Some Thoughts On Reliable Eyewitness Testimony

[masterbarber]

If you were and LEO and saw one killing livestock. Would you report exactly what you saw, and not accept any modifications by the Shift Commander? Yes or No?

Saw one what, a Bigfoot? Why would you not report exactly what you observed during any incident? Are you stating that your Supervisor ordered you to change the facts of a report or did he/she address questionable content (such as an opinion)prior to approving the report(s)?

If you've spent any time as an LEO then you should know the difference between a lawful directive/order and an unlawful one. Ordering or directing a subordinate to falsify a Police report is unlawful and against policy in most, if not all Agencies.

[Guest]

^Realistically, it's not that simple. Airline pilots have the same problem vis a vis UFO sightings; there is INTENSE pressure on the part of the airlines for them to keep silent when they see strange things in the skies.

You have to decide what's more important to you...keep silent or otherwise not fully report on something that did no one harm (other than maybe a good scare) that will ruin your professional reputation and possibly get you fired or go along to get along.

Given the current state of affairs where even when LEOs DO stick to their guns about a BF encounter they still get lumped in with the kooks and nuts, what is their reason to stick their neck out like that?

[masterbarber]

It really depends. I feel that if you're off duty, doing your thing and you see a bigfoot, then I agree that you're better off keeping your mouth shut, unless you're gonna drag that sucker in.

If you're on duty and sent to investigate a claim, you see what you believe to be "Bigfoot" then you are compelled to do your job and report it accurately. You may catch hell for it but the amount of grief will depend greatly on the known character and integrity of the Officer making the report. An on-duty Officer has many resources (which vary from agency to agency of course) at his disposal. A Professional LEO in today's world can key his mic and bring in numerous back up units, air support, SAR, Fire personnel, additional armament, portable audio/video units, portable FLIR units, NV, Professional Investigators, Tracking Dogs, etc...all in his/her quest for "Information" to support whatever situation he/she may encounter.

In a lot of ways, LEOs are the ideal witnesses because we are human information recorders. 80 to 90% of what we do is record and report information in the most clear and concise manner we can. By the very nature of what we do, we realize that scrutiny of our efforts is a given fact of life. Very few of us ever let that fact deter us while performing our duties.

edited for content

Edited November 2, 2010 by masterbarber

[Guest]

Saw one what, a Bigfoot? Why would you not report exactly what you observed during any incident? Are you stating that your Supervisor ordered you to change the facts of a report or did he/she address questionable content (such as an opinion)prior to approving the report(s)?

If you've spent any time as an LEO then you should know the difference between a lawful directive/order and an unlawful one. Ordering or directing a subordinate to falsify a Police report is unlawful and against policy in most, if not all Agencies.

Master Barber is right on the money. Want to find your LE license flushed and on the ugly end of some pretty impressive criminal charges (at least in my agency & state but also all I'm aware of), either gundeck an official report or worse, order a subordinate to do it. I would not hesitate for a moment to burn one of my guys or uniformed supervisors if I caught them doing this and neither would any other LE administrator I know.

This is why I always chuckle at the conspiracy theorists who claim traffic accidents in which BF have been killed have happened but MIBs have swept the body off, forced the agency with jurisdiction to alter or flat out not report & document as is require by law, and managed to hush up every operator, injury victim, and witness. In my three decades of experience I know this is not possible...

[Guest tirademan]

Bear mis-indentification is a red herring...EXCEPT when people are out looking for sasquatch. Then every tree snap is one. It depends on what you're expecting.

As UPs said, hunters are good sources. Here's how it really goes down in the woods!

tirademan

[Branco]

Saw one what, a Bigfoot? Why would you not report exactly what you observed during any incident? Are you stating that your Supervisor ordered you to change the facts of a report or did he/she address questionable content (such as an opinion)prior to approving the report(s)?

If you've spent any time as an LEO then you should know the difference between a lawful directive/order and an unlawful one. Ordering or directing a subordinate to falsify a Police report is unlawful and against policy in most, if not all Agencies.

No, I did not say that. And yes I spent "anytime" as a LEO. How about reading before you type.

[MagniAesir]

The first thing I fire back with the eye witness testimony argument is HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE CONVICTED EACH YEAR BY THIS VERY TESTIMONY??? ALOT! Especially if you get two or more eye witnesses and their testimony matches the other. If two or more eye witnesses pick you out of a line up, your in trouble in the US justice system.

So why does it work for our criminal court system, but when applied to sasquatch reports all bets are off? Well I suppose it's not the answer that the skeptics are looking for.......that's why.

