There’s nothing worse than not being able to see around the next corner, knowing there’s an armed suspect there and it’s your job to go in and and get him. Police officers and soldiers around the world are faced with this terrifying experience nearly every day. I’ve been in this situation several times. Believe me, it’s scary.

Back in the day, we either took a deep breath and did what we had to, or sent a canine in ahead of us, which was extremely dangerous for both us and our dogs. FYI – Most K-9 officers would be willing to take a bullet for their dogs, so the use of trained canines in these situations wasn’t always an option. Fortunately, someone came up with the idea of using technology, such as the two products I’ve listed below, to protect officers in these highly volatile situations.

The ReCon Robot was designed with officer safety in mind. When officers are in a dangerous situation and need to see what’s behind a barrier, such as a wall or inside a house, police officers can toss the ReCon Robot camera into the position where it’s needed where it will land, begin moving, and then upright itself. The robot is operated by a remote controlled joystick.

Telescoping camera poles are available in a variety of sizes and shapes, suiting many needs. In the photo below, the officers can safely search an attic space for an armed suspect without attempting to climb into the area, making themselves easy targets for the bad guy.

I remember friends of mine having to go through a very similar scenario several years ago. These very cool cameras weren’t available in those days, so my fellow officers couldn’t get into the attic safely. They tried once and were immediately met by a barrage of gunfire from a shotgun-wielding criminal. The scene was a very tense standoff for quite awhile before the SWAT team eventually terminated the threat by firing lots and lots of rounds through the ceiling. In case you didn’t know, drywall doesn’t stop bullets.

The officer operating the pole cam can watch the monitor that’s strapped to the back of his partner. The partner covers the opening with his weapon in case the suspect makes a threatening move.

Compostite sketch of Chicago strip mall shooter.

Composite sketching has been around for longer than most people think. The first drawing system for the purpose of criminal identification was devised in 1896. In 1910, a drawing was used to capture Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen for the murder of his wife.

I remember the days when the Identi-KIT was a wooden box filled with clear, poly sheets that could be overlayed to create an image of a person’s face. The sheets were simply pictures of face shapes, noses, ears, eyes, hair styles of various shades, and lips.

Detectives sat in a room with a witness, and together they painstakingly picked out face parts that best resembled the suspect’s features until they had a final image of the crook’s face. The images weren’t always the best in the world, but it gave us something to work with. Sometimes we were lucky and came up with a real dead-on ringer.

Chicago police captured serial killer Richard Speck using an early Identi-Kit sketch kit.

Forensic artists were also employed to draw sketches, freehand, based on witness descriptions.

Then, finally, Identi-KIT and a few other companies developed software that can provide an image of a suspect’s face in mere seconds based on a few basic interview questions. With this software, investigators have the ability to fine-tune details such as eye and face shapes.

Some investigators still prefer to employ a forensic artist to draw the composite. I’d be curious to hear what Forensic Artist Robin Burcell has to say about this one. Are you out there, Robin?

* Thanks to Identi-KIT and Tru TV

Contrary to the belief of some, and to the image that’s sometimes portrayed on television, police officers cannot enter a private residence without a warrant or permission to do so. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but the exceptions to this one are few and must be only in dire emergencies.

– A search warrant is valid only if it is issued pursuant to an affidavit stating each and every fact that establishes the probable to search for certain people and items. For example, the officer who is asking for a search warrant must apply for it by filling out a form, a sort of application, called an affidavit. This application (affidavit) must clearly explain every single reason why she wants to go to inside someone’s house without the owner’s permission, by breaking down the front door, if necessary.

Normally, the officer must swear to (under oath) the facts in her affidavit.

– The description of the place to be searched must be in vivid detail, almost down to the size and color of the doorknob. (I’m exaggerating – not much – , but you get the idea).

– Search warrants must be served promptly. Normally, there is a three or four day rule. If officers wait longer than that time frame the search may be ruled invalid.

