Dawson's X-Files/FBI/Law Enforcement FAQ Version 3

General FBI Questions

ASAC is Assistant Special Agent in Charge, and SAC is Special Agent in Charge. Please note the the words are spoken by initials, never by acronym. So it's "ey ess ey see" not "a-sack."

No. Never. Firing warning shots went out in the 1960s. Too many innocent people getting hit by stray rounds. That is the official line; however, some law enforcement types have "missed, strategically."

Under certain circumstances. FBI agents are assigned as Legal Attaches (LEGATS) to United States Embassies overseas. While the entire Embassy operation is under the control and guidence of the US State Department's Foreign Service Office, FBI LEGATS often work in close conjunction with the host country's domestic law enforcement agencies at the national as well as provincial and local levels. In some, very limited situations, FBI agents have arrest powers overseas, usually only in drug, espionage and terrorism cases, and then usually only with the agreement of the host country.

The BSU, recently renamed to the ISU (Investigative Support Unit,) is a specialized unit within the FBI charged with providing, upon request, criminal profiles to law enforcement agencies. Profilers are specially-trained agents that can take the circumstances and situational specifics of a crime and "reverse-engineer" the type of person that would commit such a crime. For more information about the BSU/ISU, read "Mindwalker" by John Douglas.

They're relieved of duty and their weapon is seized for ballistic tests. They are sent for psychological evaluation. Depending on the outcome of the "shooting investigation," they are either returned to duty, fired, or civilly or criminally prosecuted.

The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team was created in response to the 1994 Los Angeles Olympics. They trained with the US Army's Delta Force and the Navy's SEAL Team Six to create a domestic law-enforcement agency capable of performing hostage rescue. (In a stunning political move, however, LAPD Chief Daryl Gates managed to get the FBI to agree to allow the LAPD SWAT team to perform any hostage recue operations during the Olympics.)

HRT is specifically trained to perform Hostage Rescue operations, whereas your normal FBI SWAT team is used for serving high-risk warrants, and other unusual situations.

General Firearms

Minor design and operational differences, mostly. A revolver runs through its available ammunition via a revolving cylinder located midway between the grip and the barrel. A semiautomatic pistol is fed through a magazine that fits into the bottom of the grip. Pistols are slimmer and generally preferred by law enforcement types because as a general rule, semiautomatic pistols hold more rounds than a revolver. The SIG Sauers that Mulder and Scully carry are classified as SA/DA Semiautomatic Pistols.

Single Action/Double Action. It's a way to describe the action of how the pistol can be fired. There are several types of pistol mechanisms: Single action only, Single Action/Double Action and Double Action Only.

Single action means that the gun must be cocked before it can fire. In the olden-days of six-shooters, this meant that the shooter had to hand-cock the weapon. I can't think of any single-action-only revolvers that are still in use by any responsible police agency anywhere in the civilized world. However, some semiautomatic pistols are single-action-only, such as the Colt Government M1911A. Because of the repeating slide action of that (and similar pistols,) it isn't "as" single-action as a single-action-only revolver. But the pistol must be carried "cocked and locked" in order to be tactically effective as a law enforcement sidearm.

Double action means that the natural mechanism of pulling the trigger performs two (double) tasks: It cocks the gun AND fires it.

Single-action-only pistols (Colt Government M1911A, and the thousands derived from that original beautiful design,) must be carried with a round in the chamber and the hammer back in the "cocked" position. To protect against accidential hammer-fall (gun talk for "shooting yourself in the foot,) there are two safties that are engaged when the pistol is holstered, "locking" it against firing.

Most semiauto pistols, when operating normally, go "out of battery" when they are empty. This is a technical term; what it means is that the slide that runs along the top of the pistol (which moves back and forth during firing [much too quickly for the naked eye to see],) locks in the rearward or "open" position. If you want to know how this happens, continue reading: The magazine that holds the cartridges has a small lever that extends from the magazine into the pistol. When the last round is fired, this lever pops up, which engages a slide-lock, which prevents the slide from coming forward again. This happens so that if the shooter has another magazine, they can immediately eject the spent one, insert the fresh one and use the slide-release, making the gun immediately able to fire again.

