The Fourth Amendment is based upon the standard of “objective reasonableness.”  This means that the subjective, or in other words, personal intent of an officer is irrelevant in determining whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred.  On July 2, 2014, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decided Scherr v. City of Chicago, et al. [i], which serves as an excellent review of the aforementioned principal. In Scherr, the plaintiff, Jennifer Scherr’s, seven year old daughter was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor that led to seizures.  Jennifer’s father-in-law was an officer for the Chicago Police Department.  Jennifer learned that marijuana oil might help with the [...]

“Two police officers must pay a Milwaukee man more than half a million dollars for violating his civil rights by searching him without a legal reason and wrongfully arresting him, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A federal jury determined that officers did not have a reason to stop and search the 40-year-old man outside his mother's home in 2012. With the verdict, jurors were essentially saying that Milwaukee police, like their counterparts in New York City, had used unconstitutional ‘stop and frisk’ tactics. The officers did not have ‘reasonable suspicion,’ the lowest level of proof required for officers to search [...]

On April 8, 2014, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decided the Gennusa and Studivant v. Canova et al. [i], which is instructive regarding the Fourth Amendment implications of recording attorney-client conversations.  The relevant facts of Gennusa, taken directly from the case, are as follows: In the summer of 2009, Det. Marmo was investigating Mr. Studivant's possible misdemeanor violation of a domestic violence injunction. On June 8, 2009, in the course of that investigation, Det. Marmo conducted a non-custodial interview of Mr. Studivant at the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office. Ms. Gennusa was present during the interview as Mr. Studivant's attorney. The interview [...]

Have you noticed anything different recently in the training classroom? Decades ago newspapers, crossword puzzles, and stale coffee in Styrofoam cups littered the room. Scan the modern day class and witness the change. Specialtycaffeine shots in white cups with green lettering adorn each row of tables. Behind the piping hot shot of life-sustaining nectar sits a student hopelessly addicted to more than just the java jolt. The Generation Y classroom reeks of an electronic dependency ultimately resulting in a distracting learning environment. For instructors and agencies there are two responses to this electronic impairment- they can ignore the influence of [...]

he recent events in Ferguson, Missouri have brought national attention to a number of issues central to law enforcement operations.  The sole purpose of this article is to focus squarely on one of them—the continuing challenge within law enforcement agencies to hire and retain a diverse group of officers that reflect the community they serve.  Even more specifically, to discuss the ways in which a continuing process of Strategic Planning for Diversity in Recruiting and Hiring can place agencies in the best possible position to make concrete efforts to attain diversity and demonstrate those efforts to members of the media, to elected [...]

On April 18, 2014, the First Circuit Court of Appeals decided the United States v. Oquendo-Rivas [i], which serves as an excellent review of the law pertaining to requests to remain silent and requests for counsel under Miranda.  The relevant facts of Oquendo, taken directly from the case, are as follows: A shootout at La Tómbola, a bar near Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, left several patrons dead. In its aftermath, rumors led officers from the Puerto Rico Police Department ("PRPD") to a nearby home, where several men involved in the murders were thought to be hiding. Arriving at the residence, officers observed [...]