Today we examined the Mission Valley ROP Law Enforcement Training Vehicle. I showed you how to conduct a vehicle inspection as well as how to position the vehicle for a traffic stop.

 

When we returned to class I handed out permission slips for the Incident Command System / Forensic Challenge on the 13 andf 28th of May. Participation will act as a practical examination of what you have learned to date. Non-participation will result in your being given a written examination.

Today, 27 Feb 12 you had the opportunity to take a short field trip to Mission Valley ROP to hear a talk on the ADministration of Justice topic Human Trafficking. This is a problem that can be found in communities throughout California. What it amounts to is keeping people for sexual servitude and forced labor.  Children are often the victims. Not everyone attended and that is fine. This is a tough topic and also many of you had conflicting schedules. For those of you who attended and are interested / concerned about this problem there are career fields that you might pursue; counseling, teaching, law enforcement, probation, prosecutors, advocates, and psychology are a few that come to mind.

 

Additionally there are volunteer groups that reach out to victims of abuse that you may consider joining after you are set on whatever life career path you choose.

 

Thank you for attending. 

The 10 code was handed out to each student today with the admonishment that they will see questions in the warm up component of each day's class as well as quizzes and tests so they should read it and use it as much as possible in class.

 

Self defense starts with proper approach to people, and taking up an appropriate stance at an appropriate distance. This does not mean actting like a wrestler or Bruce Lee, it means stopping at a distance where you can see the person you are talking to from the top of their head  to their feet. It means making sure that you are not within arm's reach plus a held club such as a beer bottle. It means standing with you strong leg back. This should mean that you are protecting your holster and gun by having it further away from the suspect and by placing your body between them and the weapon. You should keep your legs about shoulder width apart and your body sideways to them, like you were taking a step. Your knees should not be locked but rather bent slightly so that you can move in any direction.

 

If there are multiple people being detained you should not allow them to triangulate or surround you. You should keep the in front of you and slightly to one side or the other. If you have a cover officer he, or she, should stand in the same manner that you do but further back from the suspects. The job of the cover officer is to watch the suspects and the surrounding area for threats. The cover officer does not conduct the interview, does not conduct the searches. The cover officer watches.

 

Some of the students in our class have taken boxing, wrestling, kick boxing and other martial arts so we formed a panel and asked about different approaches to operating in a safe manner and things to watch for on the part of the person you are talking too. Although the panel was made up of students I was pleased to discover that most of what they said was carefully thought out and reasonable. I corrected the comments that were not and explained why.

 

The bottom line is, if something is too dangerous you should back away, get assistance, form a plan, and then retackle it.

 

Never turn your back on a suspect.

Because the class enjoyed the mock colonial trial that we conducted, we have decided to use a mock trial to focus the next few segments of this course. We will look at the Administration of Justice process as a whole, the roles of the investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury, etc. and then choose students who will focus on specific roles to play their part in the trial. First we need an issue, a crime, that captures the imagination of the class as a whole. It is also hoped that amendments in the bill of rights will play a part.

 

I then shared the story of Kirsty Theologo who recently passed away due to injuries sustained in what was described as a ritual. What rights were involved? The class decided that it was the 1st and 9th amendments. The 1st would be freedom of religion. The 9th would be the recognition that rights exist beyond the basic ones quoted in the other amendments. In this case it was the right to life. We then discussed what evidence we would look for at the crime scene that would solve the issue of who was responsible for the attack.

 

Using that as an example I asked the students to choose a crime that would be the focus of the trial.

 

The crimes suggested by the students were:

 

Arson   Child Abuse,   Human trafficking   corporate crime  ,   riots,   rape, murder, grand theft auto, drugs, extortion.

 

At this point the bell rang so we will have to vote on this on Monday.

