LINE OF DUTY DEATH NOTIFICATIONS, ESCAPING YOUR IDENTITY, AND BANK ROBBERIES - 023
TRANSCRIPT:
This week on The Writer's Detective Bureau, line of duty death notifications, escaping your identity, and bank robberies. I'm Adam Richardson, and this is The Writer's Detective Bureau.
Happy New Year. This is episode number 23 of The Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction.
If you have your own author business consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon.
Please join me in thanking the patrons that make this podcast possible, Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, and Robin Lyons, by visiting the links to their author websites in the show notes by going to writersdetective.com/23.
Happy New Year. This is episode number 23 of The Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction.
If you have your own author business consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro-payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more, visit writersdetective.com/patreon.
Please join me in thanking the patrons that make this podcast possible, Joan Raymond, Guy Alton, Natasha Bajema, Natalie Barelli, Joe Trent, Siobhan Pope, Leah Cutter, Ryan Kinmil, Richard Phillips, and Robin Lyons, by visiting the links to their author websites in the show notes by going to writersdetective.com/23.
Speaking of our awesome Patreon patrons, my latest patron, Robin Lyons, submitted what is our first question for 2019. You can find Robin's work at robinlyons.com. That's Lyons spelled, L-Y-O-N-S.
Robin writes, "Hi, Adam. I've been listening since episode 14. Love your show and the information you provide is amazing. Thank you." Thank you, Robin. I appreciate that. "I hope I'm not asking a question that you've already addressed. I'll binge listen to episodes one through 13 soon. I'm curious about the procedure of notifying a wife when her husband, an officer, is killed in the line of duty. A super sad topic. I'm sorry. Often there is a community funeral with color guard and officers from other agencies in attendance. Is that standard? Also, I know police departments are like families, so I assume there's a lot of follow-up and assistance provided to the widow and children. Can you talk a little about the follow-up? Again, I apologize for the sad topic. Thank you for your service to the community."
Thank you for your question, Robin. Yes, the color guard and community funeral would be pretty standard for an officer killed in the line of duty. Now, to start with, I want to talk about the notification, which itself is always done in person and often with a chaplain.
I remember one night when a neighboring agency had an officer killed, but the officer lived in our jurisdiction. We accompanied the officers from that other agency to the house and the officer's wife went with the coworkers of her husband to the hospital to be with the husband, who, at the time, we knew had already passed, but they made the effort to get her to the hospital to be with him. We stayed at the house to watch over their newborn baby until ... This was like 3:00 in the morning or so, so until more cops and family members arrived in the morning.
In fact, in almost every death notification, I can only think of one that wasn't done this way. I'm not talking about officer deaths here, just everyday death notifications of regular people. These death notifications, almost all of them that I've done or that I've requested be done in another jurisdiction has been done in person. Again, it's done with an officer or a deputy and a chaplain if the department has one.
Going back to the officer death, line of duty death, yes, we really do rally around the families of the coworkers that we've lost. Many agencies will have groups of law enforcement spouses that really rise to the occasion as well. Helping with food and childcare. The police union may help with immediate expenses for the family because a life insurance policy can take months to pay out. GoFundMe pages will also get set up for these reasons as well. Then after that initial barrage of support for the first few days, weeks, or months, life eventually starts to get back to normal for everyone but the family that lost the officer, and it kind of has to.
This doesn't even begin to account for balancing this against any kind of investigation into the death of the officer and the toll that it takes on the family and on the investigators having to work through this period of mourning. But sometimes the family pushes the support away sooner than you'd expect because it could be the sight of the uniform or the sound of the police radio is that constant reminder of loss. Every death is different and every family member will deal with it differently, but we try to support the families any way we can.
Like any other death of a loved one, eventually, it will come down to that personal connection developed during daily life that really gets relied upon the most. It's the best friend, the former partner. Those are the ones that will still be trying to be the rock for the family when life seemingly returns to normal for everyone else.