There are plenty of people that see a moose when they have seen a cow. Or a squatch when they have seen a bear, etc... But then again many people lead urban lives and simply do not get much interaction with nature anymore. But what about the old logger or fisherman or hunter that sees native animals all the time? Then either he is lying, or he saw something outside of his normal experience.

Don't know about the US but we just had another person released from jail after serving 27 years for crimes that dna evidence shows he did not commit.

As a hunter I find it hard to believe that an experienced hunter would mistake a bipedal animal as a bear or vice versa.

On the other hand none of the experienced hunters/trappers I know have ever claimed a bf sighting.

[MagniAesir]

Hi All . Very interesting reading. As I said I am not a researcher nor did I really spend a lot of time wondering about weather there was a bigfoot or not. I think because of that I was open to information on a fair level.

The fellow who I spend all and believe me all my extra money on books for is sharp as a tack he is 94 almost 95.He was a sniper in the war and protected our rights. A good portion of his life time he has spent in the bush as a prospector and trapper.

When he speaks about this subject it is with such clarity and detail that it can't be made up. He has no reason to make up anything there is no gain for him .He only shares his many (many experiences with truly interested people ,he just seems to know who they are.He speaks of bigfoot as I would a big buck. there is no exaggeration ,no story telling tone to his voice. He knows people who have seen Bigfoot and refuse to believe it. The first time i listened to him I never heard him refer to him as anything other than a Bigfoot .He has seen family unites and is not nor has he ever been afraid to share the bush with Bigfoot.

He can't get enough information about him. I am afraid now with all of the books I have bought that I may buy some that are not genuine,or made up stories.

I so believe and from listening to him ,I can completely envision this creature.

I would realy like any book sugestions you guys may have I need to visit amazone soon. Charles

Have you ever talked to the gentleman that drives the Sasquatch Research vehicle in our area.

I know he sometimes frequents Rocko's

[Guest tirademan]

As a hunter I find it hard to believe that an experienced hunter would mistake a bipedal animal as a bear or vice versa.

I tend to agree!

tirademan

[Guest]

I was a first time hunter and even I would not mistake what I saw for a bear. No way, no how.

[MagniAesir]

I was a first time hunter and even I would not mistake what I saw for a bear. No way, no how.

This where my own experience may skew things,as I have seen black bears for as long as I can remember.

I cannot think of a single encounter with either black bears or grizzly for that matter where you could mistake them for being bipedal.

I do not believe that sasquatch exists, however I do find it insulting to chalk up many of these sightings to bears.

Some could be mis-identification undoubtedly, I am just talking about the accounts where the observer had a close-up encounter with a bipedal animal.

[Guest]

May I suggest these issues with eyewitness testimony as it relates to Bigfoot.

1. Advocates such as the late Dr. Krantz and Dr. Meldrum seem to have been converted to belief in Bigfoot by examining the track evidence. This implies that eyewitness testimony is not the strongest element of the phenomena. I suggest that without the tangible evidence of tracks, sighting reports alone would place the phenomena in the paranormal file, along with ghost stories and other spook tales, and leave the phenomena as a lay enthusiasm even more detached from general scientific interest than it is now. There must be a reason for this.

2. We should always remember that when we read eyewitness testimony, it is often presented, filtered even, by advocates through their web sites or publications, and this may color even the most simple account. This is not to say there is a dishonesty involved. Instead, there is the natural tendency to perhaps overlook possible mundane solutions if the account seems to verify what one already believes (in this case, that Bigfoot exists). Thus, some accounts may appear stronger on the page or screen than they really are if we knew all of relevant facts.

An example: Ivan Sanderson wrote about the famous Ruby Creek incident, which occurred in 1941, in a 1960 men's entertainment magazine. He interviewed the native American woman who reported seeing a "Sasquatch" outside her cabin near Ruby Creek, B.C. Her story was harrowing and Sanderson duly reported it. If he had a little more background work on the prior documents relating to the woman's testimony, he would have known that parts of her interview with him had been embellished compared to earlier accounts. For instance, she probably had only a momentary look at the animal in question before she fled in fear, with her children in tow. In Sanderson's account, she had several minutes to look at the animal, long enough that misidentification would be an implausible explanation. Either Sanderson went with a more sensational rendering of the sighting because it complied with his agenda, presenting good evidence for America's own Abominable Snowman, or he was not familiar with the discrepancies in this particular witness' testimony. In any event, his account gives us a much stronger version of the story, even if it deprives us of a better understanding of what may have really happened that day.