When you pull the trigger and nothing happens, barring a misfire. Seriously, most duty revolvers used by police officers hold a maximum of six rounds. After six "bangs," the gun will just go "click" when you pull the trigger. After having spoken with more than one cop who has popped up from behind a dumpster and had the "point and click" experience, it's not hard to understand why most of the favor the higher-capacity semiautos!

Because it looks cool. Single-action only weapons are not in vogue anymore in modern law enforcement, although some very, very "old" timers in some Western state police departments (Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, etc.) still carry Colt M1911A pistols, which must be carried in the "cocked and locked" position. But, with a single/double action pistol (like the SIGs that Mulder and Scully carry,) "cocking" the pistol is a cenimatic dramatic device designed to show the dedication to cause that a character has. If a cop asks a suspect a question and gets a bullshit answer, cocking the pistol reminds the suspect that the cop really isn't kidding. Most responsible law enforcement agencies frown on this practice, as it greatly heightens the chance for accidential discharge.

Pistol: When the pistol is empty, the slide will lock back. Assuming that you have a fresh magazine, the first thing you need to do is eject the spent magazine by depressing the (you guessed it,) magazine release button. (Some automatics, notably Scully's original Walther PPK in .380, use the Eureopean style of semiauto magazine release, which is a lever-thingie on the butt of the gun. As these weapons were originally designed for use by the officer corps of various European armies, and such men were thought never to need to resort to such vulgar things as gunfights, not much tactical thinking went into that concept...) Once the magazine falls out, you insert the fresh magazine and release the slide. Most semiautos have a slide-release lever that is accessible with the thumb when holding the pistol in a natural shooting grip. Some require a small rearward tug on the slide in order to release the slidestop. The slide slams foward, chambering a round, and you're ready to party again!

 

Revolver: This is slightly more complicated. On the left side of the pistol is the cylinder release latch. On some models, you pull it towards the rear; on others you push it towards the front. This unlocks the cylinder, which will drop on a hinge to the shooters left. Assuming a right-handed shooter, the shooter will hold the revolver in his left hand, with the trigger guard in the middle of his palm. While pushing at the cylinder release latch with the thumb of his right hand, he'll push the cylinder open with the tips of his left fore and middle fingers, pushing his fingers through the space that the cylinder just occupied. By pointing the barrel at the sky, his thumb is now in position to push the ejection rod. The rod is attached to a die-cut piece of metal that lies flush against the rear face of the cylinder. By pushing the rod, the spent shell casings are forced out of the cylinder and onto the ground. (The heat of rapid firing and the intense bore pressures of some high-powered rounds may cause the brass casings to expand during firing, which is why pushing HARD on the ejector rod is important.) Once the cylinders are all empty, the gun is then rotated so the barrel is pointing at the ground. Depending on the reload strategy of the shooter, they can either use a speedloader, speed strips, or the 'ol fumble-fingers method. Once the cylinders are full, the [left] thumb that just pushed the ejector rod now pushes the cylinder back into the frame, where it locks into place. Note:: Using the "wrist-flip" method of closing the cylinder looks very cool on television, but there are two things you should be aware of...first, bullets can go flying if you do that, and secondly, the torque that is applied to the cylinder hinge over time will eventually loosen it, making for a less firm fit, which can degrade handgun performance.

Legally? In movies and television? Or in reality? Legally, an assualt weapon is any weapon  that the local legislature decides IS one. On television and in the movies... I won't even GO there. In reality, an assualt weapon is a light, one-man automatic weapon. "Automatic" means that the weapon will fire as long as the trigger is depressed, until the weapon runs out of ammunition. A Colt AR-15 is NOT an assault weapon, because unless it's been modified by the owner, it's semi-auto. Gotta pull the trigger each time you want it to fire. An AK-47, also, is NOT an assualt weapon. An M=16, however, IS. As is an H&K MP-5, because they are both automatic. Or, as the press likes to call it, "Fully automatic."

