A police detective changing partners

rosehips · Nov 11, 2013

I imagine it's not easy for a police detective to change partners. I need some advice about what would go into a change of partners for a detective in my novel.

I'm writing the fourth novel in a series, in which there is a recurring character who is a detective (he's not the mc, but is dating her). His name is Daniel. In the first book, Daniel's partner Lara was involved in planting evidence and getting an innocent man arrested for a murder. The mc was able to prove the man was innocent but not that Lara planted evidence, although Daniel believed the mc. Lara underwent a brief IA investigation but nothing came of it.

Lara wasn't a player in book 2 due to the IA investigation, but in book 3 she was back. Daniel continued to work with her, having decided that what she did in book 1 was a one-time mistake (and it's true it had to do with helping someone she cared about). However, in book 3 Lara plants evidence to try to get the mc in trouble (in retaliation for the events of book 1). Ultimately due to a good turn the mc does for Lara, Lara backs off and claims she made a mistake with the evidence, letting the case against the mc be dropped. However, Daniel is fully aware that Lara tried to send his girlfriend to jail by planting evidence.

I'm currently working with the idea that Daniel is willing to forgo reporting what Lara did, as long as he can no longer have her as a partner. Is there a process that he can go through to have a new partner assigned to him? Lara would cooperate considering it's that or he reports her to IA. Although I'm not sure IA would necessarily just take his word for it about her actions, and she'll have destroyed any evidence of her wrong-doing. Still, what with the previous investigation, I'm thinking she'd be in some serious trouble, and she'd want to avoid that. Anyway, any explanation of the procedure for changing partners would be appreciated.

Some considerations that may or may not be useful:
This takes place in Sacramento, CA.
Daniel is Korean American, so if there had to be a cause might he claim Lara has made insensitive comments about his ethnicity?
The mc, Veronica, is psychic and has helped Daniel with cases. Daniel has been keeping this secret. Lara knows about it. She could make his life difficult if she told their superiors that Daniel's been giving access to crime scenes and such to a civilian. However, the ADA that tried the case in book 2 *is* aware that Veronica is a psychic, so I'm not sure how far Lara could take that whole thing.

ironmikezero · Nov 11, 2013

If this is an actual LE agency (Sacramento PD?), I'd recommend contacting their PIO and asking some generic questions re: relevant departmental policies. You may be surprised how helpful a PIO can be.

If this is a fictitious LE agency, you can make up your own rules - just keep them simple and reasonable.

Generally speaking, individual investigators are assigned as partners by the unit commander. Various factors impact such decisions; manpower allocations, seniority, experience, training officer status, departmental diversification standards, rotation cycles, labor agreements, etc...

Once so assigned, a partner team may work together for specified period of time or for as long as management deems them satisfactorily productive. Partnerships don't always work out - a savvy first line supervisor will notice early on and take appropriate corrective measures to ensure mutual cooperation. If that fails, he'll take it up the chain of command, whereupon the reassignment of subject personnel is a potential remedy.

It's not productive to have two individuals who can't get along - or distrust one another - as partners. That's a situation doomed to create administrative headaches - if not worse problems.

frimble3 · Nov 11, 2013

And why is Daniel willing to 'forgo' reporting her?
He just wants to dump Lara on some other random officer? This lousy excuse for a human being has used her position to falsify evidence for her own ends twice, and he's just going to let her go on her merry way? (Seriously, in what universe is 'it had to do with helping someone she cared about' any kind of justification for a police officer to plant evidence and get an innocent man arrested?)
What happens if the next time psychic MC isn't around to save Lara's victim and they go to prison? What if Lara is later caught and appropriately punished, and Daniel's name is dragged into it? (I suspect Lara would be more than willing to muddy the waters by implicating him.) He should at least have some sense of self-preservation. 'Making his life difficult' is no reason to let this woman pull her crap on others. Besides, if the ADA is okay with the psychic, what's Lara going to do?

How long will it take her new partner to realise what Lara's capable of? Worse, what if she and her new partner egg each other on? And it will all be Daniel's fault: he knew what lengths she was willing to go to, and he didn't make every effort to stop her.

Perhaps their supervisor, realising that it would be awkward for Daniel and Lara to work together, separates them? (Or maybe the supervisor thinks that in view of the IA investigation, it would be better for them both to have other, more watchful, partners?)

rosehips · Nov 11, 2013

frimble3 said:
And why is Daniel willing to 'forgo' reporting her?

Good point.

I'll have to think about that. I was operating on the assumption that police officers protect one another despite illegal activity, and I realize I'm basing that on TV shows I've watched and not on reality. You're quite right. Daniel is a good guy and he wouldn't want to allow Lara to continue to operate in a capacity which allows her to mess up people's lives that way.

