AREA POLICE CHIEFS DISCUSS EFFECTS OF NEW LEGISLATION

About 25 police chiefs and administrative personnel from throughout the region were brought up to date Thursday on recent changes in Missouri statutes which were passed during the last legislative session.

Representatives from law enforcement and the Missouri Police Chiefs Association have been travelling throughout the state since August, providing legislative and procedural information to its members. On Thursday, they stopped at the Drury Lodge for their sixth of seven seminars.

"This is the first year we've gone around to the seven regions of the state, putting on this kind of program," said Tim Jackson, executive director of the chiefs association. "In the past, we've had this seminar once a year and invited police chiefs to come to Jefferson City for the day.

"When we finish these seminars, we expect we will have talked to 400 law enforcement administrators across the state," he said. "Compare that to the 52 police chiefs that showed up in Jefferson City for the seminar last year."

The focus of the day's lectures was the massive amount of law enforcement legislation passed during the last legislative session. In all, about 40 bills concerning law enforcement were passed in the last legislative session.

Jackson and Dave Rost, of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, not only touched on every bill passed, but also explained some of the consequences and impact upon the law enforcement community.

For example, during the discussion of the stalking law, Rost told the group: "The state has really put the monkey on your back when it comes to deciding when to use this, and when not to. I suggest you use your best judgment and let your local prosecutor bear the monkey by making him decide whether or not to file charges."

A bill the group focused on for quite some time was the Omnibus crime bill -- HB 562 -- which affecting just about every segment of law enforcement.

Among other things, the bill defines and outlaws criminal street gang activity; allows for the forfeiture of a child's property if he or she is caught with controlled substances or drug paraphernalia; determines minimum prison terms by the number of prior felony convictions; allows federal probation officers and federal judges to carry concealed weapons; makes flying while intoxicated a punishable offense and prohibits pilots or crew members from drinking 8 hours before a flight; and sets up certain procedures to allow the transfer of seized property to a federal agency.

The forfeiture guidelines prompted more discussion than any other topic of the day. Police chiefs were tossing out scenarios in which federal and local agencies worked together, asking Rost and Jackson how monies could be divided so both could benefit.

State forfeiture laws were repealed last year and new legislation was passed in its place, mandating that all seizures go to school districts throughout the state, rather than to the confiscating agency. Federal forfeiture laws differ in that all seized property and money is given back to the confiscating agency to spend on equipment and training.

Other topics discussed at length were current fingerprinting procedures and the new juvenile fingerprinting legislation.

Capt. Bob Howard of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, updated the group on the Automated Fingerprinting Identification System (AFIS) run by the state, and extolled the benefits of using such a system.

Howard stressed to the group that AFIS was in the charge of the state; not the highway patrol.

"You all need to support this system because it can benefit everyone equally," he said. "It might be a pain to fill out a card every time you arrest someone for a major crime, but its great to be able to call upon this system when you need information."

Howard said that even though the fingerprinting of people arrested for serious misdemeanors or felonies has been mandated by the state since 1987, his agency is still not receiving what he called 10-print cards from many of the smaller agencies throughout the state.

The AFIS computer in Jefferson City consists of two data bases -- one which stores all 10 prints, another which stores just the two index finger prints of the suspect.

"You can search 600,000 prints in about two and a half to three minutes," Howard said. "And that's on a slow day."

The computer can also identify partial prints, but that kind of search -- which would compare it to 6 million other prints -- would take about two hours, he said.

"This system is not guaranteed to find a match every time, but we run at about 70 percent efficiency," he said. "That's much better than zero percent.

"It's an improvement; not perfection."

Howard also discussed juvenile fingerprinting -- made legal by a 1993 statute -- and suggested that local law enforcement agencies get with their juvenile authorities and juvenile courts to establish guidelines.

"St. Louis has submitted some of its juvenile offenders' prints to AFIS, and you would not believe what they found," Howard said. "They cleaned up 20-some homicides, and untold numbers of auto thefts and burglaries.

"If youths are going to get on the bad side of the law, the earlier we can catch them, the sooner we can straighten them out," he said.