Expert: Jack Toomey - 11/8/2004

Question
Hi, Jack! :)

I am a screenwriting student working on a piece, and I am running into a problem. I don't know the first thing about police procedure. :)

Say you were a detective. You and your partner have been investigating a string of sexual assaults with similar details over the course of a month. All of the victims are similar, and all of the sexual assaults happened in pretty much the same way, within the same part of town. All were stranger rapes.

What would office look like? Would there be something like a map on the wall with pins in it, or have I watched too many movies? What kinds of things would you and your partner be discussing? Where would the investigation be, at that point?

Thanks in advance for helping out! I may have painted myself into a corner here...  

Answer
Hello,

    Yes...you are watching too many movies or old tv shows.  I never saw a map with pins on it in all my years of investigating crime.

   As far as the description of an office you have to remember that there are thousands of police departments and all would be in different buildings with different looking offices.  If this is a big city department you would be safe in saying that it would be a big room with a lot of desks and file cabinets with ringing telephones and a place for interviewing apart from all the confusion.

  Who says I have a partner?  Too many movies again.  Detectives don't have partners.  There might be a few detectives assigned to a serial rapist case but they surely aren't "partners".  They would be discussing likely suspects, looking for past sexual offenders, setting up stakeouts with plain clothes units, compaing DNA if there is any, possibly preparing a composite drawing of the suspect if the witnesses were able to describe him, analyzing evidence, looking at recentely released sexual offenders, and hoping that they get the right break.