Automated License Plate Readers and the Fourth Amendment

Automated License Plate Readers and the Fourth Amendment

WRITTEN BY: Lieutenant Brian Tully (ret)

In January 2024, an officer in Gautier, Mississippi got an alert on his phone. A license plate reader at an intersection had captured a plate tied to Elijah Porter, who was wanted on an aggravated assault warrant. The officer ran the plate, located the vehicle, made the stop, and saw a Glock with a machinegun conversion switch protruding from under the driver’s seat. Porter moved to suppress all of it, arguing that using the LPR system to find his car was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and a warrantless search of his movements.

The Fifth Circuit disagreed in United States v. Porter, holding that the use of an LPR did not invade any reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore was not a search at all.

Seven weeks earlier, the City of Norfolk, Virginia won the same argument in a civil action where two Norfolk residents sued the city over its Flock ALPR program.  In this case, 176 cameras were the issue, not the ten in Gautier. But the judge who handed Norfolk that victory wrote a line every agency running ALPRs should read twice. Asked at what point ALPR surveillance becomes too intrusive to survive the Fourth Amendment, he answered “not today.”

A potentially ominous prediction by the court.

The Technology: What an ALPR System Actually Does

A fixed ALPR is a camera paired with software. It photographs passing vehicles, uses optical character recognition and machine learning to read the plate, and logs the plate number, date, time, and location to an encrypted, searchable database.

Three functions matter constitutionally.

• Real-time alerting: Each read is compared against hot lists for stolen vehicles, wanted persons, missing persons, and AMBER alerts. A match pushes an immediate notification with the date, time, and location of the hit, which is what happened in Porter.
• Retrospective query: Stored reads are searchable by full or partial plate. Some systems index make, type, color, and features such as roof racks and bumper stickers, so a vehicle can be searched without a plate number at all.
• Network sharing: Data can flow between agencies, and often well beyond the collecting department. This is the fastest growing piece of the technology and the least settled legally.

A fixed ALPR sees a vehicle only when that vehicle passes that camera. Norfolk deployed 176 cameras in 75 clusters across 66 square miles containing more than nine million feet of roadway. The district court described the system as having many thousands more blind spots than cameras. The reasoning behind the location of the cameras and the amount of uncovered road was important.

The Law

A person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another. A plate must be displayed where it sits in plain view from outside the vehicle, so there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in it.

RELATED ARTICLE BY BRIAN: Plain View in the Digital World

Carpenter v. United States was a major change to how law enforcement can obtain location information. Historical cell site location information was a search because it exposed the whole of the defendant’s physical movements. But the Court called the decision a narrow one and said it was not questioning conventional surveillance tools such as security cameras. 

Porter applied the distinction directly. The Gautier system provided only periodic information about a vehicle’s location as it passed one of ten fixed points. Unlike a cell phone, an LPR does not faithfully follow a person beyond public thoroughfares into residences, doctor’s offices, and other revealing locales.

Schmidt v. City of Norfolk stress tested the same principle. The plaintiffs’ vehicles were photographed roughly 475 and 325 times over four and a half months, placing them among the five percent of vehicles captured most often. The full plate matches averaged two to three per day, typically 2.5 to 3.5 miles apart with 45 to 50 minute gaps. The CSLI in Carpenter produced about 101 data points per day, thirty to fifty times that rate. The court granted summary judgment for the city, describing the fixed cameras as capturing images of locations rather than individuals.

Where This Is Heading: Density, Chatrie, and the Tipping Point

Schmidt is on appeal. It is pending in the Fourth Circuit as Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, No. 26-1227, fully briefed and drawing amicus filings from privacy organizations urging reversal and from a multistate brief supporting the city.

The Supreme Court decided Chatrie v. United States on June 29, 2026. The Court held that police conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they obtained a suspect’s Google Location History through a geofence request, because an individual has “a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone’s location.” The Court declined to decide how narrowly a geofence warrant must be drawn and did not reach the exclusionary rule, remanding the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for further arguments. 

Chatrie is not an ALPR case and the opinion does not mention license plate readers, but there are two important takeaways. Private custody of the data did not defeat the expectation of privacy. And the government could not escape the Fourth Amendment by noting it had pulled only a narrow, time-limited slice of a much larger database.

Each court upholding ALPR use has done so on the record in front of it, but as camera counts climb, retention lengthens, and networks interconnect across jurisdictions, the same analysis will eventually produce the opposite answer.  Judges are signaling that with the right facts an ALPR query could be a search requiring a Search Warrant. 

Practical Takeaways for Investigators

• Treat the hit as a lead, not as the conclusion: Porter survived because the officer corroborated. He ran the plate independently, confirmed the vehicle description and location, and connected it to an active warrant. Get your specific and articulable facts.
• Write the corroboration into the report, in sequence: The suppression hearing will be about what you knew before you activated the lights. Write it in your report.
• Log the query purpose: The audit report will be your friend in a suppression hearing.
• Watch cumulative query volume on a single vehicle: One query in one investigation is easy to defend. Repeated queries assembling weeks of movement on one plate is the fact pattern most likely to produce the first suppression ruling in this area.
• When in doubt, get the warrant: An application costs an hour. The courts could be moving the goal posts in the area of the law. 

