Archive for Drugs
High Times
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New officers don’t always have the “street knowledge” they need to make good drug cases. Street knowledge is something that often takes years to build before an officer can recognize common drugs and activities surrounding their use and sale.
Training is not a substitute for experience, but it does give the officer additional information to use while on the street to hasten their learning. However, drug training is often not available to new officers. Read More→
K9Trooper.com: Training for K9, Criminal Interdiction, and Drug Interdiction Work
Posted by: | CommentsI meant to post this a while back, but if you have any need for police K-9 training, or training in drug and criminal interdiction, check our K9Trooper.com. They list training classes throughout a lot of the US that relate to drug interdiction and canine handlers.
House Arrest: Are You Kidding Me?
Posted by: | CommentsI think every cop knows that ‘house arrest’ is a useless form of punishment/rehabilitation. The only thing it is good for is allowing the courts to “feel good” about having “done something” to punish a convict without sending them to prison.
Think about it for a second… A jury has convicted someone for a crime. But, rather than sending them to prison, we just send them home. Yeah…that will teach them!
Case in point: a knock and talk I did Saturday night. While riding through a neighborhood looking for an armed robbery suspect, a man flags me down. He tells me about his niece who has “rocks and weed” all over the coffee table. She also owes him money, but I’m sure that did not have anything to do with why he flagged me down.
So, a couple of officers and I go by the apatment. I knock and she answers. I introduce myself and she invites us in. Once inside I ask “Got any drugs?” She says “Yep…got a pile of weed over there,” and points to a pile of weed that was, in fact, over there.
I ask “Is this your purse?” She says “Yep. And those pills are ones that my girlfriend gave me for my toothache.” Uh-huh.
I say “You are under arrest.” She says “There is cocaine in my bra.”
I inquire about the lovely, state required, bracelet around her ankle. She tells me that she was on probation for cocaine and pills, but was caught with more cocaine and pills. So, the court sentenced her to house arrest as a punishment. “How very effective,” I say.
So, I carry her down to the jail with three new drug charges. But, get this, being arrested while on house arrest does not net you a “no bond”. In other words, she can immediately post a bond and walk right out of jail. I get the deputies to max her bond which totals a mere $10,750. Of course, I am hoping that will keep her in jail until the next morning when a judge can review the case and her status and “no bond” her.
Well, the judge did see her the next morning…and promptly reduced the bond to $5,500.
Sometimes, I don’t know why I bother to go to work.
The Mexican military has escorted drug smugglers into United States territory for years. On occasion, our Border Patrol agents are confronted, on US soil, by the Mexican army. In fact, there have been more than 200 confirmed incursions by the Mexican military into the United States since 1996. The latest case was on Sunday, August 3, 2008.
A Border Patrol agent, working south of Ajo, Arizona, encountered Mexican military personnel who had crossed over into the United States. The agent was held at gunpoint for a period of time, presumably while the smugglers they were protecting moved through the area. Thankfully, back-up officers arrived and the troops withdrew without a gun battle.
Unfortunately, not all US law enforcement encounters with the Mexican army have been as “peaceful.” For example, in January 2007, the Mexican army, in the United States, fired on Texas deputies with a .50 caliber machine gun.
Or how about the time in 2002 when a Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation police officer reported being chased by men in a Humvee and a Border Patrol agent responding to assist, encountered Mexican soldiers who fired on him with a .50 caliber machine gun.
Scores of incidents like these have been confirmed, but hardly mentioned in the press. The southern border is a war zone, and we are sending law enforcement officers in to do what mechanized infantry should be doing. And then our government tries and convicts two agents for shooting an armed drug smuggler. It makes one wonder what the hell is going on.
Read a well-researched article in the Washington Times here. Read an interesting “take” on the incident in an AP article here. Check out the Border Patrol union local 2544’s post about the most recent incident here.
Recognize A Deadly Force Situation: Tasers Are Not Appropriate
Posted by: | CommentsPolice officers have enjoyed the use of the Taser X26 (and the effective M26 before that) as an excellent intermediate force option that allows the quick incapacitation of an offender while minimize the chance of harm to the suspect and officers involved. Tasers tend to be effective where pain compliance techniques are not.
However, Tasers are not 100% reliable. For the Taser to work properly there has to be a completed circuit with electricity flowing through a wide section of muscle mass. The failure of a Taser to effectively work can happen if only one probe hits the suspect, or the probes land too close together, or there is a faulty battery, or thick clothes do not allow the probes to get close to the skin. I’ve seen Tasers fail to incapacitate in each of these situations. The point is: the X26 is effective but not 100%.
