Mother Daughter Murder Night

There are two main police detectives in the novel, Detective Ramirez and Detective Nicoletti, and they both act harshly at times. This demonstrates that police can act inappropriately, and this can affect the victims of their abuse and the outcomes of their cases. This abuse happens between the detectives and the public as well as between the detectives themselves, as Detective Nicoletti does not respect Detective Ramirez to the degree that her position requires. This negatively impacts the case, as it leads to Nicoletti wasting valuable time and resources while chasing the wrong leads.

The first instance in which the police are shown to cross an ethical line is in their interrogation of Jack. Jack is a 15 year old girl, and it is reasonable that she would have been interrogated because Ricardo was supposedly on her tour the night he died. Instead of sticking to these facts, however, Nicoletti insults Jack’s integrity by implying that she may have been flirting with the much older bachelors on the tour. He even goes so far as to talk about girls “like her” as if she belongs to a group of irresponsible and morally corrupt individuals. It remains unclear as to whether he was motivated to speak to her like this because she is a female or because she is part of a racial minority—or both—but his way of speaking to a suspect, particularly one who is a minor, is shown to be disrespectful and unprofessional.