Bottom Line

I don’t want your case to be the one that changes the precedent.  The judges in these cases are sending the law enforcement community signals.  They have told us exactly what will change the Fourth Amendment analysis: longer retention, broader sharing, and deeper integration with other data. Chatrie handed defense counsel a Supreme Court opinion holding that when it comes to location information neither third-party custody nor a narrow slice of a large database keeps the Fourth Amendment out of the analysis.

Be mindful of how you get and use ALPR data.

Plain View in a Digital World

“When can the police use evidence they stumble upon during a lawful search of a digital device?”

WRITTEN BY: Lieutenant Brian Tully (ret)

All police officers know the plain view doctrine. You are lawfully in a place, you see contraband, its criminal nature is obvious, and you can seize it. It’s the bag of pills on a passenger seat seen during a traffic stop.

What about plain view in a digital world? You have a warrant for drug evidence. The examiner is scrolling through a media folder. A video appears to have nothing to do with narcotics and everything to do with a felony nobody knew about. Is that plain view? Can you keep it? Can you start working the new case right then?

The US First Circuit Court of Appeals took up a version of that problem on May 18, 2026, in United States v. Deschambault. The ruling and the older Tenth Circuit case mentioned in the opinion together provide a practical guidance on how to handle the unexpected evidence in a digital world.

Plain View Defined

Plain view has three requirements:

First, lawful vantage point. The officer must be somewhere he is entitled to be. In a digital search, that means executing a valid warrant and looking in places the warrant allows.

Second, immediately apparent incriminating character. The evidentiary value must be obvious on its face, without further searching to establish it.

Third, lawful right of access. Seeing it is not enough. The officer must be able to get to it without another intrusion.

The Case

In August 2019, Maine drug agents arrested Rayevon Deschambault after a controlled buy. In the car they recovered two phones, a loaded handgun, a scale with cocaine residue, and packaging consistent with distribution. A state judge issued a warrant to search Deschambault’s iPhone for records tied to the trafficking, and for material showing who owned and used the device.

While executing that warrant, the agent found three videos. Two involved Deschambault and a female who looked young to the agent. The third had no sexual content and showed the same female standing in Deschambault’s bedroom, the identical room where officers had already recovered cash and drugs, with Deschambault panning the camera around and describing the room as a “dirty ass trap house room”.

The agent did not recognize the female. He circulated a clothed picture to other officers, one of whom identified her as a fourteen-year-old known from prior drug activity.  Investigators located her, interviewed her, and learned she knew Deschambault by his street alias, knew he and his girlfriend sold cocaine, and had been asked to help.

Then, and very importantly, they went back to a federal magistrate and obtained a second warrant authorizing a search of the phone for evidence of child exploitation. Deschambault was convicted on two counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor and sentenced to 216 months.

The Plain View Argument

Deschambault argued that once the agent noticed the female looked underage and began working to identify her, he had left the drug warrant behind and was investigating a different crime without authority.

The First Circuit disagreed, and the reasoning is important. The court did not need to rely on plain view because it found the videos fell inside the original warrant. The bedding, the wall paneling, and the background matched the room where drugs and cash were seized. Deschambault’s own recorded statements tied that room to distribution. The videos helped establish who had custody of the phone and connected him to the stash location.

The vantage point was lawful. The right of access was lawful. And the incriminating character was apparent without any further searching. All three tenets satisfied.

The court then addressed the juvenile’s identification effort separately and rejected the idea that following the lead was improper. Evidence lawfully seized under a warrant for one crime can be used to investigate another. Identifying the female was not abandoning the drug case, it was advancing it, and it produced a witness who could place Deschambault in the room with the narcotics. As a different federal case stated decades ago, when an investigation of one crime uncovers a trail to another, following that trail is the investigator’s job.

Where Digital Plain View Can Go Wrong

Deschambault leaned on US v. Carey, and the contrast between the two cases is the training point.

In Carey, a Tenth Circuit case from 1999, an officer had a warrant to search a computer for evidence of drug sales. He opened a file and found child pornography. At that moment he was squarely within plain view. Had he stopped, documented it, and applied for a second warrant, the analysis would have been straightforward.

He did not stop. He testified that he then spent roughly five hours opening additional image files, one after another, looking for more of the same. He was no longer searching for drug evidence. He was conducting a warrantless search for child pornography using a drug warrant as the entry ticket. Every file after the first one failed the lawful access requirement, because the warrant did not authorize a hunt for that material.

The First Circuit separated Deschambault from Carey on two grounds. The videos here were directly relevant to the drug investigation, which was not true in Carey. And the agent here did not convert his search into a child exploitation search without authority. He got the federal warrant first.

Takeaways

• Draft the affidavit so the categories requested are justified in your own words, based on your training and experience, and tied to the crime you are investigating.

• Putting the device under the control of your target is critical.  Like the investigators in Deschambault, add a category requesting evidence of care, custody, and control of the device.

• When something unexpected surfaces, document the moment. Note what you saw, when you saw it, and whether it connects to the crime in your warrant. If it does connect, say how.

