Recently in Misdemeanors Category

This is actually a smart way for an Officer to get trained on how to recognize a drunk driver.  This type of training envolves police officers getting drunk inside a controlled environment while the police officers that are sober examine the intoxicated police officers motor skills and speech.  Not only that but it will also come in handy when an intoxicated person is brought into court.

 

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/02/25/dnt.cops.get.drunk.wdtn 

http://www.qctimes.com/news/local/53e20d44-fbf6-11de-9716-001cc4c002e0.html

Iowa is trying to pass a law to stop the sending of explicit images through a phone known as sexting. Teenagers tend to forget the consequences and just get up in the moment of sending images like that to the ones they like or want. Under the state's current laws, a teenager engaged in sexting could face an aggravated misdemeanor or a felony charge typically meant for child pornography cases. The proposal would give prosecutors the option of charging teenagers with a simple misdemeanor if they disseminated sexually explicit material to another teen. Many teens can even be put on the sex offenders list if they were to be caught with pictures of underage teens on their phones. A boy who was 17 at the time, was sent many naked pictures from his girlfriend who was a year younger than him. When he was 18 and she was 17, they had an argument and around 3 in the morning he woke up and sent those naked pictures of her to everyone she knew, friends, family, parents, grandparents, over 70 contacts saw them. The boy was arrested and put on the sex offenders list. He has to get counseling as if he was the owner and viewer of child pornography, he can't get a job, can't live with his parents because they live next to a school. His life was ruined by the push of a button.

This is an interesting article I had to read for a Criminology class regarding the discussion of the Uniform Crime Report, and what police chiefs did in order to make their cities seem safer then they were. To do this they downgraded a lot of fleonies to misdemeanors and other crimes they simply just didnt report. Since then those official have obvioulsy been releaved of their duties and one new official told his community that when he enters office the crime rate will be a lot higher but at least it will be the correct one that they can work hard at to minimize. I guess the take home point of this type of article is to bring awarness in the dependece of statistics because they can be very misleading and in some cases just made up.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/03/us/as-crime-falls-pressure-rises-to-alter-data.html?scp=3&sq=senior police officials around the nation&st=cse