Jefferson Memorial

On Police Officers and Other Bullies

Jamison Koehler Evidence, Trial Advocacy

  I am sitting in JM-15 at D.C. Superior Court watching a Georgetown University law student cross-examine a police officer on a drug case. The officer is doing the old “dumb officer” routine; that is, he can’t seem to understand any of the questions, even though it is perfectly clear to everyone else in the courtroom what the student is …

D.C. skyline

The “Collective Knowledge” Doctrine in D.C.

Jamison Koehler Evidence, Opinions/Cases

  The firmly established “collective knowledge” doctrine in D.C. provides that, in determining whether the officers possessed sufficient knowledge to establish reasonable suspicion or probable cause for a search or seizure, it is not what any individual officer knows but what the officers know collectively, whether or not the information is actually communicated from one officer to another. At the …