• Do not exceed the scope of the warrant. The line between Deschambault and Carey is not what the investigator found. It is what he did in the ten minutes after he found it. One went back to a judge. One kept clicking.  Get the second warrant.

Register now for “Digital Evidence: Where to Find It and How to Use It” to learn how to avoid mistakes when dealing with digital evidence. 

Chatrie v. United States: The Warrant Rule for Location Data Just Got Simpler… and Harder

WRITTEN BY: Brian Tully

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Chatrie v. United States. If you work cases that touch location data, this one impacts your work. The takeaway: when police obtain a person’s location data from a company like Google, that is a Fourth Amendment search, and you need a warrant. It does not matter the length of your request.  If it is location data held by a third party, get a warrant.

The Robbery

In 2019, a man robbed a credit union outside Richmond, Virginia. Witnesses and camera footage showed him approaching from a nearby church while appearing to talk on a cell phone. The man walked in and demanded $100,000 from the teller.  When the teller said she did not have access to that much cash, the man forced the manager at gun point to open the vault and left with $195,000. 

Investigators applied for a geofence warrant to Google, drawing a 150-meter circle around the scene and asking for the phones inside it around the time of the robbery.

The warrant used the three step Google process. Step one produced anonymized data for 19 phones inside the geofence. Step two narrowed the list to nine and pulled two hours of movement, inside and outside the circle. Step three narrowed to three and returned names. One of them was Okello Chatrie, whose data placed him at the scene about ten minutes before the robbery. Chatrie moved to suppress the evidence.

The lower courts split badly. The trial judge said the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment but admitted the evidence under the good faith exception. A Fourth Circuit panel said there was no search at all. The full Fourth Circuit deadlocked seven to seven on that question. The Supreme Court took one issue: was this a search?

What the Court Decided

Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan held that a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone location data, and that accessing Location History is a search. The Court leaned on Carpenter v. United States, the 2018 CSLI case, and found that everything that made CSLI a search applies just as strongly, or more strongly, to Location History.  Having found a search, the Court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit to decide whether this multi-step warrant actually satisfied probable cause and particularity at each step.

The specific geofence Google technique is largely gone already. In July 2025, Google moved Location History onto individual devices and now says it cannot respond to these warrants at all. So, the exact technique in Chatrie is off the table, but do not dismiss the importance of the decision.  The Court wrote broadly, and its reasoning reaches any location data held by any provider.

What This Means for Your Cases

1. Get a Search Warrant every time. Do not rely on the old arguments. Forget the 2703(d) orders.  Do not lean on a short time window. If you are seeking location data from a company, assume you need a warrant supported by probable cause.  For years, many state courts have required Search Warrants for any location data.  Now that rule is nationwide.
2. The reasoning travels. The Google technique is dead, but the logic covers Apple, Uber, Lyft, Snapchat, and whatever comes next. Do not treat a different provider as a warrant free workaround.
3. Remember Particularity. The dissent noted that when a request sweeps in private location data you did not need, the remedy is suppressing that piece, not the whole case. Narrow requests protect the rest of your evidence.  Be able to explain why you chose the geographical size of the request (in Chatrie, the 150-meter radius) and the time frame.   Avoid Constitutionally sensitive areas.  In the written and oral arguments, much was discussed that the radius of the Chatrie geofence warrant contained a church.  If your location request includes places of worship, abortion clinics, political organizations, or medical facilities, be able to explain why these locations are in the Search Warrant request.
4. Watch the horizon. The dissent warned that search history, purchase logs, and payment records could be next. The doctrine has not moved there yet, but if you are building around sensitive third party digital records, the safe course is a warrant.

Bottom Line

Chatrie makes the rule cleaner. When you want location data from a provider, get a warrant. The hard part moves to the paper. Write the affidavit and the warrant so that every step stands on its own probable cause and its own particularity.

Brian Tully recently retired from the Massachusetts State Police and is considered an SME regarding digital forensic evidence.

Algorithms Writing Reports

The Legal and Constitutional Stakes of AI Assisted Police Reports

WRITTEN BY:  Mike Schentrup

As police departments adopt generative artificial intelligence (AI) to draft incident reports from body-camera audio and field notes, the practice is colliding with state legislation, judicial precedent, and constitutional guarantees. While law enforcement tech companies market these tools as time saving innovations, legal advocates and civil liberties organizations warn that offloading narrative creation to software introduces severe risks to due process and the search for truth.

The Statutory Push for Transparency

State legislatures are increasingly taking action against opacity in AI-generated reports:

• Mandatory Disclosure & Audit Trails: Laws like California’s SB 524 and Utah’s SB 180 require explicit disclosure whenever AI assists in drafting a police report.
• Preservation Requirements: Agencies are obligated to retain original, unedited AI drafts alongside underlying audio files. This requirement ensures defense teams can trace how a narrative evolved from initial algorithmic output to the sworn document.
• Human-in-the-Loop Safeguards: Statutes mandate that officers review and individually sign off on report accuracy, attempting to preserve human accountability amidst automation.
• Local Jurisdictions Ban AI: There are several large municipal governments that have banned the use of AI to write police reports, including Seattle, Washington.

