January 2015 - Lee Lofland

Friday’s Heroes: Remembering The Fallen

Motor Officer Michael Kern, 43

Olathe Kansas Police Department

January 20, 2015 – Motor Officer Michael Kern suffered a fatal heart attack while preparing to escort President Obama’s motorcade. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, and son.

Sergeant Charles Kerry Mitchum, 53

Loxley Alabama Police Department

January 26, 2015 – Sergeant Charles Kerry Mitchum was killed in a vehicle crash when his patrol car left the roadway and struck a tree.

Patrolman Roger O’Dell, 47

Town Creek Alabama Police Department

January 28, 2015 – Patrolman Roger O’Dell suffered a fatal heart attack after arresting two juveniles who’d escaped from a detention facility. After placing the two inside his patrol car Patrolman O’Dell collapsed. One of the juveniles managed to crawl through the opening in the partition and used the police radio to call for help.

Patrolman O’Dell is survived by his wife and four children.

January 30, 2015/by Lee Lofland

Police News

Cop Stuff: The Weekly Top Ten List

1. A law enforcement officer dies in the line of duty every 53 hours.

2. Not all police officers have access to ballistic vests. Why don’t they? Sadly, this due to to a lack of funding in their areas.

3. Deputy Sheriffs in Wayne County, Mi. earn $28,284 annually. That’s less than the salaries earned by county tree trimmers and maintenance workers. Some deputies in the area have opted to leave police work in favor of careers at Home Depot or Lowes where the earning potential is greater.

4. Isle of Wight County Virginia Sheriff’s Deputies now wear body cameras in response to the public’s desire that they do so. However, the county schools now want school resource officers to announce that their recorders are on prior to becoming involved in an incident. School officials are also demanding that they have immediate access to the recordings upon request, even if the recording is of a criminal act. What happens, for example, in the case of a school shooting? Must the officers first announce to everyone involved that they are recording the incident before beginning the steps needed to save lives?

5. Remember the infamous typo on the Pinellas County Florida Sheriff’s Office new rug, the one that should’ve read “In God We Trust?” Instead of the desired phrase the company mistakenly printed “In Dog We Trust.” Well, there’s now a hot bidding war going on by people hoping to purchase the rug. So far the highest bid is more than $9,000. For. A. Rug.

6. A Riverside, Ca. police K-9 named Sultan was fatally shot by a fleeing felon the dog was pursuing. A Texas police K-9 named Pepper was also shot and killed by a fleeing felon.

7. New copper-thread technology added to ballistic vest carriers eliminates heat-related issues and odor-causing bacteria and fungus troubles. Spouses and in-car partners will definitely appreciate this new technology. No more P.U. or rashes!

8. A Pennsylvania man applying for a job as a trooper was arrested during the polygraph portion of his interview after he stated he’d had sex with an underage girl. After interviewing the now adult woman, the man was charged with additional counts. He was not hired.

9. A Washington man was rudely awakened from a deep sleep when a man being pursued by police rushed into his home and climbed into bed with him. The homeowner told police he wasn’t sure if it was the intruder or the police crashing inside that actually awakened him.

10. ShotSpotter, the gunfire detection system, is now deployed in over 90 U.S. cities. Savannah, Ga. is one of the latest cities to make use of the technology and, according to reliable sources, it is working extremely well. The system displays the locations of gunfire as it happens, allowing officers to respond even before a call by citizens is made. This greatly decreases response time which could potentially save lives and to potentially apprehend criminals before they’re able to flee the shooting scene.

January 29, 2015/by Lee Lofland

Police Procedure

WAZE: A Danger To Police Officers, And To You?

WAZE is a navigational app designed by an Israeli start-up that was later acquired by Google. The WAZE app is a bit different than traditional navigation devices in that it incorporates real-time data entered by its users, compiling information based on their current travels.

For example, a WAZE subscriber is driving along a freeway and sees a traffic crash. He/she then quickly enters the information into the app and presto, the crash appears on the WAZE map. Likewise, users enter information about traffic jams, cheap gas, traffic hazards (potholes, animals in the roadway, etc.), red light cameras. WAZE even features the standard turn-by-turn voice navigation.

