NCJ Number
69616
Date Published
1969
Length
28 pages
Annotation
Policemen are warned of the constitutional threat posed by the application of simplistic solutions and excessive force to criminal justice problems; and recent Supreme Court decisions are described which should be implemented in police operations.
Abstract
The persistence of problems associated with police officials' wide discretion in enforcing the law is discussed. Although the needs to upgrade police staffing and training and to speed up the procedural aspects of criminal justice are acknowledged, popular pressures on the police to enforce the law without regard to individual rights must be resisted. Excessive police force stimulates rather than suppresses crime, and threatens constitutional guarantees as well. Police are hampered more by archaic technology than by overemphasis by the courts on individual rights. Police commanders are also urged to keep informed of the law and communicate their policies to their staffs down to the patrolman level. They should also retain a full-time legal advisor experienced in criminal law to make sure that cases are properly prepared. Some recent decisions of the Supreme Court are not being applied in the day-to-day operation of detective divisions throughout the states. These cases concern the conditions for issuing a search warrant and the inadmissibility as evidence of fingerprints taken while a suspect is being illegally detained. Other cases concern limitations upon police search to the person arrested and to the area within his immediate control and the requirement that the Internal Revenue Service give taxpayers under investigation the warnings required by the Miranda case.