Week 9 - Investigations Division - JCSO Citizen's Academy

They through a curve ball at us this week and moved Investigations Division up to week 9.  Directed Patrol will be next week instead.

Major Daryl Reece is the Operations Bureau Commander.  He spoke briefly and then handed off to Captain Doug Baker for a brief presentation.

Investigative services are organized into the functional groups of Crimes Against Property, Crimes Against Persons, Drug Enforcement, Organized Crime, Crime Scene processing, Crime Analysis and Street Drug Enforcement.

Sheriff’s investigators are assigned reported violations of Kansas criminal law that occur within rural Johnson County, DeSoto and Edgerton. It is their responsibility to gather both the physical evidence and factual information required to identify and apprehend offenders and to assist the District Attorney’s Office in the prosecution of those offenders.  The types of crimes vary from burglary, robbery, credit card and identity fraud, computer crime, homicide and missing person cases. Investigators also serve search warrants and subpoenas in the course of their investigations.
Investigative staff routinely collaborate with investigators from area police departments as well as with state and federal investigative agencies in order to share information, leads and resources. Sheriff’s Investigators provide training on investigative methods to other law enforcement agencies as requested and they serve on the METRO SQUAD when it is activated to investigate homicides committed in the Kansas City region.  JCSO Investigators have an average of 16 years experience.
Case loads vary with an average of 71 cases per detective per year.  In 2011 there were 785 cases, 639 of which were closed.  In 2010, there were 721 cases, 511 of which were closed.


Detective Chris Evans led the presentation on Cyber Crimes:

An Internet Investigative Unit was established in December 2005.  The main focus is on Child Solicitation.  If you are familiar with Dateline (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/) and their series "To Catch A Predator" then you have a general idea of what this unit does.  The goal when the unit was established was to make 1 arrest per month the first year.  36 arrests were made in 2006 which is triple what they had anticipated. 

The primary role of the unit is to protect young teenage boys and girls from Internet Predators.  Internet Dangers include:  Exposure to inappropriate material, Physical Molestation.  Detectives go on-line in to chat rooms.  They don't start the conversations.  The shortest chat that led to an arrest is 30 minutes.  The longest is 18 months.  To date, the unit has chatted with 35,000+ on-line personalities and made 115 arrests with a 100% conviction rate.  Great job guys!

68% of chat room personalities stated that 14 was too young.  19% want to just talk about sex but never request a meeting.  11% want to talk about sex and set up a meeting.  2% jump straight to meeting.  Offenders range from 17 to 71 years of age.  They come from every race, have been all males, all levels of education and all levels of income.  Their are multiple chat rooms predators use to prey on teens including common sites like twitter, facebook, 4 chan, x-box live and of course MySpace.  If you have young teens at home, now would be a good time to educate them on the risks of chat rooms.  Teens often use File Sharing Programs to share music so they don't have to purchase on-line music.  Be sure to warn your teens about these programs as they are often used by predators to trade child porn.  Some of the common programs used are:  Ares, BearShare, BitComet, eMule, LimeWire, etc. 

Detectives showed a Saturday Night Live skit in which men attend a seminar on how to set up a MySpace Account.  Their intention is to attract young teens to their page.  If you are an SNL fan click here to view the skit:  http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=snl+myspace+skit.

Be wary of posting pictures.  Racy or inappropriate pictures can later come back to haunt you when applying for college, jobs, etc.  Safety is also an issue since your gps location is embedded in the photo.  Resizing the photo strips this information from your picture except when you are using flicker or twitter. 

Detective Evans showed pictures of some of the predators arrested by JCSO and discussed their crimes.  Sorry... did not take notes.



Detective Lucky Smith led a presentation on Crimes Against Persons:

Crimes Against Persons include everything from child abuse to domestic violence to rape to murder, etc.  We were shown a slide show of some cases to review.  Again no notes here, sorry.  Some things just can't be shared for the benefit of the victims.  One note of interest from the presentation though includes:  Insect activity is one way to determine time of death. 

Did you know the Sheriff's Office has a list of Cold Cases on their web page?  To view Cold Cases or to report a crime, visit the JCSO web page at:  http://www.jocosheriff.org/index.aspx?page=126. 



Detectives Kent Leiker, Norm Bissonette and Brett Wilson discussed Property Crimes: 

Cases regarding Property Crimes are either assigned or discovered by Detectives.  Most burglaries are random.  Detectives often gain intelligence (ie leads) from attending meetings with other law enforcement agencies.  Case work includes conducting Interviews, Collecting Evidence, Surveillance, Prepare & Serve Search Warrants and Interview Suspects who either admit to crime or implicates self or is caught in lie through evidence. 

If you are in the agriculture or construction industry you will want to acquaint yourself with the Theft Reports of Agricultural and Construction Equipment (T.R.A.C.E.) program.  The objective of the T.R.A.C.E. program is to quickly inform all participants of suspicious activities and crime in their neighborhood, farming community or construction sites.  You can register on-line for the program via the JCSO web page at http://www.jocosheriff.org/index.aspx?page=147.  You can even follow the TRACE program via twitter.

Next up was a review of a Cockfighting Case.  In 2009, Senate Bill (SB) 238 & House Bill (HB) 2060 would be edited and passed to address the issue of cockfighting in Kansas.  You can read more about these bills at:  http://skyways.lib.ks.us/ksleg/KLRD/2009ConfCommRpts/Ccrb2060_001_41.pdf. 

Multiple agencies assisted in a raid of an alleged cockfighting operation.  30 officers, 10 civilians including 2 Veterinarians were involved along with the Humane Society.  2 arrests were made.  172 gamecocks, 99 hens and 311 chics were confiscated along with $46,000 in cash and evidence including how to books as well as items pictured below:

One suspect (owner) received $500,000 bond (later reduced to $100,000) and 1 year Diversion.  The other suspect spent 7 months in jail due to not being able to bond out.  The $46,000 went to JCSO as restitution to cover manpower costs.  The birds were signed over to JCSO and were later euthanized based on recommendation from The Humane Society (due to the way they were raised... drugs utilized, etc). 



Detective Kent Leiker discussed Financial Crimes:

Financial Crimes include Bank Fraud, Mortgage Fraud, Securities Violation/Investment Schemes, Forgery, Identity Theft, etc.

Forgery is felony if it's $1.00 or greater.

Identity Theft - Many times detectives can't determine how an identity is stolen.  Victims credit is often ruined without their knowledge until they go to open an account, buy a home or vehicle, etc.  Using a fake id does not constitute identity theft.  Identity Thefts often occur from Instant Credit Transactions or Credit Card accounts.  Method of stealing identity include:  dumpster diving, trash recovery (don't put your trash until morning of pick up as close to pick up as possible), theft of mail from mailbox, theft of wallet, Internet activity, dishonest employees, pretext calling.

Kansas is the second most secure drivers license in the United States (ie hard to make fake id to replicate drivers license). 

Unfortunately due to manpower (lack of) identity theft cases tend to not be high priority in small investigations units.

Things you can do to reduce chance of becoming victim of identity theft:  use a cross cut shredder rather than single cut shredder, sign name and write "see id" on back of credit card, monitor your credit via the 3 major Credit Bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). Opt out of Internet public information sites.  To obtain a Identity Theft Victim Packet visit the JCSO web page or the Federal Trade Commissions web page at http://ftc.gov/.