criminal justice paper

Criminal justice Cell phones in an investigation Intro Cell phones are everywhere. They help us in emergencies, connect us to the internet, have music on them and they are our window to the world. My father always makes sure I have my phone because of a medical condition I have. Sometimes we forget that we are not connected to our phones. Some people are cell phone dependent for various reasons. We can use phones to bully or get revenge on others sometimes. We have our secrets exposed by someone. Some people threaten others using phones. Some people use phones to communicate with others. Like people who are deaf, they cannot hear so they use phones to communicate with others. One thing I said about being cell phone dependent for various reasons. One of the various reasons I meant was diabetes. I have diabetes and had an accident once. I had over-exorcised on a flavored coffee. As soon as the caffeine wore off I felt bad and almost passed out. The only thing that “saved me” from passing out was the sugar flavoring in the coffee. Luckily I had my phone and medical bracelet on me in case. Another thing is epilepsy. If someone had a black out or a seizure and they need help they could use a phone for that for trouble. We can call people if we had an emergency. My dad has asthma and now always carries his phone with him in case he has an attack and can’t grab his inhaler in time. One thing we could use is cell phones in records in an investigation. We can track what they sent, received, called, tried to call, everything. Although we need a warrant to get their information; it can be very iffy at times with that warrant. These things and others could be ingrained in today’s investigations. How many of us are prepared for something such as this? Are we going to be ready for something like that? Analysis Crimes that occur usually have some type of communication. If someone hires someone to commit a crime usually the contract killer will contact the person. One crime someone acted inappropriately. The perpetrator was supposed to be shocked since no one said someone had died in the fire. He acted as though someone had said someone had died. Another case someone stole a phone and the perpetrator called the person who hired her to kill the victim. The perpetrator got rid of the murder weapon by giving it to some boys who were snake hunting. Another case a person tried calling his then girlfriend but was off by 1 number in her cell phone number. If he had gotten it correct he would have gotten caught immediately. He ditched the phone after not getting it correct. Sometimes we have our secrets exposed; like if you do not want them to tell your secrets you can threaten them with it. Black mail people even. Some people will threaten you and expose your secrets in order to get revenge or just bully you. Sometimes if you were going to tell police about your “stalker” bully or harasser, they might “out” your secret. You might be embarrassed about your secret and try denying it. That might not be a good idea since we cannot always deny our secrets. In pretty little liars there was a girl who acted as “A” and the girls were trying to figure out who A was. They connected the photos and texts to the girl who acted as A. The 2nd A rerouted the texts, IMs and pictures to someone’s stuff. The helper “A” and the 2nd A rerouted all the stuff to “the liars” phones and laptops and stuff. It made them look like they were crazy and made the whole thing up to get attention about their friend Alison. People use it for different reasons. It is not just for calling and texting anymore. Some people threaten others. We could use it for self-defense as in getting revenge on someone else. Mona who is the 1st A used it for revenge on Jenna Cavanaugh in the books. Crimes can occur with or without communication. If someone does it and they are the only one involved they could send that person to jail if they get caught. If someone has another individual do it then both parties could be involved and be in trouble. When we think of being harassed and bullied we normally think girl would get more of the damage but not really. It is about even between the genders. We just happen to see more of the females getting the hits. Girls are more show in the limelight. Guys get actual mail in terms of “hate mail”. Girls use cell phones, social media and other means of trying to get the girl they are trying to victimize. When we see people getting hate emails its very close between the 2 genders. Girls are less passive. They take things more seriously and are more likely to report bullying, harassment and other things that are going on in their life. Girls usually are cyber bullying so they do not do anything “un-lady like” in the physical realm unlike their male counterparts. You would think more female college freshman would get harassment versus their male counterparts but it is actually the exact opposite. We just hear about girls getting more attention since girls are not as passive as their male counterparts. One thing is that girls and males are likely to be involved in online harassment. Males are the ones who receive actual mail. Guys would not report it as often. Although there are several reasons for harassing other people; it is not as common to have multiple reasons. One is that a person is jealous of another person for some reason. We hear gossip. Although some is talk but some of it is nasty talk about someone. My friend has several reasons to hate a person in my life, even though I myself have forgiven that person. I have given her several reasons to hate the guy which adds to it. One thing is I wonder how she would get revenge for me if the time ever came. One thing is more people who gossip are females since they are more aggressive in that department. Females are more likely to believe the rumors and report it. I met a guy who also is being harassed and