Field Work

Part of the mentioned duties that I would assist with was the field work which is a more hands-on assignment. I have been lucky enough to have been invited to assist or observe three different field assignments which include a witness interview as well as two search warrants. Basically, field assignments are a chance for me to get out of the office and see the type of police work that is most commonly viewed on TV that the public views as exciting.


The Interview


The interview is pretty self descriptive in that all the interview included was meeting the district attorney who would join detectives in the interview of a witness involved in the case. I was able to meet the district attorney that primarily works with the department on insurance fraud cases. The process started with the district attorney meeting with the detectives to overview the witness's involvement and what information they were looking to get through the interview. It was interesting to see the interaction between the two. During the interview, the district attorney lead the questioning to find out if the witness had information pertinent to the case that would aid in the prosecution of the suspect. I tried to listen to the questions and answers to determine my own opinion on the interview and at the end of the interview I didn't think the interview was very helpful. I was wrong, the interview gave probable cause to ask for a search warrant for one of the suspect's to locate some documentation the witness claimed to have seen that pertained to the case. After the interview, the district attorney and the detective again discussed the witness and the information she had given and came to the conclusion that she would be helpful to the case if her information proved to be accurate.




The Search Warrant


The first search warrant I got to go on was the search of a business. The search warrant covered the search of an auto shop for one of the customer's vehicle that was being investigated for a false insurance claim. For the search, the detectives meet at a field location to go over the operation plan (and yes there were donuts)  which is a summary of the case and those involved, what the search warrant includes, and a detailed plan of the execution of the warrant such as paths taken to enter and a risk assessment of the facility. This warrant was given a low risk assessment but the officers involved still whore their uniforms and vests and I was instructed to wait in the car until the building was secured of any possible threats before I could join the team to execute the search warrant. It was interesting to see how the process worked and the amount of documentation that is required to make sure that everything is done legally and if needed in court would hold. The car was found and we were in and out in approximately an hour.


The second search warrant started of the same way with the debriefing.  Then we were forced to wait a couple of hours before executing the warrant because there was another warrant being executed at another location that would determine if our search was still necessary. Once our search was deemed necessary, we needed to get the judge to sign off on the warrant and then we were good to go.The difference in this search was that it was a search of a residence. The homeowner was compliant and made the search an easy process. I will admit it was weird going into a person's home looking through their stuff thinking what it would be like if police unexpectedly came to my house and searched through my belongings. But the home owner was told what we were there to look for and was able to lead the investigators directly to what they wanted. Again the process did not take too long and we were able to finish the search rather quickly.