– In most cases, officers are required to knock and announce their presence. (Knock, knock. “This is the police. I have a warrant to search this house. If you don’t open the door I’m going to huff, and puff, and… Well, you get the idea).

The exceptions to the knock and announce rule are if the officer has good reason to believe that:

1) There is a clear and present danger to himself and anyone else present, including people inside the house.

2)  The delay of entry would cause irreparable harm to the investigation (evidence would be destroyed).

The easiest way to serve a search warrant is to knock on the door and wait for someone to answer. This is definitely the safest way to serve a search warrant. Unfortunately, the bad guys don’t always play by the rules

If no one answers the door in a reasonable amount of time (Normally a few seconds – 15 seconds or so) police officers are legally permitted to damage property, if that’s what is required, to gain entry.

Karen E. Olson is the author of the Annie Seymour mysteries. The fourth in the series, SHOT GIRL, is available now. She is also working on a new series with a tattoo shop owner in Las Vegas. THE MISSING INK will be out in July. She was a longtime print journalist and now edits a medical journal part time at Yale. She lives in the suburbs of New Haven,Connecticut, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

I was never a police reporter like my protagonist Annie Seymour. But I did deal with cops on a regular basis in a couple of the towns I covered, when I went to the station to check the daily log. Lots of mailbox vandalism, a few break-ins, some obscene phone calls. Two adjacent towns I covered didn’t have a local police force. They relied on the state police, which had a barracks about half an hour away and a couple of resident state troopers who spent a lot of time driving around farmland.

I covered two murders in my six years as a reporter. Neither of them was a mystery.

The first was the most interesting in that it was a love triangle. An airline pilot was dating a woman with a rather jealous ex. He’d even called the cops to say the guy was stalking him. The cops told him to get a gun. So he did. Unfortunately, one night at a local watering hole, the ex confronted the pilot in the parking lot and threatened him with a broken beer bottle. The pilot took his gun out of his car and shot the guy. Then called the cops and waited for them to show up. Although there was a trial, he got off on self defense. I can’t remember what the woman looked like, except she was blonde. Of course.

The second murder was in one of the towns without a police force. A kid shot his father over a pack of cigarettes. Yeah, over cigarettes. They took the kid away and he ended up in juvenile court. Which meant no story for me because those records are sealed.

Probably the most interesting murder, however, in my whole career wasn’t one that I covered but one that I edited. I was on the night copy desk, and one of our sources called to say a girl had been stabbed and left in the street in New Haven. We sent the police reporter out, and he came back with the story of a dead Yale student. We didn’t have the whole story for days, and it finally turned out that she’d been a graduate student and the only suspect in the case was her thesis adviser, a professor. Suzanne Jovin’s story was fodder for a Law and Order episode, and a huge expose in the New York Times Magazine. But the professor was never charged because there was no physical evidence, and her murder today remains unsolved.

The Jovin case was not the basis for my first book SACRED COWS, but it influenced it. Around the same time, there was a story about a prostitute who’d been found dead in the middle of York Street after falling from a high-rise balcony. The guy who owned the apartment from where she fell was a then-state representative who’s now dead. The paper covered the story, but only half-heartedly, and then the story disappeared. I wondered if she’d been a Yale student, too, if the story would’ve been pursued a lot more vigorously, like Suzanne Jovin’s.

I like giving Annie bigger stories to cover than I did (one of my front page stories at the Bristol Press in Bristol, CT, was about the first traffic light being installed in Burlington, and my very first newspaper story was an interview with the Deep River dog warden). I’m living vicariously through her, because in her world, the murders are always over something bigger than cigarettes and the murderers don’t wait for the cops to arrive.

Karen

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This blog post was supposed to be online a few days ago, but I was quite ill and just couldn’t hold up my end of the bargain. I’m sorry it’s so late, Karen.

Please, please, please go out and buy Karen’s new book. She’s a wonderful writer!