Thank you for the question, Robin, and thank you for becoming a patron. You can find Robin and her School Marshal novel series at robinlyons.com.
Robin writes, "Hi, Adam. I've been listening since episode 14. Love your show and the information you provide is amazing. Thank you." Thank you, Robin. I appreciate that. "I hope I'm not asking a question that you've already addressed. I'll binge listen to episodes one through 13 soon. I'm curious about the procedure of notifying a wife when her husband, an officer, is killed in the line of duty. A super sad topic. I'm sorry. Often there is a community funeral with color guard and officers from other agencies in attendance. Is that standard? Also, I know police departments are like families, so I assume there's a lot of follow-up and assistance provided to the widow and children. Can you talk a little about the follow-up? Again, I apologize for the sad topic. Thank you for your service to the community."
Thank you for your question, Robin. Yes, the color guard and community funeral would be pretty standard for an officer killed in the line of duty. Now, to start with, I want to talk about the notification, which itself is always done in person and often with a chaplain.
I remember one night when a neighboring agency had an officer killed, but the officer lived in our jurisdiction. We accompanied the officers from that other agency to the house and the officer's wife went with the coworkers of her husband to the hospital to be with the husband, who, at the time, we knew had already passed, but they made the effort to get her to the hospital to be with him. We stayed at the house to watch over their newborn baby until ... This was like 3:00 in the morning or so, so until more cops and family members arrived in the morning.
In fact, in almost every death notification, I can only think of one that wasn't done this way. I'm not talking about officer deaths here, just everyday death notifications of regular people. These death notifications, almost all of them that I've done or that I've requested be done in another jurisdiction has been done in person. Again, it's done with an officer or a deputy and a chaplain if the department has one.
Going back to the officer death, line of duty death, yes, we really do rally around the families of the coworkers that we've lost. Many agencies will have groups of law enforcement spouses that really rise to the occasion as well. Helping with food and childcare. The police union may help with immediate expenses for the family because a life insurance policy can take months to pay out. GoFundMe pages will also get set up for these reasons as well. Then after that initial barrage of support for the first few days, weeks, or months, life eventually starts to get back to normal for everyone but the family that lost the officer, and it kind of has to.
This doesn't even begin to account for balancing this against any kind of investigation into the death of the officer and the toll that it takes on the family and on the investigators having to work through this period of mourning. But sometimes the family pushes the support away sooner than you'd expect because it could be the sight of the uniform or the sound of the police radio is that constant reminder of loss. Every death is different and every family member will deal with it differently, but we try to support the families any way we can.
Like any other death of a loved one, eventually, it will come down to that personal connection developed during daily life that really gets relied upon the most. It's the best friend, the former partner. Those are the ones that will still be trying to be the rock for the family when life seemingly returns to normal for everyone else.
Thank you for the question, Robin, and thank you for becoming a patron. You can find Robin and her School Marshal novel series at robinlyons.com.
Our second question comes from Otakara Klettke. Otakara is the author of the Detective Bella Unleashed children's books, but based on this question I think she's getting into some pretty serious storytelling. You can find Otakara's work at otakaraklettke.com. You can find the link to that in the show notes at writersdetective.com/23.
Otakara asks, "If my character wants to pull off memory loss and therefore, create a new identity, what does she need to watch out for? I get fingerprints, but would there be any chance to find her from doctors' records and such? How far would police go to find her identity?" Now, I reached out to Otakara for a little more backstory on this question, and she explained that this character is on the run and found on the side of the road disoriented and playing at having full memory loss.
Yes, fingerprints would definitely be a quick way to identify her. As would pushing her picture out to social media, news media, and informational bulletins to other police agencies. At least from the police officer's perspective. Numerous times in my career I've seen bulletins for police agencies finding people that couldn't tell them who they were and have no ID on them. They're often suffering from severe mental issues well beyond just memory loss, and then also there's usually an inability to communicate with the police.
