The Briefing Room Small Town Dicks Presents

In our season finale: When children are the victims of abuse, they need someone in their corner to make sure that seeking justice is a caring process. Sarah Stewart is the executive director of Kids First, a child advocacy center that helps kids who are victims get access to services like therapy and medical care, while making sure their stories are heard so a case can be built against their abusers. That’s where Nichole’s work comes in: She is the forensic interviewer and helps children feel safe enough to share what happened to them. She also works to build trust between kids and the juries who hear their stories. Today, Detective Dave - who has worked closely with Kids First as a sex crimes detective - sits down with Nichole and Sarah to talk about how trust is built, how kids navigate trauma, and why it’s better to be a conduit than a vessel.
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Digital devices - phones, computers, tablets - have become integral to our daily lives. And they have become tools for criminals. What’s found on a suspect's digital device could make or break a case. Ask Detective Robert Weaver, who specializes in digital forensics. He has uncovered troves of damning evidence by sifting through digital data while working at the department that once employed our twin detectives, Dan and Dave. Today, Detective Robert talks about how your phone knows more than you think, when and how police can seize devices, and how digital detectives have cracked cases wide open. Oh, and they talk about Artificial Intelligence, too!
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In 2014, social media strategist Yael Bar tur took on one of the most significant projects in her career, when she was hired to revamp the public image of the New York Police Department. A year before, a federal judge had ruled the department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program was unconstitutional. For six years, Yael worked with the NYPD, weathering PR crises, building trust between civilians and law enforcement, and helping each city precinct develop its unique voice. Today, she sits down with Dan and Dave to talk about why every police department in the country should have a social media strategy and know how to respond when violence goes viral. How did she convince curmudgeonly cops to log into Twitter?
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Over the course of his long career in law enforcement, Matt Pitcher has put his personal life on hold to go deep undercover to catch the bad guys. Matt did short stints pretending to be someone else when he worked street crimes trying to take down drug dealers. Then came two separate deep cover investigations that required Matt to live for months apart from his wife and newborn son. Matt sits down with our twin detectives to talk about the real world impact of assuming someone else’s identity, the dangerous close calls when he was almost discovered, and why he thinks deep-cover assignments are becoming a thing of the past.
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What happens when a child goes missing? Every second counts and law enforcement needs to know exactly what to do to improve the chances the victim will be found alive. Enter Lindsey Wade, a veteran detective from Tacoma, Washington. Lindsey travels the country training officers on child abduction response and what to do in those crucial seconds, minutes, and hours after a child goes missing. Today, she joins Detectives Dan and Dave to talk about what she teaches, the critical information parents need to know, and her work as a cold case detective.
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Detectives Dan and Dave have long said that victims and their families are at the mercy of the quality of detective assigned to their case. It turns out that detectives and other law enforcement officials will sometimes find themselves beholden to someone else’s work: that of the medical examiner. What a medical examiner finds at a crime scene can make or break a case. So what does it take to do that job well? And what could MEs learn from a veteran in the field? Today, our twin detectives talk with Dr. Mark Super, who has spent decades as a medical examiner in California, about a typical day on the job, his most memorable cases, and what lessons he wants to impart from his storied career.
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