Still, its very important to recognize that no matter how good you are at reading people, and threat evaluation, you shouldn't let your guard down and rely too heavily on that gut instinct. There's no violence in the police dashcam video below, but it does illustrate the point perfectly.
Bad People don't always look like or act like bad people.
The man that the Officer was talking to in the video is Richard McNair, and Richard McNair is a cold blooded murderer. Just a couple of hours before this video was shot, McNair had escaped from a Federal Prison in Lousiana where he was serving two life terms plus 30 years for murdering two people and seriously wounding a third in a botched hold-up. Previous to this particular escape, McNair had also managed to escape from both a city jail and a state penitentiary.
McNair's story is pretty fascinating if you ever have a chance to read about him. Lots of near misses while he was on the run. After the Police Officer in the video above let him go free, McNair traveled all over the US and Canada for over a year before eventually being recaptured and returned to prison. He's very clever, and even more importantly has the ability to appear "normal", calm, collected, and non-threatening. Even the fact that he gave the Officer two different names while being questioned wasn't enough to set off warning signals.
He just didn't feel like a bad guy.
I wonder if the people he murdered thought the same thing?
H/T Radiolab
1 comment:
That video is both funny and terrifying. Something that you don't pick up on is he is constantly "weighing" what's going on. You can see him look around for escape routes and pays really cloe attention to the coversation while looking unconcerned as the cop looks back in on him.
What you can tell from the cop is he totally doesn't think this guy is really all that bad. He thinks he's a bit sketchy... but he's not convinced that the guys been involved in anything serious. That's odd since he knows there's a guy missing, has a hunch that this guy's not strait with him and knows he's looking for someone that looks really like this dude. I
I almost think that the cop was relying on the guy to flinch when the radio would go off, and to run. He didn't - so he must not be any trouble right?
Really scary.
Post a Comment