Interviewing and Interrogation

          The short film Scaredycat presented by Andy Blubaugh reveals the productive thoughts of memory and through the concept of fear. In the short film that Andy had presented to us, Andy is known for having these types of rituals ever since he was a little boy which was him having to align his feet with every floor board that he came across, and that he had to have every item that he saw straightened out, from a picture frame to a piece of newspaper on the bus.
          One day Andy was riding his bicycle late at night and had gotten jumped by 5 individuals. He had encountered a face to face moment with one of the individuals who had jumped him and that man happened to be an African American man. After having that encounter with the African American man, Andy had only remembered all of the men being African American, which they were not. Two of them were white men, and the other one was hispanic. The reason why Andy had thought they were all black men who had jumped him was because of the encounter he had with the African American man who he last had saw. From being in a state of shock he started to have a fear of African American men who he would come across in a public or private area. He would see them on the bus, and he if he felt uncomfortable he would get off the bus or walk away from the individual. People may say that he would be stereotyping the situation, and in a way he is, but people need to remember his exact situation and realize why he thinks what he is thinking.
            Later, Andy decided to call one of the men who had jumped him for a type of interview. He had asked the man why he did what he did and the guy had said, "Andy was at the wrong place at the wrong time" and that he did feel guilty in a way for doing what he had done. The criminal was later telling Andy that he did not feel it was fair for him to have to be put in prison for such a long period of time, because by the time he gets out he would be 33 years old and would have no real life experience to be put into the real world, which would make him commit more crimes. Andy had said that he did understood that the people who jumped him deserved to get what they got, but later felt bad after he heard the guy say that he would not have any use of being put into the real world after.
           While reading the article The Reid Technique and False Confessions it made me understand the situation way better. It was created in the 1940s by a former policeman named John Reid, the method is "really considered the gold standard of interview and interrogation techniques," Starr tells the Fresh Air's Terry Gross. When John Reid was doing this in the 1950s, people had thought that you were able to see anxiety in a person's body language. If the person had their arms folded, or was hunched over, or looked away, they were being anxious, and also that anxiety was a hallmark of lying. But, 40 years of extensive research has shown that both of those premises were actually untrue. Anxiety has nothing to do with lying. It is said that there is many liars who could look at you straight in the eye and very calmly lie up a storm right to your face. Body language has nothing to do with deception.
              Overall, a lot of people tend to feel guilty with situations and will confess up to something that they never even did, because of the amount of pressure cops put on them through interrogation. In the Reid's article it had said how a man named Darrel Parker had eventually succumbed to the suggestion of murdering his wife, because Reid was putting it in his head that his wife was unfaithful, and that he would've done there same thing. Putting things in people's mind to get them to confess about something is very wrong. Many people could be innocent, but got put in prison and falsely accused just because of a false confession. Even though cops want to just "capture" someone and end the case, they should really look more into the case.


https://www.npr.org/2013/12/05/248968150/beyond-good-cop-bad-cop-a-look-at-real-life-interrogations?sc=tw&cc=share


         

Seek Death Penalty for Cruz

       Do you believe that Cruz will receive the death penalty? In my opinion I feel like he will not. There has been so many young kids who deserved to have the death penalty done to them, but since they still are looked at as a "baby" they will not give them the death penalty. Already Cruz was locked in a cell by himself for protection, because they know that he would get eaten up alive in Prison with the other prisoners, which he deserves. Cruz should not be getting any type of special treatment at all from what he has done to those innocent teenagers.

       Reading in an article, "Florida Shooting: Prosecutors seek death penalty for Nikolas Cruz", by BBC News it states that they are looking to give him the death penalty. Personally, I feel like they are just looking for more attention to bring to him to make it look like they are actually going to do something about the situation. In the article it had mentioned how Nikolas Cruz will plead guilty if it means he will not get the death penalty. Even though according to them he does not consider himself "guilty". That is one of the most sickening things that I have ever heard. The fact someone does not believe that they are guilty, but will only plead guilty because they do not want to be placed on the death penalty is honestly ridiculous. That is not even a far trade. He had taken 17 innocent teenagers lives away from their friends and family, so why should he deserve to live and be safe in prison away from all of the other criminals?

Spring Break

         Over spring break I had gone to Cancun, Mexico with my boyfriend. It was my first vacation in over 5 years. I was very nervous to go into a different country because it was my first time doing that also. Plus my first time being on a plane since I was about 10 years old. The overall experience was actually really fun and I enjoyed myself a lot. It was scary having to go through immigration because I had never done that before, but it was actually really simple minus getting the sheets in Spanish. The other con with going to Cancun is not many people spoke English and if they did it was very hard to understand. The resort was beautiful though we were on our own private beach, and it was all inclusive which made it 10x better. The only scary thing that I had experienced was when my boyfriend and I went into the town. The people there were very pushy to sell stuff to you, and we ended up walking in a very sketchy area with plenty of creeps around. We ended up getting on a bus that took us the wrong direction from our resort, but luckily we had a nice lady who spoke English and Spanish and told the bus driver that he needed to stop for us to be able to get onto another bus going the right direction. Overall, the trip was beautiful and I would defiantly do it again only with a bigger crowd of people who know what they are doing.

Washington Post

       The post from the Washington Post, White House softens tone on gun-control measures after Trump meets with NRA, by David Nakamura has shown some major issues in what had been said by President Trump. President Trump had mentioned that he believes that all teachers should be armed with a gun to prevent major issues like that incident that had just happened at Parkland, Florida with Nikolas Cruz shooting 17 students. As I talked about in my last post I still do not feel like teachers should have guns, we should leave the guns to the pros like the police officers. Even though in the last post the deputy who was on at the school did not do anything I still feel like teachers are not fully trained enough to be able to have a gun. The teachers in my opinion would be more scared to shoot at a student especially if they know who the student is. It would give the teachers more of a higher authority and even so something scary could happen with a teacher having a gun. With the zero experience that certain teachers may have with guns it could actually cause them to feel like they have more power and it may even get to their heads and cause more issues.

      I think it is a good idea to raise the age limit on being able to purchase a gun. Personally, I still feel like 21 is such a young age to purchase a gun. I still feel like people are not very mature to maintain and handle a gun, especially in a serious situations. A person who is that young I still feel like would be scared and frightened and would not know how to handle a situation if they needed too. I would probably changed the age to at least 25 years old because at that age I feel like the brain is actually more developed and could handle the situation at the time being verses the age of 18/21 years old.