Jim Glennon’s highly rated and bestselling book, Arresting Communication: Essential Interaction Skills for Law Enforcement, has reached its twelfth year of publication and is still going strong. The book is required reading in many academies, is used in promotional exams, college courses and recommended by many in the field of criminal justice.
** To celebrate this milestone, Calibre Press has decided to offer the KINDLE version of the book for just $2.99.**
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EXCERPT SERIES: Over the next several months we will publish excerpts from the book for you to review, comment, discuss and share.
— We start with a focus on pre-attack indicators taken from Chapter Seventeen. —
Great Story
My all-time favorite story from teaching the Street Survival Seminar is about a female police officer from Texas who wrote me an email thanking me for “saving her life and the life of her children’s mother.” Intrigued I read on. This young officer explained that she had attended a Seminar approximately one month prior to the email. In it, she said, I had talked about and explained the phenomenon of ‘Scanning.’ “And that” she went on, “is what saved my life.”
To clarify, in the Seminars and particularly in my other classes on communication and body language I always ask the audience of cops if, while on patrol, they have ever encountered a suspicious person in the middle of the night. Of course, they all say that they have. I then ask if they have ever seen one of these people start to Scan the area as they approach the subject? In other words, “look past you, around, and maybe even behind themselves.” There is another collective affirmative response. “What do you think he is looking for?” I ask, though I immediately answer my own question: “He is looking for back-up, witnesses, escape routes, his buddies. Is any of that good for you?” “No,” is the crowd’s communal reply.
Then I tell them what I always tell them, which is; “Your job is to recognize this behavior and immediately control the situation.” I further suggest that they prepare themselves to do two things when in the presence of someone Scanning: find their hands and then call them on the behavior. “Use your command presence and an authoritative voice and say to the person; ‘What are you looking for?” But, I point out, as they are taking this tact they also need to; “Watch the Hands!” Invoking the sage advice of my friend Dave Smith’s alter ego; J.D. Buck Savage.
Back to the email from the female attendee. The Officer went on to say that she encountered a subject in an alley in the middle of the night just as I had talked about in the Seminar. She told me that she had seen Scanning before, always had a bad feeling about who was ever using it, but had never recognized it on a conscious level as anything threatening until it was talked about in the Seminar. On this particular night she was alone with no back-up when she saw some miscreant lurking behind a closed business. She said that as she approached him she noticed that he began to “Scan” the area. She remembered what was said about finding the perp’s hands and when she glanced down at them, the bad guy was sliding his right hand into his pocket. She “instinctively” knew he was going for a weapon and she just as instinctively drew her sidearm just as the bad guy revealed a revolver. The result? She shot first, hit him several times in the chest, and won the gunfight.
Her words meant a lot to me. She said that she believed that if she hadn’t consciously recognized Scanning for what it was she wouldn’t have looked for the hands, she would have hesitated; she may have wound up dead. She thanked me, but I assured her that it was she who took this new information, analyzed it, visualized it, and utilized it on a conscious level in the real world.
This is a perfect example of melding the cues and information picked up by the subconscious and making rapid sense out of them with the now partnered conscious. This is what should, and can be done with virtually all of the cues and behaviors that are to follow.
“It came out of nowhere!”
No, it didn’t. There is a video of a patrol officer on a DUI stop. The Officer and the motorist are standing in front of the squad car. The Officer has no back-up. The Policeman has advised the uncuffed, unsecured, highly intoxicated gentleman that he is under arrest for DUI and is in fact reading the DUI Warnings to the man right there on the roadway. The offender is very agitated, profane, and challenging towards the young Officer who seems to be oblivious to what stands before him; a violent, angry predator. Seconds later; KAPOW!!! The bad guy unleashes a right-handed roundhouse into the left side of the Officer’s face sending him to the ground. The attacker then kneels over the Officer and begins a barrage of punches to the face of his defenseless victim. Bad guy is eventually subdued by civilians and eventually arrested; Good guy has his jaw wired shut for a couple of months.
“It came out of nowhere!” At least that is what I was told the Officer said once he could eat solid foods, utter words and formulate sentences again. But “out of nowhere?” Really? There were absolutely no clues that this attack was imminent? Of course there were. In addition, what did the Officer communicate about himself to his eventual attacker? Did he come across as an aware, tactically sound professional police officer? Or did he come across as a victim? As prey? What did he unknowingly leak to his adversary through his behavior, his inaction, his failure to take control, and his verbal utterances?
Leakage
The human animal is in a constant state of communication (where have I heard that before?). Therefore; intent, thought processes, cues, clues, signs and signals are always leaking out through the body, the paralinguistic and the actual words used. If you watch this above-mentioned video this punch not only didn’t come out of nowhere, you could see it coming from last week!
Let me list the clues given by the bad guy in this particular incident: high pitched voice, verbal challenges, profanities, refusal to obey orders, emptying of the hands, a rolling up of the sleeves, a drop of the right leg. All of these things immediately preceded the haymaker from hell. Out of nowhere?
