Perp walk

A perp walk or walking the perp (also called a frog march in Washington, D.C.) is a practice in law enforcement of parading an arrested suspect out in public before their initial appearance in court. The suspect is typically escorted from a police station to a police vehicle to the courthouse and then after the court hearing back to a vehicle, creating an opportunity for a media frenzy to take photographs and video of the event (sometimes, if the police have alerted the media to an imminent arrest, it takes place afterwards). The defendant is normally handcuffed or otherwise restrained, and is sometimes dressed in prison garb. Within the United States the perp walk is most closely associated with New York City. The practice rose in popularity in the 1980s under U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, when suspects charged with felonies were perp-walked.

The perp walk arose incidentally from the need to transport a defendant from a police station to court after arrest. Law enforcement agencies often coordinate with the media in scheduling and arranging them. It has been criticized as a form of public humiliation that violates a defendant's right to privacy and is prejudicial to the presumption of innocence, but is defended as promoting transparency in the criminal justice system. American courts have permitted it on the grounds that it arises from the limitations and necessity of police procedure, but have also limited it only to those times when it is actually necessary.

Procedure

In the United States, once a person has been charged with a crime, the government may request that a judge either issue a summons for that person or an arrest warrant, which can lead to a perp walk.