Mod+ 284. Why police don’t use psychic detectives? Even though they are effective.

When I lived in Flagstaff I worked in the Philosophy Dept. At one point, one of the graduate students had a dream about a woman who had just been killed. The dream was pre-cognitive or something. He made the mistake of sharing the info he got with law enforcement and was actually arrested for the murder. He was in jail for quite a while...if I remember correctly he even went to trial. He was eventually released.
Hi Judith,

Do you have any further info on this individual? If not can you lead me to any information to learn more about this case?

Thanks.
 
I can imagine why he might not want to encourage a lot of people to approach him with claims that they have psychic powers. Could that just be a diplomatic way of putting it?
I absolutely agree. Rare opportunities should be sought out and investigated carefully! It's not often you get truly exception people willing to submit themselves to tests, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/World-Grain-Sand-Clairvoyance-Ossowiecki/dp/0786421126

Ossowiecki did not have ego issues, and was in fact quite humble about it.

Cheers,
Bill
 
This was more than 25 years ago (ugh...I'm old) and I have lost touch with most folks who worked in the department at that time.
 
Alex's question at the end of the interview:

Alex thinks that police departments are less likely now to use psychic resources on account of successful sceptical pressure. What do you think about that?

The phenomenon of officers/detectives having "unexplainable" hunches or gut instincts about cases (without evidence) is no different, yet in those cases the officers are considered heroes. What are the efforts to understand how/why/when/to whom it happens? Likely, none.
 
When I lived in Flagstaff I worked in the Philosophy Dept. At one point, one of the graduate students had a dream about a woman who had just been killed. The dream was pre-cognitive or something. He made the mistake of sharing the info he got with law enforcement and was actually arrested for the murder. He was in jail for quite a while...if I remember correctly he even went to trial. He was eventually released.

In an old post on his blog, Joe McMoneagle basically warned people with psychically-obtained information not to contact and try to share it with law enforcement agencies. An exception to this rule would be people whose psychic perceptions tend to be pretty accurate and can be shared on a more-or-less repeatable basis.

http://www.mceagle.com/blog/2006/do-you-tell-anyone/

Do you tell anyone?
from Joe, on October 5th, 2006

The question is, if you get information “psychically or through remote viewing” that might be useful to someone in power, do you tell them?

Of course not! My recommendation would be not to do it, unless you want an FBI case number after your name and a permanent file in their regional data bank where someone will go to it every time something really screwy happens and ask to look at his “nut-balls” listing, to see if anything cross references to you — because that’s exactly where you will end up and that’s exactly what will happen.

You could volunteer your information in some secretive way? Actually, that could prove to be much worse. What if you turn out to be right? If you are correct, then you are automatically suspected as involved and every effort will be made to hunt you down since you did deliver the information secretively. And since they have had to hunt you down, you are now automatically considered a righteous suspect, or at least until you are totally cleared (preferably by alibi.) Take my word for it. Out of any given 100 investigators, and I’m talking hard-core investigators, maybe two would believe you got it in your dreams or psychically in the first place, so you still get the case number and go in the nut-bag file drawer until you’ve solved at least five or six cases.

This is probably something not worth doing unless they come and ask you for it first. This means you must first develop a track record of some significance.

(Ding!) I heard that from the back of the room. “Gee, how do I do that if no one will ever listen to me or use me in the first place?” Great question!

Basically, it’s called sink or swim. You jump in. Ignore everything I just said. If you think you are that good and the information is that good, you pick up a phone and call someone at your local FBI Regional Headquarters and give them your name. You tell them you are a psychic [don’t try and explain remote viewing, they don’t care about it] and you have information you feel is important. Then you give them the information. They take it and put it all in the “Nut-bag File.” If it comes true, they will show up at your door and you will be seriously interviewed and asked where you were and what you were doing when it occurred. I hope you have a great alibi for where you were when it happened.

Now, you keep doing that, until you’ve established a track record that contains more accurate information than inaccurate information, at which point they will then take you out of the “Nut-bag File” and give you a confidential informant number, and may actually accept your phone calls. However, and this is critically important you hear this because I will only say this one time. If you tell anyone you are working for the Government or the FBI, and they find out you said that, you will go permanently into the “Nut-bag File” and they will never speak to you again. The rule is; if you talk about their business, they will have no business to do with you. And that is the same with every law enforcement agency I’ve ever had any knowledge of.

And, there is one louder and more significant word of warning that is even more important when it comes to important people in power and that regards the President of the United States. Never mess with the President unless you are absolutely, 100%, solid-gold positive about your information and can back it up with a track record that is Platinum-clad. The Secret Service is an organization that does not muck about or play games with anyone about anything at all. You do not want to go into their “Nut-bag File.” Once you go in, you do not come out.

