Page 134 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

people. Gallagher had elaborate theories, worked out over many years: street criminals
overwhelmingly put their guns in their waistbands (on the left side, in the case of a
right-hander), causing a subtle but discernible hitch in their stride. The leg on the gun
side takes a shorter step than the leg on the nongun side, and the corresponding arm
follows a similarly constrained trajectory. When stepping off curbs or getting out of a
car, Gallagher believed, gun carriers invariably glance toward their weapons or
unconsciously adjust them.

Gallagher flew to Kansas City, with great fanfare, the month after the failed hotline
experiment. He gave seminars. He made videos. The officers took notes. The television
program 20/20 sent a camera crew to record the technique in action on the streets of
Kansas City. Nobody spotted anything. 20/20 came back again. The same thing
happened—nothing. Whatever magical skills Robert T. Gallagher possessed were not,
apparently, transferable to the beat cops of Kansas City. Two of the team’s best ideas
for curbing gun violence had failed. They had one left.

3.

The winning entry in the Kansas City gun experiment was deceptively simple. It was
based on a quirk in the American legal system.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from
“unreasonable searches and seizures.” That’s why the police cannot search your home
without a warrant. On the street, similarly, a police officer must have a good reason
2
—“reasonable suspicion”—to frisk you. But if you’re in your car, that standard is not
at all hard for a police officer to meet. Traffic codes in the U.S. (and in fact in most
countries) give police officers literally hundreds of reasons to stop a motorist.
“There are moving violations: speeding, running a red light. There are equipment
violations: a light that doesn’t work, a tire not quite right,” legal scholar David Harris
writes.
And then there are catch-all provisions: rules that allow police to stop drivers for
conduct that complies with all the rules on the books, but that officers consider
“imprudent” or “unreasonable” under the circumstances, or that describe the offense
in language so broad as to make a violation virtually coextensive with the officer’s
unreviewable personal judgment.

There was even a Supreme Court case in which a police officer in North Carolina
stopped what he thought was a suspicious driver, using the pretext that one of the car’s
brake lights was out. As it turns out, it’s perfectly permissible in North Carolina to
drive with one brake light out, so long as the other one works. So what happened after
the driver of the car sued, claiming he had been stopped illegally? The Supreme Court
ruled in favor of the officer. It was enough that he thought driving with only one brake
light seemed like an infraction. In other words, police officers in the United States not
only have at their disposal a virtually limitless list of legal reasons to stop a motorist;
they are also free to add any other reasons they might dream up, as long as they seem
reasonable. And once they’ve stopped a motorist, police officers are allowed, under the
law, to search the car, so long as they have reason to believe the motorist might be
armed or dangerous.
Kansas City decided to take advantage of this latitude. Sherman’s proposal was for
the police department to detail four officers, in two squad cars. Their beat would be