There is an understandable reluctance by police officers to use deadly force. Cops are not evil people and they do not want to harm or kill anyone. So, many times when a police officer faces a situation in which deadly force is the appropriate level of force, the officer may hesitate or seek some other lower level of force, which generally decreases their own safety. While in some respects this is admirable, the fact is the officer must survive and win the encounter, not just for his or her own well being, but for the community as a whole. For if the officer is incapacitated or killed due to their attempt at a lower force option, their killer is now free to harm other innocents…perhaps even with the officers own weapons.
If a police officer encounters a suspect armed with a deadly weapon, the officer’s appropriate response will be deadly force, not a Taser. A suicidal subject armed with a knife or a gun needs to see the business end of your AR, shotgun, or pistol…not the blast doors of a ‘green’ X26 cartridge. If you have appropriate deadly force cover (say your two zone partners are in a position of advantage covering the suspect with .223 rifles), then you might –in certain circumstances– attempt to use a Taser to subdue the suspect. The idea is that your backup can employ deadly force should the Taser attempt go wrong.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of us have Taser cartridges that are good to a maximum of 21′ or 25′. Perhaps 21′ sounds familiar? That distance should be known to all police officers as it relates to the Tueller Drill. The Tueller Drill was developed by Sgt. Dennis Tueller of the Salt Lake City PD. Sgt. Tueller discovered that an average person could cover 21′ and begin stabbing an officer in 1.5 seconds: the same amount of time an officer could draw his weapon and put a round on the threat. That, of course, does not take into account that a fatal shot is not likely to instantly stop the attack.
So, if you encounter a violent subject armed with an edged weapon AND you have lethal force cover AND you want to try to use a Taser, you better hope it works. If it doesn’t, you will likely have a subject on top of you in less than two seconds. Your partners better be very accurate and very quick. Even then you stand a pretty decent shot at getting hurt.
If the subject has a firearm, you don’t even have 1.5 seconds, as they just have to point and pull the trigger.
So, read your department SOP’s, know your state laws of the use of force, and work out plans with your zone partners before you encounter a deadly force situation in which you may want to try a Taser.
County officials along the U.S./Mexico border say the cost of apprehending, arresting and convicting undocumented immigrants is crippling their courts and the region’s entire criminal justice system. In a report released by the U.S. / Mexico Border Counties Coalition (USMBCC), elected county leaders argue they are well past the national debate on immigration reform, and simply want to be reimbursed for the burden illegal immigration places upon their criminal justice systems, to the tune of about $200 million a year.
“It’s all about the criminal justice costs associated with criminal aliens,” says Kent Evans, Immediate Past President of the USMBCC and a Dona Ana County (NM) Commissioner. “Any way you look at it, border counties spent more than one billion dollars in less than a decade. That’s a lot of money, money that should have been used to improve schools, roads and public safety in our communities.”
In the study, conducted over a 12-month period by the University of Arizona and San Diego State University, it was revealed that the 24 border counties in Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico are spending a disproportionate amount of local tax dollars to provide law enforcement and criminal justice services to apprehend, transport and convict criminal undocumented immigrants.
“This updated study effectively illustrates that until our borders are secure and our immigration laws are adequately enforced, many states and localities, particularly in border states like Arizona, will continue to incur overwhelming costs to process those illegal immigrants who commit crimes, or who, sadly, die trying to come to the United States,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who secured funding to produce the report.
“This study underscores the unfair and unacceptable fact that border residents continue to pay for our broken immigration policies,” said Congressman Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, TX, a 26 1/2 year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol. “The current approach reflects a lack of understanding of border communities.”
The Coalition asked that the federal government cover three major costs associated with undocumented immigrants who commit state felonies and/or multiple misdemeanors by fully funding the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative and county law enforcement and criminal justice services. “We are not asking for a hand out,” said Manny Ruiz, Vice Chairman of the USMBCC and a Santa Cruz County (AZ) Supervisor. When federal lawmakers fail to secure our borders, our local taxpayers should not have to pay for the skyrocketing costs.”
The Coalition is a nonpartisan, consensus-based policy and technical forum founded in 1998 to address challenges facing county governments located on the United States/Mexico Border. For a copy of the 155-page report, visit www.bordercounties.org.