is also asking for help in that situation. He wanted help. I told him what I suggested he do. Use the emails as leverage. The hate mail can come in several ways: mail (physical mail), emails, texts, social media and several ways up. Someone finds who made a hate site and the victim could use it as leverage as a way to say, “so and so did this and I have the proof right here.” We can track people using phones. We’d need a warrant for someone’s phone records. Even with that it will be iffy since we might not be allowed to see their entire record since it could be too long. Sometimes we can figure out people’s phone numbers and sometimes we can’t. Emily in the pretty little liars’ books has an iPhone with a child tracking device in it so they could track her when she was helping with a plan to ruin Christmas decorations. She did not let on that she was going to ruin the decorations. Her mom did not let on she knew what Emily was going to do. Although if a cell phone has a child tracking device it is a different story since a child could have accidents. I use my phone to call in case of a major emergency. I have needed to call for help. Sometimes we try to sneak things in illegally. Sometimes people try sneaking in phones into correctional facilities. Those places have a rule against having cell phones in those places. 3 hits were ordered using contraband phones. Search dogs are allowed to sniff people’s articles of clothing in order to get the cell phones. Something as owning a cell phone can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. People need it to communicate with others in an emergency. Other times people order hits on contraband cell phones with intent to kill others. Sometimes people call family members “on the outside” to make something and get revenge on the people who wronged them. Once someone testified against his friends and then the family members “on the outside” made a bomb in order to get revenge on the person who sent the people to jail. Unfortunately, the bomb got 2 innocent victims. Other times it can be from a cell phone from the perpetrator they to get revenge on the people. Like I mentioned 3 different times there were 3 separate hits made from a contraband cell phone from jail. If someone has diabetes or another medical need for a cell phone on them at all times then they’d need to make others aware of it. They’d need to say I have a medical condition. I need to have it on me. If there is not a medical need to have it on you 24/7 then I say don’t have it on you 24/7. Specialized dog units can track certain things. Some can smell cell phones on a person’s body; some can smell decomposed remains and other can smell if someone has a weapon on them. Some correctional facilities are using dogs to smell if a person is sneaking in a contraband cell phone. Some places have a bag search. I had to tell the people that I had diabetes and they were about to open my glucometer and that’s what it was. We need a warrant to follow a cell phone and get their records. How would we allow people to get a warrant? What would be probable cause? Some people wonder if ping their phone to get the GPS function is probable cause. It wouldn’t get you far. It will get you directions on where they are but you are doing it illegally. It is not going to be fair if someone is continually paging your cell phone to get something. One thing if someone needs a warrant to do something. Unless they have probable cause they cannot get one. For instance let us say someone is stopped for a traffic violation. That person has a right to let an officer to not search their car if they do not want to. One thing that should be significant is whether or not there is “probable cause”. Someone acting suspiciously with a cell phone could be subjected to questioning. Being racially profiled is not very helpful either. If someone is being asked because they look like someone involved in a murder is a bad thing. Some probable cause could smell something from a car when you stop it for a traffic violation. Another thing could be if someone is acting weird. There could be explanations for both situations. The smell is someone’s leftovers from lunch and its gone bad. The acting weird is someone who has diabetes and their blood sugar has gone a little low and they are not acting like themselves. Sometimes the warrant could be totally unnecessary. If someone has an explanation for the circumstances then they won’t have a need for a warrant. What would be probable cause for people to get a warrant? Most business today is on cell phones, PDAs and computers anyways. Would people getting several calls around the time of a certain murder be cause for concern? What if that person is a “person of interest” in an investigation? A lot of today’s information in an investigation is from electronics. Let us say we have an ordinary person. They like golf, fishing and owns their own business. Then we find out they have an internet lover. They are often chatting to them. Then what? Would that be suspicious? Is it enough for a warrant? What constitutes probable cause to issue any type of warrant? One thing that could be suspicious is if they have a firewall app to hide some of their activity on their cell phone. Another thing is if they aren’t completely cooperating in the investigation. If they begin to cooperate then they are acting weird then they stop or act differently would arouse suspicion. It could be one way that people could be “a person of interest” or a suspect in the crime. Could being uncooperative mean anything? At least in an investigation could mean something or it could mean nothing. Some people are very private. Although, it is suspicious not all people who are private are suspicious. We could be just not willing to share everything. I heard our private life and our personal lives are becoming blurred. Once while in high school I let it slip who I was going to prom