Info & Updates by President Bob Kero

                                            Info and Updates

                                                         By

                                                   Bob Kero

 

            Now that we have been working with the current order on TRRs a few things have come up that could negatively impact lieutenants.  Without getting into any particular situation here are some of the issues that we have seen as potential problems for our members.

            When watching videos of incidents requiring TRRs, please be careful when using the term “All videos have been reviewed.”  There have been some instances where more videos were found later in the investigation that showed the incident in question.  A better way to word it might be something along the following lines: “All videos known to be available at this time have been reviewed.”  This shows that you did your due diligence with all the information available to you at the time of the report yet explains why you didn’t view a video that is found at some future time.

            Some of the incidents that we encounter have multiple officers on the scene which means watching several videos.  Many times the videos are lengthy with some of the time being the officer just driving to the scene.  At times like these we may scan past that part and begin watching when we get to the actual incident under investigation.  When you do this, make sure that you annotate the times watched in your summary.  An example of this would be; R/Lt. viewed the video of Officer Smith #12345 from the 3:57 mark to the 12:23 mark.  The video of Officer Johnson #4715 was viewed from the 4:12 mark until the 14:41 mark.   By doing this you are indicating that made your best effort to view the pertinent parts of the videos yet you can explain why you didn’t see something in some other part of the video should that need arise at a later time.

            We just want to remind everyone that the Force Review Unit is reviewing TRRs and are tasked with taking action when deficiencies are noted in our reports.  As we do more of these and become more familiar with them issues such as these should decline, but in the meantime we just hope that we can keep our membership from any unnecessary aggravation.

            We are also seeing another trend that is causing some angst to our members.  A couple of lieutenants have been investigated and asked to justify approving an arrest report in which probable cause was not fully substantiated.  Our officers function at various skill levels and consequently not all reports are written in the most eloquent manner.  Although our experience allows us to understand what some less than perfect reports are trying to get across not all of these reports can hold up to further review.  We must be careful as some of these arrests are being scrutinized for other reasons and this issue crops up.  We just want to remind everyone that there needs to be probable cause articulated for every charge on the arrest report.  On some occasions our officers will get wordy yet miss some of the important aspects such as fully covering probable cause.  Please make sure that you go over these reports to ensure that they meet the needed criteria.  Hopefully we can keep our officers, as well as ourselves, from having a problem down the road.

            If we get any information down the road on issues of concern to the lieutenants we will put something on our website letting you know of the latest changes in the fine points of our job.

In the meantime stay safe and take care of the troops.

Bob

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