Page 141 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

2.

A Kansas City traffic stop is a search for a needle in a haystack. A police officer uses a common
infraction to search for something rare—guns and drugs. From the very beginning, as the ideas
perfected in Kansas City began to spread around the world, it was clear that this kind of policing
required a new mentality.
The person who searches your hand luggage at the airport, for example, is also engaged in a
haystack search. And from time to time, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) conducts
audits at different airports. They slip a gun or a fake bomb into a piece of luggage. What do they
find? That 95 percent of the time, the guns and bombs go undetected. This is not because airport
screeners are lazy or incompetent. Rather, it is because the haystack search represents a direct
challenge to the human tendency to default to truth. The airport screener sees something, and maybe
it looks a little suspicious. But she looks up at the line of very ordinary-looking travelers waiting
patiently, and she remembers that in two years on the job she’s never seen a real gun. She knows, in
fact, that in a typical year the TSA screens 1.7 billion carry-on bags, and out of that number finds
only a few thousand handguns. That’s a hit rate of .0001 percent—which means the odds are that if
she kept doing her job for another 50 years she would never see a gun. So she sees the suspicious
object inserted by the TSA’s auditors, and she lets it go.
For Kansas City traffic stops to work, the police officer could not think that way. He had to
suspect the worst of every car he approached. He had to stop defaulting to truth. He had to think like
Harry Markopolos.
The bible for post–Kansas City policing is called Tactics for Criminal Patrol, by Charles
Remsberg. It came out in 1995, and it laid out in precise detail what was required of the new, non-
defaulting patrol officer. According to Remsberg, the officer had to take the initiative and “go
beyond the ticket.” That meant, first of all, picking up on what Remsberg called “curiosity
ticklers”—anomalies that raise the possibility of potential wrongdoing. A motorist in a bad
neighborhood stops at a red light and looks down intently at something on the seat next to him.
What’s that about? An officer spots a little piece of wrapping paper sticking out between two panels
of an otherwise spotless car. Might that be the loose end of a hidden package? In the infamous North
Carolina case, where the police officer pulled over a driver for a broken brake light—thinking,
incorrectly, that this was against North Carolina law—the thing that raised his suspicions was that
the driver was “stiff and nervous.” The most savvy of criminals will be careful not to commit any
obvious infractions. So traffic cops needed to be creative about what to look for: cracked
windshields, lane changes without signaling, following too closely.
“One officer,” Remsberg writes, “knowing that some of the most popular dope markets in his
city are in dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs, just parks there and watches. Often drivers will get
close before seeing his squad [car], then stop suddenly (improper stopping in a roadway) or hastily
back up (improper backing in a roadway). ‘There’s two offenses,’ he says, ‘before I even pursue the
car.’”
When he approached the stopped car, the new breed of officer had to be alert to the tiniest clues.
Drug couriers often use air fresheners—particularly the kind shaped like little fir trees—to cover up
the smell of drugs. (Tree air fresheners are known as the “felony forest.”) If there are remains of fast
food in the car, that suggests the driver is in a hurry and reluctant to leave his vehicle (and its
valuable cargo) unattended. If the drugs or guns are hidden in secret compartments, there might be
tools on the back seat. What’s the mileage on the car? Unusually high for a car of that model year?
New tires on an old car? A bunch of keys in the ignition, which would be normal—or just one, as if
the car was prepared just for the driver? Is there too much luggage for what seems like a short
journey? Or too little luggage for what the motorist says is a long journey? The officer in an
investigatory stop is instructed to drag things out as long as possible. Where you from? Where are
you headed? Chicago? Got family there? Where? He’s looking for stumbles, nervousness, an
implausible answer, and whether the driver’s answer matches what he’s seeing. The officer is trying
to decide whether to take the next step and search the car.

Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of people with food in their car, air fresheners,
high mileage, new tires on an old car, and either too little or too much luggage are not running guns