Tag Archives: Police

WOULD YOU BE A GOOD POLICE INTERROGATOR?

Interrogation. Just the word elicits your vision of forcible confinement in a hot and windowless room, shoved in a wooden chair with one leg shorter than others, a bright light from a bare bulb burning over your head, and hulking forms of trench-coated detectives firing hardboiled questions in your face. The truth is different. A lot different. There’s a high skill involved in getting useful information from people, and not everyone is cut out for the job. Are you? Would you be a good police interrogator?

To start, drop the “interrogation” word. It’s not correct to say “interrogation” in today’s professional police procedures. The right terms are “interview” and “dialogue exchange”. And, they’re more applicable because the vast majority of police-civilian interactions are respectful interchanges of relevant information.

I’ve spent a good part of my life talking to people and getting information. I learned long ago that you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. I also learned you slide a lot further on bullshit than you do on gravel. I made those principles the core of my information-gathering days. I also practiced another fundamental rule. That’s that the best interrogators interviewers are the best listeners.

Where’s this going? I subscribe to Psychology Today. I recently read a piece by Mary Ellen O’Toole, Ph.D. in her regular column Criminal Minds where she set out ten questions with graded responses to her Are You A Good Listener Test. Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole was a senior profiler at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and author of Dangerous Instincts: How Gut Feelings Betray Us. Here’s her short ten-question exam to see if you would be a good police interrogator. Sorry… police interviewer.

ARE YOU A GOOD LISTENER TEST

1. Typically, how emotional (frightened, insecure, angry, etc.) do I get when I am attempting to interview someone? (Rate this on a scale of 1-3)

1 = very emotional
2 = nonemotional and detached
3 = I remain interested and tempered

2. Typically, how often do I interrupt?

1 = several times during a conversation
2 = just once or twice during a conversation
3 = almost never

3. Do I say things like “What? You have got to be kidding me,” – or- “That reminds me of the time I…” – or – “You think that’s bad, let me tell you about…”

1 = frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

4. Do I roll my eyes, put my head down, shake my head back and forth, throw myself back in my chair, turn away, get up and walk away, show signs of anger or threatening behavior, or otherwise display that I am not paying attention or do not like what the other person is saying?

1 = frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

5. Do I fidget until people stop talking and then immediately respond without considering what they’ve said?

1= frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

6. Do I let my mind wander to all the other things on my “to do” list and keep thinking that I just don’t have the time for this?

1 = frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

7. Do I wait until the nanosecond when the speaker goes to take a breath to pounce on him or her with my opinions?

1 = frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

8. Do I hijack the conversation? For instance by saying something like, “Look we’ve been over this a million times. Your ideas are just not going to work. This is what we are going to do.”

1 = frequently
2 = sometimes
3 = rarely

9. I reflect the person’s thoughts and feelings back to the person I am listening to.

1 = rarely
2 = sometimes
3 = frequently

10. I ask open-ended questions to encourage the other person to talk.

1 = rarely
2 = sometimes
3 = frequently

Total Score = ______

The higher the score – the better your listening skills tend to be and the better interrogator interviewer you would be. Note: This is not a scientific test and has not been validated or otherwise vetted. These opinions are those of Dr. O’Toole and do not represent the views of the FBI.

My experience is that the key to successful information gathering is simply listening to what’s being said. Does it make sense? Does it fit? Does it make you ask more questions? Or does what’s being said to you satisfy what you’re after?

Let me know in the comments how you made out on the test!

DEFUND (ELEMENTS) OF THE POLICE — BUT LET COPS BE COPS

This post is from Joe Broadmeadow — retired Police Captain of the East Providence, Rhode Island, PD and now highly-respected crime writer.

The movement toward defunding or, in the extreme, eliminating the police has a fundamental logic to it. Although I’m certain many proponents miss the point because they are caught in the fog of emotion. There are public funds allocated to police departments that could be better directed to other programs. Some of my suggestions will be met with outrage, but the simple fact is the most effective departments are those who let cops BE cops. They catch bad guys (in the universal, non-gender specific way.)

Changing police departments without keeping this fundamental truth in mind is Utopian idiocy. These foolish experiments with “autonomous” zones excluding the police are living examples of the Lord of the Flies phenomenon. They will fail, and innocent people will suffer and die amid the anarchy.

Let me state a universal truth.

