Opinion ID: 217668
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Incriminating Evidence

Text: Given what he knew about the shooting, the Magnolia Street Gang, and McGregor, Smigielski feared that the car contained a gun. Concerned about officer safety, he and his colleagues removed the men from the Honda and patted them down for weapons. They came up empty, so they moved the men to the curb and focused their attention on the car. By this time other officers had showed up to help secure the scene. Among those arriving was Scott O'Brien, an officer specially trained in how to detect hidden compartments, commonly called hides. Smigielski got into the car and started looking for easily  accessible weapons. Smigielski asked O'Brien if he recognized any of the men. And O'Brien did  he knew Green from an earlier firearms arrest. Scotty, Smigielski then said to O'Brien, there's got to be a gun in this car. From the start, O'Brien saw telltale signs of a hide in the Honda where one could stash a gun. Almost immediately, his eye was caught by an object on the dashboard just below the car stereo. It was only a couple of inches long and looked like a Lego piece. [2] Smig, what's that? O'Brien said to Smigielski. But O'Brien already knew  it was an alarm magnet, which he knew from extensive training and experience could be used as a magnetic switch to activate an electronic hide (rubbing the magnet over a specific area will complete a circuit that will open the hide). And, as far as he knew, magnets like this one played no part in the normal workings of a car. His instructors had drilled into him to always be on the lookout for magnets in situations like this. In any event, Smigielski grabbed the magnet and gave it to O'Brien. His interest piqued, O'Brien looked underneath the Honda to see what he could see. And he saw plenty: an exhaust pipe that had been tinkered with suspiciously (it was off-center and lower than usual); and a piece of metal that had more rust on it than the rest of the undercarriage, with a considerable amount of Bondo (a substance used in auto-body work) around the edges to help seal the piece in place  both dead giveaways that the car had a false bottom. O'Brien crawled under the Honda and tapped the area with his flashlight, and he heard a hollow rather than a solid sound. Convinced more than ever that the Honda had a hide, O'Brien got into the car and focused his attention on the center-console area  the very area where he thought the hide would be. He started with the cup holder, which was next to the console. Normally cup holders are removable so people can clean them more easily. But O'Brien could not lift this one. It had been glued down, a sure sign that someone did not want others to get at that area. O'Brien then lifted up the lid to the console and removed the CDs that were there. He wanted to open the access panel (something most cars have so persons can get to and work on the emergency-brake cables that run underneath). But this panel had glue around it, so O'Brien put a knife in the panel's latch and with little effort popped the panel open. Peering inside, O'Brien found a handgun, which turned out to be loaded, and some crack cocaine. Only about five minutes passed between the time the officers sat McGregor and the others on the curb and the time O'Brien found the damning evidence. The police arrested McGregor and his companions and had the Honda towed to a secure location. The next day Sergeant Detective William Feeney of the Boston Police executed a warrant to search the car. Usually when officers suspect that an auto has a hide, Feeney gets involved. Intimately familiar with automotive systems (mechanical and electrical), Feeney is considered the department's foremost expert on hides. He has studied them for years and has taught other officers (including FBI and DEA personnel) all about them. He had even trained O'Brien. Look for magnets inside cars, he tells his students. See if the center console or dashboard is loose or glued-down in a manner that is out of the norm. Look under the car and see if anything has been modified suspiciously (inspecting the exhaust system is a good place to start). Feeney knew that O'Brien had found a hide in the Honda's center console. And he knew too that O'Brien had come across a magnet near the dashboard. So he looked there to see if anyone had rejiggered the wiring in a way necessary to run an electric hide. And he saw exactly that. He then figured out how the system worked: put the key in the ignition, fasten a seatbelt, switch on the cruise control, turn on the rear-window defroster, tug on the emergency brake, move the ceiling-light switch to the middle position, move a magnet around a spot on the dashboard (which would trigger a magnetic switch behind the dashboard), and press the sunroof button  doing this activates a series of switches, which starts up a motor under the center console, which opens up the hide so one can reach right through the bottom of the console and into a secret compartment. These steps can be done in any order, and it takes about 20 seconds to run through them from start to finish. But you could speed up the process considerably if, say, you did 7 of the 8 steps first and left only one for later  then it would take less than 5 seconds to open the hide. Feeney did the steps and found (among other things) another round of ammo tucked inside the hide.