Category: Law

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” This is the simple yet powerful adage which is Murphys Law. But a lot of people dont know that this infamous law, although have existed for centuries prior, was only named in the year 1949. It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base working on a project called Air Force MX981.

One day, Capt. Murphy got mad at one of his men when he found out something wrong with a transducer. He was heard exclaiming, “If there is any way to do it wrong, hell find it.” A project manager whose job was to list down the laws of the project listed these words down and named it Murphys Law.

From then on, even reputed engineers and scientists of the base would consider this law whenever they attempt to create a project or test some of their creations. Additionally, safety measures were prioritized and were fervently designed to perfection in the hopes of circumventing the threats of Murphys Law.

This law indeed exists as evidenced by a lot of people around the world who experience mishaps even in their most planned-out tasks. At events, no matter how hard performers practiced and got ready, slip outs and glitches still happen. The most experienced of people still go wrong at their repetitive tasks.

Businessmen may have studied every possible angle of risks but during operations something unexpected would still come up. For average Joes who carefully plan out their payday advances, would still miss out on a payment despite the accuracy of a payday loan calculator.

No one can really point out the real cause of this law. All they know is that eventually, somewhere along the readiness and familiarity, something wrong will happen. However, this doesnt mean that it would completely hurt people. Slow down their routines and change their plans, yes, but never to disrupt them of their causes and passions.

If something goes wrong, people can still stand up again and move on. Plans can still be worked out or changed. Routines can be renewed and processes can be improved. No matter what misfortune Murphys Law may bring, the strength of spirit and intense faith of people will always prevail.

So if mistakes are bound to happen, it is something people have learned to deal with and circumvent centuries before.

At no time in our modern history have more demands been placed upon the law enforcement officer. Communities are extremely concerned about crime and they are demanding that law enforcement agencies “do something about it.”

It seems that every day, violent crime and drugs occupy the front page of every newspaper in America.
Politicians at the local, state and national level like to give the impression of being “tough on crime” and espouse philosophies which, at least outwardly, seem to support that toughness.

At the same time, the public (via the media) is scrutinizing the actions of the law enforcement community more closely than ever before.

The public wants results and, more importantly, to feel safe. Yet, that same public will not tolerate any perceived abuses of suspects’ rights in the process.
Primarily due to the increased cost of incarceration, a concerted push is being made to release prisoners from jails and prisons, with the ensuing increase in probationers and parolees.

Probation/Parole Officers have increased caseloads with no end in sight. Juvenile crime is sky-rocketing. Younger, more fearless criminals are becoming the norm, with the media bringing sad tale after tale into our homes on a nightly basis.

When I speak to new recruits, I tell them that what the public wants in a police officer is simple: we want applicants that are warm, caring individuals who are capable of speaking to public groups; conducting demonstrations at schools; counseling troubled youth; rendering first aid; interacting with and assessing problems from a community perspective.

In addition to all of those admirable qualities, we want much more. If a bad guy is trying to get into our home, we want an absolutely fearless gladiator who will willingly risk his/her very life to apprehend the suspect (without injury to the burglar, of course) and protect our property. We want, expect and demand all of this for a salary that is far less than society pays a plumber!

Whether a person is a Probation/Parole Officer supervising 100 felons, a Police Officer in a patrol car, a Fish and Wildlife Officer working all alone 50 miles from any back-up, a military law enforcement officer or a Federal Agent working in a structured environment, being a law enforcement officer is an extraordinarily tough and complex job which demands that we apply all of our skills and training.

How has the law enforcement community dealt with the ever-increasingly need for interview training? Poorly, I’m afraid. Here’s how it works…

In virtually every modern law enforcement agency, much care and consideration is given to the allocation of training, especially that training which requires both expenditures of time and money. Traditionally, different segments of the agency (patrol, detectives, administration, etc.) have had to compete in a sense for their share of the almighty training dollar budget.

As a result, it is incumbent upon agency administrators to prioritize the available training money. Training in most modern law enforcement agencies has taken on the semblance of a triage system at an emergency room. Administrators want to send everyone to training, so they end up throwing some money at those who are “bleeding” the most.

Due to civil liability concerns, patrol officers mainly receive training emphasizing the motor skills areas (firearms, arrest techniques, emergency driving tactics, handgun retention skills, etc.), said areas presenting the most opportunity for misapplication and a resultant lawsuit.

