2015-09-16 Social Media and Emerging Applications: Investigative Potential and Legal Issues from Frederick Lane The Criminal Justice Institute in Little Rock, Arkansas, invited me to design and present a one-day continuing education course for Arkansas law enforcement officers. The course was certified for 7 hours of CLE credit by the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement…
This case does not involve a cybertrap per se, but it does help to illustrate two related topics: 1) the ongoing profound impact that video is having on both policing and the policing of the police; and 2) as always, the perils of attempted cover-ups. (Actually, this is a case in which a cover-up would…
It was the pool party seen round the world. On June 5, a number of officers from the McKinney Police Department allegedly responded to a “disturbance” or “reports of possible violence” at a pool party at the Craig Ranch North Community Pool in McKinney. It’s not entirely clear who phoned in a report or why,…
As I predicted in my blog post yesterday, the MBTA Transit Police wasted no time canvassing a number of surveillance cameras in and around the area of the State Street station where the well-publicized act of public sex occurred. Thanks in part to the blowee‘s distinctive attire and haircut, they were able to find four…
A new case arising out of White Oak, TX helps to illustrate not only the slippery slope of teacher-student cell phone communications, but the enormous challenges law enforcement officials face in investigating charges of digital misconduct. At the beginning of May, the news broke that an educator in the White Oaks Independent School District had…
During the civil unrest in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 34-Maryland Transportation Authority Police posted a photo of a memorandum it received from the Baltimore Police Department warning of possible targeting of police officers by various gangs: Baltimore, Md., April 27, 2015 — The Baltimore Police Department…
The world’s leading for-profit geneaology company, Ancestry.com, was founded in Provo, Utah in 1983. Thirteen years later, an 18-year-old woman named Angie Dodge was sexually assaulted and murdered in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Nearly two decades after her death, a twisting set of circumstances and rapidly-evolving technology have linked those two events in ways that have…
Reporter Alyssa Gambla (@AlyssaGambla) had an interesting report on Fox 32’s 9 & 10 News in northern Michigan last night. Entitled “Catching a Sex Offender,” Gambla presented a behind-the-scenes look at the resources deployed by the Charlevoix County Sheriff’s Department. One of the people she interviewed was Deputy Bill Church, who reminded people that when…
The Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, which encompasses the states of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, ruled Monday that police do not need to get a search warrant in order to obtain cell phone tower data from cellular providers during a criminal investigation. The 9-2 en banc decision in United States v. Davis overturned an…
A 28-year veteran of the Greenburgh (NY) police department was suspended without pay and relieved of duty earlier this week for posting an apparently racist image to Facebook. Greenburgh Police Chief Christopher McNerney told The Journal News that last week, members of the police force showed him a copy of the image posted by Officer…