On a meta-story level, I need to keep Lara around because she's a recurring antagonist. So I guess now I need advice on how to do that, considering she's been the subject of an IA investigation before, so I would think Daniel reporting her would be taken very seriously...

melindamusil · Nov 12, 2013

rosehips said:
On a meta-story level, I need to keep Lara around because she's a recurring antagonist. So I guess now I need advice on how to do that, considering she's been the subject of an IA investigation before, so I would think Daniel reporting her would be taken very seriously...

What if Lara resigns/gets fired, and decides to use her knowledge and connections to become a private investigator? She could still be showing up on crime scenes and generally harassing the police department, as needed, but she would no longer be employed by the PD.

Duncan J Macdonald · Nov 12, 2013

rosehips said:
On a meta-story level, I need to keep Lara around because she's a recurring antagonist. So I guess now I need advice on how to do that, considering she's been the subject of an IA investigation before, so I would think Daniel reporting her would be taken very seriously...

Any number of ways you could go, but I'd recommend staying with the tried-and-true. Put her into a position where she can do a 'favor' for a Senior Police Executive (SPE), and he pulls the strings to get her assigned as his 'executive assistant'. Said SPE is so enamoured of her 'talents', that he keeps the IA hounds off of her.

Note: 'scare' quotes used instead of actual sexual/immoral/illegal equivalents -- depending on the tenor of the rest of your work.

ironmikezero · Nov 12, 2013

rosehips said:
Good point.

... she's been the subject of an IA investigation before, so I would think Daniel reporting her would be taken very seriously...

Any reporting of violations (law, regs, etc...) is taken very seriously by an agency's IA section, notwithstanding the source. Allegations are always investigated and subsequently sustained (corroborated) or closed (refuted/unfounded, lack of evidence, etc.). Corroborated findings can be the basis for any level of administrative sanction - or, if warranted, criminal prosecution.

The planting of evidence is a serious felony. The first time would have gotten her fired and prosecuted in any jurisdiction with which I'm familiar. She'd be under federal scrutiny for civil rights violations as well. Beyond her criminal sanction exposure, she (and her agency) would both be vulnerable to a significant civil suit. The agency would make every effort to be severed from the lawsuit; she'd be left on her own.

Upon her criminal conviction, and subsequent civil suit, incarceration and/or bankruptcy would be a likely outcome.

If your story must have her still on the job, she'll need some major leverage with some powerful individual...

Don't get discouraged - just think big...

rosehips · Nov 12, 2013

ironmikezero said:
Any reporting of violations (law, regs, etc...) is taken very seriously by an agency's IA section, notwithstanding the source. Allegations are always investigated and subsequently sustained (corroborated) or closed (refuted/unfounded, lack of evidence, etc.). [...] The first time would have gotten her fired and prosecuted in any jurisdiction with which I'm familiar.

Thanks, Mike. I didn't mean to make it sound like they didn't take it seriously the first time. It's that there was no actual evidence of her wrong-doing so the case was closed. Veronica, the psychic, "saw" what happened, but she couldn't come forward as a witness because she didn't actually see anything.

The second time Lara essentially destroyed evidence rather than actually planting it. What happened was Veronica went to a church and tried the knob on a locked door, then left. Some time after she left, the door was broken into and the interior of the church was vandalized. There was exterior video surveillance and Lara got the tape. She altered it so it stopped right at the point that Veronica went to the door. She also got a teenager to say he saw Veronica enter the building (the teenager was actually the vandal). Lara's goal was to make Veronica look not only like she was guilty of the vandalism but also that she stole something to help her pretend she'd had a vision; that she was a fraud. Veronica had given some help in an investigation involving the church, and the vandalism would show that she had a vendetta against the church and that she wasn't above breaking in to places to get information she could later claim she'd acquired in a vision. Lara is very motivated to discredit Veronica as a psychic.

After Veronica later saved Lara from being killed, Lara went to the DA and said she'd made a mistake. She blamed it on the witness and said it was a case of mistaken identity, that the woman on the tape wasn't Veronica. This is all stuff that happens "off stage" so to speak. The reader only sees Lara tell Veronica she's going to make the case against her go away as repayment for Veronica saving her.

If Daniel wanted to try to stop Lara from continuing to be a detective, he would have to go to his superiors and explain that Lara altered the tape and made a deal with the real vandal to say he saw Veronica go in the building. He would have to out Veronica as a psychic and explain Lara's motivation for wanting to discredit her. So far, he's been sneaking Veronica into crime scenes and such, and the only other person who knows what she can do is one of the ADAs, though he hasn't acknowledged it in any official way. Even the ADA doesn't know the extent to which she's been helping Daniel. So it poses a dilemma for Daniel: if it comes out he has been giving access to crime scenes and evidence to a civilian, he's going to get in trouble. Which I'm not saying I don't want to do (eek, double negative), just that it complicates things.