 

 

Today we covered the 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10th amendments. We also broke up into teams and examined a logic problem called "A Deadly Picnic." The point was to use the supplied clues to narrow a list of 6 suspects down to one, identify that suspect and then explain what supported your contention that this is the responsible person. After that we revisited the crime scene to determine what physical evidence we would look for to confirm or refrute our contention that this was the responsible person, how the evidence would be analyzed and what results we would be looking for.  I was very impressed with the thoroughness of your responses especially as this was the first logic problem that you tackled.

Today I handed out the Sexual Harassment / Discrimination Policy Acknowledgement forms for students to read, and sign. There is also a place for their parents to acknowledge that they are aware that MVROP has a policy against such behavior that could result in a student being removed from the program if necessary.

 

Next we discussed a question that I gave the class at the close of our session on Wednesday. An article that we read said that an Israeli speaker at a college was shouted down by protesters who were subsequently arrested. The question was whose right to speak un the Bill of Rights was violated? The speaker, the protesters or both? I believe that we agreed as a class that all of the people involved have the right to freedom of speech. I believe that we agreed that shouting down the speaker was rude. As far as whose rights were violated an argument could be made for all three answers, however, the  thrust of the Bill of Rights is to prevent these rights from being abused by the government. This is a lead in to the next section of our curriculum which is studying civil rights.

 

I next read excerpts from an article/Special Report that was put out by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics entitled Characteristics of Suspect Human Trafficking Incidents, 2008 - 2010. According to the article there were 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking investigated between these dates in the United States. 30% of the investigations demonstrated that human trafficking was taking place. This led to 144 known arrests. We then discussed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 that says that human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for one of three purposes: Labor through the use of force, fraud or coerciion for the purposes of subjection to involuntary servitude, debt bondage or slavery, a comercial sex act through the use of force, fraud, or coercion or any commercial sex act if the person is under 18 years of age.

 

We discussed under what circumstances these incidents might occur and how we could do something about it by reporting when we see something suspicious and by staying aware of issues and bringing them out into the open. I told them of an investigation of case involving involuntary labor and false imprisonment that I was aware of having occurred in Oakland buy a drug dealer.

 

This is an issue of fundamental human rights and one of the areas of investigations that a person could go into as a career. It also served as an example of the use of math and statistics in the Administration of Justice and led into a brief explanation of Crime Analysis techniques.

 

On Monday we will start examining the Bill of Rights.

 

 

 

 

Friday and Monday we spent talking about the history of law. You have been given handouts that outline some of the facts and events that routinely come up in a law enforcement class. Today you received an assignment that is due Friday. You will have time in class to work on it. First you are to write down the definition of law that we discussed in class. Second you are to take a current event and relate it back to an event or concept that we either discussed in the history of law or that you found in the handout.

 

For example, today we discussed the recent hurricane on the East Coast, compared the emergency plans and responses that were used this time with those that were attempted in Hurricane Katrina and then discussed how the need for formalized rules and procedures had to be in writing for ready reference and how that seemed to be a reflection of the concept of writing down laws as demonstrated in the Code of Hammurabi and the 12 Tables of Rome.

Topic Course: Introduction of Students.

Skills: Communication and Interviewing.

Warmup Questions: None.

 

Each student interviewed another student and then introduced them to the class.

   When speaking in public consider the following:

You did a good job today especially as this is the first time.

 

 

The control discussion will take place tomorrow.

First day of class. We discussed who ROP classes work, the class syllabus, and my background in the subject that I teach.

 

We completed bubble sheets to register with MVROP.

 

I posed the question could a person with absolute authority control a class or a single person? The class answer was yes. I asked each student to consider the question and the issues so thatthey could participate in a class discussion on this topic tomorrow.

 

I read a press release from the Oakland Police Department regarding a crime, a pursuit and an arrest. I asked the students to identify issues involved and to tell me what questions were raised by the press release. Some of the questions I received were how could a pursuit take place when the suspect vehicle had a flat tire.  Was the search of the car legal? Was the interrogation and subsequent confession legal?

 

I asked the s tudent what they wanted to learn in the class. Two responses were civil rights and corruption.