As long as there are humans, there will be bad guys and the need for those brave enough to stand between them and society.

If one is rational enough to understand this point, then certain corollaries follow. We can no more eliminate the police than we can stop burning fossil fuel without a realistic alternative. But we can get back to basics with police departments. Refocus them on their core functions, and reallocate resources to other services more suited to social welfare agencies.

Over the last few decades, there have been several divergent trends within law enforcement. One toward militarization and one toward a “touchy-feely” gentleness. Neither added to the elemental function nor improved the effectiveness of police departments.

Starting back in the days of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the federal government offered surplus military equipment to police departments.

I recall the glee among many of my fellow officers, including me, over this bonanza of toys. M-16 rifles, night-vision equipment, armored personnel carriers, and more. We thought this was the coolest thing in the world. I mean, come on. Is there anything better than firing automatic weapons and seeing in the dark?

To make it even more palatable, President Reagan reinvigorated the War on Drugs. We had the stuff, we had the war, all we needed was an enemy. Like all wars, most casualties were civilians. We tried to arrest our way out of a health crisis. If you think someone who would steal from their grandmother to buy heroin gave any thought to being caught by the police, you are remarkably naive.

Then, we came up with mandatory sentences, three-strike laws, and asset forfeiture statutes. All well-intentioned, like the proverbial road to hell. The net result? We turned whole swaths of society into convicts and filled our prisons with society’s most disadvantaged.

No one embraced the concept of the war on drugs more than me, and the many officers I worked with. But most cops are an intuitive bunch. We came to see the fallacy and contradiction in what we were doing. Like the war in Vietnam, we had to destroy the village to save it. We lost the enthusiasm for a failed policy.

Back then, no one made the connection that turning police departments, at least in appearance, into what were essentially armies of occupation was a dangerous thing. They held entire training conferences teaching agencies what language to use in the applications.

No one questioned the wisdom or consequences.

These programs were followed by the COPS Grant program, designed to put more officers on the street through technology. And there were others. Each had, what seemed, a logical and beneficial purpose.

In parallel with these programs, a kinder and gentler approach took hold. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program rose to prominence in Los Angeles and spread across the country. Community Policing quickly followed on the heels of DARE.

The problem was, in many agencies, these programs became specialized units rather than philosophical changes.

DARE put cops in schools as teachers when most lacked a fundamental understanding of educational theory. No matter how well-intentioned, DARE would prove marginally effective, if at all. Studies show contradictory results from DARE training. One five-year study showed no significant results between schools implementing DARE programs and those that did not.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/dare/effectiveness.html

Community policing, one of the most promising of all the “New Age” programs, had the most potential. Police Departments formed “Community Policing Units” as a way of embracing this new paradigm. This presented a contradiction to the purpose of the philosophy. Community policing is not a thing, not a specialization like CSI or Homicide investigations. To treat it as such is to hobble the beneficial effect.

Community Policing is a philosophy, a paradigm, and a practice to be ingrained within an agency’s approach to police work. But many issues addressed by community policing are better handled by other agencies. In some agencies, Community Policing became little more than a central collection point of information about quality of life issues—loud congregations of youths, trash on the streets, burned-out streetlights, noisy business establishments, road maintenance. The officers then referred this information to the responsible agency. It drew personnel away from the core function of the police. That is not what cops—by training or design— are best suited to do.

Once again, a well-intentioned program clouding the fundamental responsibilities of cops. As a matter of normal course of operations, cops should pay attention to such issues. Small annoyances can escalate into major problems. While the “broken window” theory of law enforcement is largely discounted, an element of its validity persists. Focusing on the small things before they become major issues works.

Community Policing drew personnel away from the core function of the police with limited beneficial improvement to the community. The reality is, all policing is intended toward protecting the community. Crime prevention through police presence, apprehending criminals, suppressing disturbances, responding to accidents, all take place within the community.

Attitudes and expectations, both by the police and by the community, need to change. The cops are not the enemy, and the community is not the problem. Community Policing should comprise merging the responsibility of both the community and the police into a partnership to catch bad guys. 

There was once an effort to combine the functions of public safety, i.e., police, fire, ems, into a single agency. In theory, it seemed to make sense. Have those first on the scene cross-trained in all aspects of public safety.

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/What_Works_in_Community_Policing.pdf

In reality, it was a dismal failure.

