September 6, 2013 The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch Page 55 . . Deceased OCPDMembers Involved In 30 Active Cases FROM PAGE 54 back to where they are from at the end of the summer when their deployments are over. In one example he cited, a seasonal officer who returns to Tennessee. He said it is often at great expense and larger inconvenience to bring them back for trials, especially at the District Court level. “The very best seasonals make a lot of arrests and a large part of our job is managing our caseload to get the best result we can,” he said. “We try to work with the District Court to schedule cases with the same arresting officer on the same day, but that’s not always practical. Sometimes, the stars don’t line up just right and you have to let some cases go.” Fortunately, many of the more ser-ious cases are handled by veteran officers and the seasonal officer issue does not come into play. In some cases, an incident might begin with a seasonal officer making a routine arrest, but veteran leadership steps in and takes over when it becomes more serious. “The OCPD is very smart in terms of getting the right people involved early on in serious cases and most felonies,” said Oglesby. “When a case evolves into something beyond the capacity or experience of a seasonal officer, veteran officers will step in and take over in a lot of cases.” A change in the law in Maryland this year allows law enforcement officers in Ocean City and around the state to issue criminal citations for many lower level misdemeanors such as simple possession, for example, but the long-term effects of the change are still uncertain in terms of court caseloads and officer appearances. The intent is to streamline the booking process and get officers quickly back on the street, but the defendants in most cases still face the same court processes down the road as if they had been arrested and booked. Oglesby said this week the jury is still out, so to speak, on the impact of the change. “The citations have created a new issue and it creates a different burden on the District Court to put the information into the system,” he said. “At this point, it’s uncertain what the fall out of that will be, but we’re monitoring it closely.”