On the occasion of our thirtieth anniversary, Police Magazine decided to contact veteran officers and ask them how law enforcement has changed in the past three decades.
When custodial interrogation is imminent and it's time to give the suspect a Miranda warning, what exactly do you have to say? The answer is, nothing exactly. The U.S. Supreme Court, which created the necessity of a warning of rights and a waiver as prerequisites to the prosecutorial use of a statement obtained through custodial interrogation, has never held that any precise wording is required.
Simply put, the more information you have in a case, the better your chances of solving it. While this is common knowledge to most officers, we tend to forget that using field contacts is one of the easiest ways of gaining intelligence in our own cities.
By the most conservative estimates, there are more than 12 million illegal aliens in this country. All but the most liberal Americans and those who own large industries that benefit from illegal alien labor at ridiculously low wages believe that this is a real problem.
Sometimes a schoolyard scuffle is just a simple fight. Sometimes it’s a clear cry for help from a kid battling bigger demons at home. And sometimes it portends more serious violence from a disturbed, future-felon-in-the-making.
Take a close look at the recent media coverage of the rioting in France, and you will see that those young French men of Arab and African descent are wearing identifying tattoos.
One afternoon about five years ago, I was summoned from my desk at the detective division of a major Southern California urban sheriff's department and asked to meet one of the staff drill instructors at our academy gymnasium.
New York detective Ricky Smith has devoted his life to battling for control of the streets.
My northern Jerusalem neighborhood, and the area within a few minutes drive from my home, has been the site of more than 20 terrorist attacks. So I feel like I have earned a Ph.D. in attack tactics and techniques from Terrorist University. What I have learned I now share with you, the American law enforcement officer.
There was a message in two recent gang murders for the people of Long Island. And that message was that gang violence had moved into the upper middle class enclaves of the Island, into the kinds of communities where the locals assume that crime is somebody else’s problem. Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) is unfortunately becoming everybody’s problem.