When an EMT responds to a shooting, their focus needs to be on treating the victim. When the Fire Department responds to a fire, its focus needs to be on putting out the fire, rescuing individuals, and saving property.

When cops respond to these same incidents, an element of each comes into play—preserving life being the most important. But the officer must also focus on determining if a crime occurred, preserving evidence, and apprehending those who committed the crime. Differentiation and separation of responsibilities make all public safety operations more effective.

The problem is, in many cities and towns, the police are the agency of last resort. If the trash in the street is infested with rats, if the neighborhood bar blares music to all hours, if the kids on the corner block the way, cops are the simplest solution. If a homeless person, suffering from mental illness, is blocking the entrance to a business, call the police.

Even if they can only deal with the issue temporarily.

There is another, more sinister aspect to things police departments are tasked with performing. The enforcement of traffic laws—intended to save lives and prevent accidents—has become a source of revenue critical to state and municipal budgets. Every department in the country will say they do not mandate a quota for officers. Yet, most agencies use the number of tickets written as a measure of officer performance.

Like the contradiction in government warnings about the dangers of smoking and their dependency on the tax revenue from the sale of tobacco, police department generate revenue from tickets. It is a tax disguised as a public safety function.

If one wants to understand the danger of such dependency on traffic ticket revenue by a municipal government, all one has to do is look at the level of traffic enforcement in Ferguson, MO. The shooting of Michael Brown wasn’t the reason for the unrest and riots in that city, it was the spark that lit the fuse.

The recent revolts across the country are not just because of unjustified police shootings of people of color. They are a reaction to a complex range of issues. Police departments are being forced to contend with many of these, mostly outside their control, and doing it poorly.

We wouldn’t send a carpenter to fix a plumbing problem, why do we expect cops to solve societal issues beyond their control or expertise?

Redirecting funds from police departments to social service agencies make sense. But this is a long-term strategy. We still need to deal with the practical realities of crime. Cops prevent, investigate, and solve crimes. They apprehend bad guys. They should do so with professionalism within the confines of the law. Sometimes, this will involve the use of deadly force. We can set our sights on eliminating that necessity someday. However, we still need to have cops being cops for the foreseeable future.

Before we rush headlong into such irrational actions of disbanding the police. Before we just slash and cut police budgets to satisfy an incensed, but uninformed public. Before we commit ourselves in a rush to judgment to do something, anything, we need to step back and analyze what purpose police departments serve.

The cops are not the adversaries of the public. This is not an us versus them situation. Cops are humans, subject to the same frailties and foibles as everyone else.

We need to let police departments get back to the fundamentals. We need to stop relying on the police as the agency of last resort in dealing with issues outside their skill set. We need to recognize the problems we face are all our responsibility, not just the police departments because they are a convenient 911 call away.

Let cops be cops. Not social workers, not teachers, not mental health providers, not counselors. Let cops do what they signed up to do, stand on the thin blue lineand catch bad guys.

*   *   *

Joe Broadmeadow retired with the rank of Captain from the East Providence, Rhode Island Police Department after twenty years. Assigned to various divisions within the department including Commander of Investigative Services, he also worked in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and on special assignment to the FBI Drug Task Force.

Joe is the author of seven books; three novels based on his experiences as a police officer, Collision Course, Silenced Justice, and A Change of Hate, a Y/A novel, Saving the Last Dragon, and three non-fiction books; Choices: You Make ’em You Own ’em written with Jerry Tillinghast, UnMade: Honor Loyalty Redemption written with Bobby Walason, and It’s Just the Way It Was: Inside the War on the New England Mob and other stories written with Brendan Doherty former superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police.

Joe also writes for two blogs, The Writing of Joe Broadmeadow (http://www.joebroadmeadowblog.com) and The Heretic and the Holy Man (www.thehereticandtheholyman.wordpress.com) and as a guest columnist for the Providence Journal and GoLocalProv.com.

When Joe is not writing, he is hiking or fishing (and thinking about writing). Joe completed a 2,185-mile thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in September 2014. After completing the trail, Joe published a short story, Spirit of the Trail, available on Amazon.com in Kindle format.

Joe lives in Rhode Island with his wife Susan.

