Page 178 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Chapter Twelve: Sandra Bland

“Dude, issue the…pulling her out?”: Nick Wing and Matt Ferner, “Here’s What Cops and Their
Supporters Are Saying about the Sandra Bland Arrest Video,” HuffPost, July 22, 2015.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cops-sandra-bland-video_us_55afd6d3e4b07af29d57291d.
“An employee of the Department…extreme provocation”: Texas Department of Public Safety
General Manual, Chapter 5, Section 05.17.00, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3146604-
DPSGeneralManual.html.
TSA haystack searches: DHS Press Office, “DHS Releases 2014 Travel and Trade Statistics,”
January 23, 2015, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/01/23/dhs-releases-2014-travel-and-trade-
statistics, accessed March 2019.

“go beyond the ticket” and other Remsberg quotes: Charles Remsberg, Tactics for Criminal
Patrol: Vehicle Stops, Drug Discovery, and Officer Survival (Northbrook, Ill.: Calibre Press, 1995),
pp. 27, 50, 68. Also from this source: “If you’re accused…the defendant’s case,” p. 70; “concealed
interrogation” and “As you silently analyze…incriminating evidence,” p. 166; and “Too many
cops…what the suspect does,” pp. 83–84.
the driver was “stiff and nervous”: Heien v. North Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 534 (2014),
https://www.leagle.com/decision/insco20141215960.
When he approached the stopped car: Gary Webb, “DWB: Driving While Black,” Esquire 131,
issue 4 (April 1999): 118–27. Webb’s article was really the first to document the growing use of
Kansas City techniques. It is superb—and chilling. At one point he sits down with a Florida officer
named Vogel who was a particularly aggressive proponent of proactive searches. Vogel was proud
of his sixth sense in spotting potential criminals. Webb writes: Other indicators, [Vogel] said, are
adornments like “earrings, nose rings, eyelid rings. Those are things that are common denominators
with people who are involved with crimes. Tattoos would go along with that,” particularly tattoos of
“marijuana leaves.” Bumper stickers also give him a feel for the soul of the driver. “Deadhead
stickers are things that almost—the people in those kinds of vehicles are almost always associated
with drugs.”
Give me a break.
a day from Brian Encinia’s career: Los Angeles Times Staff, “Citations by Trooper Brian
Encinia,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 2015, http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/citations-trooper-
brian-encinia/.
“I was checking…yes sir” (and all Encinia/Renfro Q&A quotes from Brian Encinia): Interview
with Cleve Renfro (Texas Department of Public Safety Lieutenant), October 8, 2015. Audio
obtained by KXAN-TV of Austin, https://www.kxan.com/news/investigations/trooper-fired-for-
sandra-bland-arrest-my-safety-was-in-jeopardy/1052813612, accessed April 2019.
“An operator shall use the signal…”: Texas Transportation Code, Title 7: Vehicles and Traffic,
Subtitle C: Rules of the Road, Chapter 545: Operation and Movement of Vehicles, Sections 104,
105, p. 16, https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?link=TN.
“In Western culture…the investigator”: John E. Reid et al., Essentials of the Reid Technique:
Criminal Investigation and Confessions (Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2005), p.
98.
The Reid Manual is full of assertions about lie detection that are, to put it plainly, nonsense. The
Reid “system” teaches interrogators, for example, to be alert to nonverbal cues, which have the
effect of “amplifying” what a suspect says. By nonverbal cues, they mean posture and hand gestures
and the like. As the manual states, on page 93, “hence the commonplace expressions, ‘actions speak
louder than words’ and ‘look me straight in the eye if you’re telling the truth.’”
If you stacked all the scientific papers refuting this claim on top of each other, they would reach the
moon. Here is one of my favorite critiques, from Richard R. Johnson, a criminologist at the
University of Toledo. (Johnson’s research can be found here: “Race and Police Reliance on