Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 4036 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: MARCH 2016 We all know that injured officers are a big headache for agencies charged with serving and protecting our communities as well as for the of- ficers who have the misfortune to get injured. The LAPD has an unusually high rate of injured officers, but perhaps that will change soon as the department is lucky enough to have a high-profile surgeon currently training to be an LAPD reserve officer. Kenji Inaba knows all about injuries – even fatal ones. He treats patients and saves lives about 80 hours a week. Inaba is a trauma surgeon at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center and is also director of the sur- gical ICU. He also runs the residency program. “I look after injured patients – anyone who’s shot, stabbed, in a car crash,” Inaba said. As a reserve officer working 16 hours per week, he’s bringing a very valuable skill set to the Los Angeles Police Department. One of the reasons Inaba wants to help is the rate of officer injuries at LAPD. “Why is the LAPD seeing all these injured of- ficers? It did make me specifically come here to volunteer my time,” Inaba said. Lt. Darnell Davenport oversees the agency’s reserve officer training program. “The way to effectively police is to have reserve officers,” Davenport says. “Those are the officers who can staff additional cars and special events. That way these activities don’t deplete resources, so when you call, police respond quickly and can also police other events in the city.” Hot shot surgeon trades scalpel for badge and gun as a reserve officer There’sprobablynotmuch that can rival the frustration an investigator feels when he can’t close a case because of budget issues. Welcome to Alabama. According to a recent ar- ticle from the Anniston Star, the Alabama Department of Forensic Science is so strapped for cash that of- ficers and prosecutors have to wait and wait, sometimes for more than a year, for that agency to run tests on evidence. The agency has an impres- sive 40,000-case backlog. Those tests yet to be run keep prosecutors from win- ning convictions. Calhoun County District Attorney Brian McVeigh says it’s a pretty sad state of affairs. “There is no doubt the Department of Forensic Science needs more fund- ing,” McVeigh said of the $797,555 budget cut the department has for the 2016 fiscal year. Efforts to reach a spokes- person for the Department of Forensic Science by An- niston Star reporters were not successful. In addition to a lack of funding, emerging technolo- gies in the law enforcement market are also playing a role in convictions being held up. One way police and prose- cutors have tried to reduce the backlog is with the TruNarc, a device that tests for drugs immediately at the scene. “It works like what we use to do to check for someone’s blood alcohol content,” An- niston Police Chief Shane Denham said. “It’s just not admissible in court yet.” But defendants don’t know that the evidence against them is inadmissible. That’s why police and prosecutors have been able to secure guilty pleas just with the results, senior foren- sic scientist Mark Hopwood told the Anniston Star. “It’s a handy little tool,” he said. “I haven’t checked the numbers recently, but with the TruNarc results we were getting guilty pleas of 35 percent to 40 percent.” We’re officially too poor to convict serious criminals? Another redtail is saved Cops are saving injured hawks left and right. If you read American Police Beat you might have seen the hawk save story from the NYPD in the February 2016 issue. Now an eagle-eyed police officer in Columbus, Ohio has made another save. Co- lumbus police officer Joseph Baker said he was on patrol when he spotted the young red-tailed hawk. The raptor was just sitting there and appeared to be dazed. Baker pulled up next to the bird. “It did not move a mus- cle,” Baker told reporters. “You don’t typically see something like that.” Baker first took a photo of the bird and sent it to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Then he grabbed his coat and a bucket and scooped the little guy up. Baker brought the animal to a veterinary hospital in north Columbus. Veterinarians told the of- ficer the bird was suffering from some head trauma, probably as the result of be- ing hit by a car. Officer Joseph Baker Columbus Police Dept. Coming next month: Cops train eagles to take down drones