Interested in the latest court decisions on use of force, search and seizure, off-duty confrontations, and a long list of other topics of vital interest to proper law enforcement?
Now you can access some of the best legal reports available–FREE, online.
Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, the nonprofit organization that produces outstanding legal seminars for police agencies and provides valuable amicus curiae briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court in support of law enforcement, is making its monthly case-reporting publications available without charge to any officer with internet service.
Just go to:
http://www.aele.org/law/index.html.
There you can click into AELE’s 3 newsletters: Law Enforcement Liability Reporter, Fire & Police Personnel Reporter, and Jail & Prisoner Law Bulletin. You’ll find current editions, as well as back issues. All are searchable by key words and all contain a wealth of information that’s essential to street officers, trainers, administrators, and legal advisors.
The current issue of the Liability Reporter, for example, contains reports of federal court decisions related to qualified immunity defenses, warrantless arrests, firearms use, homeless persons, and interrogation practices, among others. A “library” of past decisions related to law enforcement liability allows you to search in 245 different categories, including vehicular liability, Taser use, strip searches, positional asphyxia, domestic violence, flashlight issues, etc. Also accessible are scores of articles and white papers on liability concerns, ranging from gang enforcement and drowning investigations to body armor and identity theft.
A similar abundance of material is accessible through data bases associated with the other 2 publications, dealing with employment matters and corrections case law.
Previously, the newsletters were available only on a costly paid-subscription basis. “For years, I have regretted being only a legal advisor to chiefs and sheriffs and ignoring the street cops,” says AELE executive director Wayne Schmidt, himself a former Chicago police officer. “Now our publications, law digests and search engines are free,” assuring that those professionals who most need this information can get it.
Also at the site noted above, you can get information on AELE’s highly regarded seminars on civil liability, agency compliance and management audits, lethal and less-lethal force, jail and prisoner legal issues, and internal investigations. The lethal and less-lethal force seminar, next scheduled for Mar. 5-7, 2007 in Las Vegas, includes several Force Science Research Center representatives on its faculty, including executive director Dr. Bill Lewinski.