The concern for law enforcement is that the interactive map also shows specific locations for police officers, and not just those officers who’re running radar. In fact, a quick check just a minute ago showed a police officer at the KFC in Napa, Ca., an officer running radar on I-80 in Vacaville, Ca., and another at the scene of a crash in Green Valley. FYI – Commuters heading to Sonoma should be mindful of their speed this morning. I’m just saying.

Here’s a screenshot of Napa, Ca. Notice the police officer icon near the word Napa. The triangular icons are road hazards. The one directly below the KFC marker indicates a pothole (a touch of an icon provides descriptions and exact locations). Other more personalized icons are individual WAZE users. A touch of those reveals their locations and vehicle speed.

The app could be quite helpful in some ways—avoiding traffic backups, etc. However, the concern among the law enforcement community is that the app has the capability of pinpointing the location of every single officer in every single community, and criminals who wish to carry out an assault on an officer now has an easy guide that could help them with their plot. In addition, it’s extremely helpful to a crook who wants to commit a crime because he now has access to the locations of the police within his town.

For the purpose of officer and citizen safety, law enforcement officials have requested meetings with Google officials to discuss the removal of officer locations from the interactive app. Whether or not they do…well, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

What do you think? Should the locations of police officers be removed from the app? Consider the number of ambush attacks on officers that have already occurred in recent months and years. Do the murders of those officers sway your opinion at all? Do you want criminals knowing that the nearest police officer to your street is miles away at the moment?

*By the way, drivers using the WAZE app while in motion are extremely distracted from the real task at hand…concentrating on their driving.

January 28, 2015/by Lee Lofland

Notes On Forensic Medicine

Back By Popular Demand – Jonathan Hayes: Notes On Forensic Medicine…Smell

Jonathan Hayes (www.jonathanhayes.com) is a senior forensic pathologist in the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, and author of PRECIOUS BLOOD (Harper 2007) and A HARD DEATH (Harper, 2009).

Notes on Forensic Medicine: Smell

by Jonathan Hayes MD.

My sense of smell is pretty acute, an extremely useful attribute in my food writing career but a double-edged sword in my career as a forensic pathologist. For example, it’s pretty easy for me to tell when a particular decedent has been drinking heavily, but I will admit that I had a pretty rough time with decomposition when I began in the business.

I should be more specific in my terms: decomposition is the natural breakdown of tissues after death. We divide decomposition into putrefaction (damp rot under the influence of bacteria), mummification (where the body shrinks as it dessicates in a dry environment) and adipocere formation (typically occurring in cool, damp places, like waterlogged coffins or bodies recovered from a lake, adipocere is a condition in which the body fat is chemically converted into a soapy material sometimes called “grave wax” – it’s an odd process, because the body decays, yet its form is preserved, almost “cast” in odd, cheesy-looking material.)

In the early stages after death, cellular metabolism slows as the internal systems begin to break down. Lack of oxygen in the tissues triggers an explosive growth of bacteria, which feed on the body’s proteins, carbohydrates and fats, producing gases that cause the body to smell and to swell. In 1885, the German physician Ludwig Brieger identified two nitrogenous compounds – putrescine and cadaverine – as the chemical basis of the smell of putrefaction; there are, in fact, a host of volatile compounds involved, including substances related to butyric acid. While together these chemicals may be characteristic of putrefaction, they’re encountered in other places, giving odor variously to bodily fluids, rancid butter, bad breath and stinky cheeses.

A body may release gases within hours after death, even without visible signs of decay. In cities, bodies are often found when a “neighbor complains of a foul odor”, a history so common it’s occasionally shortened to “NCFO”. More poetically, I’ve heard the smell of decomposition referred to as “the stench of loneliness”; those who have partners or family are usually discovered before their bodies rot.

It was in Boston that I encountered my first putrefied body. A resident in General Pathology at Boston University Medical Center, I spent a lot of time at forensic autopsies – the medical examiner’s office autopsy room was on the top floor of our building. My first winter there (thanks to indoor heating, bodies decompose all year round in temperate zones, too; the extreme dry heat means that we tend to see more mummification in winter than in summer), I wandered up to the autopsy room and opened the door to find them working on a very putrefied body.

