By Elisabeth Strillacci

KANNAPOLIS — In this week’s class, two sergeants who work in criminal investigations took time to explain how detectives conduct investigations, and the two different investigative departments.

Kannapolis police have both a Criminal Investigations Division or CID and the Vice, Narcotics and Organized Crime team. Both are investigative groups, and both work together, but the cases they take on are slightly different.

Sgt. Wesley Wilson from CID and Sgt. Nick Corn from Vice were instructors for the session and Wilson kicked things off by explaining that CID investigates a wide range of crimes, including arson, burglary, homicide, suicide, robbery, rape, sex offenses, child abuse, felony assault, theft, forgery/counterfeiting and fraud, embezzlement, stolen property, weapons offenses and firearms accidents. The Vice squad tackles incidents involving things like gambling, prostitution, drug sales and organized crime such as gangs.

Cases are referred to detectives once the type of case is determined but they will also respond to active scenes if the crime is clear.

If they are fortunate, a suspect is caught at the scene or their identity is established early on. If not,  as Wilson explained, much of what detectives do when searching for a suspect is essentially fishing.

“We are constantly throwing out cast nets in the hopes we will capture information that helps us narrow down who we are looking for,” he said. “But it’s not like what you see on television. We don’t get fingerprints back in an hour.” Everything submitted to labs for testing takes time.

But he added that the arrival of social media has been a tremendous benefit to detectives because with a warrant, they can obtain any and all online information about a person as well as what they have posted, sites they have searched, and with cell phone tower pings, they can even track locations.

Wilson demonstrated the benefit of that kind of information from a previous case. A man was charged, tried and convicted in the murder of a woman, and the cell tower records showed a list of a murder suspect’s locations throughout the day as he was searching for his intended target. It was clear he was moving between locations she’d been known to frequent.

“And sometimes we can see someone has searched online for say, how to cover bruises, and they are accused of an assault of a child,” he said. “Online search history can be very telling.”

However, the cell phone tower records produce massive lists of numbers that have pinged off a tower during a given time, so there is a lot of leg work in plowing through thousands of numbers to find ones that are relevant.

If it becomes clear there may be more than one case involving a suspect, he explained that police will work to figure out the suspect’s “MO,” a term that is heard on television and which stands for “modus operandi” or method of operation. It establishes a pattern of behavior for a particular suspect that can not only help tie multiple crimes together but can even at times help police figure out the next target.

Wilson said detectives spend a lot of time these days working on cases from the Department of Social Services involving abuse.

When Sgt. Corn stepped up, he went on to explain how things like surveillance can help establish drug activity or other criminal behavior that is ongoing. It can also help prevent a crime, or can allow officers to arrest a suspect in the middle of a crime being committed, or caught in the act. But the main purpose of surveillance is to add to the evidence of a criminal violation, and to support requests for things like search and arrest warrants.

Corn added that the vice squad spends much of its time investigating and working to eradicate illegal drug sale and distribution, which connects in many cases to gangs, though things are not as violent as they were just a few years ago. Gangs are still active, but they are not currently fighting with each other the way they were even four years ago.

“I remember one night when we went from one shooting scene to another, I think we had four in one night, and we would be at one scene and hear the gunfire from the next,” he said. “At that time, two different gangs were beefing, and they were shooting at each other to ‘flex’ at each other. We don’t have that kind of activity at this time.”

And through the years, the drug of choice on the streets has changed. It was marijuana, then it was cocaine, then crack cocaine (so named because of the popping noises it makes when its heated), then heroin and methamphetamine, and now, it’s primarily fentanyl, though marijuana is always in the mix.

“Most of the drugs out there are fentanyl now or have fentanyl in them,” he said. “And when you hear us talk about drugs, we talk about them being a certain schedule of drug. Well, if a drug has a medicinal use, and fentanyl does, it is a schedule II drug, because it can be legally prescribed in a proper medical setting in addition to its illegal use. But if it never had a medical use or no longer has one, it becomes a schedule I drug.”

“A lot of what is called heroin these days is actually fentanyl,” explained Corn. “And both are highly addictive.”

In the notes provided to the class, it explained that heroin is an opiate. Opiates, in the form of medications like hydrocodone, oxycodone, with brand names like Norco and Percocet, were widely prescribed for pain for years before it became clear those prescriptions had created a massive number of people addicted to opiates. Dependence can set in as quickly as four days, and initially there were not plans in place to help patients come off that dependence, because the level of dependence or addiction wasn’t acknowledged.

When patients were taken off the medication but their body both became sick from withdrawal and craved the chemical, many turned to street drugs including buying prescription pills on the streets or buying heroin which could be cheaper. Trouble is, these days fentanyl can be compressed into pills that look incredibly similar to prescription pills and people don’t always know what they are actually getting.

And some who struggle with addiction have come to it another way, often starting with marijuana and as they crave stronger highs, moving to stronger drugs.

Corn made an interesting observation that Wilson agreed with from their own work experiences, and that is that while many believe marijuana is not as bad as many other drugs, and should be legalized, what they see is something different.

“Homicides involving marijuana are very violent,” he said. “There are violent arguments over pot, and it happens primarily among young males. The violence connected to marijuana and fights over it would surprise you.”

In explaining some of the ways detectives can gather evidence of possible drug crimes, Corn did share one trade secret that pairs with the information found on social media. Detectives will conduct trash grabs from a house.

“Once your trash can is on the street, it’s now public property,” he said. “So we’ll grab the trash from a house and, while it is a very messy job, go through it. And the information we can get is invaluable.” It can include names, information about financial institutions, and even associates, but it can also include wrappings from drugs or products used to further process or package drugs. What is found in those trash cans is added to the evidence used to obtain a search warrant for a residence or a vehicle.

Detectives have numerous ways of getting suspects to talk during interviews as well. While some will just not talk, others can be drawn out, by emotional connections, by guilt, by fear or even in some cases by implied friendship. And detectives have broad leeway in the tactics they are allowed to use in interviews to get information. That does not extend to physical assault, however, no matter how they portray it in movies.

Detectives work particular schedules but they are also essentially “on call” if a case merits it, so it can be an exhausting job, but as both men noted, “it’s worth the time put in when we take bigger drug dealers off the street. There will be others, but at least for a minute, we’ve made a dent.”