TERRY STOPS AND OFFICER’S DISPLAY OF WEAPON
On December 7, 2012, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided Billingsley v. State [i] which serves as an excellent review of reasonable suspicion and the reasonableness of an officer’s show of force during a Terry stop. The facts of Billingsley, taken directly from the case, are as follows: Around 2:34 a.m. on November 5, 2011, the 9-1-1 dispatch center of the Fort Wayne Police Department ("FWPD") received a call from a woman. The woman said there was a "young man" at the Veterans of Foreign Wars ("VFW") building who had "held [her] hostage" a week or two before and that she "want[ed] the police to [...]
US SUPREME COURT
In Missouri v. McNeely, [i] the United States Supreme Court examined the constitutionality of a forced blood draw on a person who had refused a breathalyzer test. The Court outlined the facts as follows: ` While on highway patrol at approximately 2:08 a.m., a Missouri police officer stopped McNeely's truck after observing it exceed the posted speed limit and repeatedly cross the centerline. The officer noticed several signs that McNeely was intoxicated, including McNeely's bloodshot eyes, his slurred speech, and the smell of alcohol on his breath. McNeely acknowledged to the officer that he had consumed "a couple of beers" at [...]
SOCIAL MEDIA LEGISLATION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL PRACTICES Part II
Part I | Part II | Part III Social Media Issues impacting Law Enforcement In Part I of this three part series, Lou Reiter examined the issues facing a number of states which have enacted legislation governing the use of social media. Legislation clearly supersedes any policies an agency creates to control the use of social media. Nevertheless, policy and procedures are guideposts that provide structure on this emerging information technology until the judiciary provides sufficient legal direction concerning the rules of engagement involving social media. Part II of this series will identify a number of policies which have been adopted by [...]
SOCIAL MEDIA LEGISLATION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL PRACTICES Part I
Part I | Part II | Part III How will the current trend to legislate employee rights regarding social media access affect our law enforcement personnel practices? Not much if we continue to use reasonable and defensible practices. Recently, six states have passed legislation directly targeting employers’ access to and use of employees’ social media sites. We should expect that more would do so or be encouraged to do so. The legislation in New Jersey and Delaware is specifically oriented to educational institutions and Maryland’s is focused on hiring. But we should look at the elements in three other states that might signal [...]
US SUPREME COURT
On February 19, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Bailey v. United States [i], which involved the issue of whether Michigan v. Summers [ii] can justify detentions beyond the immediate vicinity of the premises being searched. As a review, Michigan v. Summers involved the detention of a defendant as he was walking down the front steps of his house to leave the premises when the police were about to execute a search warrant for narcotics. The police detained Summers, executed the search warrant, and found illegal drugs. Summers was arrested. The issue before the Supreme Court in Summers was whether police can seize the resident [...]
US SUPREME COURT
In Florida v. Harris [i] the United States Supreme Court applied the totality of circumstances approach to the determination that a law enforcement K-9 was reliable with respect to sniff-alerts for narcotics and rejected the Florida Supreme Court’s much stricter requirements for establishing this reliability. On June 24, 2006, Officer Wheetley of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office in Florida pulled over Clayton Harris for an expired license plate. Upon approaching Harris, Officer Wheetley noted that Harris was extremely nervous, that there was an open beer can in the cup holder, and was breathing rapidly. Wheetley asked for consent to search the Harris’s [...]