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