and that he then stopped the defendant for that possible traffic offense. Actually, the defendant and the child were wearing seat belts at the time of the stop, but the adult passenger appeared to just be holding his unlatched seat belt across his body. The driver could not produce proof of insurance.

The officer who originated the surveillance approached the stopped truck and requested consent to search both the defendant’s residence and another car. The defendant eventually agreed and more than four hundred pounds of marijuana were discovered.

The defendant was charged with felony possession, and moved to suppress the evidence. The trial court denied the motion, and the defendant appealed his subsequent conviction.

The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the officer stopped the truck only because of the request from the other officer, and not because of any traffic violation; that the officer had no reasonable suspicion that the child was not wearing a seat belt; and that any continued detention after determining that the child was wearing a seat belt was unlawful.

The State appealed the Court of Appeals ruling, contending that the suppression hearing testimony supported the stop, and that the adult passenger’s failure to wear a seat belt was an independent reason for continuing the investigation after the stop.

Holding: Reasonable suspicion is an objective standard. “There need only be an objective basis for the stop; the subjective intent of the officer conducting the stop is irrelevant.”

Reasonable suspicion is determined by a review of the totality of circumstances, giving almost total deference to the trial court’s factual determination.. The Court of Appeals was incorrect, however, in holding that the validity of the stop turned on whether the traffic violation was a subjective reason for the stop, and for holding that there was no basis for a continued detention once it was determined that the passenger was not wearing a seat belt.

Absolute certainty is not required to establish reasonable suspicion, but the State was required to present evidence sufficient to create a reasonable suspicion that the child was not wearing a seat belt.

The officer’s testimony did not qualify the manner in which the child “looked back.” The officer merely concluded from the child’s looking back that the child might not have been wearing a seat belt.”

While it might have been that there was something about the way in which the child turned around to look several times that suggested the child was not wearing a seat belt, there was nothing in the testimony that gave the court any objective way of determining what else the officer might have meant.

All that can be ascertained from the testimony is that the child looked back, and the officer concluded that this action established reasonable suspicion. “But this kind of testimony could be given in any case and could simply reflect an officer’s mistaken belief that a certain fact possesses a tendency to create reasonable suspicion.”

Other seat belt cases have involved a clear and unobstructed view of the defendant not wearing a seat belt, or an apparent absence of a shoulder harness. Because the record in this case reveals no more than that the child looked back at the officer, there was no reasonable suspicion established. Due to the insufficient evidence to support the stop for a traffic offense, the suppression motion should have been granted. Garcia v. State, Ct. of Crim. App., No. 2057-99 (4-18-01).

[Editor’s note: As of the publication date, the opinion had not been released and was subject to withdrawal or revision.]

Big Kitty

(Don't be alarmed, it isn't real - the magic of digital images!)

From the Chaplain - Marilyn Featherstone

GOALS

The FBI went into one town to investigate the work of what appeared to be a sharpshooter. They were amazed to find many bull’s-eyes drawn around town, with bullets that had penetrated the exact center of the targets. When they finally found the man who had been doing the shooting, they asked him about the technique he used to attain such accuracy. The answer was simple. He shot the bullet first, and drew the bull’s-eye later.

That may be an easy way to have the appearance of hitting the mark, but it is at best a deception and at worst a lie. So it is with goals. We should use them to direct our work and determine if we have accomplished our purposes, not to defend what we happened to do.

Cyber Space

Email hoaxes have become so prevalent that they're regarded in some quarters as a threat to network integrity comparable to that of actual computer viruses. "They're both hoaxes," said U.S. Department of Energy spokesman David Schwoegler in a recent interview, "and they have the same objective: to generate an unusually high volume of e-mail traffic, which crashes the server. Then the whole system is down." For this reason, many companies and institutions now forbid the sending of chain email by employees or other account-holders on their systems.

The threat posed to individual users is less dramatic, but in these days of ever-increasing “spam” people are getting fed up with the amount of garbage clogging their inboxes. Net hoaxes account for a growing percentage of the glut .

One reason for the increase is the constant influx of new and inexperienced users unfamiliar with Netiquette and unaware of how rampant misinformation is on the Internet. Old hoaxes and chain letters are revived and re-circulated right alongside newly-invented ones. Just when one dies down another surfaces (or resurfaces) in a never-ending cycle. Everyone is asking what can be done about it.