The Court Liaison Officer (CLO) attends General Sessions Court on behalf of patrol officers and in some cases for detectives. Some responsibilities include, facilitating the preparation of case files for all cases on the General Sessions Criminal court docket and those cases bound over to Grand Jury for patrol officers, briefing the Assistant District Attorney (ADA). and, when requested by the ADA, answering questions for the defendant or their attorney regarding case details. Most cases result in a plea or other disposition, which can be handled without the arresting officer’s presence.
The CLO will also assist the ADA in prosecuting the case by contacting victims or civilian witnesses if requested and collecting offense reports from other agencies. When cases are bound to grand jury, the CLO will research the case, locate, and download any body-worn camera video or car camera video, download an evidence list from the Tracker system so the prosecution will have evidence information, and attempt to locate any other information requested by the District Attorney’s Office. This information is uploaded to the “CivicDocs” cloud-based system for the District Attorney’s Office.
Between court appearances, the CLO will research upcoming court dockets and create a spreadsheet of officers’ cases broken down to cases set for discussion and those set for preliminary hearing. The CLO will create folders for each court day with the warrants, reports, pictures, or any other documents needed for the prosecution of each case.
The CLO is a point of contact for the District Attorney’s Office and defense attorneys alike attempting to locate officers in the department for any level of court.