Investigators receive training geared toward their primary areas of emphasis (interview & interrogation, crime scene investigation, investigative specialties, etc.). Ironically, an objective analysis of the component parts of the job of patrol officer reveals interviewing skills are utilized far more often than any other skill.

Think about it, what skill is used more often than the ability to talk with people and elicit information? Conversely, what will get an officer in trouble with the public faster than an inability to communicate?

How many times in any officer’s life will he or she use deadly force? How many times in any given month will he or she get into a vehicular pursuit? How many instances of dealing with hazardous materials will crop up in an average month?

Contrast the frequency of these incidents against the absolute certainty that we will have to interact with people during each and every shift. We routinely qualify in shooting, attend yearly hazardous materials safety courses, attend Emergency Vehicle Operations courses and the like, yet most patrol officers never attend formal interview and interrogation instruction after an initial exposure to it in the basic training academy.

Consider the following sober statistics:

Police Training academies in the United States offer, on average, only 4 hours of training on interviewing techniques during Basic Training.

60% of law enforcement training academies in the U.S. don’t offer any interview training at all during Basic Training.

Less than 20% of all law enforcement officers have received in-service training in interviewing techniques.

Unfortunately, in most law enforcement agencies, the investigators are repeatedly sent to interview and interrogation training, while the patrol officers who apply to attend are routinely turned down.

In the bureaucratic effort to make training dollars stretch a long way, administrators often prioritize training requests, sometimes based upon outdated or inaccurate information.

I have personally taught classes year after year where the same people (investigators) are in attendance taking the same training while other members of their agencies never get to go! The reason? Someone in authority determined that investigators are the only ones that need the training, so they send them to the same thing year after year.

It is largely for this reason that I developed the Focused Interviewing system in written format, to allow the inexpensive, easy methods contained herein to benefit police officers without regard to job assignment, all in an affordable manner.

Compounding the training problem is the current countrywide push toward “Community Policing” and all of the responsibilities inherent with that system.

Simply put, Community Policing can be best described as a philosophy of empowerment that allows the beat officer to solve problems. By a collaborative effort with others in the community, police officers are responsible for actually resolving the community concerns, rather than just taking enforcement action.

While the philosophy sounds good, the average law enforcement patrol officer has not been given the tools with which to conduct investigations, interview people, make public presentations and achieve this collaboration to solve problems.

Federal grant money has been spread across the country in an effort to promote Community Policing. Officers have been hired, equipment has been purchased and public relations efforts have been extensive in this area.

Unfortunately, officers that do not have the foundation of investigative training may find themselves in an uncomfortable position.

One Community Policing officer recently told me “If I had wanted to interview neighbors, show photo lineups, speak to public groups and work extensively with other public agencies, I would have been a detective. What happened to good, old-fashioned police work?”

One of the primary components of Community Policing is the ability to interact with people in a non-threatening manner which elicits maximum information.

It is an exceptionally good idea for a Field Training Officer to share interviewing techniques with a trainee. Most basic training academies teach a block of instruction on “Interviewing and Interrogation.”
However, these traditional systems stress the structured interview approach to interviewing.

The new trainee soon realizes that he or she will conduct hundreds or thousands of street interviews while on patrol and will perform relatively few formal, structured interviews in an interrogation room setting.

The beauty of the first responder interviewing training is its simplicity. There is no memorization of steps, rules, mandatory order of progression or confusing concepts.

Instead, in a series of articles, I will present a system where you decide how to approach the myriad of situations facing police officers in everyday life, using concepts which are based upon common sense.

There are some very fine formal “Interview and Interrogation” type training classes for law enforcement officers out there (being a polygraph examiner, I have attended quite a few of them), but they tend to emphasize the structured interrogation aspect of the situation and are geared more toward an investigator than a patrol officer.

The information I will deliver in this series of articles does not deal with just the structured interview/interrogation type setting. Again, an analysis of a patrol officer’s daily job reveals that the vast majority of contacts that he or she experiences are not in a structured setting conducive to a formalized method of interview and interrogation.

These techniques are being successfully used daily, are very easy to learn and do not require reference texts to be carried in the field.

