Judge: Tip about bodies in Texas came from psychic

[struggle4progress]

by KHOU.com staff, JUAN A. LOZANO / Associated Press
Posted on June 7, 2011 at 4:50 PM
Updated today at 8:09 PM
HARDIN, Texas -- A county judge says investigators are waiting for a search warrant to go inside a Texas home where a person claiming to be a psychic says multiple bodies are buried. Liberty County Judge Craig McNair says the sheriff's office received two calls from a person who said dismembered bodies would be found at the house about 70 miles northeast of Houston. McNair says officials have to take such tips seriously but "don't know if this is true or not." McNair says deputies who went to the property Tuesday found blood on a back door and detected a foul odor from the house ... http://www.khou.com/news/crime/Liberty-County-deputies-search-property-after-tipster-reports-dismembered-bodies-123394698.html

Here's a pretty public policy question for yall. What should authorities do when they get any anonymous 'psychic' tip that there are a bunch of bodies at a house? The question isn't whether or not we believe in psychics: the question is how to respond

[ret5hd]

1. How to respond when a person claims there are bodies...

at a house that has "blood on a back door and detected a foul odor from the house"???

Why, you bring that person in for questioning...pronto.

[struggle4progress]

4. ... anonymous tip .. from a person claiming to be a psychic ...

Police Investigate Report of Mass Grave in Texas, but Unclear Whether Bodies Were Found
Published June 07, 2011
FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/07/mass-grave-found-in-texas/#ixzz1Oe1ZqSoI

Anonymous person might be hard to locate

[struggle4progress]

12. ... Authorities have a name and number and are trying to track down the caller ...

Jun 07, 2011
Sheriff: No bodies found on East Texas property
By Michael Winter, USA TODAY
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/06/reports-dozens-of-bodies-found-buried-in-texas/1?csp=hf

[rug]

2. Let me check.

Crap.

[classof56]

3. I'd say, checking it out is the right thing to do.

At least everyone will know.

Just MHO.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. Psychic powers should not be reasonable cause ...

to obtain a search warrent.

[struggle4progress]

7. Oh, I completely agree with you. But play hard-boiled dectective: somebody's

called in, claiming to be a psychic, saying there are a lot of dismembered bodies on the property; you don't need to believe in psychic powers, but you do have to decide whether or not to investigate

[Ozymanithrax]

8. If a hardboiled detective is called by one of his regular paid..

informants about dismembered bodies, I think that is likely legit. That informant lives on the street and knows the areas. But someone who looked in his crystal ball, felt vibrations from a map, or read the entrails of a bird, no. We are supposed to be free of unreasonable search and seizure.

Why not just have every police force hire a person who claims to by psychic. They can search anyone the psychic wants them to.

[struggle4progress]

10. You miss the point. We don't know who called. The person who called claims to be psychic.

You and I naturally roll our eyes at the factual content of that claim. But -- there's another issue: the state of mind of the person making the claim and the person's motive for making the claim

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Madam Cleo didn't see it coming.... and you would think that she would have, now wouldn't you?

http://www.slate.com/id/2063700/


I'm looking at a "collection letter" addressed to my husband for $119.76 in unpaid "psychic services." The bill is for a 24-minute phone call that we allegedly made to the "Jamaican" "master shaman" "Miss Cleo." This Miss Cleo may be a heck of a fortuneteller, but she's not much of a record-keeper. We disconnected this phone number six months prior to the time of the alleged phone call, and our phone company has rightly refused to pay her. So, she's sent a "personal" letter, urging us to "take responsibility" for our "spiritual journey."

[struggle4progress]

11. Most of us here will agree Miss Cleo and her ilk are pumped full of bilge. That's not the question.

[TlalocW]

9. Silly psychic... Must be knew to the state and didn't know what Texas actually smells like

This story could have a wonderful, happy ending if the psychic finally grows up, stops pretending he or she has non-existent powers, and stops wasting police time and resources.

TlalocW

[onager]

13. In that case, they should respond as they would to any citizen...

And go investigate. I hope they'd investigate if they get a tip from ANYBODY that "there are a bunch of bodies at a house." Then I'd put the psychic on top of my "persons of interest" list, but that's just me.

As far as actually using psychics to solve crimes...pfft! Here in my 'hood, the Los Angeles Police Dept. - and I'm tempted to say "naturally" - commissioned two studies/tests of people claiming to be "psychic detectives."

