MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston can say a lot of things, but having tons of free time isn’t one of them.
Along with doing his normal duties, which includes preparing for another year of incoming West Virginia University students, Preston is looking to teach what he knows to our future law enforcement officers.
The strategy — to release a textbook to help police officers properly charge crimes in the event of grey areas.
“There was really no book that was a punch board for where you could say ‘Hey, I think this may be a crime but what are the elements of this crime,'” Preston said on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “So we wrote a book in this manner that wrote down every elements of the crimes that you have to have, if you could hit the punch board, then you probably have that crime.”
According to Preston, the book “West Virginia Crimes” aims to clearly and conveniently set forth basic principals of criminal law.
This will include complete detailing of the West Virginia state code, what law specifically entails and examples of crimes that were committed in West Virginia, ranging from the more determinable crimes such as larceny, to the more complex crimes such as multi-level conspiracy, which can be ruled very differently depending on interpretation.
“If you’ve ever read the West Virginia code, it is as clear as mud sometimes depending on where a comma is inserted,” he said.
Preston has been participating in many educational programs over the past couple of years. Along with teaching classes at Salem University, Preston has worked in several aspects of law enforcement involving both region wide and with federal law enforcement agencies, including the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Task Force nationally and the Mon Metro Drug Task Force.
This knowledge, he says, made it easier to have information passed down to tackle bigger crimes in combating the state’s opioid epidemic.
“A major benefit is because instead of chasing a crack rock down the street, you get the kilos of it and get the importers and the distributions and the money networks,” he said.
The book is expected to have immediate benefits to law enforcement officers within West Virginia. Preston, with the help of former Director of the West Virginia Police Academy turned Attorney Steve Koger, had created a textbook intended to help local law enforcement across that state.
Despite being unique for West Virginia, the book follows similar blueprints as other books used in the same nature in other states, some as far west as Colorado. Despite its format, the book, according to Preston, will help local police officers the most.
“Each of the state codes, or municipal codes, are created locally for the local need, and when mean local, I mean the West Virginia need,” he said. “Our 55 counties and that’s what this was been written for, our 55 counties.”
West Virginia Crimes is expected to be released in the very near future.