Category: Police

Two Bad Misconceptions About the Law

This is a fun job. It really is.  So fun, in fact that everybody wants to do it.

Maybe that’s a stretch. It seems that everybody wants to comment on it, though.  I’ve pointed this out before, but there aren’t a lot of other jobs where people without any real experience are so open to tell you what the laws should do, what your job should be (and why they could “never do your job”).  Nobody tells the accountant at the Thanksgiving table that they have to defend/attack/comment on something they heard Nancy Grace or Jon Stewart talking about on TV.  Nobody asks the plumber at the party how he could dare install plumbing for “those people.”

Not that I’m complaining. It goes with the turf.  It’s part of the job. Continue reading “Two Bad Misconceptions About the Law”

“We dropped $200k on this armored truck and there hasn’t been a murder since,” said no police department, ever.

For a couple of reasons, I’m what you could call in interested observer of the militarization of our local police forces.  First, it scares the hell out of me see how many of the local departments that can’t consistently make solid DUI arrests have no problem getting their hands on better weapons than most countries around the globe.  Second, and more importantly, I’m interested in anything that affirms my belief that if the police spent less money on deadly toys and more money training themselves to deal with the mentally and developmentally disabled, we’d all be better off.

So, I do things like keep an eye on this list of small towns that the federal government has given armored ambush vehicles to.  Doing that and “interacting” with Nancy Grace on Twitter is practically a full time job.  Somebody has to do it, though.

Today, during a lull in court, I decided to take a look and see if any local Kane County municipalities had soothed this apparent police “need” for war machines. Not surprisingly, google took about .2334 seconds to find one.  A few years back, it looks like the City of Elgin bought this beautiful piece of reinforced steel.   Continue reading ““We dropped $200k on this armored truck and there hasn’t been a murder since,” said no police department, ever.”

Driver sober AND get pulled over.

Nothing warms my jaded, criminal defense attorney heart more than when law enforcement comes up with cute catch phrases.  I’ve always loved it when Illinois State Troopers talk about the “Fatal 4”.  I especially love “click it or ticket” because the Illinois law really only lived up to a “watered down” version of the phrase until the decidedly “big government” Bush administration tied changes in the law to eligibility for federal funding:

SENATE BILL 50: Primary Seat belt Legislation
The new law changes the Illinois Vehicle Code’s seat belt law from a “secondary” violation to a “primary” violation. Formerly, law enforcement officials could not stop a motor vehicle solely on the basis of a violation of the seat belt law. This law removes that exception, enabling law enforcement officials to stop vehicles solely on the basis of seat belt violations. The law provides that a law enforcement officer may not search or inspect a motor vehicle, its contents, the driver or a passenger solely because of a violation of this law. The law took effect immediately upon signing by the governor. Illinois is the first state this year to enact primary safety belt legislation and the 19th state across the country.

No discussion of cute-catch-phrases-tied-to-federal-funding would be complete without “Drive Sober Or Get Pulled Over” though.  As I explained back in December, that propaganda (and, more accurately, the funding behind it), is why you start seeing news of all the “checkpoints” that pop up everywhere around the holidays (I really should go back to see exactly how many St. Charles DUI arrests were made as a result of that weekend… and then check that number against the number of DUI arrests made on a “normal” weekend to see if the the money and resources spent were actually justified).

Nevertheless, I’m very saddened to read today that not everywhere lives by “drive sober or get pulled over.”  In fact, in Wisconsin, it looks like they’ve bought into quite the opposite- drive sober and get pulled over:

Tanya Weyker was hurt so badly, she couldn’t blow into a breath-testing device or perform field sobriety tests. But a Sheriff’s deputy arrested her for drunk driving anyway. And the County hung those charges over her head for nearly a year, even long after blood tests proved she was perfectly sober.

Wait. She was just driving down the road and got a DUI?  Nothing is that simple. Obviously, there’s a catch.  That catch is that you’ve got to let the cop run into you, first (and lie about it, second):

A Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Deputy rolls through a stop sign and causes a violent crash. So why was the victim placed under arrest?
A FOX6 Investigation finds that a deputy’s changing story may have changed one woman’s life forever.
* * *  

Continue reading “Driver sober AND get pulled over.”

You matter less, Part III

I’m hoping that somebody somewhere steps up soon and explains this stuff to me.  Even as an attorney I’ve never understood, and I still don’t, why normal people- people like you and I- are the least important people in criminal law.  Break my stuff? That’s bad. Break the government’s stuff?  That’s really bad, right?  Steal my stuff? That’s bad. Steal from a corporate retailer, though? That’s somehow worse.

