Case Studies
Chapter 5: Laws Governing Police Surveillance
Case 1
Janie Smith headed up a criminal ring in Sometown. This ring had been responsible for the rise in drug-related activity and prostitution in the town, and yet because Smith ran a tight and efficient operation, police have no evidence tying her directly to her crimes. Every time the police thought they had gotten close to Janie, she slipped through their grasp. Or had, until police caught up to Cynthia Stout. Police in Coppertown had caught Stout with enough cocaine to put her away for 20 years. However, Stout offered to give them Janie Smith in exchange for a lighter sentence, and so she began to work with the Sometown police department.
Stout agreed to become a police informant and wear a state-of-the-art tiny video camera to her meetings with Smith about an upcoming drug shipment. The police would use the video to obtain an arrest warrant and charge Janie Smith with drug trafficking. Stout’s meeting was to be held in the private offices of a local businessman who had ties to the underworld. Stout went to the meeting, and there Smith described how representatives of the ring planned to meet a truck that would come in to an abandoned warehouse along the Winding River, on the outskirts of Sometown. The truck would contain 20 kilos of cocaine, along with some marijuana. Smith instructed Stout to meet up with her associate after the drop was made.
Sometown police used this information to intercept the drug shipment and then to arrest Janie Smith on drug trafficking charges as she was attempting to flee Sometown.
Questions
Case 2
Joe Staples is well-known in Sometown for his marijuana. Several students from Sometown High School have recently been arrested for marijuana possession, but none of them have been willing to identify their source. Officers at the Sometown Police Department have had their eye on Staples for years, but they just have not been able to catch him in the act. They strongly suspect that Staples has been growing marijuana in the back of his house, using heat lamps. However, they have been unable to gather enough evidence for a search warrant for his home. After the drug busts involving Sometown High School students, the police decide to get serious about catching him.
It just so happened that the department had recently acquired a thermal detector to crack down on home-grown marijuana operations. The police decided that it was time to try it out. Late in the evening, police officers snuck into a wooded area behind Staples’ property and installed the detector. For several days, officers monitored the heat signature coming from Staples’s home and determined that the heat coming from his home could only be coming from a marijuana growing operation. Now it was just a matter of catching Joe Staples leaving his home.
Unfortunately, Joe Staples was a bit of a homebody, and he did not leave his house very often. A few people came and left his house, but the police let them go, not wanting to alert Staples to their plans to arrest him. Finally, Staples left the house. As soon as he was down the driveway and onto the sidewalk, the police arrested him for an illegal marijuana growing operation.
Questions
Case 3
In order to combat the growing drug problem in Smalltown, the police department has gotten a narcotics detection dog for use at traffic stops. When officers go out to patrol Sometown Heights, they will bring along the dog along, and an officer will walk the dog around the vehicles they pull over. Officers Smithwick and Charleston were the first officers to use the dog. They turned onto Broadway, just as a car went speeding by, going 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. The officers pulled the car over.
It seemed like a routine traffic stop. Two young people, who did not appear to be drinking or on drugs, lost at night. Provided that the driver had a good record, Officer Smith was prepared to let him off with a warning. She took the license and registration from the driver and was running it when Officer Charleston decided to go out with the dog to get used to doing the inspection.
The dog did not alert as Officer Charleston took it around the passenger compartment, but when he got to the trunk, he alerted. Officer Smithwick was busy finishing up with the driver’s license and registration and was writing up a warning, when he looked up and saw the dog alerted on the trunk. This changed things. Officer Smithwick ordered the driver and the passenger out of the car and asked them if they had any weapons. She then used her flashlight to do a search of the passenger compartment.
“I’m going to have to ask you to open your trunk, Sir,” Officer Smithwick said. Inside the trunk was two ounces of marijuana. The driver was placed under arrest.
Questions
Case 4
Seven-year-old Tracey Kidder had been kidnapped, and investigators suspected that she was carried across state lines. The investigation thus far had pinpointed the Kidders’ neighbor, Joel Grace, as the primary suspect. Kidder was last seen talking to Grace, a man the neighbors described as “shifty” and “not quite right.” One of the neighbors said that he had taken a strange interest in the girl. Grace had not been seen since Kidder disappeared. Federal investigators suspected that Grace may have taken Kidder to a house off of highway AA, as it is family property and his cousin lived there. Investigators had a photograph of Grace going through a toll booth five miles from the exit where the house was located. Grace did not go through the next toll, 40 miles up the highway.
Grace was believed to be armed and extremely dangerous. In the ransom call to the family, the kidnapper threatened to kill Tracey Kidder if he believed that the authorities were involved. The kidnapper informed the family that he would contact them again in two days’ time with instructions for where to drop the money.
Investigators were reluctant to get too close to the house, as it was in the middle of a wide clearing, to establish if enough evidence exists to get a warrant to search for the girl. If they could get enough evidence to determine whether or not Grace is in the house, then they would be able to conduct a rescue mission. Investigators had approached neighbors and townspeople, but no one had seen Grace or the girl. Police suspected that Grace had brought enough food and supplies with him to not need to leave the cabin. Time is of the essence in solving these crimes, and so they were determined to pinpoint Grace’s whereabouts.
Investigators had the cell phone number that Grace used to contact the Kidders, but suspected that he might try to switch phones.
Questions
Case 5
Jeffrey Winklevoss conducted his business over the Internet—including his criminal business. Winklevoss had made a small fortune as an online entrepreneur and as a hobby, fancied himself a collector of rare antiquities. He had an impressive collection in his home, where he threw lavish parties for important friends.
To finance this hobby, Winklevoss traded in black-market antiquities. His friends soon had fine collections of their own, though most of them could not display them as proudly as he did. Winklevoss took orders from his contacts via e-mail and then sent messages in return when he obtained certain items to see if they might be interested. He used coded language, of course, but the overall gist of his communications was clear. Once an agreement was reached on price, payment and shipping details were arranged. Winklevoss avoided the telephone, and there was no paper trail linking him to the deal.
The authorities had suspected him for a couple of years of dealing in rare artifacts illegally, but they were unable to trace anything directly back to him. He was careful with shipping methods and worked with a network of couriers to make sure that his name was in no way connected with the shipments. However, after arresting one of his important friends on a cocaine charge an officer found a printout of an e-mail from Winklevoss that appeared to be a description of a rare artifact and a price in his wallet. When questioned about the paper, the important friend gave some incriminating testimony about Winklevoss’s online operation. The important friend did not know if Winklevoss came about these objects legally or not, but he did know that Winklevoss wanted everything kept quiet.
This gave the authorities an idea. They would search his e-mail records to see if they could get enough evidence to prosecute him. His love of collecting, they surmised, might have made him an e-mail saver.
Questions