This piece by Joe Broadmeadow originally appeared on Joe’s personal blog. Here’s the link:

https://joebroadmeadowblog.com/2020/06/26/defund-elements-of-the-police-but-let-cops-be-cops/?fbclid=IwAR1G_UFVVvEVWu7mjZHqeTpuxKlOyXTwz-cZekU6f6zMCZQqOUh9skgKkW8

Visit Joe Broadmeadow’s Amazon Page.

Follow Joe Broadmeadow on Twitter.

Connect with Joe Broadmeadow on Facebook.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WHAT’S UP WITH GARRY RODGERS’ WRITING FOR 2020

Wow! How fast did two decades fly by? Seems like yesterday we were freaking over the new millennia’s Y2K impending doom of driving a dastardly internet chain reaction filled with devastating quirks and quarks through the hearts of our hard drives. Well, that never happened. As Trump says, it was fake news – all lies – a terrible, terrible hoax. Fortunately, it gave me twenty new years to polish my craft and plot my course. So, here’s what’s up with Garry Rodgers’ writing for 2020.

2019 was a productive year in the writing room. I penned and shipped about fifty feature articles for my daughter’s agency. None changed the world but they helped pay the bills. I also managed to scrape together personal blog posts for every second Saturday morning on DyingWords.net. Some pieces took a lot of research and I learned new things. That’s part of the many happy returns from blogging.

As well, I completed two full-length book manuscripts. One is a historical non-fiction work titled Sun Dance – Why Custer Really Lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It’s now with an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, and we’ll see where that goes. The other is a based-on-true-crime story called From The Shadows. I was going to release it on Amazon this month, but put things on hold till January as I didn’t want it getting smothered in the Christmas market.

I’m also two-thirds through writing Beside The Road. It’s another based-on-true crime read in the same series as From The Shadows, Under The Ground and In The Attic. These formats have worked well in reader reviews and the sales department. So, if it ain’t broke, I’m not gonna fix it. I have more plots planned which follow true crime stories that I was either directly involved in or have decent personal knowledge of the case facts. Working titles for those are On The Floor, Beneath The Deck, By The Book, and Behind The Badge. I also have sights on writing The Mother From Hell which is based on a crazy case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy that I unfortunately investigated and got sued over.

My website at DyingWords.net continues to gain traction. I installed a web tracker in April and am pleasantly surprised to see I’ve had over 137,000 visitors during the last eight months. The most popular posts are true stories I’ve dissected like JonBenet Ramsey, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Manson and Elvis Presley. One post really surprising me is The Guy on the Greyhound Bus which gets twenty or more reads a day. That’s the case where a deranged passenger stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized a fellow rider on a public bus. Go figure.

But, a story getting a lot of attention doesn’t surprise me. That’s the high-profile and unsolved Lindsay Buziak Murder that happened at Victoria, British Columbia in 2008. I took on the task of researching Lindsay’s tragic circumstances, and it swirled me down a rabbit hole I couldn’t have imagined. I’ve met many of Lindsay’s family and friends as well as several suspects. One prime person-of-interest laid a criminal harassment complaint against me as a ruse to get me off her back. The cops said it was a civil matter, and I told her to sue me as I’d love to get her under oath and on the witness stand.

When I started privately investigating Lindsay’s murder, I was unprepared for her bizarre father. He’s been the drive to keep Lindsay’s memory alive by narcissistically placing himself front and center media-wise including his recent appearance on the Dr. Phil TV show. I was pathologically lied to and then personally attacked online by the dad. I had a real hard time coming to grip with how intentionally misleading he’s been in the years since his daughter was killed. It’s a sad and strange story on its own.

What I can say about Lindsay Buziak’s murder is that I may not be able to truthfully write the public story as the circumstances now sit. I have a lot of information about this awful mess, the motive for the crime and, with probable certainty, who the conspirators are. If I publish what I’ve learned and what people close to the story have candidly told me – to tell the truthful and accurate story – I might compromise an active police investigation and that can not happen.

What I can say about Lindsay’s case is she was a totally innocent victim of an elaborate conspiracy to frame her as a police agent. That was to cover up and protect a real police informant who double-crossed an arm of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel in a multi-million dollar cocaine loss. Yes, the story is that involved and complicated. I will also say, with probable certainty, the two people directly involved in stabbing Lindsay to death are a Mexican brother and sister pair who are now long gone from Canada. However, the co-conspirators who fed Lindsay to the killers are still active in the Victoria area. One of them checks my blog daily.

