Detective Requests

Hey!

So in my previous post, I mentioned that sometimes detectives will ask us for certain things, and that is why we create program B. They will usually send our unit an email with a request. Most of the times they are looking to see if the offender they have in custody committed any other crimes or they want to know when the most likely time and the mostly like place a perpetrator they are trying to arrest will be. So, they will ask us to look in our program B to see if we have any crimes that match their request.

A request can include many things. If we are looking to see if the person they have in custody has committed any other crimes, the request will usually ask us if we have any reports that occurred on certain dates and the M.O. might include something very specific. So, for example, let’s say a detective wants to know if there were any reports from June of 2008 until October of 2010 that were sex assaults where the man was wearing a mask. (By the way, I have never been asked to look for this certain crime; I just made it up.) Well, we would go into program B and narrow down our files by the date and crime type. Then we would look in our synopses for the word ‘mask’. If we found a match/matches to the request, we would send them to the detective.

Another possible request from a detective might include a detective asking when and where a certain crime has occurred the most, so they can try to catch the offender. For example, a detective asks us to see when and where vehicles are being graffitied at supermarkets (i.e. not home garages). So we say we see this crime occurring mostly on Thursdays and Fridays from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at these certain locations. (Again, I made this request up.) Then the detective will try to send officers out there to catch the perpetrators.

I love when detectives send us requests because it gives me a chance to track patterns in crime. So, I get to actually use the data I enter in program B most of my days.