Total bust. The report noted that the psychics produced about 10 times as much information as the non-psychics, so random chance alone gave them a better opportunity to get more "hits." But they still did no better than the non-psychics. None of the psychic-generated information was any more useful investigatively than that of the non-psychics. IOW, the psychics produced no names of suspects, license numbers, street addresses, etc.

The current position of the LAPD, from spokesman Dan Cooke: "The LAPD has not, does not and will not use psychics in the investigation of crimes, period. If a psychic offers free information to us over the phone, we will listen to them politely, but we do not take them seriously. It is a waste of time."

Wikipedia has some good info under "psychic detectives:"

A 1993 survey of police departments in the 50 largest cities in the United States revealed that a third of them had accepted predictions from psychic detectives in the past, although only seven departments treated such information any differently to information from an ordinary source. No police department reported any instances of a psychic investigator providing information that was more helpful than other information received during the course of a case...

Look! I coulda predicted this, so I must be psychic!

A detailed 2010 study of Sylvia Browne predictions about 115 missing persons and murder cases has found that despite her repeated claims to be more than 85% correct, "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case."

[struggle4progress]

15. I suppose my reaction to an anonymous tip from a self-proclaimed psychic would be:

Why is this person calling? And why am I being told about the person's psychic ability? Am I dealing with a nice harmless fruitcake, or is this a schizoid person who might actually have seen/heard something but can't distinguish between reality and the voices/visions, or has some real sociopath called up to jerk my chain by sending me off to a genuine mass burial under the pretext of having a psychic vision?

[okasha]

14. Sounds as if someone has seen (or smelled) something suspicious

but doesn't want to be asked how s/he knows about a possible crime, much less admit being in the vicinity.

[struggle4progress]

16. Yeah, "I had a psychic flash" might be a lot less embarrassing than "For the last ten years,

I've lived next door and I've noticed people visit and never leave"

[okasha]

19. Or, "I live next door and the guy has a chain saw."

n/t

[sudopod]

17. Don't.

Better yet, fines for wasting the sheriff department's time with false tips.

[struggle4progress]

20. I agree with you, in cases when one can determine immediately who the "psychic" is and

where it seems clear that the only "knowledge" the psychic has is from the purported "psychic's" purported "psychic" ability, that officials can immediately disregard the "tip"

If, however, the "tip" is anonymous and one cannot evaluate anything about the tipster, it seems to me officials have a more difficult problem

[struggle4progress]

21. "A self-proclaimed psychic could faces charges after making a false tip about dozens of bodies being

on a rural property in Liberty County. But first, officers have to find her ..."
Officers Search For 'Psychic' In Hoax Tip About Bodies
Tipster Said 25 To 30 Bodies Were On Liberty County Property
POSTED: Wednesday, June 8, 2011
UPDATED: 4:23 pm CDT June 8, 2011
http://www.click2houston.com/news/28168909/detail.html

[Iggo]

22. 'The owner of the home also wants answers.'

"Seventy-four reporters can get a hold of me on my telephone, but the sheriff's office cannot," Bankson said.

He's got a point there.

[struggle4progress]

25. Anonymous tip about mass grave. Blood on door. Foul odor from house. Owner and

wife out of town. Previous known resident, son of owner, a sex offender

Just because an anonymous tipster claims to be psychic doesn't necessarily mean the caller really believes it. Could be a harmless loony-tunes busybody with psychic pretensions. Could be a drunk prankster. Could be a guilt-ridden witness to multiple murders trying to avoid explaining how she knew about the affair. Could be lots of things

Police usually don't contact the property owner first when seeking a search warrant

[WolverineDG]

18. While LE has to investigate tips

I'd say that next time they might not want to tip off the media & make wild claims until they've actually substantiated something.

dg

[struggle4progress]

26. +

[gratuitous]

23. Under the legal standard of "close enough"

I don't think there's any problem with this. If someone suitably suspicious or creepy is hanging around, law enforcement folks should be encouraged to shoot first, dump the body and reserve any questions for later, possibly never. As long as a sufficient number of the raiding officers agree that the person executed was suspicious or creepy or just very, very bad, then there should be no problem, and the American people can rejoice once again that "justice" has been done.

Right? Can I get an "America, Fuck YEAH!"?

[FLPanhandle]

24. What's next? Issuing warrants from analyzing crop circles?

Or so other woo?

See Texas, this is what happens when you ignore your science teaching.

[spanone]

27. and all the media ran with it....ran like the pathetic non-journalists they are

[WolverineDG]

28. and folks on DU ran wild with it too

shiny buttons, just ripe for pushing.....


dg