Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,100

new breed of police officer. And we have decided that we would rather our leaders and guardians pursue their doubts than dismiss them. Encinia leans in the window, tells her why he pulled her over, and—immediately—his suspicions are raised.

3.

Renfro: OK. After you asked Bland for her driver’s license, you then asked her where she was headed and she replied, “It doesn’t matter.” You wrote in your report, “I knew at this point based on her demeanor that something was wrong.”

In his deposition, Encinia is now being questioned by state investigator Cleve Renfro.

Renfro: Explain for the recording what you thought was wrong.

Encinia: …It was an aggressive body language and demeanor. It appeared that she was not okay.

Brian Encinia believed in transparency—that people’s demeanor is a reliable guide to their emotions and character. This is something we teach one another. More precisely, it is something we teach police officers. The world’s most influential training program for law enforcement, for example, is called the Reid Technique. It is used in something like two-thirds of U.S. state police departments—not to mention the FBI and countless other law-enforcement agencies around the world—and the Reid system is based directly on the idea of transparency: it instructs police officers, when dealing with people they do not know, to use demeanor as a guide to judge innocence and guilt.

For example, here is what the Reid training manual says about eye contact:

In Western culture, mutual gaze (maintained eye contact) represents openness, candor, and trust. Deceptive suspects generally do not look directly at the investigator; they look down at the floor, over to the side, or up at the ceiling as if to beseech some divine guidance when answering questions.…

Truthful suspects, on the other hand, are not defensive in their looks or actions and can easily maintain eye contact with the investigator.

The post–Kansas City textbook, Tactics for Criminal Patrol, instructs officers in police stops to conduct a “concealed interrogation,” based on what they can gather from their initial observation of the suspect.

As you silently analyze their stories, their verbal mannerisms, and their body language for deception cues, you’ll be trying to convince them that suspicion is far from your mind.…The longer you can delay their tumbling to the fact that you are actually appraising them, their vehicle, and their reason for being in transit, the more likely they are to unwittingly provide you with incriminating evidence.

So that is exactly what Encinia does. He notices that she’s stomping her feet, moving them back and forth. So he starts to stretch out their interaction. He asks her how long she has been in Texas. She says, “Got here just yesterday.” His sense of unease mounts. She has Illinois plates. What is she doing in Texas?

Renfro: Did you have safety concerns at that point?

Encinia: I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know if a crime was being committed, had been committed, or whatnot.

He returns to his squad car to check her license and registration, and when he looks up and observes Bland through the rear window of her car, he says he sees her “making numerous furtive movements including disappearing from view for an amount of time.” This is a crucial point, and it explains what is otherwise a puzzling fact from the video. Why does Encinia approach Bland’s car from the passenger side the first time around, but from the driver side the second time? It’s because he’s getting worried. As he wrote in his report, “Officer safety training has taught me that it was much easier for a violator to attempt to shoot me on the passenger side of the vehicle.”

Renfro: So explain for the recording why you would go from “This is a routine traffic stop with an aggravated person that in your opinion is not being cooperative or she’s agitated,” to your thought process that there’s a possibility that you need to make a driver’s-side approach due to the training on officers being shot.

Encinia: OK. Because when I was still inside the patrol car, I had seen numerous movements to the right, to the console, her right side of her body, that area as well as disappearing from sight.

His immediate thought was Is she reaching for a weapon? So now he approaches with caution.

Encinia: She has untinted glass on her windows so I can be able to see if anything could possibly be in her hands, if she had to turn over her shoulder or not. So that’s why I chose that