Understanding "make your own case" call

[poweredup1566]

I have heard this term used quit often and I do understand what it meens but the other day I heard a call go out that kinda confused me maybe someone could shine some light for me. So the call was to look for a guy that had exposed himself to a woman walking down the street, she obviously wasnt amused since she called the cops right away according to the dispatcher who said "the incident just happened", the dispatcher put out the location of the woman and also puts out the discription of the vehicle along with plate number, make, and model of the vehicle, the owner, his discription and license info and they also gave the responding officers his address, at the end of the call out the dispatcher said " locate and make your own case", the reason this seems weird to me is because this is alittle different situation than someone driving alittle erratic on the highway, and I was listening to this broadcast for awhile and they never pulled the guy over never went to his house nothing, they just took the womans report and everyone cleared about 30 min later. Now based on my limited knowledge of how the law works i assume this will be just the same as an erratic driver call they didnt find the driver they cleared and go back to work and dont try and find them again. Or will there be like a warrent put out on this guy. I cant see something like this not looked into more or why they didnt go to his house or something to try and find him.

 

[patch4094]

Poweredup,
Simply put, if an agency states "make your own case" after a broadcast they are saying that they do not have any charges on the suspect in the broadcast at that time. In this case, most likely what happened was the caller gave the information to the dispatcher but refused contact. Something like that happens often where people want the police to know about something but don't actually want to take the time to press charges or get involved beyond calling it in. In cases like this, if there is no victim then there is no crime and therefor no charges to hold the suspect on. The information is passed on to other agencies for public safety reasons, but he is not actually wanted for a crime at the time of the broadcast, and there is no legal justification to detain him.

If the victim stayed around and took a report, the broadcast would have been given as a "stop and hold" or other similar phraseology. In that case, the broadcasting agency is saying it does have charges on the suspect and if another agency locates him they should detain him and notify the broadcasting agency.

I hope that makes sense and helps you understand why they handled that the way they did.

 

[poweredup1566]

Patch4094,
Thanks for the info that does make sense never thought of that.

 

[Mpiel21]

Also, they could arrive and not find the guy in the area then radio in "suspect GOA" (gone on arrival) but yea usually a case like that its just up to the officers to arrive and figure out if the call is really what the caller is stating.