Another fiction question: police procedure stuff

[Boyo_Jim]

@Infovore

Great advice, everyone. Just let me clarify something before we go too far: Magic is real in the world, but very rare (especially practitioners at the level of my protagonist) and the general public doesn’t know about it for the most part. Mages are very secretive about revealing what they are because they don’t want to deal with the fallout after the cat’s out of the bag. So whatever procedures the police use would be the same standard-issue ones that they’d use on a normal, well dressed, well-spoken (i.e., not giving off crazy or dangerous rays) guy they find hanging around a gory murder scene.

His apprehension is intended just to slow him down, rattle him, and cause him to miss an appointment with another character–not to be a major part of the story (though it will have implications down the road because another cop will become an important character in the story as it goes on, and will actually find out that he’s a mage).

Two other relevant facts if they matter: the story is set in California, and the technology level in the world is mostly modern, but things like cell phones are very new (none of the characters have one yet) and the Internet doesn’t exist yet as a thing that the general public has easy access to. I’m purposely vague about exactly what year it is.

This is not very clear. Are you saying that the police or a prosecutor cannot make a case in court involving magic as part of their theory of the crime? If they can make such a case, how is it possible the public doesn’t know it? If they can’t make such a case, then mages using magic to commit crimes that would be impossible without the use of magic are essentially immune from prosecution, possibly even from detection.

[Infovore]

@Boyo_Jim

This is not very clear. Are you saying that the police or a prosecutor cannot make a case in court involving magic as part of their theory of the crime? If they can make such a case, how is it possible the public doesn’t know it? If they can’t make such a case, then mages using magic to commit crimes that would be impossible without the use of magic are essentially immune from prosecution, possibly even from detection.

No, no. The police can’t make such a case. For the moment, just forget he’s a mage. I just gave that as background information. Nobody in town knows he’s a mage. Just go on the assumption that somebody reported hearing some weird noises in an area where there weren’t supposed to be any people, the police (who are on edge due to the other murder: murders are very rare in this town) show up to investigate, and they find a mid-30s guy they’ve never seen before who looks somewhat tired/injured (not bad, just puffing a bit and moving slowly). They detain him and find the body, which is inside a nearby barn). At that point, they decide to take him back to the station for questioning.

ETA: Yes, mages committing crimes using magic would be very difficult to prosecute. But that’s an issue for another story.

[Dale_Sams]

IMHO…if it’s the equivalent of 1990, then police are going to be less reluctant to cut him free so readily as I earlier indicated. Simply because they have less technology at their disposal. Ultimately the rules are the same, but they may be more hardheaded about things. It seems to me also that police back then thought they could get away with more, too.

[Boyo_Jim]

1. Would they arrest him right then and there, or just hold him and take him back to the station for questioning without arresting him?

It depends on whether he agrees to go with them or not. I don’t think they can take him involuntarily without arresting him.

2. How much would they search him back at the station? Simple pat-down/check his pockets/etc. or would they take his clothes and have him in one of those jumpsuits that suspects always seem to be wearing on cop shows?

No way to be sure, as there are not universal rules. There was a supreme court decision within the past few years which IIRC upheld the police’s right to strip search someone over a very minor offense, a traffic violation I think. Also, the answer would change depending on whether he was under arrest or voluntarily accompanying the police to the station.

3. He knows he didn’t do it and he knows there’s no way they can pin it on him (he has a solid alibi–he was in the Bay Area when both the first and second victims were murdered, and can prove it). Would he be stupid to simply answer their questions without a lawyer? Obviously he isn’t going to tell them the supernatural stuff, but other than that he has nothing to hide. As an aside, the cops are professional and have no ulterior motive–they just want to solve the crime.

This isn’t a procedural questions – this is about your character’s attitude, self-confidence, possibly a prior history of interactions with police, etc.

4. He wouldn’t need to post bail if they don’t arrest him, right? I’m assuming they’ll determine fairly quickly that he couldn’t have been involved and let him go, telling him not to leave town for now.

If he’s not arrested they don’t “let him go.” He can leave when he wants, and then the police will have a choice of letting him go or revisiting the question of wther to arrest him because they don’t want to let him go.

5. Anything else I need to know about the process? Ideally I’d just like them to take him in, question him, and let him go without an undue amount of complication. I want to rattle him but not seriously inconvenience him. Is that reasonable?

You don’t need to know almost anything about the process if you decide to have the police ask him to go along and answer questions, and he agrees. If he won’t agree, that opens up a whole new direction and a bunch more complications, unless of course the police simply accept his refusal and he walks away.

[Infovore]

@Boyo_Jim

It depends on whether he agrees to go with them or not. I don’t think they can take him involuntarily without arresting him.

He agrees to go. He’s not happy about it, because he’s trying to find his friend and wants to do this as soon as possible, since he thinks his friend is in danger. This whole process will slow him down, which is frustrating. But he’s still essentially a law-abiding guy.

No way to be sure, as there are not universal rules. There was a supreme court decision within the past few years which IIRC upheld the police’s right to strip search someone over a very minor offense, a traffic violation I think. Also, the answer would change depending on whether he was under arrest or voluntarily accompanying the police to the station.

Definitely nothing as invasive as a strip search in any case. Just whether they’d want to process his clothes for evidence. I’m definitely leaning toward they just pat him down to make sure he doesn’t have any weapons on him, and otherwise let him keep his clothes.

This isn’t a procedural questions – this is about your character’s attitude, self-confidence, possibly a prior history of interactions with police, etc.

Yeah, I get that. But he’s a pretty sharp guy and very self-confident, so he wouldn’t do anything that’s blatantly stupid. He has very little experience interacting with the police (certainly not as a potential lawbreaker), but he has a generally positive view of them (the friend he’s looking for attended the Academy for a while before he got kicked out for fighting, and still has a positive view of, and contacts with, the police). My protag isn’t terribly worried about saying anything that will get him in trouble, since as I said, there’s no way they can pin these murders on him. The worst they could do is suspect him of being somehow connected to them, but since they have no proof I’m thinking all they can reasonably do is keep an eye on him.

If he’s not arrested they don’t “let him go.” He can leave when he wants, and then the police will have a choice of letting him go or revisiting the question of wther to arrest him because they don’t want to let him go.

Good point! So I’ll just have them ask him if he’s willing to answer some questions, and tell him he’s not obligated to do so.

You don’t need to know almost anything about the process if you decide to have the police ask him to go along and answer questions, and he agrees. If he won’t agree, that opens up a whole new direction and a bunch more complications, unless of course the police simply accept his refusal and he walks away.

Thanks, that’s the kind of thing I need.

[Boyo_Jim]

If they want to process his clothes for evidence, its pretty much the same thing as a strip search. They would need to remove his clothes and send them to a lab, which means either leaving him naked or giving him one of those prison jumpsuits in the meantime.

Plus, it would be very far-fetched to have him volunteer for this in the course of a visit. If someone said to me, “Well, while you’re answering questions, please strip naked while we look for blood (or whatever) on your clothes, and you can put on this nice orange suit until we’re done?”, I would say no, and even under the best of circumstances I wouldn’t believe they could do all that testing in a reasonable amount of time. I would basically be incarcerating myself if I agreed to something like that, because I wouldn’t be able to leave.