General Police Procedural

The full Miranda warning is: "You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during this and any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you by the court."

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was a famous Supreme Court case that established the boundries of the Fifth Amendment (the right against self-incrimination,) and focused national attention on certain police agencies "beating" confessions out of people. Please note that improperly Mirandizing suspects can result in the arrest being tossed out. If a cop goes to Mirandize someone and they interrupt with "I know my rights!" that does not lift the officer's obligation to complete the warning. The more circumspect departments have suspects sign a "Miranda card," to prevent the suspect's lawyer from later claiming incorrect Mirandaization.

In some cases, it's a rank. In others, it's a job description. For example, the San Francisco PD doesn't have a title "detective." Plainclothes officers assigned to investigate crimes are called "Inspectors" in that department. The NYPD, on the other hand, has three grades of detectives and two of Inspector. (Detective 3rd Grade, Detective 2nd, Detective 1st, Deputy Inspector and Inspector.) Basically, a detective is a police officer assigned to investigate crimes, identify the criminals, apprehend them, and shepard the case through the courts.

Generally, Sheriffs Departments are responsible for the unincorporated areas within a county. What this translates to in real life is, if a local municipality doesn't have it's own police department, then it's the Sheriffs Department's responsibilty.

A warrant is a legal document allowing the government to perform specific acts. The term is generally used for arrest and search warrants. This is not the same as a court order, but it is similar. You don't need a warrant to tap a phone, but you do need a court order.

Generally, there are three types: Bench, Search and Arrest.

An Arrest Warrant is one issued by a court on the affadavit of either a police officer, peace officer or other "officer of the court," that a known person or persons are subject to arrest for the police on the suspicion (using evidence set forth in the affadavit,) that a crime has been comitted or will be comitted.

A Bench Warrant is one issed by the court itself to satisfy some need of the court. An example of a bench warrant would be a subject who was arrested, made bail, and then failed to appear before the judge (the "bench") at a later date for subsequent proceedings.

A Search Warrant allows the police (or other duly authorized law-enforcement entity,) to enter a home or business in order to search for a specific item or type of item. As with an arrest warrant, an affadavit (a sworn statement) is prepared and presented to a judge, who decides whether or not to grant the warrant. A search warrant is not carte blanche to tear a house apart; most times police are only allowed to search for the items specifically listed on the warrant. Any other contraband that is found, however, can be impounded. This leads to something called "masking" a warrant; Assume you knew that Johnny B. Goode killed Little Richard, but you couldn't legally prove it. You had a gut feeling that the murder weapon was in the house. You don't have enough to get a search warrant on the gun, BUT you have an informant that told you that the house is also full of drugs. You can get a search warrant for the drugs, and then just happen to "find" the gun. The gun, although not specified on the warrant, can be admitted as evidence. Defense lawyers are getting smart to this tactic, though, and have challenged the legality of such actions in the courts.

They can, sometimes. The problem, as with all fingerprint-related "solves," is that the criminal (or whomever,) needs to have been fingerprinted some time in the past in order to get a match. The FBI runs the world's largest Single Print Index for just this reason. Although rare, murderers have been caught by as much as a partial thumbprint.

No. The FBI's SciCrime lab can use lasers and acid to "raise" the numbers off the metal. Gun manufacture laws in the US require that any weapon that is serial-numbered must have it stamped deeply enough so that by removing it, you would compromise the structural integreity of the gun itself. However, there are ways to get around this: The first is to get a gun into your hands BEFORE the serial number is registered with the police; this would require that they be stolen from the factories themselves. Secondly, certain manufacturers make pistols specifically for use by the US Government that are made without serial numbers. Obtaining one of these pistols would accomplish the same task.

I've recently been informed that certain inexpensive (~$150) firearms, like the HiPoint C9, have the serial number stamped on a metal plate that is affixed to a polymer reciever, and that just by prying off the metal plate can render the pistol "untraceable."