Suffice it to say that there are innumerable signs and signals leaked by people preparing to attack. The unconscious will always pick these up, but it is imperative that they are also recognized in the conscious mind of law enforcement officers. Remember, the unconscious acts at light speed and often independent of the conscious, so it is necessary that we train ourselves to recognize these signals in order to narrow the processing time between observation and (re)action. So, let’s examine some “telegraphed” indicators of hostile intent — keeping in mind that many others exist beyond the short list established here.
Scanning: To recap, scanning is when a subject is observed focusing his attention to the surrounding area rather than the interviewer (the interviewer for our purposes being a law enforcement officer). Someone who is scanning is usually moving his head from side to side while his eyes appear to be searching. There is usually little or no direct eye contact. Sometimes the scanning is subtle, using just the eyes with limited movement of the head. Sometimes the behavior is very obvious where you will see the suspect do any or all of the following: scan a complete 360 degrees, look past you, look to the left and right, and even turn around to assess the total environment. The scanning may occur while the suspect is answering questions, listening to orders, and even complying with commands. The scanner literally appears as though he is looking for something, and he is. He is looking for the officer’s back-up, witnesses, escape routes or perhaps even his own compatriots. But what it is exactly doesn’t matter. As far as the officer is concerned, it’s all bad.
The Target Glance: Target glancing is a term used to refer to the obvious preoccupation an offender has with a particular area of an officer’s body or with any of the officer’s weapons. It can involve either staring or repeated glancing at the intended target. One of the most common target glances involves ocular attention on an officer’s gun, indicating that a subject is considering a “gun-grab.” However, other areas of interest to a would-be attacker include the chin, the nose, the throat and the eyes. Any target glancing directed at the face generally indicates that the suspect is evaluating an attack of some sort, perhaps a punch. Targets can also involve the hip or upper leg area, obviously indicating the subject is measuring the possibility of a takedown. A target glance can be designed to measure the distance to the neck, face or head.
Clenching: Whether it’s tightening the fists or clenching the teeth, constriction of muscles indicates physical stress and perhaps readiness for an attack. Pre-fight tensions will cause jaw muscles to bulge, fists to close and facial muscles to contract. If you pay close attention, you may observe the trapezius (also called “trap”) muscles (the flat triangular muscles that cover the back of the neck and shoulders) rise as the large muscles of the body constrict as if to prepare for physical contact or assault.
Eye blinks: Average eye contact (and this is a very general statement and dependent on many things) between two people is between two and three seconds. The average non-arousal blink rate is somewhere six and twenty times per minute. Under significant stress the human being will alter blink rate patterns in one of two ways: They will either blink rapidly (40 to 60 times per minute), or they will slow their blink rate down drastically (two to four times per minute). The latter of the two alterations is often referred to as the “thousand-yard-stare.” It’s described as one person looking right through another person. Because it is stress-induced, the reason for the exhibited stress has to be considered in the totality of the circumstances. If you are questioning a subject and rapid blinking is evident, deception may be causing the stress. If the “thousand-yard-stare” is displayed while interviewing a suspicious person, then be aware that flight or fight is being contemplated.
The Pugilistic Stance: Also known as “the fighting stance,” the pugilistic stance is almost always a precursor to an attack — or at least an indicator that one is being considered. The pugilistic stance is rather obvious: dropping one leg and side of the body (usually the strong side) behind the other. It may be accompanied by a fist clench, facial tightening, nostril flaring (body preparing to take in extra oxygen), and even a verbal warning or threat. But police officers must recognize that any shifting of the weight or stance by the other person, no matter how slight, may be a significant indicator.
Flanking: This usually occurs when there are multiple suspects. It’s the movement to the rear or side of a police officer by one or more of the suspects being engaged. Flanking is an attempt to find a position suitable for a successful attack. One of the most infamous and despicable examples of flanking in the law enforcement community involves the murder of Constable Darrell Lunsford in Nacogdoches County, Texas, on Jan. 23, 1991. The suspects Lunsford stopped employed flanking maneuvers (as well as demonstrating the pugilistic stance) prior to the attack that brought Lunsford to the ground.
Hesitation in response: Often, when intensely engaged in the process of internal thought, a person’s response time to questions becomes protracted. This is because people are not particularly good at divided-attention tasks when under stress. The more intense or stress-filled one task may be, the less likely it is the person can multitask. Contemplating an attack on an officer would be considered an intensely stressful internal thought process. Measuring distance, determining a target and pondering the consequences of such an attack requires a tremendous amount of concentration. Answering questions while in such a state is not easy. Therefore, a police officer may notice a distracted gaze and hesitation between questions posed and answers given.
There are many, many more physical behaviors that indicate an intent to attack: furrowed brow, pursed and tightly closed lips, dilation of the pupils, hiding of the hands, dipping to the strong side (as if to grab something), flared nostrils, mouth breathing, face touching (result of blood pressure changes caused by stress), crossed arms (barrier), hands on hips (defiance), spitting (contempt), walking around, failure to comply, arguing, stalling, and stretching (often referred to as the felony or stress stretch).
Study these. Learn them. Visualize their use. Reconcile them between the conscious and the unconscious. Envision winning. For that is what you must do: WIN.
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