The case of sixteen years old runaway girl with a forty years old man requires the attention of police officers due to age issues, and the girl might be in danger. The Milwaukee Police officers should cooperate and establish ways they can save the girl. It will help determine if the older man inflicted any harm, and apprehend him because of being with a minor in a hotel. The officers have to take statements from both parties, which will be used as the basis of prosecuting the older man. Any other evidence in the hotel room may be used as guidance on what happened.
The first thing the Milwaukee Police officers were supposed to do is get a search warrant from the judge. Since the hotel was two hours’ drive, the officers would be on the way and wait for the warrant to be processed and sent to them in a digital file (Dimpe & Kogeda, 2018). A search warrant, in this case, would be necessary as it will allow the officers to search the entire hotel if need be, without being considered as intruding on personal property. The search warrant is also essential as it will allow the officers to attain evidence on the crime scene. The material collected can then be presented in court as evidence without being refuted because they will have been obtained legally.
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In the hotel room, there was a laptop computer placed on the table, and it had a classified listing on it. It means that the laptop was holding information that the owner did not want to be known by other people. The hotel room could be considered as a crime scene since the runaway girl was found there. Since the officers had a search warrant, they could take the computer as part of the investigation process. It would contain information such as the reason the older guy had taken the sixteen years girl in a hotel, and why there were other underage girls in his car, and where he was planning to take them.
When the officers question these two individuals on the scene about their relationship, they contradicted each other. The girl says that she was just a friend while the guy stated that she was his girlfriend. On the age issue, the man stated that the girl was twenty years old. The older man was trying to show that the girl was of legal age, and she could choose to be with him, even if he was older. The girl, on the other hand, stated that she was eighteen. These two individuals were hiding a lot since the girl matched a photo indicating that she was only sixteen years old and had run away. The first law the aged man had broken was being in a romantic relationship with a minor as that would be considered as sexual abuse. Therefore, the officers will make a case against the older men on sex offences with an underage ( Rogers, 2018).
The hotel room was registered under an older woman. She is not in the scene but this gives the officers a clue that the aged man was not operating alone. The crime, in this case, maybe organized, with several older adults using young girls to make money, such as through selling them for monetary gain or trafficking young girls. The search warrant allows the officers to access the registry in the hotel, thus getting more information on the case. It will also shed light on the name of the older woman who is registered under the hotel (Fyfe, Stevenson, & Woolnough, 2015). It would also be essential to carry out further investigations to determine how long the room has been rented. The hotel owner will also be required to answer several questions. Such may include the number of times the older man has visited the hotel with young girls and why the hotel owner never reported a case of an older person with a minor.
In the scene, the officers observed the guy trying to communicate with the girl. He might have been warning her of saying that she was kidnapped, or even threatening her. The guy tried to leave, meaning that he was escaping because he had committed a crime. In his car, there were two girls in the back seat, and they were afraid to talk. They gave the officers fake names to avoid being identified. These girls may have feared that the police officers would implicate them in a crime when reporting about the investigation ( Boateng, 2018). When the guy was asked, he indicated that he needed a lawyer. It was his right to attain a lawyer by hiring one, but he had to remain in custody. The presence of other girls shows that the guy may have been committing crimes against human beings, such as selling the young girls into prostitution or even trafficking them. The next step, the officers were supposed to take is calling for medical assistance so that the girls could be checked.
Further investigation led to the evidence of condoms and RX bottles, which had names of different women. It is an indication that the guy must have been taking sexual advantage of the young girls. The RX bottles show that these women must have been taking a particular medication. The medical officers called in for the case would help determine if the women were under any medication or they were being drugged. There was a boarding pass for airlines and an ID card matching the girl in the hotel room. It directs that the girls might have been ready to be moved to another country. The older man may have been making promises to these girls that there was work overseas, thus luring them for sexual activities and drugging them. The girls in the car giving fake names indicates that they were in fear of something happening to them.
The message that one of the girls received indicating that "I saw your ad on back page" could be related to the classified listing on the laptop in the hotel room. These girls could be prostituting, and they had created adverts to attract customers. The officers should confiscate their phones as they may contain evidence on other older people involved in this case. The victims, in this case, are the girls. They are young thus may have been lured by the older man and his accomplices into sexual activities for monetary gains. These girls also took medication, as seen with the RX bottles showing that they might be drugged to accept everything they were told.
The next step would be apprehending the older men and these girls in the scene and taking them back to Milwaukee Police Station, where further investigation will take place. The officers will analyze the evidence from the crime scene, and if they get information on accomplices, they should also be arrested (Greer & South, 2019). Making a report on the case will follow, which will help take the older man to court to answer the crimes of sexual involvement with underage women. The officers will also contact the parents of the girls so that they could be taken home. The officers have to follow up on the court process and ensure that the offender, the older man gets the punishment he deserves.
References
Boateng, F. D. (2018). Crime reporting behavior: do attitudes toward the police matter? Journal of interpersonal violence , 33 (18), 2891-2916.
Dimpe, P. M., & Kogeda, O. P. (2018, October). Generic Digital Forensic Requirements. In 2018 Open Innovations Conference (OI) (pp. 240-245). IEEE.
Fyfe, N. R., Stevenson, O., & Woolnough, P. (2015). Missing persons: the processes and challenges of police investigation. Policing and Society , 25 (4), 409-425.
Greer, S., & South, N. (2019). 2 The criminal informant: police management, supervision, and control. Invading the Private: State Accountability and New Investigative Methods in Europe , 2.
Rogers, J. W. (2018). The Time Limit on Prosecutions for Underage Sexual Intercourse in the Sexual Offences Act 1956: A Continuing Problem. Hart Publishing.