A gun that cannot be traced back to its origin in a way that can establish culpability. For example, if Bob buys a gun in Las Vegas from a gun store, he is the registered owner of that pistol. Bob then sells the gun to Jim. Bob dies before he can notify the FBI of the transfer. The FBI has no idea, no record, that Jim owns this gun. If Jim knows this, and then sells the gun to Ted, Ted now has a clean gun. He doesn't have to worry about the police automatically realizing that he had posession of a firearm.

Teflon-coated handgun rounds that can defeat a bulletproof vest. There are some federal laws dealing with the manufacture, sale, posession and use of these items, but not an outright federal ban. However, many states have laws regarding these items; if you have a question, check with your local law enforcement agenncy.

No, more like "bullet-resistent." What makes a bulletproof vest "bulletproof" is the assumption (made by statistical sample,) that most officer-involved shootings: a) involve low-powered or medium-powered handguns using b) low-powered or underpowered ammunition, c) at medium range. If you use a high-power firearm (.44 Magnum, for example,) with high-powered ammunition (++P+ rated ammo, for example) at VERY close range, the bullet will probably penetrate the vest. Also, most high-speed rifle rounds will penetrate a bulletproof vest.

Generally, the handcuffs used by the overwhelming majority of US Law Enforcement agencies all use the same key style, even though they are all made by different manufacturers. The reason for this is obvious.

DEA - The Drug Enforcement Administration is responsible for investigating international narcotics and other illegal drug trafficking, both in the United States and abroad, as well as monitoring the distribution, perscription and consumption of controlled substances within the borders of the United States.

Secret Service - The United States Secret Service, aside from their primary role of executive protection, is the investigation of counterfiting, as well as interstate wire, credit card and cellular telephone fraud.

United States Marshals - Guards at federal prisons, transportation of federal prisoners between facilities, executive protection of federal judges, bailifs and court officers in federal court, and the pursuit and arrest of escaped federal felons.

ATF - The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is responsible for tracking the illegal production of its named entities, as well as making sure that alcohol and tobacco taxes are paid. ATF also investigates any use of explosives in the comission of a crime anywhere in the United States.

Coast Guard - Responsible for drug interdiction operations, and so have been granted limited arrest and investigative powers. Interesting to note that to board a vessel while underway does not require a warrant of any kind! Presence in the waters of the United States is considered "Presumptive consent" under admirality law.

Customs - Responsible for the ports of entry to the US, including airports, train stations and other border crossings.

INS - Responsible for monitoring of the persons that enter the United States.

IRS - Yes, the IRS has "Special Agents" that are armed. Scary, eh? Basically, IRS Special Agents are responsible for serving seizure warrants for tax scofflaws and enforcing other liens and legal judgements. (The thought of an IRS SWAT Team makes me shudder...)

CID - The US Army's Criminal Investigation Division is responsible for investigating crimes comitted by members of the US Army, or crimes comitted on properties owned by the US Army by civilians.

NCIS - The Naval Criminal Investigation Service is responsible for investigating crimes comitted board US Navy vessels, on US Navy or Marine Corps bases, or by US Navy or Marine Corps personnel while not on base.

OSI - The US Air Force Office of Special Investigation is (perhaps) the most feared of any of the US Military investigative units -- originally, the USAF was the only service that had nuclear weapons, and the OSI was charged with investigating any activity that would threaten nuclear security. They achieved a reputation as a ruthless investigative service during the 40s and 50s.

Gadgets, devices and toys

An explosive material that can be molded like clay and detonated electronically or by fuse. Some types of plastic explosive include C4 (US Military issue,) SemTex (Chezch plastique that is the most stable in the world and the kind preferred by most of your terrorists,) as well as some of the homemade stuff you can cook up with desiel fuel, vaseline and some other stuff. Don't bother asking, I won't send you the recipie.

From a recent correspondence:

"The most popular explosive used by terrorists is TATP. (Acetone Peroxide). Manufactured from Acetone, Hydrochloric Acid and Hydrogen Peroxide it is very very very easy to manufacture. TATP does NOT require a blasting cap or similar charge because it is a Primary Explosive. TATP is hydroscopic (absorbs water) and will stabilize itself. It is not shock sensitive (compared to nitroglycerine) after being exposed to normal atmosphere for a few hours."
 