Judicial Scrutiny and Evidentiary Challenges

In courtroom proceedings, evidentiary rules and witness memory standards present steep hurdles for AI-assisted narratives:

• Memory “Contamination”: When an officer reads an AI summary generated from body-camera audio before drafting their final statement, the AI summary can overwrite or distort the officer’s actual subjective memory of the event. Under evidentiary rules governing refreshed recollection, defense attorneys argue that this process taints the witness’s independent recollection.
• Impeachment Evidence: Cross-examinations routinely exploit subtle discrepancies between an officer’s direct impressions, body-camera footage, and the text generated by AI.
• CJIS & Privilege Compliance: Federal compliance guidelines strictly prohibit the transmission of some unredacted police data to third-party cloud tools, raising data security and privilege waiver concerns.  This is especially true when using open source platforms, such as Chat GPT and Claude. This is not as much of an issue with proprietary closed systems, like Axon’s Draft One.

Constitutional Concerns

• Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process & Brady Obligations

• Brady v. Maryland requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory or impeaching evidence. If an AI “hallucinates” details, glosses over an officer’s hesitation, or smooths over inconsistencies in a narrative, it obscures critical exculpatory material.
• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes that algorithmic tools operate as opaque “black boxes,” hindering defendants from probing how a narrative was shaped or altered.
• Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause
• The Confrontation Clause guarantees a defendant the right to cross-examine their accusers. When an incident report relies on a machine-synthesized narrative, the defense is left questioning a hybrid entity: an officer whose memory has been filtered through a proprietary algorithm.
• Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection & Embedded Bias
• LLMs are trained on massive public datasets that contain historical societal and systemic racial biases. Is it possible these will be reflected in the AI assisted report narrative?
• Fourth Amendment Integrity
• Police reports often serve as the sole factual basis for probable cause determinations, arrest warrants, and search warrants. If automated drafting tools insert unverified framing or exaggerated details, warrants may be issued on inflated claims, undermining Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Ultimately, while automated tools offer speed, the combined weight of statutory mandates, evidentiary standards, and constitutional guarantees makes clear that efficiency cannot come at the expense of procedural fairness and human accountability.

Sources

1. https://statescoop.com/aclu-police-generative-ai-draft-reports/

2. https://admin.thehub.news/tag/aclu/feed/

3. https://statescoop.com/aclu-police-generative-ai-draft-reports/

4. https://admin.thehub.news/tag/aclu/feed/

Mike Schentrup is the owner/founder of Advanced Police Concepts and teaches report writing and supervisor report review across the United States.

Acting Corporal – A Leadership Dilemma

WRITTEN BY: Sgt Steve Sweeting

I love how police work, life, and philosophy often come together to teach a lesson. They can also combine in ways that reveal an old lesson in a new way.

This past month, I faced a leadership dilemma at work. It’s July, which means it is the busy season for us patrol cops. I have a team to lead through the busiest time of the year while my corporal is out for the month. So, when I need leadership and administrative backup the most, I find myself shorthanded. At the same time, it is promotion season, so a few of my officers are trying to carve out time to study and prepare for the upcoming test.

I was thinking about my lack of managerial assistance, the increased summer workload, and the fact that some of my key players were distracted by the upcoming promotions when a solution presented itself. Those of you who have been reading for a while have probably guessed correctly that I’m leading up to applying a lesson from Marcus Aurelius: “What inhibits action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Or, in popular terminology, “The obstacle is the way.” That is where I went with it, but that’s not the point of this particular newsletter.

I applied the old tactic of using problems against themselves and created a new job title on my team: “Acting Corporal.” It’s a completely fabricated job title, but it describes the role well. In short, I told each of my officers who would soon be testing for the job of corporal that they would take turns serving as the acting corporal. They would report directly to me, and everyone else would run things by them. All the small decisions and all the day-to-day issues were up to them. At several points during the day, I planned to meet with my acting corporal. They would review the paperwork and decide whether to approve or deny the reports, with my oversight, of course. I couldn’t delegate everything to them, but I was able to put enough on them that it felt real. They started feeling the weight of responsibility in a new way.

Check out Steve’s YouTube page @SteetStoicSteve

This completely made up job title worked better than I could have ever imagined. The acting corporals took it seriously and started trying to fill the role of corporal. They started having the hundreds of small interactions that leaders have on a daily basis. They started seeing how no two problems are identical, but usually they are all the same. They got to see first-hand how most of their coworkers were causing their own problems.

These lessons really crystallized during the report review portion of the night. They were harder on each other in terms of report writing and case management standards than I would ever be. They were quick to deny and slow to approve. Even though they were using my laptop and were logged in under my account, one officer looked at a lackluster report and said, “I’m not putting my name on this crap.” I had to laugh because it was actually my name going on the approval page, and the same officer had sent me many lackluster reports in the past.

The weight of responsibility and seeing the cases from a different perspective were changing how they perceived what was good enough and what was acceptable.

