Milner Report

The Milner Report is an expansive report issued in 2013 on North American crime fighting operations commissioned for the North American Congress by former detective and prosecutor Mike Milner. The report was largely a scathing rebuke of North American crime fighting efforts at the time, with Milner detailing extensive cases of abuse and neglect among "all levels of law enforcement". Milner's summary of his report stated that he believed that North American crime fighting had "devolved to the point where the entire culture of policing is geared towards law enforcement agents seeing themselves as 'heroes' who would rather serve themselves and seek greater fame and glory than serve who they are supposed to- the public."

Background

In 1930, Bruce Wayne became the first Spitzenkrieger to effectively operate outside of the Vandal Kingdom. Wayne's successes in restoring order to the Depression-era Las Vegas soon captured the public imagination, giving rise to the "superhero" genre of entertainment. After World War II, law enforcement agencies sought to capitalize on the public imagination by having superheroes of their own, eventually spawning an entire industry geared towards creating these superheroes, who became known as "mercenary law enforcement agents" in formal settings. In the 1960s, the most famous and eventually the most prosperous of the "superhero factories" was founded, Stark Industries, by Tony Stark, which led to a boon of MLEA companies operating worldwide.

Wayne and his descendants were openly critical of Stark, believing he inspired "vigilantism" and thus, as Wayne's company, Wayne Enterprises, developed its products, they slowly began moving away from having a superhero unit to a more conventional law enforcement unit. The Third World War gutted many MLEA companies, which opened an opportunity for Wayne to come in and use his funds to revive the traditional law enforcement agencies in its aftermath. The centrepiece of this program were the Crime Scene Investigators (CSIs) which Wayne created for Las Vegas in 1997 as well as the Behavioural Analysis Unit, which Wayne saved from extinction in 2003.

Commentators praised Wayne Enterprises for their efforts, noting that while superheroes were more decisive they "often got things wrong", whereas more elaborate police units were more dedicated to thoroughness and "getting things right". Detractors countered that the judicial process was too slow, creating a backlog of cases that soon meant many crimes would not get solved. A few critics even noted that since these units would still employ humans, it was inevitable that human error would crop up and thus mistakes would get made anyway.

Deaths of Tom Cartier and Ted Bundy

On January 14, 2006, former psychic Oldrich James was arrested without incident for the murder of Tom Cartier at the Sacramento Mall of Fortune. James testified in court that he killed Cartier in self-defence, eventually winning an acquittal. The California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) opened an investigation into the murder, leaning that James encountered Cartier because he was after the Randy Joe Killer (RJK) who had killed his family. The CBI noted at the time that James did all the legwork for the investigation himself, as local authorities refused to investigate RJK after they deemed he was "too difficult to catch", with the CBI soon firing all of its agents after learning they too resisted attempts to investigate RJK. After the CBI learned that Cartier was an imposter who knew the real RJK, a new task force was formed to investigate RJK within the CBI, whom they finally arrested with the help of the BAU in 2013. This CBI task force would become the basis for the TV series The Mentalist.

In July 2011, the body of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy was found in a ravine near Tulsa, Oklahoma. The discovery of the body sent further shockwaves through the law enforcement community, since Bundy had been known to law enforcement agencies since the early 1980s. Questions began to surface about how Bundy could have eluded capture for so long, since, at the time the body was found, Bundy had only been dead for several weeks. The Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation (OBI) opened an investigation into Bundy's death and found that local authorities knew Bundy was around but failed to do anything about it, believing that his crimes would be "too difficult" to investigate. In this case, the OBI noted that several police complaints made against Bundy were made by a one Hayden Myers in several different Oklahoma jurisdictions weeks before Bundy had died. It was later found, at the trial of Ingrid Fjallsdottir for human trafficking, that Myers had been kidnapped by Bundy for this ring and was later kept as his slave, with Myers soon being recaptured by Bundy after the police failed to come to her aid. Myers then later killed Bundy with a poison which allowed her to escape, fleeing authorities for many years until the trial of Fjallsdottir exonerated her.

The Report

Noting the similarities of Cartier's and Bundy's deaths, Roman Caesar Valerius IV ordered an investigation, hiring Mike Milner to investigate. Milner had made a name for himself as a distinguished and fair investigator and later prosecutor in Savannah who worked frequently with NAU officials and thus had their respect. 

In the course of the investigation, Milner toured North America, thoroughly investigating every aspect of every law enforcement agency on the continent. His investigation lasted well over a year, eventually submitting a lengthy report to the Caesar and the NAU Congress on March 21, 2013. 

Milner made extensive observations about the lack of resources and funding that was present in many North American jurisdictions, specifically calling out the NAU Congress for withholding funding and expecting Wayne Enterprises to foot the bill for each law enforcement agency, which Milner concluded was implausible. Milner also chastised the Roman government for failing to provide funding as well, as Milner believed that the Romans, despite operating the NAU as a protectorate, often ignored the continent's true needs in favour of their own. 

However, the part of the Report that made the biggest impact was Milner's often repeated assertions that North American police culture had become too entrenched in heroism and glory and often ignored the needs of the public. Here, Milner noted the following: 

1. Public impatience over the length of time it took to close cases made police departments decide to cut corners and make simplistic decisions over investigative thoroughness, this soon evolved into a practice of police departments "just finding someone to pin the blame on" instead of ensuring they had, indeed, caught the right suspect. 
2. The rise of TV shows glorifying and honouring law enforcement officers and their work led to a mentality among law enforcement officers that they, too, had to be heroes so they could see themselves as fit to stand beside their TV counterparts. This caused jurisdictions to pursue cases that would net them the preferred attention in the press, often ignoring less glamourous cases. 
   1. More to this point, Milner often noted that there were many jurisdictions that slashed or outright cut out funding to departments that enforced things like parking or noise violations because they were not seen as "glamour" positions. 
3. Because of the massive caseload and the lack of resources to pursue them all, jurisdictions often decided to pursue the "easiest" cases as opposed to the cases of highest importance. 
   1. Milner blamed here equally the lack of funding and public pressure to close cases, although he still criticized what he saw as a "culture of laziness". 
4. Due to Points 1-3, policing eventually evolved into a system where law enforcement agencies determined their case selection based on a combination of these points, rejecting cases that were either too hard, not "attractive" enough and/or would not generate the appropriate attention for the police agencies in question. 
5. Milner did note, somewhat ironically, that investigations into police mischief were often pursued, since the investigating officer would often gain the glory of "taking down his corrupt colleagues". Often, Milner reported, this devolved into police officers merely investigating colleagues they did not like.