DA Investigators, Warrantless Arrests in the Home, and Cover-Ups

I'm Adam Richardson, and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. Welcome to episode 135 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. And this week, we're talking about district attorney investigators, warrantless arrests made inside a home, and how to conduct a cover up.

This week's first question comes from Cheryl Essary, who writes, Hi Adam, couldn't believe it when I found your podcast. I've been binging ever since. Thanks, Cheryl. I have a couple of questions for you. My protagonist is a DA investigator whom I might want to move into a police homicide detective job. In her position as a DA investigator, would she have interacted or worked with city homicide detectives?

What reasons can you think of that she might want to make the change, other than focusing solely on homicides? She's an army vet and a former tribal police officer with a degree in criminal justice criminology. Is it common or believable that she would be hired as a homicide detective before the department would look to their own officers?

My premise is that she's worked with them and they'll have asked her to apply for the job. I'm guessing they would still have to advertise the job and interview other candidates even if she's the only one they really want. Is that right? What other insights do you have as to the work she might have done as a DA investigator?

Thank you. Hi, Cheryl. I'm so glad you found the podcast and thanks for reaching out. Yes, as a DA investigator, a district attorney investigator, your character will definitely work alongside police homicide detectives. DA investigators usually get involved once the district attorney has charged the suspect with the crime in court.

When the suspect officially becomes a defendant. and the DA investigator is involved in chasing down any further leads or tying up any loose ends that those police detectives haven't quite done yet. They usually work quite closely with those detectives on cases, so it would make sense for your DA investigator to be liked and wanted by the PD, by the police department, as a homicide detective.

Now that said, she would have to start from the bottom at the police department and work her way up to detective just like everyone else. Now, that might be a good in between book if we start thinking about a series, right? So, um, when we're talking about a character arc, if you're gonna do a character arc across three books, maybe book four is that reset where she has to put a uniform on, uh, and then get promoted toward the end of that book, and then from there, you can go off into your next set of three, uh, where she's now a homicide detective.

You could always have her get dispatched as a patrol officer, that new police officer, um, to a homicide on an unusually busy weekend of murders in that city and then get tasked to temporarily work the case alongside a homicide detective because the detective sergeant knows her personally from the DA's office and wants to leverage her experience while they deal with their shortage of detectives.

I'm spitballing all of this, obviously, but it's just an idea. As for why she'd want to move over to the police department, real reasons might be pay, benefits, and retirement reasons. It could be political. Let's say a new DA is elected and your main character backed the loser in the last election and the work life becomes uncomfortable due to office politics.

In reality, the way the job hopping works usually is the reverse of what your character is doing. Many, many DA investigators started as patrol officers with the police department, then became a detective within the police department, gaining their expertise as investigators, and then once they retire from the police department, they then move over, uh, or get hired by, I should say, the...

District attorney's office as a DA investigator. And to be clear here, a DA investigator is a peace officer or a sworn law enforcement officer. We're not talking about the actual district attorneys or deputy district attorneys, which are prosecutors, which are attorneys. We're talking about the cops in the DA's office that are working on these cases, handling follow up, just like a police detective.

Now, DA offices, the district attorney's office is usually a county. Employee or a county, uh, department, which at least in California means joining the county's retirement system as a county employee. And that can mean being able to collect your retirement check from your city's retirement system. Here in California, the counties usually have a self funded county retirement fund, and the cities will be part of a statewide retirement system.

We have public employee retirement system or PERS for state. Uh, and city employees to pay into. So by paying into two different systems, you can retire from one and then still work for the other and start to qualify for a second retirement system. So we call it double dipping. Uh, but that is a common reason for police officers or police detectives to leave the police department and then go work for a county agency to become a DA investigator.

Um, The other common reason would be they work for a police department that has a rotational policy. Some medium sized agencies only let officers become detectives or remain detectives for two or three years at a time. Uh, and then they have to rotate back into uniform to give other officers a chance to work as an investigator.

Some of these cops, some of these detectives, love being a detective so much that they will then lateral over to the DA's office as an investigator to avoid having to go back to putting on the uniform and working patrol. So that might be another reason. Now, all that said, it is still 100% plausible for your DA investigator to lateral over to the police department or the sheriff's office.

She'll just have to go through a field training program, uh, usually a very abbreviated version, I would guess that given that she's already been a tribal police officer already. Uh, and then she would have to work patrol long enough to meet whatever that policy is for time on within the department before testing for promotion to detective.

You could plausibly make this a year long period and then the detective bureau picks her as the top candidate on the next detective promotion list. Now, I know I said paying benefits as primary reasons, uh, are for her wanting to change, but it could also be something in her B story. that prompts this change.

Does the city offer better health care for family members? Or do they have a city daycare that's free for city employees to use now that she's a divorced mother with a little one? Or is it to get away from the situation at the DA's office? You know, we talked about that earlier when it comes to elections.

Um, you know, she would still be dealing with the DA's office regularly, but at least she wouldn't be in the daily Office, you know, politics and all that kind of stuff if she were to leave and go to the police department. So I hope this helps. Welcome to the Bureau and we are so happy to have you here.