The real lesson came when I reviewed the cases and the deficiencies that my acting corporals were taking issue with. For each task that wasn’t done and each important thing that was overlooked or not documented, I asked them, “Why do you think the officer made this mistake?” I asked, “Do they not know?” I asked, “Do they lack experience?” or “Is this just an honest mistake?” Each and every one of them ultimately came to the same conclusion: The flaws in the cases were not caused by a lack of knowledge, resources, or experience. The officer simply didn’t want to do the task. They knew better but didn’t feel like doing it.

With each acting corporal, I discussed the phone calls, issues, and questions they had handled for their coworkers during the shifts. I asked whether there was any connection between the content of those conversations and what they were seeing in the reports. Each of them understood exactly what I was driving at. In many of those calls and conversations, the officers asking for advice already knew the answer. They knew what should be done, and they were usually calling or seeking advice because they wanted permission not to do the things they didn’t feel like doing.

It literally took only a day or two in a supervisory role for them to see the most common problem in police work and the primary obstacle to every good investigation and every good career: not doing the hard thing, especially the things you don’t feel like doing.

After each of them saw it for themselves and experienced it first-hand while the lesson was still fresh, I drove it home. This is a good leader’s job: protecting people from themselves. A good leader looks at the big picture, considers the long term, and guides people toward success. People are universally their own worst enemies and struggle to perform when they don’t feel like doing something. This is why parents make their children eat their vegetables. This is why coaches make their teams run laps in spring training. This is why we put the family on a spending budget. What we feel like doing is often the wrong answer. What we don’t feel like doing is usually what most needs to be done.

I’m happy that I invented a job title this month. I think the lessons learned did a lot of good for my aspiring leaders. I know that when they have their promotional interviews, they will have something insightful to say. I think I also did myself a favor by letting them learn that lesson. When they are out there working calls unsupervised, they will be more likely to recognize when they are avoiding necessary tasks simply because they don’t feel like doing them. Hopefully, that will mean fewer headaches for me in the future.

This idea holds true for working cases and writing reports, and it is also true in life. How much more successful would we all be, and how much closer to our goals would we all be, if the phrase “I don’t feel like it” didn’t exist? What if we learned to identify the thought, “I don’t want to,” as a massive green light and a directional arrow pointing us toward the things that we absolutely should do? I think we would all live with fewer consequences and regrets. I know we would all be more successful if we did.

Until next week, BOLO for the dangers of “I don’t want to.”

Amor Fati

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Public Safety Training and Development

Creating engaging, professional training presentations has always required a significant investment of time. From researching content and organizing ideas to designing slides and developing visuals, the process can be overwhelming for even experienced instructors. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way public safety trainers build and deliver training, making it possible to create higher-quality presentations in less time.

AI as Your Training Development Partner

One of the greatest challenges instructors face is getting started. Whether developing a new course or updating an existing one, organizing information into a logical and engaging format can be difficult. AI tools can help trainers quickly generate outlines, identify key learning points, suggest course structures, and even draft speaker notes.

For example, an instructor developing a course on report writing, leadership, investigations, or officer wellness can use AI to brainstorm topics, identify emerging trends, and create a framework that supports learning objectives. Rather than replacing the instructor’s expertise, AI enhances it by accelerating the development process.

Building Better Presentations Faster

Slide design is another area where AI is having a significant impact. Modern AI-powered tools can transform simple bullet points into professional-looking presentations with visually appealing layouts, relevant graphics, and consistent formatting.

Instead of spending hours adjusting fonts, searching for images, or creating charts, trainers can focus on refining their message and improving student engagement. AI helps ensure presentations look polished and professional while maintaining consistency throughout the course.

Creating Custom Images and Videos

Finding the right visual content has traditionally been one of the most time-consuming aspects of course development. AI image and video generation tools now allow instructors to create custom visuals simply by describing what they want.

Need an image of a patrol officer conducting a traffic stop? A crime scene investigator processing evidence? A supervisor mentoring a new officer? AI can generate unique visuals tailored to the training topic within minutes. This capability allows instructors to create relevant, high-quality content while reducing reliance on stock photography and generic imagery.

Why Public Safety Trainers Should Embrace AI

The public safety profession continues to evolve, and so should the methods used to train its professionals. AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it is a practical tool that can help instructors save time, improve creativity, and enhance the overall learning experience.

Organizations that embrace AI-driven training development can create more engaging courses, update content more efficiently, and respond faster to emerging training needs. Those who ignore these tools risk falling behind as technology becomes increasingly integrated into professional education.

The Future of Training Is Here

Artificial intelligence will never replace the knowledge, experience, and credibility of a skilled instructor. However, it can become one of the most valuable tools in a trainer’s toolbox. By leveraging AI for content creation, presentation design, and multimedia development, public safety professionals can spend less time building slides and more time doing what matters most—developing the next generation of public safety professionals.

The future of training is not about replacing instructors with technology. It is about empowering instructors with technology to deliver better training than ever before.

Report Template- Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence Investigation

This template is designed to assist you in gathering and organizing information needed to complete the investigation of a domestic violence report.  Obtaining the information contained herein may assist you in performing a complete investigation and gathering information vital to your report. This is NOT state specific and is not an exhaustive list.