So if the bombmaker himself triggers it, he knows how much time he has before detonation!

This is such an incredibly technical question that I'll just point out a few obvious things: With the advent of Caller ID, it's much easier than it used to be. You can defeat Caller ID, though, very easily. Basically, if you have a valid need to trace a call, you can use the local phone company's switch to locate and trace, and it happens pretty much instantly, unless the caller is using a cellphone. Then things get tricky.

It's not as easy at it sounds. What follows is a basic primer on cellular telephony. Basically, once a call has been identified as originating from a cellphone, the phone company (PC) can tell you which cell-tower the call is coming in from. But a single cell-tower can covers up to three or four square miles. In heavily concentrated cellular areas (big cities such as LA or NYC,) there are more cell towers per square mile, because more users demand more channels. (Each tower is capable of handling a certain amount of simultaneous calls...) In more rural areas, where the demand for channels is lower, a single tower could serve ten or twenty square miles. And if the caller is moving while making the call, it can make things even more difficult (especially, hint hint, if the bad guy knows where the cell towers are and deliberately drives in a confusing pattern, causing the call to jump from tower to tower...) But, assuming the BG is staying in one place, AND you have a direction finding team set up, DF triangulation can occur in as little as five minutes.

Depends if it's digital or analog, and what type of cell system is being used. If you know what cell tower the call is coming in to, and you are at that tower, all that's needed is a laptop computer, a serial cable and a tape recorder. If it's a digtal call, things get complicated in a hurry, because most digital telephony systems use built in encryption to prevent against just that:eavsdropping on the calls. (You might have heard something in the news a few years ago about the Clipper chip. In a very small, very specific nutshell, this is what the debate was about; the government wanted a way to defeat electronic encryption so that they could tap cellphone calls. The Clipper was a compromise between the Law Enforcement community and the right-to-privacy advocates. The chip would allow a call to be decrypted, but only with a secret code. The government proposed to keep half of all the codes, and some other entity would have all the other "halves" of the code in something called "key escrow." Upon receipt of a valid court order, the key escrow company/institution or whatever would release their half; by putting the two halves together, the cops would be able to listen to a specific phone. The only problem is, with pre-paid cellphones available at Circle K for 50 bucks, the bad guys could keep ahead of the key-escrow scheme with little muss or fuss.)

Phone calls are analog, just like tape recorders. All you need to do is connect a tape recorder somewhere where you can isolate the caller you want and let it fly. Basically, you can tap the phone itself (the instrument,) or the LINE. Tapping the line is better, because it allows you to monitor all calls on that line. You can tap in the punchdown block (where the line comes in from the street before branching out to all the extensions in a house,) or at one of the local substation switches. The further away you get from the physical location you want to tap, the more wires you have to wade through to find the ones you want.

Caller ID before Caller ID was invented. Basically, pen-registers were used when people got threatening phone calls, or during a kidnapping when the cops were expecting a ransom demand, etc. A pen-register is a little black box that sits on a telephone line and scribbles out the number of any phone calling that line. Except in very rural areas, they aren't used anymore.

Not really...not the analog type of modem that makes all that screeching noise that we've been using for twenty years. But with the advent of home digital telephony services (ISDN, xDSL, ADSL, etc.) which use digital transmission instead of analog transmission, tapping would be a snap. The reason you can't tap an analog modem call is that while you're connected, any signal strength loss causes all kinds of problems at either end of the "call." One of the ways you can tell if your phone is being tapped is to test the signal strength of the line. Any minute fluctuation would cause either modem to drop, defeating the purpose of the tap and (over time) increasing suspicion that something was going on.

In the episode "Ghost in the Machine," the COS machine dials Scully's home PC and starts reading her email or something. This really can't happen. Normally. If, however, you have SET your computer to expect an incoming call, and the calling computer knows what protocol to use (the language of information transfer,) when calling, then it could be done. But there'd have to be human beings involved on both ends; that means that, in reality, someone would have had to broken into Scully's apartment to set her computer to recieve COSs call.