In this system, we will look at what is wrong (or at least ineffective) with typical street interview techniques, what led us to use techniques that don’t work, what does work and how to develop techniques that will dramatically increase our “confession” or “incriminating statement” rates in dealing with offenders and will be of great value in clarifying statements obtained from victims and witnesses.

Yes, there will be some psychology and physiology presented, as both lay a foundation for the working mechanisms of this system. Although (I can hear your groans already) some basic psychological and physiological concepts are included so that you know why these concepts work, they are not necessary to learn to effectively use the procedures described herein.

Quite simply, the principles are included because some people like to know why something works, some people like to be shown how it works and some people won’t be convinced until they use the system personally.

The 2009 Car Complaint Index has just been published, showing the ranking, by vehicle, of cars receiving the highest ratio of complaints to sales. Complaints are fielded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), results are published yearly and this year shows the Land Rover LR2, the Mitsubishi Lancer, the Pontiac Solstice, the Dodge Avenger and Subaru Impreza to be the top offenders.

Attention is sharply paid to vehicles with high complaint ratios for good reason: the percentage of defective vehicles, or lemons, is astoundingly high, especially from the U.S. Big Three automakers. To add insult to injury, when a defect is found in a vehicle, a manufacturer will do as much as possible to cover it up so that they are not plagued with demands for refunds or replacements.

There is, in fact, something called a secret warranty that can act as a deflection to consumers with valid lemon law complaints. A secret warranty is a strategy that manufacturers use to avoid a recall, explained California lemon law attorney Norman Taylor. Under a secret warranty, manufacturers will pay for repair of a particular defect in a particular kind of vehicle, even after the warranty has expired. They call them warranty adjustment policies or goodwill gestures. And even these have to be pried from the manufacturers by loudly complaining consumersonly the squeaky wheel actually gets the grease.

Taylor has witnessed such practice many times over the years. He has been a lemon law specialist since 1987, and he and his firm, Norman Taylor and Associates, have handled over 6,000 cases for consumers with a 98 percent success rate. He is one of the leading lemon law attorneys in southern California.

It comes as no surprise that manufacturers will resort to such tactics to avoid a recall. If the NHTSA discovers safety-related defects and orders a recall, the manufacturer must arrange to repair the defect at no charge or, if the manufacturer chooses, can replace or repurchase the vehicle or defective component. The manufacturer must also file a public report with detailed information on the recall, must notify all owners of affected vehicles, and take numerous other costly steps to right the wrong.

Because manufacturers can and do take every measure to avoid replacement or refund of defective vehicles, it behooves any consumer who believes he or she may have purchased a lemon to contact a qualified lemon law attorney right away.

About Norman Taylor & Associates

Norman Taylor and Associates have been assisting consumers since 1987. At Norman Taylor & Associates, the goal is to provide clients with the highest quality of legal representation if theyre one of the unfortunate residents of California whove had the misfortune of purchasing defective vehicles or goods and who have recourse under the Lemon Law. They represent consumers in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. With a twenty two year history of successful cases, Norman Taylor & Associates has established their reputation as a firm of consumer advocates that get the job done.

Does a Tenancy Have to Be in Writing? Under the Law of Property Act 1925 and the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provision) Act 1989 any contract for the creation of an interest in land is invalid and unenforceable unless it is do so in writing. Interest in land would include mortgages, sales and transfers, charges or leases. The exception to this rule is that an oral lease may be created so long as it is;

* For the best rent reasonably obtainable (i.e. a market rent) * For a period of less than 3 years

This means that a tenancy can generally be created by verbal a agreement, although this isn’t advisable as verbal contracts would be difficult to prove and if the relationship between the landlord and the tenant breaks down, an expensive court proceeding may be have to take place in the absence of clear and unambiguous terms. This is why a written tenancy agreement is therefore in the best interests of both the landlord and the tenant.

Written Statement of Terms At the moment every residential tenancy is presumed to be an Assured Shorthold Tenancy unless there is an agreement that states otherwise. Tenancies of this type are subject to special rules.

When there is no written tenancy agreement, section 20A of the Housing Act 1988 provides that the tenant is entitled to be provided on demand with a written statement setting out the following terms of the tenancy:

* Term or length of the tenancy

* Date on which the tenancy commenced

* Dates on which rent is payable

* The rent due under the tenancy

The landlord is required by law to provide this statement within 28 days of receiving written notice from the tenant. Any failure to comply with the requirements of this act wil be classed as a criminal offence and if a landlord fails provide the requested statement within 28 days, they may be convicted and fined up to 2,500.