with and everyone went crazy because we were cute together. This is an example of public and private lives becoming blurred. Sometimes, we need to have them blurred. If we have a health condition we need people to know about it. Sometimes we need people to know our business and sometimes we do not. Unfortunately, we live in an era where it is becoming very hard to distinguish which is which. Would people use cell phones to guilt trip people? Would cell phones having some type of fire wall app look suspicious? If we aren’t someone who is talks a lot they could be more private and not arouse suspicion. Sometimes people would think it is suspicious. Sometimes we are not so lucky and we see someone wanting revenge and they get revenge. Let’s say someone’s having an affair. Sometimes people do that. But let’s say someone’s having several affairs and people happen to find out. What they do when they find out about the affairs is what defines us. Let’s say I found out my husband is having an affair. If he’s truly sorry and ending it or has already ended it then I would forgive him. If he hasn’t and isn’t planning to I would just divorce him. What could be the difference between the intent? Could we possibly guilt trip someone into confessing something? Investigators can lie to suspects. Discussion One thing that could influence the criminal justice system on this subject is that not all of the policing could be DNA, blood spatter and a murder weapon. It would have to be partially the communication. We haven’t lost our communication skills due to the internet having being launched. Our attention span may have been affected but hopefully not our communication skills. We could’ve lost some things but we could’ve gained other things to “replace” what we lost. One thing with the internet exploding is that we can search for what we need to murder someone. We could look for a hit man, poisons; we look up things for what we want. Something we could still do is going to the library and check things out. One person checked out a book on a poison and we saw that her fingerprints were all over the page for cyanide poisoning. In public places we could be subjected to video surveillance. Another thing is if we check out library books or things like that then we shouldn’t be saying, “She did it.” In our family computer we share our computer/ desktop/ laptop. Someone could check for something and say it was her/ him when it could be someone else. One thing is we can’t definitively say so and so did it unless it was their personal laptop or computer or they were the only one in a house at the time. This came up in the Casey Anthony trial. One of the prosecutors said she did something (search online for chloroform). One of the defense lawyers said it was made by Casey’s mom for chorine (something used for the pool) and it came up as chloroform. Something that’s changed with the last 10-15 years is the availability of cell phones. Everyone that I know of has a cell phone. We are on our phones for most of the day. If we aren’t on our cell phones then we are on our other electronics. This will come into play with electronic forensics. We are on our electronics most of the day so we have cyber: security, forensics, online social media, etc. Most of the books on tape/ on cd are going extinct and are being replaced with “audio books” which is a book on tape/ cd in iPod form. Magazines, books and other things we read are going to go extinct eventually since we are a nation growing to electronic era. We can read things on “e-reader” or on our IPad’s. Our world of paperbacks is not as common. We can load our iPods and IPad’s with as much of what we want. Libraries are becoming “media centers.” What’s more is that we are doing research online and living online. We don’t often go outside as often as the previous generations did. Our research online is so advanced we could use Google to do most of our work since we get a citation and then we can get to a certain page. Conclusion We use phones a lot in our daily lives. We use it to make calls, text, find information, get information and we could even use it for evil. We could use the phones for evil intent, we could use it for black mail we could use it for revenge on someone. We could use it if people have health conditions, such as diabetes and asthma. Some people need to use it since we could be sick and need help. People use cell phones for several reasons. If we use the phones or mobile devices for evil than what does that say about us? What about using computers and laptops? Would we use those for evil intent as well? Could we use them for that? What could get us a search warrant? What is probable cause for that? Probable cause is evidence saying so and so has something or has done something dangerous. We need a warrant to search everything except a car. If an odor is coming from a car, then an officer can stop you and possibly search your car. They will have a special k-9 unit to search the outside of the car and then if the dogs get the scent of drugs, then the officers could make an arrest. Something that we need warrants for is to search are cell phone records. We can’t see them for any reason; unless the people are already under surveillance than we need to have tapped their lines. Some things we can’t get a warrant for is if we don’t have enough probable cause for one. If someone is a suspect in a murder then we could get a warrant. Once I heard someone was acting inappropriately to the news of someone’s house was burnt down. No one said there was a murder. He acted inappropriately because no one had mentioned the murder. Even though he had an alibi he was on his phone as soon as he was out of the movie theater. If someone uses a cell phone and is a suspect in a murder, then they are unfortunately subjected to the extent of the law. If someone is acting suspiciously then we shouldn’t automatically assume anything.