Police: How do they decide?

[Gina B]

Maybe officers on board or those more familiar with procedures can answer this. I highly suspect that politics plays into it, but only recently thought much of it.

Why do officers sometimes wait one, two, three years to make an arrest on a charge? It is not uncommon to see that so and so was arrested for DUI, child neglect, DV, etc. and then notice the date was quite a while back.

In one case, someone running for office was taken in on an old DUI charge. It just so happened very close to elections. The department used the explanation that they get very busy, so bigger cases take priority and other ones sit until they have time. That is why they sometimes take years to decideand/or make an arrest on other cases.

Does that sound typical of most departments? Is it really common practice to wait a year or even a few? They even said, when hiring for the prison, to check and make sure you don't have a warrant before applying, because some people applying were getting arrested on warrants. They say that they don't go out and arrest on a lot of warrants, even if they know exactly where the person is, because it isn't priority except in bigger cases so they just wait and if they happen to get called out for something else, then they will arrest the person.

One would think someone would know they had a warrant, but maybe the laws are crazy enough anymore that one really needs to check ahead of time? Yikes! (I get ran for work and sometimes for volunteer gigs, surprised they haven't come got me on suspicion of sheer number of background and fingerprint runs)

So please enlighten me. How common is this? How much does politics generally play into timing? Do police have anything to do with upping the numbers of who gets in trouble for certain crimes, or is that usually the choice of prosecutors/DA's? (ie someone in office who wants to appear tough on gangs - who helps him out?)

 

[righteousdude2]

Hope this helps?

Maybe officers on board or those more familiar with procedures can answer this. I highly suspect that politics plays into it, but only recently thought much of it.

Why do officers sometimes wait one, two, three years to make an arrest on a charge? It is not uncommon to see that so and so was arrested for DUI, child neglect, DV, etc. and then notice the date was quite a while back.

In one case, someone running for office was taken in on an old DUI charge. It just so happened very close to elections. The department used the explanation that they get very busy, so bigger cases take priority and other ones sit until they have time. That is why they sometimes take years to decideand/or make an arrest on other cases.

Does that sound typical of most departments? Is it really common practice to wait a year or even a few? They even said, when hiring for the prison, to check and make sure you don't have a warrant before applying, because some people applying were getting arrested on warrants. They say that they don't go out and arrest on a lot of warrants, even if they know exactly where the person is, because it isn't priority except in bigger cases so they just wait and if they happen to get called out for something else, then they will arrest the person.

One would think someone would know they had a warrant, but maybe the laws are crazy enough anymore that one really needs to check ahead of time? Yikes! (I get ran for work and sometimes for volunteer gigs, surprised they haven't come got me on suspicion of sheer number of background and fingerprint runs)

So please enlighten me. How common is this? How much does politics generally play into timing? Do police have anything to do with upping the numbers of who gets in trouble for certain crimes, or is that usually the choice of prosecutors/DA's? (ie someone in office who wants to appear tough on gangs - who helps him out?)

I was not a law enforcement officer, Gina, but close to it. I was in management for the state DSS, and we licensed day care homes and 24 hour residential homes and facilities.

We worked closely with DOJ, our State Attorney General and local law enforcement. What frustrated me more and more with my job, and in a way I was thankful they forced me to medically retire, was the politics.

We's have everything we needed to shut down a bad facility, and once it went to the Director and legal in Sacramento, we'd pray it would be approved. the onger I worked there, the more politics came into play, and we were forced to place providers on supervised probation, people that only a few years earlier would have had the license yanked. And the reason we were forced to not shut them down had to do with race, or the possiblity of negative publiicity!

We even were told that we were shutting down too many homes. It became frustrating, because the life of the kids or adults in need of supervised care, was being put at risk! There was one home that right after I retired, was cited and called in for a beat down meeting [meant to scare them into compliance] for having so many citations in a two year period that they were at risk of losing their license. One of those citations was not covering their hot tub properly while children were present.

In 2002, a 2 year old snuck off and fell in the hot tub, nd this was one of those that sat above the ground. The child drwoned, and the day care providers were found to bth be at fault, and high on weed.

This home should've been shut down years earlier, but politics came into play, and a child died. When her arents sued the state for 10 million, they got it right away without a hearing, in an atempt to keep the department from any further negative doings with this case!

I was frustrated with letting bad providers remain in biusiness, but Sacramento and politics had the last word. Which is why I always made a file entry noting that in my best opinion the fcility should have their license revocated.

I contributed to a great book that was written about a group home that saw 3 teens and four adults [trying to save them] drown in an ice covered lake. It was a world swide story in 1991, and the book was written to expose the corrupt behavior of our department! This was another facility I felt needed immediate legal action, but unfortunately the action came a little late for 7 individuals!

If you want to know more about the book, let me know. I didn't write it, I was just a contributor to the author who needed my input to write what was missing from the actual files surrounding the case!

Hope this helps! I know I was always disappointed in my agency, because one way or another, politics reared its ugly head!

 

[Gina B]

Thank you. Another little one gone when it could have been prevented- poor baby!
Yes, I would like to give the book a read.