1. Opening paragraph: Date, time and other information important to how officer became involved (dispatched to a call, flagged down, etc.). If the deputy witnessed something to cause him/her to stop at the incident location, that fact should be included in this initial paragraph.

• Arrival at the scene
  • If situation is still volatile, what did officer do to make scene safe, secure it, treat injuries, etc.
  • Officer’s observations: what the officer saw; what the officer heard. Appearance of the scene (overturned furniture, broken items, weapons, etc.)
  • Appearance of the victim
    • Injuries (thoroughly describe the injuries)
    • Emotional (crying, screaming, shaking)
      • Describe exactly what you witnessed. Don’t draw conclusions with words like “upset” or “agitated.”
    • Excited utterances by victim
  • Appearance of the suspect (location and demeanor; also include statements, including spontaneous statements)
  • Medical attention offered/called in case of injury to any party
  • Was the assistance of a CIT officer required?
  • Separate all parties (document)

• Victim’s Statement
  • Relationship with the suspect
  • How did they receive their injury
  • Cause of the argument; however, when documenting, they did not cause the violence against them
  • Children/Witnesses
  • Prior history (have police been called before? Has suspect been arrested? Is there a restraining order or an order of no contact?) Confirm history via computer checks.
  • Drug or alcohol involvement by either party
  • What happened after the argument?
  • Sworn, taped statement from the victim
  • Emotional state of victim
  • Was a weapon used? What kind? Do they have access to a weapon?
  • Ask about strangulation.

• Suspect
  • Relationship to the victim
  • Injuries – document how they received them
  • Suspect Statement/Sworn if applicable
  • Demeanor while deputies were on scene

• Witnesses – separate first
  • Canvass neighbors to see what they may have heard/seenMake sure you locate the 911 caller, if it wasn’t the victimWhat was seen/heard
  • Relationship to involved parties or are they independent witnesses?

• Deputy’s actions at the scene
  • Evidence gathered? Are there weapons in plain view? If PC to arrest suspect, remove firearms that belong to him/her. Statement taken? Photos taken?
    • Both victim and suspect should be photographed. The scene should be photographed as well
• • Victim notification/victim packet. Victim Advocate/notification. Computer checks on suspect/victim history.
• • Lethality Assessment
  • Victim — medical attention or shelter or refusal

• Disposition
  • Primary or predominant aggressor determined?
    • Normally, both parties should NOT be arrested
    Arrest with or without incident? Suspect arrested / case filed / PC pending / investigation closed?
    • BOLO issued for suspect if not located. Warrant obtained? DV Unit Notified?
    Evidence submitted
  • Notification of Department of Children and Families when combatants have children present

Camaraderie Cuts Both Ways

By Senior Deputy Keith Walmsley (ret)

“United – We Stand, Divided – We Fall” 

The very thing I cherish most about my 21+ year career in Law Enforcement, is also the very thing which hurts most. I’ve always believed that LE is a profession that chooses YOU, not the other way around. It’s truly a Calling, and bless everyone who answers that Call.  

March 19th marked the 12 year anniversary of the LOD loss of my Brother and former partner, Ricky Delfiorentino. 12 years is ample time for people to get over most things, but I have tears in my eyes just writing that sentence. He was a big man with a bigger heart, and he touched the lives of every single person he ever met. He was literally an unforgettable presence, a center that so many revolved around. I only worked with Ricky for 5 years on the Mendocino Coast, but he continues to be a presence in the lives of my family and I to this day. 

Working for a rural agency can be challenging and, as many others, I sought greener pastures with another agency. Even working several hours away, the bonds you form with your partners during the trials of the Job, endure. I remain close with many of the Brothers and Sisters I have worked with.

I had been working at my new agency for 4 years when a Brother of mine who still worked in Mendocino called to tell me about Ricky. I was crushed. My grief was enormous. This was quickly followed by an all-encompassing rage at the (insert your own expletive here) who took him from all of us. I’ve never committed that name to my memory, because he doesn’t deserve to be in the same thoughts as Ricky. He also died at the scene.

The following days included Ricky’s Memorial Service, which was as majestic and heartbreaking as you’d expect. The days following that, included everyone returning to their duties, Protecting and Serving, Representing and Enforcing. For me, I also went back to work, but with a Ride-Along…

I was the only Deputy working in a small, upscale, contract-town with my new agency. I hit the street with my Ride-Along, which was the rage, sorrow, and overwhelming survivor’s guilt of having lost someone I loved. I was in full uniform, driving around town, crying in my patrol car. The unlucky recipient was my first traffic stop, a little old lady who did not come to a complete stop at a stop sign. I would call it more of a detonation than a citizen contact, and my tirade was volcanic. 

Immediately following that stop, I returned to the office and called my Sergeant. I informed him that he was likely to receive a citizen complaint, and that it was 100% founded. He understood what I was dealing with, and told me to just go home. I didn’t have to be there. My response? “My other Brothers don’t get a day off. Why do I deserve one?’ 

