Truesee's Daily Wonder

Ongoing issues between Orlando police and judges on call during nights and weekends prompted a meeting Monday afternoon to help clarify when police should seek out judges to sign arrest and search warrants and how jurists should respond.

Police Chief Val Demings met with Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry on the heels of a memo Perry wrote last week outlining what constitutes the need for "emergency judicial intervention" outside normal court hours.

During the weekend, the on-call judge turned away an Orlando police officer seeking an arrest affidavit for a suspect in a domestic-violence case at 4:50 a.m. Sunday. Judge John Adams questioned whether the warrant was an emergency that needed to be handled during overnight hours and offered instead to meet the officer at 7:30 a.m. In this case, although the abuser was at large, the victim had been moved to a safe place, so the officer agreed.

"We are not on duty to be subject to calls 24 hours a day," Perry said Monday. "Every judge who is on emergency duty has a regular docket they have to attend to."
 
Now, the Orlando Police Department and court officials are trying to hash out the best policy for involving judges in after-hours intervention. It's an issue because crime is a 24-hour-a-day business, and officers must be able to request warrants for searches or arrests at all hours.

"There had been an issue in the past with a couple of judges who said, 'Is this really an emergency that you would call us in the middle of the night?'" said Natasha Permaul, OPD's legal adviser. "We have come up with some language to [define] when is the right time for the officers to contact the judge in the middle of the night."

In May, Demings sent a written directive to her officers outlining that they were no longer allowed to contact the on-duty judge during non-business hours to get arrest warrants in domestic-violence cases. Confusion about what constitutes an emergency prompted the directive, Permaul said. The temporary order — meant to offer some direction until formal guidelines were issued by Perry — expired in early June.

Last week, Perry sent a memo to all law-enforcement agencies in Orange and Osceola counties outlining when an officer should contact the on-call judge during non-business hours. The guidelines were crafted with input from OPD, Permaul said.

"Emergency-duty judge intervention is only to be sought in rare and extreme circumstances where the law or totality of the circumstances requires immediate action," the memo states. "Most 'emergencies' can be handled during normal court hours utilizing existing procedure."

The memo directs officers who need a judge to sign an arrest or search warrant to be sure that the situation is urgent and that the "lack of immediate action would result in the loss of evidence or the imminent escape of a suspect."

If officers don't know the suspect's identity or whereabouts, they shouldn't call the judge, the memo says. But officers should call the judge if they know who the suspect is, but can't find that person, and the "threat to the safety and welfare of the citizen is great."

But this weekend, while Judge John Adams was performing his weeklong on-call duty — which each judge must perform about once a year — he questioned the officer's call because he did not feel the situation fit the emergency criteria.

In that case, the officer was seeking an arrest warrant for a man who beat up his ex-girlfriend two nights in a row and was on the loose. The woman was removed from her home and taken to a safe place, officers said. The officer called Adams at 4:50 a.m. Sunday asking the judge to sign the warrant.

Adams responded by reading Perry's memo to the officer and then asked to speak to a supervisor.

When reached Monday, Adams told the Orlando Sentinel he found probable cause to sign the affidavit, but questioned whether it fit the definition of emergency. He told the officer to instead meet him at the juvenile courthouse at 7:30 a.m., where Adams would be presiding over first appearances.

But an officer didn't meet Adams until 4 p.m. Sunday, nearly 12 hours after the first call to the judge.

"It was clear that this was not an emergency situation" because officers waited several hours to get the affidavit signed, Adams said. "If it had been an emergency, they could have had it signed much, much sooner."

Permaul said she stands behind the officer's decision to call the judge in the middle of the night and said a miscommunication resulted in the time lag.