Hello everyone and welcome to police off the cuff real crime stories.

I'm your host, retired NYPD Sergeant Bill Cannon, a 27-year veteran of the NYPD.

You know, in the Stefan Stern's case, perhaps we being from law enforcement made an assumption,

and maybe our assumption can be proven incorrect,

but I still think we are right.

And our assumption is that when Detective Myra Tagler was

questioning Stefan Stearns, a non-custodial interview, which means Stefan Stearns was not under arrest,

he was free to leave. So it was a non-custodial interview.

And when she asked him, and this was all recorded, is it okay if I look into your phone?

And he responded, yes, yeah, you can look into it. And that is done across police departments all across this nation

of voluntarily allowing the police to do something.

And when you respond, and I assume that Myra Tagler also got written consent from him to go into his cell phone.

And once they go into his cell phone, they find all of these horrific images that now, after they have found these images, absolutely, Stefan Stearns

is under arrest and is not free to leave. That's where, when we talk about crossing the

rubicon of probable cause, that was it. He crossed into probable cause and he was under

arrested. And we used that little sort of formula in custody plus interrogation equals Miranda.

And at that point, Miranda would have been required because he was under arrest. But before that,

he was not in custody.

He even said to her, oh, do you mind if I move my car?

And she said, no, no, you don't have to move your car right now.

Just leave it where it is because the detectives just want to take a little.

So if he even thought that he was free to go outside, which he obviously did because he volunteered to move his car.

...