Throughout all of our lives, the reliability of law enforcement is something that is cemented into us since the very beginning. If there is a fire, call 911. If you are bleeding a lot, call 911. If you feel unsafe, call 911. In the case of any emergency, call 911 and they will take care of you.
What happens when the very people that we have been coaxed to call when we feel unsafe, are out to get us? Are looking to get something from us, rather than us getting something from them? The answer is, in short, violence. Lives being taken, families being separated, and in the case of the Reid Technique, freedom being seized.
As a huge Criminal Minds fan, I have seen the Reid Technique being used many times before. At first glance, it seems like a great way to get guilty parties to confess to violent crimes. However, when we get a closer look, it is more like manipulation of vulnerability. Essentially, it is gaslighting a possibly innocent person into believing that they committed a crime, or making them feel so unsafe in their environment that the best option for them would be to confess to a crime that they did not commit. Even if someone is innocent, that environment would make anyone sweat: being told that no one believes you, they already have evidence against you, and the sooner you confess to this crime, the shorter your already likely years-long-sentence will be. Being yelled at, degraded, and promised an unfortunate fate by a group of people with infamous centuries-long violence and racism issues (i.e. all instances of police brutality) would make any sane person want to leave that environment as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, a man named Marcellius Bradford fell victim to this flaw in our system. He confessed to a rape and murder of a woman that he did not commit in 1986, and implicated three other innocent people in his confession. It was the result of a plea deal that he was pressured into taking. Thankfully, him and the three other victims of law enforcement were exonerated several years later.
Excellent point about feeling “safe”- as we saw in Brendan Dassey’s interrogation in class, one of the police officers even told him that he would like to hug him right then…such an abuse of trust.