Minimum staffing, insider trading and tecs - 093

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transcript:

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​This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, minimum staffing, insider trading and texts. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to episode number 93 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. And this week I'm answering your questions about what happens when a cop gets injured on duty and needs to go home, who handles the civil and criminal aspects of an insider trading investigation, and what kind of data is available to a detective investigating the homicide of a foreign national? But before we get into that, I need to give shout outs to my gold shield Patreons, Deborah Dunbar from deborahdunbar.com, C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicky Tharp at vickytharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli, Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com, Lynn Vitale, Marco Carocari of marcocarocari.com, Robert Mendenhall of robertjmendenhall.com and Terri Swann, for their support along with my silver cuff link and coffee club Patreons. You can find links to all of the authors supporting this episode by going to writersdetective.com/93. And to learn more about using Patreon to grow your author business, or to support this podcast, check out writersdetective.com/patreon.

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Ryan Elder writes, "Thank you again very much for your podcast. I love it and I find it to be very informative in my writing." Thanks, Ryan, I appreciate that. Ryan says, "I'm writing a screenplay and was wondering if when an officer has to get into a fight on duty and takes a bit of a beating, how much violence has to happen against them before they're chosen to be sent home and someone else would take over? For my story, I want the protagonist detective to have to be forced to get into a fight with a criminal while investigating a case, but I still want them to continue on in the plot after without another detective having to come in and replace him. And similarly, when it comes to the criminal who was in the fight that the detective has arrested, how injured would the criminal have to be to be sent to a clinic or doctor as opposed to being taken to the police station and interrogated? I was wondering if you had any information on situations like that and what would constitute being taken to a doctor or emergency clinic versus not? Thank you very much again for all your advice."

So let's start with your first question, Ryan, the decision on whether the officer wants to go home after the fight is really going to be up to the officer, not the supervisor. No different than if you were working as barista at a coffee shop and someone clocked you, the officer would essentially be on sick leave, just like they came down with an illness in the middle of their shift. Now, whether someone else would take over would depend on a few things, most agencies have a defined minimum staffing level for patrol shifts. Minimum staffing as the name implies is the minimum number of officers that must be working the street for it to be safe... ​                                                                    Continue reading...