DNA could obviously be a potential identifier as well. If this is a missing person then the police could ask for a DNA sample. Ask the family to collect her toothbrush or hairbrush, but in this case, if she's not a missing person I don't know that DNA would do any benefit unless she was already in the DNA database. I don't think that would necessarily be the case for this situation.
Doctors' records, as Otakara asked about, those would likely be protected by HIPAA laws. The police could get ... If this were a missing person's case, the police could get a copy of her dental records in anticipation of having to compare those dental records against skeletal remains, but both DNA and dental records would not lead to an immediate find of that character though. There would be two halves potentially. This would be the we found the girl suffering from memory loss and then also wherever she's missing from may have a missing person's report.
What I didn't mention about Otakara's character until now is that the character's past was spent outside of the country until this point, so all of the stuff I mentioned up until now about fingerprints, DNA, pushing out pictures of herself for ID purposes, those would very likely be dead ends. If your character could convince the police she's in danger and being pursued, this may reduce the likelihood of the police publicly broadcasting her picture on the news or social media, but they'd still send it out as a bulletin to law enforcement. But that would probably be about it.
Now, the harder half to this question would be how your character would be able to establish a new identity. Nowadays, she'd need a birth certificate or passport to get any kind of real ID. Fake IDs, obviously, are easy enough to obtain. Getting a good fake ID can be a challenge. The older your character is the easier it would be for her to pull off the using the fake ID. IDs are more scrutinized when it comes to buying alcohol if you're young or anything where you're trying to obtain money or use credit. I know Otakara's character is about 18 years old, so her fake ID may be scrutinized pretty severely, but since it's fake it wouldn't do anything to help with figuring out her true identity. If the fake ID's being looked at later on after she's gotten past the being found by the police part then it may become more problematic for her. But we're always looking for progressive complications in our stories.
To answer how hard the police would go to find her identity, if we're talking about the missing person half of this, the longer the case goes unsolved the less effort the police would likely put into that case. There's nothing illegal about becoming a voluntary missing person, especially if there's no sign of foul play. People escape their old lives all the time. This is actually very common, especially in a domestic violence situation. If she's been found somewhere with memory loss or claiming to have memory loss, the person finding her would likely report the situation to the police.
This would prompt much more effort on the police department's part because they need to do something with her. Even if it means turning her over to Adult Protective Services, but once she's been placed somewhere safe like a group home or a shelter or even a motel room, she'd pretty soon be free to get back on her feet and move on however she chooses. Having her be from out of the country would definitely thwart the attempts by police to identify her through the traditional means we would use just because she wouldn't be popping up in databases. Unless, of course, there was something that identified her officially coming into the country, but if she snuck in then, yeah, it would be very tough for local law enforcement to ID her. I don't know that they would make much more effort than that.
Thank you for your question Otakara, and you can find her work at otakaraklettke.com.
Otakara asks, "If my character wants to pull off memory loss and therefore, create a new identity, what does she need to watch out for? I get fingerprints, but would there be any chance to find her from doctors' records and such? How far would police go to find her identity?" Now, I reached out to Otakara for a little more backstory on this question, and she explained that this character is on the run and found on the side of the road disoriented and playing at having full memory loss.
Yes, fingerprints would definitely be a quick way to identify her. As would pushing her picture out to social media, news media, and informational bulletins to other police agencies. At least from the police officer's perspective. Numerous times in my career I've seen bulletins for police agencies finding people that couldn't tell them who they were and have no ID on them. They're often suffering from severe mental issues well beyond just memory loss, and then also there's usually an inability to communicate with the police.
DNA could obviously be a potential identifier as well. If this is a missing person then the police could ask for a DNA sample. Ask the family to collect her toothbrush or hairbrush, but in this case, if she's not a missing person I don't know that DNA would do any benefit unless she was already in the DNA database. I don't think that would necessarily be the case for this situation.
