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The evolution of law enforcement training
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Vehiclular Homicide-Credit Networknews.com.au
Training and a survival mindset are the arsenal of law enforcement today. Training is often developed out of tragedy. It helps us to avoid the same mistakes of the past, and keeps liability at bay. As a career law enforcement investigator and trainer, I try to make it a point to get the public to understand the mechanics of how we do things. Our training really boils down to two things; safety and liability. This job has very real consequences for not conducting yourself the way you were trained. It can lead to an officer losing cases, being fired, jail, injury and death to themselves or their partners.
Lets look at a fairly recent example of how a specific incident can affect changes in training in the way law enforcement handles and collects evidence now. This may also help the lay person understand why an officer functions the way they do. Let's beat a dead horse and go back to June 12th, 1994 to Brentwood, California. A double murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman occurred. After some preliminary work by detectives, that are still highly respected in the field of homicide investigations, they quickly came to the conclusion that O.J. Simpson may have played a role somehow. They went and found bloody socks, blood on his Bronco, a glove, and various other pieces of evidence that put Mr. Simpson squarely in the suspect cross hairs. While this seemed to be an open and shut case, the prosecution did raise some interesting questions about how the evidence was handled despite the misdirection during trial of ill fitting gloves, and the Mark Furhman issue.
For years we thought we had the handling of evidence down to a pretty good science. But with expertise, sometimes complacency follows. This case was no exception. For most of us, it looked like LAPD did exactly what they were supposed to do when collecting and handling evidence. Now the job of a defense attorney is to create reasonable doubt. They call everything into question to try and make an officer look incompetent. The "Dream Team" was very adept at this. They cast doubt on how blood evidence was handled, they raised the question of evidence being planted by a rogue cop bent on framing Mr. Simpson for the murder.
In this case there were opportunities for cross contamination. A blanket that was used from inside the house of Nicole to cover her body could have spread hair and fibers, Mark Furhman said some stupid things which let doubt in on the case as to whether he had a motivation to frame Mr. Simpson. Some of the blood evidence collected probably should have been done so with more care. As we saw, this led to O.J. Simpson being acquitted for murder, but it also sent many major law enforcement agencies into a scramble to revamp how all scenes are handled and how evidence is collected.
Now there is a tight lock down on crime scenes. Only those investigating and collecting evidence are allowed in and other officers not involved are kept out to keep outside tainting or cross contamination at a minimum. Items collected are done so meticulously and strictly by the book so as to minimize the opportunity for the defense to call procedure into question. While it may seem that this was a little black mark on the LAPD, there are the majority of us in this profession that know that the correct person stood trial. The evidence other than what was called into question, was good. The detectives did their jobs, but so did the defense. High profile cases such as these will continue to keep law enforcement evolving and keeping their training up to date.
Do you have a comment? Please write and let me know.
If you want to read more on the evidence and procedures that were in place that day, check out www.usatoday.com/news/index/nns0.htm
