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 …
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 …
I am walking with my kids at the Reading Terminal, an eatery just a couple of blocks from the courthouse in Philadelphia, when we come across a group of narcotics officers sitting in the eating area. We have been watching “The Wire” on HBO, and I point out the officers out to my kids. Look, I say. Real-life narcotics officers. …