This week's next question comes from Amber and you can find her work@elizabethamberwrights.com. And Amber writes, hi Adam. I'm a writer from New Jersey and love your show. Thank you so much. I just noticed something on Law and Order. S V U. This is my first time watching the show. Yes, late to the party. The main characters are detectives.

What is the reason that they say they can't place someone under arrest while inside their home? I've never heard this restriction before. They always ask the suspects to step outside or coax them. They've actually said they couldn't arrest someone because they stayed inside. This seems odd to me. It's not a church, which is considered sanctuary.

And people commit a lot of crimes from inside their homes. Why not read them the rights, cuff them, et cetera, as soon as possible. Amber. Thanks for the question, Amber. Like everything with the law, it all depends on the circumstances. I'm betting that in this Law Order episode, we're likely talking about making warrantless arrests inside someone's home, absent any kind of exigent circumstance.

and absent any kind of legal reason to be there, which I'll explain in a second. But first, to keep from confusing anyone, we are allowed to make warrantless arrests in public, meaning that we have probable cause to arrest someone, but we do not have an arrest warrant, uh, or even a search warrant. So what do I mean by a legal reason to be there?

Because you're right, people do commit a lot of crimes in their home. Let's say I respond to a domestic violence incident. A couple had a physical fight, and one of them called 911. My partner and I show up, go inside the house to investigate, and we determine that we have probable cause to arrest the one that did the punching.

We had a lawful reason to go into that house, because we believed a crime, potentially a violent crime, was occurring, which would qualify as an exigent circumstance. And arguably one of the parties, likely the victim of the crime, had legal standing to allow us inside. So we probably had consent to come inside as well.

Um, so yes, we could make a warrantless probable cause based arrest inside that home, all because we had a legal reason to be in there. right? So yes, people commit crimes in their home. If we are called to investigate it as it's happening, we have a legal reason to go in there and investigate it and stop that crime from happening.

But let's say instead, um, let's say this fight, this punching happened inside their car while they were on the road and they pull over to the side of the road. The victim is left on the side of the road and the suspect drives away. The victim gets transported to the hospital, which is where we conduct our initial investigation, and we think we have probable cause to arrest our suspect, and right now we believe he's gone home.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits us from going inside someone's home to make a warrantless arrest, even though we have probable cause. So we're not there to investigate a crime that's occurring at the time, we just have probable cause and we want to go arrest this guy. So The limitation is that our options are either to go get an arrest warrant for the suspect, and by having an arrest warrant for a suspect, we're legally allowed to go into their home to arrest them.

Or, as the Law Order detectives did, we somehow arrange to arrest the suspect once he's in public. And that could be trying to coax him outside. Now for you legal eagles listening. In addition to basic constitutional law interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, there is specific SCOTUS case law to this as well, and that's Peyton V.

New York, 4 45, US 5 73 circa 1980. So the real purpose behind all of this, this prohibition against warrantless arrests in one's home, is to protect US citizens against arbitrary arrests. If we, as the police have to go inside your home to arrest you. A judge has to sign off on it. So yes, Amber, Law Order SVU has their legal ducks in a row when it comes to their writing.

And hat tip to their technical advisors, for sure. And honestly, unless I have a serious ticking clock working against me, if I have enough probable cause to make an arrest in the guy's home... I'd not only obtain an arrest warrant, I'd seek a search warrant for additional evidence of whatever crime was alleged.

Based upon my training and experience of knowing bad guys often hide evidence of their crimes inside their homes. Thanks so much for the question.

Our next questions come from Jayden Frost who has a new story series coming out called Grimewood which you'll soon be able to find at grimewood. com. So Jayden writes. In my fictional city of Grimewood, there is a supernatural curse that the local government covers up. When it affects people, the authorities force them to change their witness statements to whatever the cover up is and the local news corroborates it.

How difficult would this be to do without it getting out? And what could law enforcement do to make sure it doesn't? Ooh. Well, we are definitely not talking about a society that values truth, justice, and the American way, are we? This sounds much more like totalitarian rule and fear mongering. So if we're to look at quasi successful, I hate to even phrase it that way, examples of keeping the truth suppressed and using quote unquote law enforcement to keep that covered up, I'd start with looking at Soviet Russia, East Germany, or more current examples of North Korea and Putin's Russia.

Looking at these examples, we could deduce the answer to be violence and physical force to create a culture of fear. A culture of neighbor spying on neighbor, a heavy fear of government and the punishment she's likely to deliver for anything but complete obedience. And most importantly, escape becomes a deadly, or for the lucky, a death defying experience.

For those of you that weren't alive before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's worth researching East Germany and the Stasi. If you ever get a chance to see a section of the Berlin Wall. You'll likely notice the art and graffiti on the West Berlin facing side and the East Berlin's facing side to be a stark white, a silhouette forming backstop for the snipers and border guards ready to kill anyone fleeing the tyranny.

That is how you suppress the truth and control the narrative. Lies fester in the dark. Truth is light. If the goal is to suppress the truth, we're talking about extinguishing the light from every nook and cranny that it might escape. And it sounds to me, Jaden, that Grimewood is a perfect title for this kind of place.

It sure sounds dark. Thank you so much for the question. So what are your questions? Send them to me no matter how small the question by going to writer detective.com/ask. I'd also like to thank my Patreon patrons for sponsoring this episode, especially my Gold Shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debra dunbar.com.

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