Doctors' records, as Otakara asked about, those would likely be protected by HIPAA laws. The police could get ... If this were a missing person's case, the police could get a copy of her dental records in anticipation of having to compare those dental records against skeletal remains, but both DNA and dental records would not lead to an immediate find of that character though. There would be two halves potentially. This would be the we found the girl suffering from memory loss and then also wherever she's missing from may have a missing person's report.
What I didn't mention about Otakara's character until now is that the character's past was spent outside of the country until this point, so all of the stuff I mentioned up until now about fingerprints, DNA, pushing out pictures of herself for ID purposes, those would very likely be dead ends. If your character could convince the police she's in danger and being pursued, this may reduce the likelihood of the police publicly broadcasting her picture on the news or social media, but they'd still send it out as a bulletin to law enforcement. But that would probably be about it.
Now, the harder half to this question would be how your character would be able to establish a new identity. Nowadays, she'd need a birth certificate or passport to get any kind of real ID. Fake IDs, obviously, are easy enough to obtain. Getting a good fake ID can be a challenge. The older your character is the easier it would be for her to pull off the using the fake ID. IDs are more scrutinized when it comes to buying alcohol if you're young or anything where you're trying to obtain money or use credit. I know Otakara's character is about 18 years old, so her fake ID may be scrutinized pretty severely, but since it's fake it wouldn't do anything to help with figuring out her true identity. If the fake ID's being looked at later on after she's gotten past the being found by the police part then it may become more problematic for her. But we're always looking for progressive complications in our stories.
To answer how hard the police would go to find her identity, if we're talking about the missing person half of this, the longer the case goes unsolved the less effort the police would likely put into that case. There's nothing illegal about becoming a voluntary missing person, especially if there's no sign of foul play. People escape their old lives all the time. This is actually very common, especially in a domestic violence situation. If she's been found somewhere with memory loss or claiming to have memory loss, the person finding her would likely report the situation to the police.
This would prompt much more effort on the police department's part because they need to do something with her. Even if it means turning her over to Adult Protective Services, but once she's been placed somewhere safe like a group home or a shelter or even a motel room, she'd pretty soon be free to get back on her feet and move on however she chooses. Having her be from out of the country would definitely thwart the attempts by police to identify her through the traditional means we would use just because she wouldn't be popping up in databases. Unless, of course, there was something that identified her officially coming into the country, but if she snuck in then, yeah, it would be very tough for local law enforcement to ID her. I don't know that they would make much more effort than that.
Thank you for your question Otakara, and you can find her work at otakaraklettke.com.
This week's third question comes from Taylor, who posted this in the Writer's Detective Q&A Facebook group. If this is your first time hearing about it, consider this a formal invitation to join us. You can just type in Writer's Detective Q&A with an ampersand between Q and A into Facebook and we should pop up. Or just look up Writer's Detective and you will find us one way or the other. There will be a link in the show notes as well. writersdetective.com/23, so please do join us.
Taylor's question is about a bank heist. Taylor asks, "Does the FBI immediately have jurisdiction after a bank heist or does it have to be requested by local PD? Also, does the FBI work with local police departments on bank heists? Thanks." Great question, Taylor.
A few of us responded to this in the Q&A group on Facebook. I'll read my answer that I wrote in the group and then I'm going to expand on it a little bit. I wrote, "Most American banks are FDIC insured and to rob a federally insured bank is a federal crime. The FBI has jurisdiction. However, it is also still the state crime of robbery, no different than any other robbery, so the local police department would usually get involved as well. The local police do often handle the crime scene investigation."
To go into a little more detail, you have Title18 of the United States Code, Section 2113, which is the bank robbery and incidental crime statute. Now, there's also, in every state, the crime of robbery. In the state of California, that's Section 211 of the penal code. Before I go any further, this is a good time to briefly explain that in the United States there are two levels of criminal laws.