3. We also ought to take into account cultural influences when looking at sighting accounts. Bigfoot sightings are now, implausibly, nationwide; the growth of such reports seem to correspond to the spread of "information" presented to the general public found in entertainment programming of insatiable cable TV.

David Paulides' THE HOOPA PROJECT book gives good, if unwitting, examples of cultural influences in Bigfoot accounts. His book compiles several sighting testimonies from native American eyewitnesses in northern California. One event involved two teenage girls who, years earlier, witnessed a Bigfoot crossing the road at night, in front of their car. They said the sighting didn't last more than 5 to 7 seconds. Yet, even with this fleeting sighting, an unwelcome surprise at night, they were able to describe the creature "turn its entire upper body (not just its head) to look" at them, "walking with its knees slightly bent" and its "hands hung down near its knees as it walked", it was "near seven feet tall" and "well proportioned with broad shoulders." (p.176-177) While it's possible these two teenagers had great observational skills and good recall to "see" so much with such a brief encounter, I submit it is more plausible that they saw something that they later "remembered" as looking exactly like the stereotypical Bigfoot. Without self-awareness, Paulides writes that this sighting "had the classic Bigfoot appearance now familiar in videos."

Paulides' book also includes forensic sketches made by a police artist, drawings made during interviews with the witnesses. Most of these sketches portray Bigfoot as hair covered, but with very human faces. Again, this shows cultural influence in eyewitness reports. "Sasquatch", the being of Indian lore, is no ape. To the natives, Bigfoot are people. And this cultural belief is reflected in their eyewitness testimony.

[Guest DWA]

On ‎9‎/‎17‎/‎2010 at 5:00 AM, dopelyrics said:

Hello,

Fist of all, let me qualify this post. I am not a professional in psychology or law enforcement and my views and opinions come from what I have read or seen on the TV. I am hoping there is someone on this forum who can speak with a lot more authority and perhaps shed some light on what has oftentimes made me scratch my head.

I am led to believe that if you speak to any police officer or psychologist, they will tell you that eyewitness testimony can be notoriously unreliable. People who witness serious crimes or accidents are obviously in heightened states of excitement or anxiety, and this can have an effect on what they are seeing, or what they think they are seeing. This means they can perhaps misidentify things. In relation to the bigfoot/yeti phenomenon, I heard a story about an academic from where I live (Manchester, England) who was running though the Himalayas when he saw a yeti which was stood, almost still, for a short period of time. He even took a picture of it. He was convinced it was a yeti but when he went back a year later he discovered it was just a rock formation. His name is Tony Wooldridge and it is a fascinating story. The point here is that, yes, people can misidentify things and this is no doubt the case with a lot of Bigfoot sightings too I'm sure.

What puzzles me, though, is that if you take away the crackpots and barefaced liars, you are left with seemingly sane, credible witnesses who are definitely seeing something. I did read that when someone sees something they are at first unsure of what it is, their brains will tell them that they are seeing something familiar. I've done it myself on numerous occasions, most recently when I was on a riverbank and I saw a duck flapping, trying to get in to the water. Turns out it was a cardboard box with the lid flapping in the wind. Nothing like a duck! But because of where I was, maybe I was subconsciously thinking I would see a duck there and so I saw one. This would make sense when you hear that a lot of people who claim to have seen Bigfoot will say that at first they thought they were looking at a bear. Therefore, when the skeptics say people are misidentifying bears as Bigfoot, I am slightly wary because surely they would at first think they are seeing a bear, and then realise it is something else entirely. Yes I am sure some people do misidentify bears as Bigfoot on occasion, but surely that can't be the case all the time. Anyone any thoughts on this?

Best regards,

Lee

This is one of the reasons I tell people:  you are not dealing with this topic if you don't read, and think about, the reports.  The reports are how you know that we aren't dealing with unreliable eyewitness testimony.  There are any number of reasons that witnesses in crime/accident cases fail to "get it right," including that frequently they just don't want to.  They're getting paid off; they can't deal with potential consequences of telling the truth; they didn't get a good look but want to be helpful; and I could go on.

 

Problem with this specific case:  most people who make mistaken ID in wildlife sightings (like Mr. Wooldridge above) self-correct.  They don't go on insisting that their story - including their repeated attempts to line up what they saw with what they knew - is correct after years, even decades.

 

And I think it pretty obvious that the vast majority of people, if not everyone, making a mistake in this situation are going to do what so many sasquatch observers have done:  misidentify an unfamiliar thing as something familiar.  This is so obvious to any intelligent individual that it really needs neither explanation nor defense.