What I was avoiding was the fact that I was not dealing with my loss well, and even more importantly, that I didn’t know HOW to deal with it.  As LE Officers, we are expected to control every situation, handle every problem, and look good doing it, maintaining a courageous calm in the midst of chaos. 

I displayed a strong face to others while, inside, I was reeling, drowning, suffering. This manifested as my Ride-Along, and doom on anyone who crossed my path! At this particular time, it should not be surprising that I was also in marriage counseling. During a session, my Ride-Along let my ex-wife have it during an exchange, and thankfully our therapist recognized the anguish I was in and stopped the session. 

Our therapist did not let me off of the hook. He told me that he would work with me individually, or refer me to another therapist for solo grief counseling, but I absolutely needed more help.   

This is really the thrust of this writing. LE is a difficult job to do and not everyone can do it. I’ve always been proud of that, to be a Spartan, a true Warrior against Evil and Injustice, but I’ve never seen a Spartan cry, have you? There is an expectation that we as cops are tough (and we are) and a stigma that tough guys don’t ask for help because they don’t need it. This is just not the case. Think of any call where you called for back-up…

Back-up is essential to our jobs, and also in our lives outside of uniform. Take advantage of Employee Assistance Programs or Peer Support groups when available. They are there because you are not the first or last Officer who needs it. There is no shame in asking for assistance. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means you’re still Human. Think of the suicide rate among our fellow Officers and returning Veterans. Please, call for back-up when you need it! 

The therapist I was referred to was actually a former cop, so he was uniquely qualified to help me compartmentalize my grief over losing Ricky. I still live with his loss, but learned how to function in spite of it. I was able to show up for my family, my partners, and my community again, not letting that POS effectively end my life too on that day. I was able to experience “Post Traumatic Growth”, which is something I had never even considered was a possibility. I was able to incorporate the lessons I learned into other traumatic events I’ve experienced since then, and you can too.

I am relatively new to the concept of Stoicism, but I practice it every day and it has helped me identify and deal with the stressors in my life. I feel lighter and much more confident knowing that I can handle future problems, and that I have back-up if I need it. 

While writing this, I came across something that Leo Tolstoy wrote: “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” 

Please remember that you are not alone and have hundreds of thousands of Brothers and Sisters who’ve got your back.

Thank you for reading and Stay Safe.
K. Walmsley

“Anxiety hates a moving target.”

By Sergeant Steve Sweeting

As I write these newsletters week after week, you might think that I have a plan or that I follow a schedule of topics or ideas that I want to share… Nope, not at all. I go out there, work the streets and live my life, and at some point every week the topic reveals itself to me.

This week it was a phrase that I heard during a podcast. The host and guest were talking about modern life and how prevalent anxiety is nowadays, when the guest said something that really struck home. He said:

“Anxiety hates a moving target.”

As I heard the phrase, I knew it was true and I knew what this week’s newsletter would be.

Reduced anxiety is one of the main benefits that I first noticed when I started practicing Stoicism, and I’ve heard many of my students comment on how following the Stoics has helped them with their own anxiety.

See more content from StreetStoic.com

But why? At first, I thought maybe that increased confidence was why the philosophy reduced anxiety. It makes sense that if you are more confident in yourself, you will worry less about yourself… Maybe? Next I thought that maybe the answer was in Stoicism’s focus on rational thought and facing things head on. I suspected that because most fears and anxieties are irrational, exaggerated, and overblown, and that once you started insisting on logic that a lot of that would naturally fall away. I still think that maybe it is something like that. But now with this new phrase on my mind, I have a new theory. I’m thinking that the reason why the practice of Stoicism does so much to eliminate anxiety is the Stoic bias towards action.

The bias towards action is a thread that runs through all the writings and lives of the Stoics. Act, do, engage, take initiative, take responsibility, take ownership, or as my friend Bryce Lee sometimes says, “Be the main character in your own life.”

When you have this inclination to take action, you very much become a moving target. It makes it very hard for anxiety to take aim at you.

I know from personal experience that it is hard to be actively engaged in doing something about the problem and worry about the problem at the same time. When I am productively working in the here and now, I don’t have much time or bandwidth to worry and fret about the future or dwell on the past.

Maybe the simple answer to a lot of anxiety is “do something.” Maybe the trick is to be too busy to be anxious.

“Not in passivity, but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity.”
– Marcus Aurelius

I’m a big fan of Jocko, and I think one of his famous sayings applies to this. He tells people that they should “default aggressive.” I think maybe he’s not saying that you should be confrontational with people all the time, but instead be aggressive about your life. If you have a problem, attack it. If you have a worry, confront it. This is very much a bias towards action.

When you look at Stoicism, this way of thinking is built into the Dichotomy of Control. It’s not just “don’t worry about the things you don’t control.” <– That’s the rookie version. The actual lesson of the DOC is that you actively focus on and work with the things that you DO control and the choices you CAN make. When you practice the DOC and actually use it, you learn to ask yourself constantly, “what can I do?” As long as you are alive, there is always something that you can do. The thing you learn through repetition is that if you only focus on internals, you never fail. The outcome is entirely up to you, and that is nothing to be anxious about at all.