On top of that, the way I see it, there still isn't a ton of evidence against Lara. The teenager isn't going to admit she influenced him because he'd have to admit to being the person who vandalized the church, and he doesn't want to do that. I never figured out how Lara altered the tape, but I suppose depending on how I wanted the second IA investigation to turn out, I could either say she did it in a way that they could pinpoint, which would show her guilt, or that she managed to do it in a way that you couldn't be sure wasn't a real accident (again with the double negatives--sorry about that).

So I'm leaning towards saying that Daniel does report her actions despite the consequences to himself. Which leads me to my first question:
What would the consequences be? Lara is definitely going to tell anyone who will listen that Daniel has been giving Veronica access to crime scenes and evidence.

And I'm also leaning towards saying that the second investigation would fail to find sufficient evidence against Lara. So next questions: Does that seem realistic? Is just the fact that she's being investigated a second time going to harm her? Should I still come up with some powerful ally to make her troubles go away?

ironmikezero · Nov 13, 2013

Okay, now I see where you're trying to go...

Here are a couple of possibilities, but be aware that if Daniel does make a complaint to his supervisor, that boss has no recourse but to report it to IA and the subsequent IA investigation ensues.

Since this would be a second complaint involving Lara, the IA scrutiny would be intense (too much smoke motivates the finding of at least a trace of flame). They're gonna find something - they always do - even if it's unrelated to the complaint.

Allegations against Daniel (allowing a civilian to enter and possibly contaminate a crime scene, etc.) would merit appropriate scrutiny as well - until the ADA acknowledges Veronica's status - perhaps as an ad hoc consultant? And the ADA declares that the case has not been compromised.

In the meantime, both detectives would almost certainly be removed from the involved case(s), and temporarily reassigned - separately - to other open cases. Think restrictive duty - riding a desk under the watchful eye of a supervisor, doing reports and other mundane office crap, etc... for the pendancy of the IA investigation - no street work.

The weak link - and Lara's Achilles heel - in this situation is this teenaged vandal who acted as her minion in framing Veronica. Now this street hoodlum has leverage on Lara - a get out of jail card to be played whenever he sees fit, should he be busted for a more serious, and potentially unrelated, offense and wants to cut a deal.

You could have him be responsible (at Lara's request) for altering the surveillance recording as well - that would further enhance his leverage... Hmm, a potential for future blackmail, too.

So, there is evidence against her, but it's not discovered until you deem it appropriate in your plot line.

Remember, street hoods don't suddenly see the light and live righteous lives - they act the same way they always have, and eventually get caught for something.

Lara would know this, too. Maybe she'll start thinking about eliminating this threat... See where this could go?

Now, if Daniel were to learn of this (another vision from Veronica?), he'd be motivated to find this guy - this witness and co-conspirator - before Lara does.

I still like the idea of Lara having a mysterious and powerful godfather ally of sorts... but what does he/she get out of it?

The possibilities are endless. So, have some fun!

MDSchafer · Nov 13, 2013

Real police don't have partners, it's almost entirely a fictional creation. While police officers do work together, a lot or a little depending on the agency, the idea of a having a "Partner" who you work with 99 percent of the time is extremely rare.

Also, your MC not coming forward with information is a crime. Police officers are required to report any known crime, especially when it involves another police officer. By Daniel not reporting Laura he is putting his job, and his freedom at risk. If she ever gets caught, and wants to be vindictive all she has to do to take down Daniel is state that he knew of what she was doing and didn't report it.

If it comes out that he knew and did nothing, he'll probably go to jail. If it comes out that he had reason to be suspicious and didn't inform his supervisor he will lose is job, be blacklisted in the profession and could/should go to jail and face civil lawsuits as well.

Just FYI, I used to be a cops and court reporter.

WeaselFire · Nov 15, 2013

MDSchafer said:
By Daniel not reporting Laura he is putting his job, and his freedom at risk.

Cops rarely rat out cops. But all of this is really dependent on department size, operation, etc. Quite a few detectives still have partners for example. Or, more usually, teams.

Jeff

A police detective changing partners

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

ironmikezero

practical experience, FTW

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

melindamusil

practical experience, FTW

Duncan J Macdonald

Plotting! Not Plodding!

ironmikezero

practical experience, FTW

rosehips

Mr. Boo is watching you.

ironmikezero

practical experience, FTW

MDSchafer

WeaselFire

Benefactor Member