March 18, 2009
From TheKCGuy
As I mentioned last week, I've been attending the Prairie Village Citizen Police Academy over the last few weeks. The most recent class included a talk on "crimes in progress" and a visit from the "special investigations unit".
The discussion on how the Prairie Village police respond to crimes in progress was pretty interesting to me, especially since I'm a bit of a police radio scanner junkie. I often hear them discussing current crimes in progress and being dispatched to them. Officer Stech covered what types of calls require multiple units to respond, and which ones require them to respond at full speed. He also touched a bit on how they deal with some of the more delicate situations they find themselves in.
An example that sticks out in my mind is how they respond to a bank alarm. While law enforcement would ordinarily try to prevent a suspect from becoming mobile, such as in a car or even on the run on foot, that apparently is not the worst case scenerio, especially when it comes to bank robberies. More than preventing a chase, the police would rather prevent a hostage situation inside the bank. So, when responding to a bank alarm, they will often park a little bit away instead of driving right up to the front door. If it appears that customers are coming and going as usual, and there appears to be nothing wrong with the bank, then they'll drive up and speak with the manager to confirm that it's a false alarm. If, though, it seems that there is actually a robbery in progress, this will help them allow the perpetrator to leave the bank where he can more safely be taken into custody. This was a bit surprising to me, but is pretty logical after a few moments of thinking about it. Since any bank robber worth his salt would surely think about it for a few minutes, if not do some actual research, I'm pretty sure I'm not giving away any tricks of the trade to would-be robbers.
The talk from the special investigations unit was particularly interesting. For the most part, these are undercover officers who buy drugs. It sounds like a pretty fun job, but is another one that would cause me to have to wash my underwear rather often. When someone is arrested who has information on where to buy drugs, and is willing to snitch on that person in exchange for lighter sentencing or even cash, these guys take advantage of that information. They use their new informant to buy drugs from someone. This lets them get enough information for a search warrant or arrest warrant and head back later to collect a few bad guys. They also apparently occasionally peruse through the "adult services" ads in the pitch or craigslist and find prostitutes to call up and try to bust. It all sounds straightforward enough, but their stories kept us entertained for over two hours, and we were hoping for more.
Next week is DUI and traffic enforcement. I'm sure that some of the stories that come out of that will be just as entertaining, so be sure to come back for that installment.
