(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
“If this were to get out, I feel like no one would ever call 911 again.” [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-12-28
During my life, I’ve only ever had to call 911 twice. Once when my elderly father had a seizure in our kitchen; the other when I was involved in a serious car crash. Blessedly nobody died in either of those incidents.
Imagine the horror though of someone who calls 911, the incident involves a death, and they become the target of an investigation based purely on junk science making the rounds of the criminal justice system.
That junk science has a name — 911 Call Analysis.
[Before we go any further I will state up front I’m not an expert on the criminal justice system. But what I read over the last couple of days has me quite un-nerved, and I hope it makes you feel the same way. So this diary won’t be book length, but hopefully enough to get you to read the linked articles and see for yourself what is going on.]
In recent days, ProPublica has published two articles on the utter travesty that has befallen people due to this garbage.
For example, let’s all meet Jessica Logan, a twenty-five year old mother of two, whose youngest suffered from respiratory issues. One tragic evening she found her child unresponsive in its bed. What happened next just might make your blood run cold. (Apologies for the long block-quote; read the whole ProPublica article here.)
Detective Eric Matthews decided Jessica Logan probably killed her baby before he talked to a single eyewitness or collected almost any evidence. At that point, on Oct. 9, 2019, the coroner hadn’t yet announced a cause of death. What Matthews did have was a recording of Logan’s 911 call from two days earlier. The detective scribbled notes as he listened. “Jessica,” the 911 dispatcher said at one point, “take a deep breath for me, OK?” “I can’t,” Logan replied, inhaling sharply to force the words out. “That’s my baby.” “I know. I know.” “I need my baby.” The call had come in just after 3 a.m. from a duplex in the heart of Decatur, Illinois. On the tape, Logan struggled to gain her composure as the dispatcher asked what had happened. “I came in my son room to try to give him a breathing treatment because he needs breathing treatments,” Logan said as she sobbed. “And he’s not breathing.” She had found her 19-month-old son Jayden tangled up in his bed sheets, face down and stiff, one arm bent above his head and white foam spilling out of his mouth. “He’s so cold and hard,” Logan said. “What?” “He’s so cold and hard.” Rigor mortis had already begun to set in by the time Jayden’s grandmother and her husband rushed into the apartment. For the final two minutes of the call, Logan could no longer speak. There were only screams. All of this, the detective concluded after the recording stopped, was an act: The 25-year-old mother of two had likely staged the scene to cover up a murder. He had the evidence right there on tape, and now he was going to build his case against her.
Jessica was later charged with murder, tried, and convicted in large part using 911 Call Analysis.
To call this “analysis” dubious is an understatement.
Another excellent article by ProPublica showed this graphic, which, its developers claim, can show just who is guilty and who is not by listening for key words and phrases in a 911 call.
One of my personal favorites (/s) was how offering a greeting like “hi” at the beginning of a 911 call should be considered suspicious.
Both articles trace the origin of this junk — a now-retired Dayton, Ohio, law enforcement officer named Tracy Hapster.
Tracy Harpster, a deputy police chief from suburban Dayton, Ohio, was hunting for praise. He had a business to promote: a miracle method to determine when 911 callers are actually guilty of the crimes they are reporting. “I know what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like,” he once said. Harpster tells police and prosecutors around the country that they can do the same. Such linguistic detection is possible, he claims, if you know how to analyze callers’ speech patterns — their tone of voice, their pauses, their word choice, even their grammar. Stripped of its context, a misplaced word as innocuous as “hi” or “please” or “somebody” can reveal a murderer on the phone. So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster’s claims have failed. The experts most familiar with his work warn that it shouldn’t be used to lock people up.
As you can about imagine, he’s made big $$ of his peddling this junk. I won’t link to his book, but you can find it at Analyzing 911 Homicide Calls (Practical Aspects of Criminal and Forensic Investigations).
In the meantime, reputations are being ruined, lives are being shattered, and the justice system embraces yet another steaming pile of crap and calls it evidence.
If you don’t follow ProPublica on social media, I strongly encourage you to do so.
They are non-profit, so throw them some coin also.
Finally, be on the lookout in your local jurisdiction for 911 Call Analysis, and be ready to stand against it. Before it ensnares another victim.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/28/2144264/--If-this-were-to-get-out-I-feel-like-no-one-would-ever-call-911-again
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