On that note, I came across this little gem the other day.  Like the first link above, it talks about damaging property:

[section_alt background_color=”]
(720 ILCS 5/21-1) (from Ch. 38, par. 21-1)

Sec. 21-1. Criminal damage to property.
(a) A person commits criminal damage to property when he or she: (1) knowingly damages any property of another…
* * *
(d) Sentence.
(1) A violation of subsection (a) shall have the following penalties
* * *
(B) A violation of paragraph (1), (2), (3), (5), or (6) is a Class A misdemeanor when the damage to the property does not exceed $300.
C) A violation of paragraph (1), (2), (3),(5), or (6) is a Class 4 felony when the damage to property does not exceed $300 and the damage occurs to property of a school or place of worship or to farm equipment or immovable items of agricultural production, including but not limited to grain elevators, grain bins, and barns or property which memorializes or honors an individual or group of police officers, fire fighters, members of the United States Armed Forces, National Guard, or veterans…
[/section_alt]
For those arm-chair attorneys not scoring at home, I went ahead and highlighted the nonsense part: the part where if somebody breaks your stuff it’s a misdemeanor.  Unless your stuff memorializes a cop or group of cops.  Then it’s a felony.

Continue reading “You matter less, Part III”

Mental Illness v. Public Safety.

I don’t know how I initially missed this story, but it’s very sad.  Apparently a suicidal man in Batavia township managed to find himself on top of a house with a rifle.  Obviously the police were called.  It sounds like there may have even been a shot fired before they arrived:

No charges in officer-related shooting death at Batavia house

By Erika Wurst ewurst@stmedianetwork.com March 4, 2014 1:20PMA Batavia man died at his house at 3S303 Elfstrom Trail in September after being shot by a Kane County Sheriff’s Department sergeant. | Erika Wurst~Sun-Times Media
Updated: March 5, 2014 7:51PM
The Illinois State Police and the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office have concluded their investigation into the officer-related shooting death of a Batavia man last July.
The investigation concluded that the 20-year veteran Kane County deputy was justified in using deadly force when he shot 52-year-old Luke Bulzak to death at his home on July 8, 2013, Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said Tuesday.
Sheriff’s deputies responded to 3S303 Elfstrom Trail in unincorporated Batavia Township at 11:40 a.m. that day after receiving a call about a suicidal male. Deputies were told that the man may have fired a gun.
When they arrived, deputies found Bulzak on the roof of his home with a rifle.
Sheriff’s deputies said they attempted to get Bulzak to drop his weapon, but he refused. Deputies said the man pointed the rifle toward them, and a sheriff’s sergeant shot at him…

The intersection of mental illness and “policing” is what you could call an area of extreme interest for me.  Sadly, too often people afflicted with any sort of condition affecting their normal well-being, aren’t handled in the best way by the police.  Especially when they end up on roof tops.

I’m not implying that the Kane County Sheriff’s officer who was called to this situation did anything improper.  Not that I know a whole lot about about the facts of this case, but when police are called to a man on a roof with a rifle (who may have already fired one shot) there’s going to be a tense situation that can really only end a couple of ways.  That is, of course, assuming the paper’s version of facts is true (and came from an objective source… which isn’t always the case).

What I am wondering, though, is how this might have turned out differently if your average on-the-streets patrol officer got as much training for dealing with the mentally ill as he does in firearms training, DUI detection, or any of the other matters that public has little problem funding with their tax dollars.  I’m betting that as soon as the call came in for this man, the S.W.A.T. team was getting ready to roll, and all sorts of police “resources” were being put into play. I’m betting that there was even a crisis counselor or negotiator headed towards the scene, too.  I’m not sure why they need to be called in, though.

Why not put all of these initial responders- the men and women out there in the patrol cars who are, so often, the very first people to arrive through more complete training?  Shouldn’t they all know the best way to deal with a man with Down’s Syndrome who won’t leave a movie theater, or a senile old man who doesn’t know what planet he’s on? Better yet, why not try to attract people who already have the right background into the profession?  Call it a hunch, but I’m guessing the average social worker or psychologist might be ok at dealing with people on a daily basis.

That won’t happen, though.  For whatever reason, the thinking is that police need to be modern-day warriors.  They need to be trained in the para-military arts… because it’s “them against us”.  Every one of them needs to be trained for the “worst case scenario” even if they’re in Batavia, or Elburn or Mayberry and there are already plenty of cops trained for the worst case scenario around.

I feel bad for the cop who got called to this scene and killed this man– it had to be scary as hell. I also feel bad for the man on the roof. Perhaps, someday, the general public will see the value in changing the way many of the police are trained, and we won’t have to pretend that public safety and mental illness are at odds.