What Should I Put In The Tenancy Agreement? The information on dates and rent payments that landlords are obliged to provide the tenant under the Housing Act, a tenancy agreement will usually include provisions which relate to the following:

* Details of additional bills & service charges

* Inspections

* Procedure for ending the tenancy and resolving disputes

* Procedure for varying the rent

* Responsibility for maintenance

* Restrictions on the use of the property

In all tenancies, the tenant will have a number of basic rights which cannot be taken away or restricted, and any provision of the tenancy agreement which attempts to do so will become invalid. Where one provision or term of a contract such as a tenancy is found to be invalid, other provisions which refer or relate to that term may be unenforceable. Because of this, care should be taken when drafting a tenancy agreement and you may want to consult a professional.

If you own several properties which you rent out, it may be more cost-effective for you to ask a lawyer to draft you a standard-form tenancy agreement which you can customise for each individual property rather than consulting a solicitor for each individual tenancy.

There are a couple of loopholes in the law of attraction that will allow you to get faster results with the law of attraction. These loopholes are natural parts of the law of attraction, but are seldom discussed or talked about. Developing an understanding of these loopholes will allow you to sky rocket your results and attract and manifest what you want faster than you could ever imagine. Here they are:

1. Ego can be your friend, or your enemy. Ego is that little part of our brain that allows us to differentiate things. It labels a table as a table, or a car as a car. It’s job is to allow us to navigate the world through association. The problem is that ego needs attention, and a lot of it.

Ego feels the need to be noticed, to be known. It’s that part of us that refuses to be wrong. It needs to be right, all the time. Even when it’s wrong. This can be a problem for us if we don’t keep ego in check. It’s good that ego is there. Without ego, we would forget that fire is hot, or that there are people who are willing to lie and manipulate. But we can’t let ego rule.

For many people, ego rules. We must learn to let ego be right, but allow ego to be right in ways that serves us. When working with the law of attraction, we must teach ego that staying focused on what we want, and knowing that we have it now is the correct answer. Ego wants to say that it’s not ours yet and it’s still in the future. Convince ego that it’s already yours, and allow ego to run rampant in this way.

2. Emotions are our friends, and our addictions. Each and every one of us is addicted to our emotions. Some of us are more addicted to negative emotions than others, but everyone is addicted to emotions. They can also be our friend, or our enemy.

We cannot even direct our eyes or hear a sound without having an emotional response to that stimuli. The problem is that many people have become addicted to emotions that do not serve them or that cause them to keep repeating the same reality over and over again. We must learn to develop emotional addictions to emotions that will move us in the direction we want to go.

The more we feel happy, joyful, excited, passionate, the more we become addicted to those emotions. Continuously feeling these emotions allows us to develop an addiction for those emotions and allows us to attract what we want into our lives faster. The problem for most people is that they are addicted to negative emotions and continue to attract negative situations and circumstances in their lives.

3. The first step is always the hardest, but the most rewarding. Everyone has had the experience of pushing something. Let’s take a car for example. We all know that a car sitting still in neutral is difficult to get moving. But once it’s moving, we just have to keep pushing.

Advancement and the law of attraction is the same. Many people will get started and barely get it moving before they give up. They never give themselves a chance to start recognizing and seeing any progress. They expect to get instant results and completely undo years upon years of programming in just a few days or weeks. This is unrealistic as an expectation.

We have to undo specific habits, specific thought patterns, specific emotional addictions in order to start making real progress. This takes a little bit of time and a lot of practice to do. There are techniques that the Wealthy Life Secrets program offers to help speed this up exponentially, however, it still takes a little bit of time and practice.

We must start though, and we must keep pushing. We wouldn’t start pushing our car if it broke down on a four lane highway and give up after five steps because it got a little bit difficult. We would keep pushing until it was some place that others are much less likely to hit it.

The same is true for the law of attraction. We must keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing until we get to where we need to be and are able to naturally create and manifest the life we want to live in the shortest amount of time possible. At a certain point, you will simply manifest those things you desire with very little to no effort, simply because you have habituated the ability to feel, think, and be as you need to in order to manifest.