A well-run mortuary doesn’t really smell; it is washed frequently and properly ventilated, and most bodies examined are fresh. But I’d never smelled anything like that putrefied body; it was an overwhelming odor, dense, wet, vile, almost shockingly sweet, like the vomit of a drunk; it seemed to coat the skin and settle into clothes. I felt nauseated, and stepped back outside the room, closed the door behind me and leaned against the wall, retching.

When I felt better, I went back into the autopsy room. The stench grew stronger as I approached the body and watched; a couple minutes later, I had to go back out and retch again. Then I went back in. I’m embarrassed to admit it took me a couple of years to get used to it. This makes me something of a lightweight: in NYC, each month we teach forensic pathology to large numbers of junior doctors, medical students, paramedics and EMT’s, and I’ve only rarely seen anyone have to leave the room.

The response to the odor, then, is very subjective; most people are surprised by their lack of an intense reaction the first time they see an autopsy. The context is important, of course – in an autopsy room, the surroundings are so clinical, and everyone is so matter-of-fact about the work that there isn’t much emotional space to abreact – the opening sequence of the TV show Quincy, where the cops are dropping like flies, is wholly fictitious.

My own intense response to the smell of putrefaction was fascinating to me. I’d never encountered it before; the closest I’d come was the smell of rotting grass in a compost pile back in my days on a country club grounds crew while I was in medical school. But humans are wired to find the smell repulsive for biological reasons – we know immediately when meat has gone bad, and we do not eat it. (An interesting contrast: I learned on a wildlife documentary that hyenas thrive on rotten carrion. Apparently, the digestive tract of the hyena is so robust that it can happily consume anthrax-infected flesh without problem – a superb evolutionary advantage, because that limits competition for their food. Indeed, the hyenas in the film weren’t just wolfing down the rotting flesh, they were rubbing themselves on it, rolling in it like cats with catnip.)

Occasionally I’ve heard medical examiners joke that the smell of decomposition is “the smell of job security”. With time, it’s got that I don’t mind the smell any more – I may still wince a little when I first encounter the body, particularly when it’s an exhumation, where the body has been sealed tight with its gases for years, decades even. But after the first couple of minutes, I barely notice the smell – the overwhelmed nose shuts down quickly. So, yes, I’m better about it now. But still a very long way from the hyena’s embrace of decay…

* * *

The huge Indonesian corpse flower (titan arum) blooms once every six years, and attracts insects by releasing chemicals including putrescine and cadaverine. It’s a pretty spectacular trick: not only does the broad petal that wraps the pollen-bearing spadix have the ruddy maroon color of rotting flesh, the plant generates temperatures equivalent to the temperature of the human body, volatilizing its scent to attract even more insects.

*This is a repeat article brought back in response to an overwhelming number of requests.

January 27, 2015/by Lee Lofland

Courts

Judge Bill Hopkins: When Bail, Bond, and Divorce Make Me Growl

As a sitting judge on a general trial court for twenty years, I ran across many things that made me wonder if anyone knew anything about the law. There is, of course, no secret that lawyers and their co-conspirators in all levels of government work daily and diligently to make the law incomprehensible. (CPAs are also guilty, but that’s another blog post.) So if we lawyers make things difficult, we shouldn’t complain when people don’t understand it, right? Wrong.

Here are but three of many things that make me growl.

(1) “A divorce (or dissolution of marriage or whatever your state calls it) is not a lawsuit.”

This one baffles me. Once I was speaking to a non-lawyer and I said, “John sued Mary for divorce.” The fellow answered, “No, he didn’t sue her. He filed a divorce. That’s different.”

If you are married and you do not want to be married, the only legal way I know of to accomplish that is to file a lawsuit asking the court to unhitch you. You must file a petition (or complaint or whatever your state calls it) and the court that hears divorce cases. That makes you the plaintiff (or petitioner or whatever your state calls it). The other party to the lawsuit (your soon to be ex-spouse) is called the defendant (or respondent or whatever your state calls it).

In some states, if you’ve agreed on everything, you can file a notice of settlement and some judge will sign a judgment, declaring you and your sweetie to no longer be married.

If you can’t agree, there could be a knock-down, drag-out courtroom battle that concerns everything from child custody to who gets the matched salt-and-pepper shakers from Hawaii.

