Free The Last Place You'd Look by Carole Moore Page A

Jessica again called police. It had been seven hours since her children disappeared. The dispatcher agreed to send an officer. No officer ever showed up.
    • Jessica went to the police station and spoke to an officer. She says the officer left and went to dinner after their conversation.
    • At 3:25 in the morning Jessica received another call from Simon’s girlfriend who said that she’d heard the sounds of shots being fired while she was on the phone talking with Simon. Jessica drove to the police department where she discovered that Simon had opened fire on the police with a semi-automatic handgun he had bought the day before. Police killed him. In the back of his truck they found the bodies of Jessica’s three daughters, murdered by Simon earlier in the day.
    • Jessica was held and questioned about the incident for more than twelve hours. She was not informed that her girls were dead until 8:00 that morning.
    • Jessica filed suit against the Castle Rock Police Department, charging that they failed to enforce the court’s restraining order. The case made its way through the state court system and was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that enforcement of a restraining order is not mandatory under Colorado law, and the case was dismissed. Jessica now speaks as a voice for women and children victimized by domestic violence.
    The Honorable Mark McGinnis, a circuit court judge in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, uses Jessica’s case to demonstrate the sobering consequences of the police’s failure to act. But he also uses the case to illustrate how one of the greatest fears of police—that of civil liability—should be secondary in these instances. Police fear being dragged into court in a civil case, so they often choose the path they perceive as the least litigious. McGinnis says officers shouldn’t worry about the possibility of being sued.
    “You can err on the side of finding the kid,” he tells a room full of police officers from around the country at Fox Valley Technical College’s annual missing persons conference.
    McGinnis ticks off various scenarios for the officers. The first: a young child is missing and the guy across the street is a known sex offender who refuses the police entry into his home. McGinnis asks them, “What do you do?”
    “Get a search warrant!” say several officers.
    “Watch the house and call for a supervisor!” says another.
    A few say they would go into the home anyway. “Bingo,” says the judge. Right answer.
    “You don’t have to establish exigent circumstances,” says McGinnis. He says officers should tell kidnapping suspects, “‘If you don’t let me in, I’m coming in.’ This is different than a drug case, different than a forgery case,” he asserts.
    Although the judge says the age of the missing person is a factor officers must take into consideration when conducting a search, an officer’s actions should be dictated by the totality of the circumstances. And, he says, missing adults should not be treated as afterthoughts by departments.
    An Illinois-based officer says, “People want to report adult children missing and we take the stance that because they’re adults—they can get up and walk away.”
    A New Berlin, Wisconsin, officer answers him, “If someone’s reporting that person missing, then there is reason to put some time into [the case]. Just because your child’s twenty-five doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a report. I don’t think you can operate like that anymore.”
    Judge McGinnis agrees with the second officer. “There are missing adults who need help,” he says.
    A police chief comments, “You take a report for a missing car right away. Why not take a report for a missing person?”
    McGinnis says officers who shrug off missing persons reports show a “lack of interest, lack of honesty, and lack of professionalism.” According to McGinnis, “It gives the perception the officer doesn’t know