Why won’t police stop me?

By Anthony Hegarty

As a regular driver in Korea I am often confronted with road blocks where the police require spot checks on drivers who may have been drinking. Regardless of which part of the country I am in there is one similarity between all the said control zones; as soon as the officers see my Western face they simply wave me through.

They do this because they lack adequate language skills.

Should I be grateful or concerned? As the foreign population continues to grow in Korea then so too will the foreign crime rate and the police seem woefully unprepared for this demographic change.

Interpreters are useful for explaining simple violations, but not for interviewing suspects of crimes such as complex financial frauds and homicides, particularly in the absence of forensic evidence?

As an ex-London police detective I have interviewed many different nationalities through the use of interpreters and so much was lost not only in translation but in the extra time provided to the suspects for them to prepare their next answer.

According to TV cop shows liars will avoid eye contact; they will raise their voices and fidget with their hands; and exhibit many other so called 'signs'. But these are also very natural signs of nervousness. In fact there is no sure way of determining whether or not a suspect's behaviour is an indication of his guilt.

What is true is that most people find it very difficult to lie and instead attempt to hide the truth or provide distortions of it.

In 1995 two young brothers, one three the other 14 months, disappeared in South Carolina, USA. Naturally the parents were interviewed by the police. The father was noted as saying; ``Everywhere I look, I see their play toys … They are both wonderful children.

In her interview the mother was noted as saying ``They were my life."

The point here is that the father spoke of his children in the present tense, sounding hopeful. However, the mother's description of her children in the past tense provided the critical break the detectives needed, something I suggest would be missed during an interview by a non-native speaker or through a translator.

When it was put to her that she might have knowledge of what happened to her children she responded in the following way;

``You son of a bitch. How can you think that? I can't believe that you think I did it. I did not have anything to do with the abduction of my children."

No admissions, but if we look more closely at her choice of words we can see it was quite revealing.

``You son of a bitch." No answer to the question, she just objected to it. ``How can you think that?" Again, she does not answer the question, she just responds with another question. ``I can't believe that you think I did it." She doesn't say she didn't do it, she says she can't believe the investigators think she did it. ``I did not have anything to do with the abduction of my children." And of course, this is true. She did not abduct her children, she killed them.

The mother, Susan Smith, was convicted of the double homicide of her children based largely on this interview.

Even if the Korean police massively increased their education budgets to meet the rising threats of foreign crime they will not be able to produce suitably qualified interviewers able to detect what are ``normal" attempts at truth distortion.

In my 10 years of living in Korea I have met retired intelligence and police officers, who have found their way into the education industry. These are valuable resources which the authorities should exploit to better the prospects of foreign crime detection.

If the police cannot even stop a car because the driver might not speak Korean then there is little hope for them to successfully interview a foreign suspect in a complex criminal investigation.

The writer runs Discreet Services, Risk & Security Management Consulting/Future Threat Assessments. He can be reached at helios@discreet-services.com.