That, my friends, is a real lawsuit, the same as if it was Standard Oil and the EPA.

(Note: I heard a divorce case where two judges were getting a divorce. They couldn’t agree on the disposition of a manure spreader. [Insert manure spreader joke here.] I decided it for them and they haven’t complained since.)

(2) “If you have a will, you don’t need to go through probate court.”

As far as I know, there is no such thing as an automatic will anywhere in any state or territory of the United States. (Correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to see how that works! And, keep reading.)

When you die, there are two ways your stuff (if you have any stuff leftover from paying taxes all your life) is split one of two ways: You have a will or the government decides where your stuff goes.

This one I shouldn’t get too upset about because of the growing prevalence of trusts and other non-probate transfers of property. Such things keep you away from the probate division of the court to some degree or the other (depending on your state).

Free legal advice: Go to a competent—meaning you’ve done your research on the person—estate planning lawyer. Get a financial power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney, a will, a trust, and advice on how transfer/pay on death works in your state. This can save you a lot of money and heartache. If you don’t care where your stuff goes and you don’t care if you have heartache and grief, then don’t do anything or use forms you found on the Internet.

And there’s no “reading of the will” except on soap operas. In fact, after you make out all your estate-planning documents, you should give photocopies to your potential heirs—you don’t have heirs until you die—and make sure they know how to get to your safe place after you pass. Protect your valuable documents from fire, flood, wind, earthquake, and critters (four- and two-legged).

(3) “Bail and bond mean the same thing.”

BAIL is generally how much the judge wants before you get out of jail and BOND is generally how the bail is made. Don’t ever expect journalists to get this right. And judges and lawyers often confuse it also.

The best way to knock this one flat is to give you three scenarios.

ONE: Danny Defendant has been arrested for a felony and the judge says, “You’ve always shown up in the past when you’ve been arrested so I’ll let you out on your own recognizance and we’ll take your word for it that you’ll be back for your trial.” This is a recognizance bond (or signature bond or whatever your state calls it).

TWO: Danny Defendant has been arrested for a felony and the judge says, “$10,000 cash only bail.” Danny’s decrepit grandmother who barely scrapes by on Social Security, sells her great-grandmother’s diamond ring and forks over $10,000 in cash to the court and gets a receipt made in Danny Defendant’s name. When he shows up, she gets the dough back. If he doesn’t show up, the government keeps the money. This is cash bond (or whatever your state calls it).

THREE: Danny Defendant has been arrested for a felony and the judge says, “$10,000 bail.” Chico leaves the Little League game he’s sponsoring and hustles down to the jail. Chico sells Danny a bail bond for $1000 which is paid for by Danny’s decrepit grandmother who gets a receipt made out in Danny’s name. If Danny shows up when the court tells him to, then the bond is cancelled. If Danny does not show up when the court tells him to, the bond is forfeited and Chico sues the decrepit Grandma for all she’s worth since Danny is gone. This is a bail bond (or whatever your state calls it).

* * *

After two decades on the bench, Bill Hopkins captures readers with his Judge Rosswell Carew murder mysteries. How does a judge manage to wrangle his way into investigating so many crimes? And can he do it without crossing into the dark side himself? Find out by reading the complete series beginning with Courting Murder, followed by River Mourn and Bloody Earth.

Bill Hopkins is retired after beginning his legal career in 1971 and serving as a private attorney, prosecuting attorney, an administrative law judge, and a trial court judge, all in Missouri. His poems, short stories, and non-fiction have appeared in many different publications. He’s had several short plays produced. A book of collected poetry, Moving Into Forever, is available on Amazon. Bill is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Dramatists Guild, Horror Writers Association, Missouri Writers Guild, Romance Writers of America, and Sisters In Crime. Bill is also a photographer who has sold work in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He and his wife, Sharon (also a published writer), live in Marble Hill, Missouri, with their dogs and cats. Besides writing, Bill and Sharon are involved in collecting and restoring Camaros.

Please take a moment to visit Judge Bill Hopkins at www.judgebillhopkins.com

January 26, 2015/by Lee Lofland

Police Procedure

Legal Terminology