The federal level are crimes that are consistent everywhere in the country. That crime is a crime everywhere in the United States. If you violate a federal law there will be a federal law enforcement agency assigned to handle that investigation. The bank robbery section is the jurisdiction of the FBI, so when the bad guy is arrested he's held in a federal holding facility. Then he attends federal court and upon conviction, he goes to a federal penitentiary, which will be designated medium, high, or maximum security. Then there's one super-max USP, which United States Penitentiary, which is USP Florence ADX. ADX stands for administrative maximum facility.
They could also be sentenced to a federal correctional institution, which is a minimum security facility, which you may have heard referred to as Club Fed. A play on the Club Med tropic resort name. Because compared to a real prison, it's pretty lightweight when it comes to the security of the facility and how rough life is inside. There are also federal prison camps and then there are even private correctional institutions.
Now we get to the second level of criminal laws and that's the state level. This is the level at which most crimes are investigated and prosecuted. If you violate a state law, a local law enforcement agency, meaning city or county, like a police department or sheriff's department, will investigate or it could be a state law enforcement agency. Like a state's Bureau of Investigation or Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. It's important to note that local law enforcement officers are sworn to uphold state laws, and as far as I'm aware, are able to investigate and enforce those laws anywhere in that state.
Even if you are a police officer for the city of Los Angeles, you are actually a state peace officer and have police authority anywhere in the state of California. Unlike what those old Dukes of Hazzard episodes will have you believe, the cops don't have to stop at the county line. In fact, they don't even have to stop at the state line, but that's a whole other episode.
Anyway, when the bad guy's arrested he's held in county jail and he stays there throughout the trial process. Unless, of course, he bails out. State levels crimes are prosecuted in either municipal or superior courts, and there may still be some justice courts out in rural areas as well, but superior court is where felonies are tried. Once convicted of a felony the bad guy then goes to state prison. If the conviction is for a misdemeanor, then he's sentenced to county jail for up to a year.
Now, all of this changed if you're living in California because our prison realignment laws changed all that state crime sentencing. It used to be a state prison sentence now may be a sentence to county jail or even just released back into the community with some sort of supervision being handled by an already overworked county probation department rather than state parole. When it comes to sentencing in California, everything's a mess. You can ask me more questions about that if your story's set in California.
Back to the original question. If you commit the crime of bank robbery you're potentially looking at being prosecuted in federal court for the federal bank robbery crime, that statute, and you're potentially looking at being prosecuted in state court for the state crime of robbery, which robbery is using force or fear to commit theft, essentially. You're usually only charged in either federal or state court. However, if you're acquitted in federal court of bank robbery, meaning a jury found you not guilty, it's still possible for the state prosecutor to charge you in state court for the crime of robbery.
What I've just described were the federal and state governments can prosecute you for both state and federal crimes even though it's one action. This is the legal concept of dual sovereignty, which differs from the concept of double jeopardy. If you've heard of double jeopardy before, this is a topic I will talk about on next week's episode.
Taylor's question is about a bank heist. Taylor asks, "Does the FBI immediately have jurisdiction after a bank heist or does it have to be requested by local PD? Also, does the FBI work with local police departments on bank heists? Thanks." Great question, Taylor.
A few of us responded to this in the Q&A group on Facebook. I'll read my answer that I wrote in the group and then I'm going to expand on it a little bit. I wrote, "Most American banks are FDIC insured and to rob a federally insured bank is a federal crime. The FBI has jurisdiction. However, it is also still the state crime of robbery, no different than any other robbery, so the local police department would usually get involved as well. The local police do often handle the crime scene investigation."
To go into a little more detail, you have Title18 of the United States Code, Section 2113, which is the bank robbery and incidental crime statute. Now, there's also, in every state, the crime of robbery. In the state of California, that's Section 211 of the penal code. Before I go any further, this is a good time to briefly explain that in the United States there are two levels of criminal laws.
The federal level are crimes that are consistent everywhere in the country. That crime is a crime everywhere in the United States. If you violate a federal law there will be a federal law enforcement agency assigned to handle that investigation. The bank robbery section is the jurisdiction of the FBI, so when the bad guy is arrested he's held in a federal holding facility. Then he attends federal court and upon conviction, he goes to a federal penitentiary, which will be designated medium, high, or maximum security. Then there's one super-max USP, which United States Penitentiary, which is USP Florence ADX. ADX stands for administrative maximum facility.
