The unrecorded police communication on Cape Cod has to stop. It's rampant to circumvent being recorded. It's used to protect certain people the police want to coddle such as relatives of other government hacks. It's the equivalent of a foreign language speaker using it as a code so you don't know what they're talking about.
"Clearly, if an officer uses an unrecorded line to subvert agency policy, or to violate the law, then he/she should be called to account for their actions," said Jon Shane, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Shane also served as a captain with the Newark, N.J., police force.
If you're not being recorded you're hiding. It doesn't matter if it is your wife. You obviously don't want the public to know how long you spoke to your wife; grocery lists or who you're going to retrieve after work aren't necessary secrets unless you're really paranoid.
Recorded lines have many uses. They let dispatchers replay a garbled or hasty emergency call and get vital information so they can send help. They also protect officers against charges they didn't respond properly to emergencies or other policing situations.
But recordings can also be used by the police and town officials to make sure officers aren't violating department policy or doing anything illegal.
Aren't you the same people saying if you have nothing to hide after 9/11 you should enjoy being searched and monitored without the specific warrant required by the same Constitution that created and feeds you through your job ? But when it's you, it's no good, eh ? Who died and left you king ?
"You can imagine the circumstances where they want the use of the unrecorded line, but dealing with an apparent DWI and it's an officer? That raises red flags," said Christopher Harris, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminality at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell who specializes in police accountability. "Using the unrecorded line does suggest it's something a citizen might want to know about, but would not have access to."
When it's a rich brat or a known name, onto the cell it goes to hide it and protect the "special" on Cape Cod.
"The advent of the cellphone has changed a lot about police work," Harris said. "It gives them another tool to get around monitoring."
You're working. Why shouldn't you be recorded ? Where you were and how pissed you were might impact a case.
It's another Cape Cod phenomenon where a lack of oversight turns liberty into license as Jefferson warned.
...there's no doubt in Northboro Police Chief Mark Leahy's mind of how his officers should handle a similar situation.
"It should be done on a recorded line," said Leahy, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. Leahy requires that all lines routed through the dispatcher be recorded. The only unrecorded phone lines go to detectives, where investigations could involve a promise of anonymity. Even when they want to use their cellphones, Northboro's police officers must call in by radio to the shift supervisor for permission.
Besides, some of you like illegally kill switching scanners as harassment, too. How else can the public go back and listen to what you said when you did ?
Once again what's the exception off Cape has been abused here and is now the rule.
SPQR
