Chapter 6 Concepts

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    Chapter 6 deals with writing police arrest reports. The most important lesson out of this chapter was to be as clear and concise as possible and make sure to include the information that gives the officer probable cause in the report. There are three ways to include probable cause: by using the five senses, by using the officer's training and experience and by using information gained during the coarse of daily activities. Without probable cause, an officer cannot make an arrest. Therefore, it is important to include probable cause within the police report. The rest of the chapter gave examples of police reports such as fill-inn-the-blanks forms and narrative reports. the fill-in-the-blanks form is self-explanatory, there boxes for they have a prescribed question to it and then the officer just fills in the blank. ;The narrative report requires more work on the officer. In the narrative report, the officer must manually write out what happened in chronological order and with as much detail as humanly possible.

Pedro's Experiment

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    My initial thoughts about Pedro's dressing up and then down experiment, was that I was not surprised by the results. I do not think this experiment is strictly about his race. People who dress well, do get treated better regardless about their race. I have noticed that when I dress in all black in skinny jeans and a band shirt with my long hair, people do act differently around me. Workers at stores look at me thinking I am some ordinary kid that is in there to goof off and break items. I specifically remember this one example when I was with two of my friends, all of us were wearing black skinny jeans, band shirt, and with long hair, we were in SEARS at the Louis Joliet Mall looking at beds. At the time, I was actually looking to buy a new bed, so I was sitting on beds as I was walking by, just testing them like everyone does. Then, one of the managers saw me sitting on all the beds and assumed we were goofing off and kicked us out of SEARS for the day. I was shocked when this happened because we were not goofing off any more than an adult would be goofing off, just having fun. I believe since the group of us looked as though we were young teenagers that looked like we were looking for trouble, actually got us into trouble. 

    Now when I dress, I usually wear a pair of blue jeans, a non-offensive band shirt (because I have been told by an elderly lady that one of my band shirts I was wearing was offensive, but that is a story for another day) and a nice jacket because I have noticed that people in stores are more polite to me when I dress like this. I still get some people that think I am a young stoner kid (mainly because I have long hair and I joke around a lot), but they usually realize I clearly do not do drugs once they find out that I am a criminal justice major that has aspirations to land a job in the FBI.  

    Therefore, I think this experiment can be recreated by using any person around the same age and of any race and still have the same outcome. I thought this experiment did a great job in publicizing how people treat others based on how they dress and how easily these same people come to judge others in how they dress. 

Making A Murderer Interviews

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    The Netflix series Making A Murderer shows the story of Steven Avery and the investigation of a murder he was allegedly involved with. Avery's defense was that the Manitowoc County Police Department framed Avery because of his past experiences with the police department. Avery was once convicted of a sexual assault that he was later found to be wrongfully convicted by the same police department. During interviews between the police department and Avery's lawyers, some of the officer's body language showed signs of stress and anxiety. 

    During the interviews, Sheriff Ken Peterson is seen fidgeting in his chair, constantly squeezing his hands, and interlacing his fingers multiple times. These can be taken as sign of stress meaning that he either knew something about the cover-up (if there was one) or that he was one of the officers involved. 

    District Attorney, Mark Rohrer, was interviewed and asked about the important information he allegedly  withheld from giving it to the Sheriff. During his interview, he can be seen as close to shaking like a leaf as humanly possible. His posture constantly changed from leaning forward and back in his chair. He folded his arms, fidgeted his heads, and even scratching his face which is another sign of stress. This can also be taken as he knew about the alleged cover-up and was nervous about getting in trouble. 

    After seeing this scene, I now see how bad posture and hand gestures can lead an interviewer to question ones integrity. In order to prepare for an interview I think it is just best to be honest whether or not that means you will get in trouble or not. It is better to have everyone know you messed up rather than having people debate and get emotional over it, which would make it a bigger deal than it could have been by admitting wrong.