The National Crime Information Computer is a system maintained by the FBI and used by almost every single law enforcement agency in this country. It contains arrest and conviction histories, as well as interstate wants and warrant information.

General Forensic Pathology

A coroner is a political position filled by election in some jurisdictions. He provides the official, legal cause of death on death certificates. A coroner need not be a doctor. A medical examiner is the title within a municipality that is responsible for maintaining the morgue, autopsies and so forth. The administrative side of the coroner's office. A pathologist is a medical doctor trained in the science of forensic pathology.

Please note that the legal cause of death may not match the medical cause of death. No conspiracy here; If John Q. Public was shot to death, the LEGAL cause of death is "death by gunshot." The medical cause of death would be "cardiac arrest as a result of gunshot-incuded hypovolumia" or something equally inpenetratable.

Rigor is the stiffening that a body undergoes after death. Contrary to popular opinion, you don't stay stiff. Rigor begins at about 12 hours after death and lasts for another 24 hours and then vanishes. If rigor is present, you can use that to establish that death occurred within a certain window. It is one of several ways to establish time of death, but by no means the only one.

When a person dies, if they are left in a specific position, gravity tends to draw all the blood in the body to the "lowest" point(s). This creates a large, bruise-like coloration on the corpse. This is called dependent lividity.

Using Dependent Lividty, for one. Say that Bob is shot and killed at 8:00pm Monday night. His killer leaves him on the floor of his kitchen for six hours and then decides it's time to hide the body in the desert. By that time, the blood will have pooled at certain places in Bob's body. When the body is finally discovered out in the desert, the lividity pattern will indicate that the body has been moved since death.

The body cools at a constant rate, all other factors being equal. A lot of it depends on what the ambient temperature of the location the body was found in is. For example, if someone was killed indoors, in a private home, with a heater or air conditioner running, you can assume that the air had a constant temperature range, and the cooling of the body can be used to calculate how long the body has been there. But if the body was left outdoors, with the ambient temperature changing from day to night to day again, that can screw up time-of-death calculations.

By certain chemicals at the gunshot site such as seritonin. Blood patterns as well. If the heart isn't pumping when the gunshot is delivered, the wound will bleed differently.

Bullets can kill several different ways. It can penetrate the heart, or the brain, or it can tear vital structures apart (the lungs, the aorta, etc.) How a bullet does so much other damage, though, is what makes it so effective as a weapon. When a handgun bullet is fired, it is moving at (sometimes,) up to 1200 feet per second. When that bullet impacts against the body, all that energy is immediately transferred TO the body. Because the human body is made up mostly of water (close to 95%,) that energy is converted into something called hydrostatic force. It has an effect on the human body's structures that is very similar to dropping a boulder into a pond; imagine those huge rippling waves of energy tearing through your body and you'll understand how such a tiny piece of lead can do so much damage.

MILITARY QUESTIONS

This chart goes from lowest to highest for the four major military services of the United States:

Warrant officers are an odd duck, military rank-wise. They sit between enlisted men and officers, and are really neither. They do not have a comission, and so they are not entitled to command. But they wear officer's uniforms, and are entitled to salutes by their juniors. They are given not comissions by the Congress, but "Warrants" signed by the Secretary of the respective branch of service. Traditionally, Warrant Officers were enlisted men of long and faithful service that were given this formerly honorary rank at the end of extremely long careers so that they might retire with an officer's uniform and some more benefits. During World War II, warrants were granted to men and women who excelled at a certain non-combat speciality, such as personnel clerks, cryptographers, Army finance specialists and so forth. At the current time, the largest body of warrant officers in the US Army are helicopter pilots.

The term "officer" usually refers to comissioned officers only. An officer is "comissioned" into the US Military by the Congress. When an officer is comissioned, it means that he is entitled to command. Non-comissioned officers are Sergeants and above in the Army, Air Force and Marines, and Petty Officers in the Navy. They can put "in command" of small groups of other enlisted personnel, but strictly, technically speaking, they do not "command" them.