They could also be sentenced to a federal correctional institution, which is a minimum security facility, which you may have heard referred to as Club Fed. A play on the Club Med tropic resort name. Because compared to a real prison, it's pretty lightweight when it comes to the security of the facility and how rough life is inside. There are also federal prison camps and then there are even private correctional institutions.
Now we get to the second level of criminal laws and that's the state level. This is the level at which most crimes are investigated and prosecuted. If you violate a state law, a local law enforcement agency, meaning city or county, like a police department or sheriff's department, will investigate or it could be a state law enforcement agency. Like a state's Bureau of Investigation or Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. It's important to note that local law enforcement officers are sworn to uphold state laws, and as far as I'm aware, are able to investigate and enforce those laws anywhere in that state.
Even if you are a police officer for the city of Los Angeles, you are actually a state peace officer and have police authority anywhere in the state of California. Unlike what those old Dukes of Hazzard episodes will have you believe, the cops don't have to stop at the county line. In fact, they don't even have to stop at the state line, but that's a whole other episode.
Anyway, when the bad guy's arrested he's held in county jail and he stays there throughout the trial process. Unless, of course, he bails out. State levels crimes are prosecuted in either municipal or superior courts, and there may still be some justice courts out in rural areas as well, but superior court is where felonies are tried. Once convicted of a felony the bad guy then goes to state prison. If the conviction is for a misdemeanor, then he's sentenced to county jail for up to a year.
Now, all of this changed if you're living in California because our prison realignment laws changed all that state crime sentencing. It used to be a state prison sentence now may be a sentence to county jail or even just released back into the community with some sort of supervision being handled by an already overworked county probation department rather than state parole. When it comes to sentencing in California, everything's a mess. You can ask me more questions about that if your story's set in California.
Back to the original question. If you commit the crime of bank robbery you're potentially looking at being prosecuted in federal court for the federal bank robbery crime, that statute, and you're potentially looking at being prosecuted in state court for the state crime of robbery, which robbery is using force or fear to commit theft, essentially. You're usually only charged in either federal or state court. However, if you're acquitted in federal court of bank robbery, meaning a jury found you not guilty, it's still possible for the state prosecutor to charge you in state court for the crime of robbery.
What I've just described were the federal and state governments can prosecute you for both state and federal crimes even though it's one action. This is the legal concept of dual sovereignty, which differs from the concept of double jeopardy. If you've heard of double jeopardy before, this is a topic I will talk about on next week's episode.
That's about it for this first episode of 2019. Episode 23 is in the books. Thank you so much for your support all through last year with this podcast launch. Hey, did you know that you can actually listen to this podcast on that Amazon device that's in your house? I don't want to say her name because you might be listening within earshot of A-word. But if you ask her to open Writer's Detective Bureau on Tune-In Radio, you can binge listen to the podcast as you are puttering around the house. Thanks so much for listening and be sure to check out the show notes at writersdetective.com/23. I will be right back here next week, and in the meantime, write well.
EPISODE LINKS:
- Author: Robin Lyons - robinlyons.com
- Author: Otakara Klettke - otakaraklettke.com
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- Writer's Detective Q&A Facebook Group - Join us!
PATREON PATRONS THAT MADE THIS EPISODE POSSIBLE
- Joan Raymond Writing and Design - joanraymondwriting.com
- Guy Alton
- Anonymous (you may not want your name shown, but I truly appreciate your support!)
- Natasha Bajema - natashabajema.com
- Natalie Barelli - nataliebarelli.com
- Joe Trent
- Siobhan Pope
- Leah Cutter - leahcutter.com
- Ryan Kinmil - @RKinmil
- Richard Phillips - beltsbatsandbeyond.com
- Robin Lyons - robinlyons.com
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