“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
– Epictetus

When we experience trauma or situations that induce PTSD, I think this bias towards action can be a real lifesaver. After 20 years of living it and seeing it play out in the lives of others, I can tell you with a lot of confidence that the only wrong answer is to do nothing. Your action might be talking to a friend, your move might be to go get some therapy, you might attack a stack of books or a new philosophy like I did, you might get up and go to church, or maybe you get busy doing some good in the world or improving things. However you choose to be a moving target, I think that strategy is going to work out much better than staying still, doing nothing, or inaction.

If you deal with any anxiety, worry, or dread this week, maybe it’s time to turn yourself into a moving target and see if you can’t dodge the worst of it.

Amor Fati
– Sgt. Steve

Death Investigation Report Template

REPORT WRITING TEMPLATE

Death Investigation

This template is designed to assist you in gathering information to complete an unattended death investigation / report.  Obtaining this information may assist you in performing a complete investigation and gathering information vital to your report. Remember: a death call should be treated as a homicide until you rule it out.

1. Opening paragraph: “On (date) at (time), I was dispatched to (location) in reference to a death investigation   or “On (date) at (time), I arrived at (location) in reference to a death investigation.

2. Upon arrival at the scene: In some cases, you will be responding to a call from a person and met at the scene by that person or other persons. This could include a person discovering the body, a relative, a security guard or paramedics, to name a few. In such a case, you would list what you were told by these persons first in your report. In other cases, you might be dispatched to a home where a person is calling in a welfare check on a person who has not been seen or hear in quite some time. In those cases, you would list in this section first what you observed about the home to either justify your entry into the home or why everything appeared in order. See list below for an outline of these two scenarios.

1. People spoken to at scene
   1. To include relatives, witnesses, discovering parties or EMS personnel, on scene, dwelling, other observations of location.
   1. Brief summary of what deputy was told by people on scene.
   1. Who found the decedent? Who was the last person to see or talk to the decedent.
2. Observation of body (also include information about what room or part of property body is found).
   1. Position of body: sitting, lying on back/stomach, etc
   1. How is victim dressed?
   1. Age? Gender? Race? Size?
   1. Obvious injuries? Indications of foul play?
      1. If foul play suspected, contact supervisor and detectives immediately.
      1. Search warrant may be required to proceed.
   1. Animal post-mortem activity?
   1. Decomposition, rigor mortis, lividity?
   1. Indications of suicide? Notes? Pill bottles? Weapons?
      1. Suicide by firearm: DO NOT MOVE THE GUN, unless absolutely necessary. If the gun has to be moved, for EMS, then try to photograph first or use BWC to capture the location of firearm.
   1. Indications of an overdose? Narcotics? Narcotics equipment?
      1. If overdose, what is the protocol?
   1. Temperature of room? Air-conditioning on or off?
   1. Identifying marks on body: tattoos, marks, etc.
   1. What actions deputy took to check body (rolling, moving, etc.)
      1. If the death is suspicious and ME response, do not move the body until given the OK.
   1. In any case of suspicious death, the decedent’s phone must be found and secured immediately.
3. Observations of the location
   1. Type of location (single-family, apartment, business, field, roadside, canal)
   1. Observations from outside of residence to indicate a death has occurred or not. This would include odors, newspapers, mail, outside lights, insect activity through windows, lawn maintenance, etc.
   1. How was location found? Locked? Unlocked? Forced entry? Anything suspicious? And if forced entry, was it done by a third party trying to check on decedent?
   1. Check all windows and doors.
   1. Anything missing from the location?  Any signs of theft?
4. Investigation and steps taken at scene
   1. Actions taken that altered scene (might include actions to make scene safe for first responders, such as moving a gun, or a hypodermic needle.) This is OK as long as it is documented, including the reasons for such actions. These facts may also be included earlier in report.
   1. Actions taken to preserve scene (crime scene tape, etc.)
   1. Include in your report anything that you touched. Were gloves used?
   1. Was any other barrier protection used by the deputy (latex gloves, booties, etc.)?
   1. Determine time of death (did someone pronounce death, such as an EMT), or an approximation based on evidence or statements.
   1. When was decedent last seen alive? When was he/she found dead?
   1. Medical history
   1. Psychiatric history (if indications of suicide)
   1. Who discovered decedent?
   1. Will a doctor sign a death investigation?
   1. If doctor won’t sign, call Medical Examiner or Coroner
   1. Was sergeant notified? Did he/she respond?
   1. Was a special unit (detective or crime scene) or other agency (ME) notified?
   1. Actions taken to assist family (chaplain, assist with body pickup, etc.)
   1. Was victim advocate or CIT utilized?
   1. Photos taken
      1. Regardless of case, detailed photos of the body should be taken.
      1. Detailed photos of the area immediately around the body should be taken.
      1. Photos of all prescriptions medicine should be taken.
   1. Any property taken into evidence/safekeeping – prescription meds?
   1. Any children on scene? DCF? Relatives?
5. Disposition
   1. Decedent (to medical examiner or funeral home and list body removal service).
   1. Family or next of kin
   1. Any actions taken to secure home (if FD or you forced entry)
   1. Securing of pets