Police Chief Magazine|Columns|Chief's Counsel
Chief’s Counsel: Legal Risks of Failing to Care for Children of Arrested Persons

What officer has not had the generally sad or, perhaps, even tragic experience of witnessing the arrest of a parent in front of a confused and frightened child? A number of forward-thinking police departments around the United States have planned and prepared for such events. There are even policy management services that provide policy guidance on dealing with children of arrested and detained persons. Still, the police community needs to do more to help children caught in this situation. To that end, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently released a report titled Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents.1 The report is the product of a yearlong DOJ-funded IACP project.

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Chief’s Counsel: The Duty to Train

Training remains one of policing’s strongest legal safeguards, if properly vetted and supported by policy....
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Chief’s Counsel: What to Know About Your Lawyer

Lawyers play a critical role in policing. The benefits an attorney brings to a police agency extend far beyond defending officers in civil suits. Agency lawyers can be vital to every facet of the prof...
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Chief’s Counsel: Asking Right Question

Much avoidable policing liability does not begin with bad intent. It begins with answering the wrong question.    Officers, supervisors, and chiefs are often asked after the fact to explain why...
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Chief’s Counsel: Where Policy Meets the Law

Police officers are intimately familiar with the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.1 The terms contained in that amendment—and how judges interpret those terms—dictate how officer...
Investigations
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Chief’s Counsel: ICE Detainers and Warrants

Failure to understand the distinction between so-called immigration warrants issued by an immigration judge or traditional arrest or search warrants issued by a federal court judge can lead to liabili...
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Chief’s Counsel: Patrolling the Digital Street

For today’s police officers, the first sign of a serious threat increasingly appears not on a street corner or in a call for service, but on a screen. Posts, comments, livestreams, group chats, and ...
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Chief’s Counsel: The Price of Readiness

The practice of placing officers "on call" raises questions concerning a municipality’s obligation to pay officers, as well as the ability to restrict such officers’ activities while on an "on-cal...
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Chief’s Counsel: Are After-Action Reports Privileged?

In 2011, this author wrote an article for the Chief’s Counsel section of Police Chief magazine titled “Critical Incident Review Board: Creation and Refinement.” The purpose of the article was ...
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Chief’s Counsel: Immigration Enforcement by Local Police

Immigration enforcement in the United States is generally a civil matter, handled exclusively by federal agents working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Patrol....
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Chief’s Counsel: The Algorithm Trap

Imagine this: a qualified applicant submits a résumé for a position in a department. Before anyone on the team lays eyes on it, an artificial intelligence (AI) system screens them out. No interview....
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