Moving on to other writing, I’ve spent the past few months digging into nerd-stuff like chemistry, biology and physics. I’ve also been snooping into philosophy, psychology, astronomy and anatomy. No, this is not some sort of weird enlightenment or cautious coming-out. It’s a serious look at the human condition centering on consciousness.

I’m preparing a paper with the working title Interconnect – Finding Your Place in a Conscious Universe which is more for my own curiosity than anything else. I’ll share it on an upcoming blog post as a PDF download as it looks like it’s going to be fairly lengthy – probably 20-30K words. It’s kind of a “What’s the Meaning and Purpose of Life” which has been sixty years in the making. I was hoping to wrap it soon, but I got three new books for Christmas – Origin Story (A Big History of Everything), When The Earth Had Two Moons and Lonely Planet’s The Universe Travel Guide.

I also want to share ongoing successes of my writer friends. First and foremost is Sue Coletta. If you regularly follow DyingWords.net, no doubt you’ll know Sue. We’ve collaborated on a few things, and I’ve watched Sue’s progression from her first book to her rise as a sought-after source for an upcoming true crime story commissioned by a major traditional publisher. In my opinion, Sue Coletta is one of the most talented and promising writers out there today.

Rachel Amphlett is another super-talent in the crime writing business. I had the pleasure of co-hosting an indie-publishing seminar with Rachel, and I have to say how impressed I am with her work not to mention her business savvy and drive. Rachel’s main stories are her Detective Kay Hunter series and her Dan Taylor espionage series. Rachel also writes stand-alone books in the crime thriller genre.

I’ve developed an online friendship with Caroline Mitchell. Caroline and I have something in common besides writing. She’s a retired detective from a UK police force who recommissioned herself as a crime writer. A really good and successful crime writer, I must say. Caroline has her DI Amy Winter books like The Secret Child and Truth and Lies which have been optioned for TV productions. Her stories Witness and Silent Victim also proved to be top bestsellers.

John Ellsworth is another writer I’ve got to know over the net. John is a recovering lawyer who writes legal thrillers. He tells me he set out to supplement his retirement income by a few hundred a month. Well, that took off on him. John is now one of the leading indie authors making Amazon money with his Thaddeus Murfee character.

While I’m name-dropping, have you heard of Adam Croft? Here’s a guy who’s done well for himself in the crime thriller world. Adam and I cross-blogged back in the old days when he wasn’t famous and I had hair – well before Adam became the number one book seller on all of Amazon with Her Last Tomorrow. Now Adam has sold nearly two million books and his list keeps growing.

And then there’s Joe Broadmeadow. Funny how old cops attract. Joe’s a retired captain from the East Providence, Rhode Island, detective division. He’s found his stride with true crime books like Choices – You Make ‘Em, You Own ‘Em and It’s Just The Way It Was. Joe’s also penned thrillers like Collision Course, Silenced Justice and A Change Of Hate.

I have a few more writing projects planned for 2020. One is an article for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Quarterly publication. An editor at the Quarterly is an former colleague of mine, and he asked me to contribute a piece on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) about how I personally coped after The Teslin Lake Incident where my close friend and partner, Mike Buday, was murdered beside me and I was nearly shot as well. This is part of a series the Quarterly is doing on modern approaches to managing operational stress injuries (OSI).

I’m also guesting a post on what detectives and writers have in common. This is for a very high-profile website catering to writers, not detectives. The site has been recognized as one of the top ten influencers in the writing business, and you’ll have to wait for April to see who this is.

On the writing business side, this coming year I plan to expand from publishing solely on Amazon. (Going Wide) You’ll soon find my indie works on Kobo, Nook, B&N, Apple and Google as eBooks. I’m also planning to offer most in print form and maybe a test on audio.

Speaking of audio, I want to run this by you. I’ve been mulling the idea of taking my most popular blog posts and turning them into podcasts. Some of these posts have had thousands of reads and hundreds of shares. Podcasting seems to be a hit with folks who don’t want to spend the time reading but are ripe for listening while driving, walking or whatever. What do you think? Would you tune in to a DyingWords podcast?

Anyway, that’s what’s happening  with Garry Rodgers’ writing for 2020. I hope you have a safe, healthy, happy, purposeful and prosperous new year. And thank you – thank you so much – for supporting my stuff!  ~Garry