Gordon Graham here and allow me to give you some thoughts on “random irregularity” – or for those of you who have an engineering background – “intentional variance.” Here are some examples of it in action:
1. Randomized patrol
Let me take you on a trip back to 1975 when metered on-ramps debuted on metropolitan Los Angeles freeways. The “thinkers” at Caltrans – the state transportation agency – had an idea that controlling the flow of traffic onto the Interstate would reduce the chokepoints and allow traffic to more freely merge with the main portion of the freeway – and thus reduce collisions. However, a lot of motorists did not think this new rule applied to them, so some enforcement was necessary to get compliance.
At the time I was a motor cop assigned to the north end of Beat Eight – Interstate 5 in downtown Los Angeles. With about 20 ramps on my beat – and only one beat partner – we could not enforce every ramp, every day, but we could move from ramp to ramp during those hours of enforcement so motorists would not be able to know for sure if there was going to be any enforcement on a given date and a given time.
Let me make a long story short – when CalTrans did compliance audits on all the beats in central Los Angeles – my beat had the highest compliance rate.
Little did I know that 5,000 miles away, there was another young cop in the UK doing the same thing but with a different focus. Here are his words: “A tutor showed me the benefit of not having an obvious patrol pattern. We would walk down an alley and then once at the bottom double back and slowly walk back up it. I can remember catching a good few people by this simple ‘ruse’! In a patrol car, my partner and I used to have a dice and roll it when we weren’t going to a job – a 1 would mean we doubled back, 2 we took a right, 3 take the next left, 4 stay in the area for 10 minutes, etc., and so on – it was a bit of fun and randomized our patrol pattern – again to often positive effect.”
2. Predator stakeouts
Now let’s fast forward to 1977 and the “Hillside strangler” investigation. I was active on the beat back then. Two violent sexual predators were kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing women in the Los Angeles area. I was teaching a class on license plate recognition, which led to one of the investigators on the Hillside strangler case contacting me with some questions about license plates. He invited me to their “war room” to look at some plates, which is how I got exposed to my first major sex crimes investigation. Are you aware that some of these predators stake out their victim for weeks (sometimes months) in advance to learn their patterns – where they eat, where they jog, where they park their car – so they can take advantage of their patterns and commit a sexual assault?
3. Airport security
Let’s fast forward again to September 11, 2001. After that violent terrorist attack, America decided to “tighten up” airport security and checking cars coming into airports. It is impossible to have 24/7 coverage on any given airport so some smart people at some airports put together a plan of random irregularity as to when, where and how long they would stop cars coming into the airport property. This hopefully would “scare away” bad people with evil intent because the inspections could not be predicted.
4. predictable patrol
A few years ago, I was delayed all day at a regional airport in South Carolina because of the weather. As I was reading and getting caught up on the laptop, I watched the airport cop on “patrol.” It was hilarious but simultaneously sad. I was on the bottom level of this two-level airport and, from my vantage point, could see portions of the top level. The cop was so predictable – EXACTLY every 22 minutes he would come down the escalator, staring straight ahead and when he reached the bottom, he would make a right turn and go up the escalator in the same manner. The same cycle went on all day long. His patrol behavior was highly predictable.
Bad people exploit patterns
The editor of this writing has told me in advance “no more than 1,000 words” – so here is the wrap-up.
If you are a cop and you are eating at the same place at the same time every day, you are establishing a pattern that can be easily exploited.
If you are patrolling the same way every day, you are establishing a pattern.
If you are jogging by yourself at the same time every evening, you are establishing a pattern.
Bad people try to learn patterns so they can exploit this information and use it to their benefit. History tells us that cops have died because their behavior was so predictable.
Bottom line: As you do your job and live your life day in and day out – be careful about establishing patterns that can be exploited by bad people.
