Junior Year - Week Seven

Reverse arm-bar take downs and arm-bar take downs are both techniques that have to be practiced over and over again in order to make sure that when put in the situation the officer can quickly and efficiently take down the suspect. In our Criminal Justice class usually once a week we are reviewing and practicing our take down techniques. This week we had been placed in a different situation than we are used to.  We had to do take downs while the suspect was in a chair. The suspect was in the chair and we had to approach from the front and from the back of them. When approaching from the front you had to change the technique and do a reverse arm-bar take down.  I find it easier to do the reverse and approach from the front of the suspect which sometimes will be very useful if the suspect’s back is placed against an object not allowing the officer to come from behind them.

During one of the days this week we watched videos about the “History Detectives.” The detectives are not certified forensic investigators or crime scene investigators. That’s one of the reasons why this show is different than most of what the average person watches on TV. The history investigators are a group of people with varies different professions. They come together and use the history they know, the people they contact and the object that is given to them to try to uncover the case the citizen asks them to. The most interesting one to me was probably the shot gun that was “used” in the Valentines Day Massacre. The person came to one of the detectives and asked if they could figure out wither or not this shot gun had been used to kill people. The detectives had talked to ballistics investigators and they had tried to match the gun to the casings that had been shot from the gun. In the end they believe it could have been the gun that was used but they would not know for sure without the evidence from the crime scene which no longer existed.

We learned about the ethics of law enforcement officers.  This code had been created to show officers how they should act. It had been taken out of L.A., California in 1954.One of the reasons for it coming out of California would be the fact that the city of LA was ran by Mobsters. This code was to provide direction in questionable situations. We had watched a lot of videos about some officers that don’t have integrity at all. And some officers that do not follow this code of ethics for law enforcement.  The officer that had been stealing donuts out of the donut shop in Wooster, Ohio is an example of someone integrity. He had been fired and charged with a criminal crime of burglary. While the officer  that did not follow the code of ethics had been the one that used force and screamed at the 14 year old who was not following the no skateboard rule. The code of ethics has been modified for the more modern time.

Forensics this week has been kind of interesting this week also. We had a student that didn’t believe fingerprints could be lifted off a piece of notebook paper. So Mrs. Mauser had decided to show us that it is possible.  After that we started working on the process of DNA and taking notes so everyone can understand the process when we have to do it on our own.  Than we started working on the interactive forensics on the computer which was kind of cool because it allowed us to see a crime scene and the learn the proper way to collect evidence.

Junior Year - Week Eight

In the movie “Serpico” Frank Serpico was a NYPD officer that had faced serious corruption within the police department.  The officers within the police department had not followed the code of ethics at all. The other officers had taken money from suspects and they had talked to criminals. They were criminals themselves and Frank wanted to put an end to it. The officers in the movie ended up wanted to kill Frank because he was being the good cop. He ended up getting shot in the face because the officers did not help protect him when he went into a drug bust.

When being an officer most will encounter street fights between people and sometimes they cannot do anything but get someone out of the fight. That’s what we learned at the beginning of this week. We learned how to off balance someone and force them to move out of the area. The reason it works is because of the skeletal system and the way the bones and muscles are arranged. The officer may do this by pushing the hips outward forcing the person to leave the fight and go into the open area. Shoulders will work kind of the same way if the officer wants to continue by escorting the person. The shoulders get pushed up and the officer walks to make the person move out of the fight and with the officer. Usually the officer will have a partner or at least more than one officer with them.  This allows the officer to take people out of a situation without using extreme force.

In forensics Mr. Mauser had placed a dead chicken outside so the class could observe the chicken decomposing. The chicken had began to decompose and magets began to bury its way into it. Each day we had gone outside to look at the chicken and finally by like three weeks later you could just smell the awful smell at the begining of the trail. I had also been one of the people to take two magets off of the dead chicken in order to take samples and try to estimate the time that the chicken had been left outside. Different weather conditions had also changed the amount of time that it took the chicken to decompose. It was kind of cold and rainy for almost the whole time the chicken had been left outside.