Agenda 03-21-2017 - 8-b - 2016 Amendment to County Sheriff’s Office - Records Retention and Disposition Schedule

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13 5 Chair McKee asked Commissioner Dorosin if there is probable cause to search, then the written consent is not used, or necessary. Commissioner Dorosin said the written consent is for when there is not probable cause to search. Jennifer Galassi, Legal Advisor to the Sheriff's Office, said that is not necessarily always the case, as sometimes written consent is received even when there is probable cause. She said getting the consent facilitates law enforcement's ability to things more expeditiously. She said if consent is received, the interaction tends to be more cooperative. She said law enforcement does not have to inform the person in question that there is the right to give written consent, and the prosecution does not have to prove the person in question knew that written consent existed. Commissioner Dorosin said if people know they can say no, they will say no, and while the right exists, law enforcement does not want them to say no. He feels law enforcement should inform the person in question that they can give written consent or refuse the search. Jennifer Galassi said there is a notion that the idea of consent is being substituted for the idea of reasonableness, which is the touchstone of the fourth amendment. Commissioner Jacobs asked if one does not give consent, can an officer say there is probable cause to search, or does the refusal to consent halt the interaction. Jennifer Galassi said if there is truly no probable cause, then yes the interaction should end upon refusal to consent. Commissioner Jacobs said watching TV and movies have polluted his view of all of this. He said the question for him is how well do people know their rights, and how obligated is law enforcement to inform them. Commissioner Jacobs said this is a more difficult issue than the body cameras for him. He told Commissioner Dorosin that he appreciated the topic being brought up and suggested re-visiting this. He said he thought body cameras would help, and would like to check back with the Sheriff to see how his proposed practice is working. He would also like to hear updates from those working in the civil rights movement. Commissioner Jacobs said he wanted to respect the Sheriff's prerogatives and his staff. Sheriff Blackwood said he will provide the BOCC with a breakdown of the searches that have consent and those that do not. Chair McKee agreed with Commissioner Jacobs. Commissioner Dorosin said the Board should review the data from Bumgarner and have this discussion. Commissioner Jacobs said to ask Sheriff to analyze the stops. Sheriff Blackwood said they met with Mr. Bumgarner to ask him to analyze their searches since Sheriff Blackwood has been in office, as well as searches broken down by officer. He said the collection of data is confusing and complicated. Jennifer Galassi presented the data from the period of two years prior to December 2014, and the 20 months since then. Commissioner Rich asked if this data should be weighted due to the larger white population, as compared to the black population. Jennifer Galassi said that is difficult because the people being ticketed are not even residents. Sheriff Blackwood said they are trying to correlate better data sets to be collected, including where people live, the race of the officer, etc. He said they have been challenged to come up with four categories to check, which are currently not being checked. He said these are interesting numbers, but this is not indicative of what is really going on, as all stops do not require documentation. He would support changing this practice, and collecting data on every