There is one other comment I would add here. If this is a game you want to play in, then you can’t be just good at it, you must be very, very good at it. Because there are people in power who play on more than one side of the street and they do so simultaneously. Sometimes they even play on more than one street at a time. If you cannot see that psychically along with the information you are choosing to deliver, you may be playing in a very awkward game and be in for some very uncomfortable surprises.

As many of you know, I can be somewhat humorous when speaking. In the past, I have sometimes referred to remote viewing within the halls of government, the law, or bureaucracies as more like a ‘knife fight in a phone booth’ (then of course everyone titters and laughs.) But, no matter how many laugh whenever I make that statement, I’ve never made it to be funny. It’s absolutely true.


Doug
 
Dean (1:57:20):

"She's completely correct in terms of ego getting in the way. That's definitely -- we see that in the lab a lot. That's one of the reasons, by the way, that we don't test people who come to us who claim to have special abilities. Because the moment that they learn that maybe they may have some kind of ability, their ego always becomes inflated, and we don't want to be responsible for that."

I think in reality he is not getting talented psychics coming to him making claims. If someone showed up who could juggle bowling balls using PK he would test them and not worry about inflating the psychic's ego.

When you have psychic ability, you know it. The talented psychics I met at Spiritualist churches know they are psychic and don't need a scientist to tell them that "maybe they may have some kind of ability". They prove it week after week in development class, advanced students give readings in public at church services and certified mediums have to pass a practical exam to get certified. The mediums know who is good and who is better because they see each other work in class and church and the opinion of a scientist is not going to affect their ego one way or the other because any issues involving ego revolve around the opinion of other mediums and people who attend the church services. One of the mediums who worked the churches in my area had been certified by Gary Schwartz and it made no difference in her standing in the community. What mattered was her continuing ability to communicate with the deceased.

It is interesting that some people are not very psychic until they start taking classes and their ability develops to the point where they can work as a medium. You would think that this phenomenon would interest parapsychologists. Maybe it is the parapsychologists who's egos are too big to see that there are things that ordinary people know that they don't

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...next-will-surprise-you.2489/page-3#post-76292
 
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I think in reality he is not getting talented psychics coming to him making claims. If someone showed up who could juggle bowling balls using PK he would test them and not worry about inflating the psychic's ego.

Why would somebody real bother working with a scientist who will throw them under the bus in public, but be fine with working with them in private?

In his last book, Russell Targ said he wished they had treated Uri Geller better. Because Geller was a controversial celebrity, they didn't back him up in regards to the success of the tests at SRI. It's no wonder Geller doesn't bother with scientists anymore.
 
This was more than 25 years ago (ugh...I'm old) and I have lost touch with most folks who worked in the department at that time.
That's cool, and I understand. Perhaps can you tell me exactly what year? I'm interested in looking further into this and I'm sure there must be some record if a graduate student was arrested for murder. Thanks!
 
I recently watched this old "Sightings" episode about a child murder in 1979, where the murderer had not been identified when the episode was broadcast (which must have been around 1992). The (rather harrowing) case starts at 39:40.

According to the police sergeant interviewed in the episode, a psychic had given them accurate descriptions of where to look for the body.

In the episode, the psychic has a police artist draw a portrait from her descriptions of the man she perceives to be the killer (best pause the video at 47:10 to get a good look and compare with the foto in the link below).

She also makes the statement that he probably had killed another child since, had a wife or a girlfriend who was afraid of him and was about 5 foot 9 of height.

So I googled the case and found that finally in 2009, DNA traces seem to have led to the identification of the killer:

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/10/fresno_police_solve_30_year-ol.php

If you compare the police drawing with the foto, they do look alike (just imagine the hair still being dark). It's not proof positive, of course, but I would definitely count it as "pro psychic detective" evidence. Sadly, the articles I found via Google don't seem to mention other details, like the bodily height of the murderer. He seems to have been arrested (and sentenced to death actually, but he obiously had not been executed by 2009) for the murder of two teenagers back in 1980, which is the year after the case in the Sightings episode. This would make the psychic's intuition in the episode, that he had killed again, correct (although she said "another child", not "two teens").

Strange, but maybe not surprising: while I googled the case and the new findings, I noticed that on most sites, neither the psychic nor the Sightings episode are mentioned. For example, most articles state that Victoria Desantiago's body had been found in an irrigation trench, but nowhere (except probably on the "fringy" sites) does it say that it was found as a direct result of a psychic's information (as the police sergeant claims in the Sightings episode).

What I'm wondering about is that there must have been many more occasions where the psychics' intuitions had been documented in writing, on tape or even on camera and could then be verified or falsified when more evidence turned up. Does anyone have similar cases of evidence confirming or refuting psychics' statements long after them being documented?

Sorry if I'm digging up what might be old hats for you, but here in Germany, psychic detectives are basically a non-subject and I'm only now getting to watch these episodes on Youtube (and sorry about my pedestrian english, btw.).

As for the title of this thread, I guess it would be very interesting to have some hard numbers of instances where psychic information has indeed been helpful versus instances where they didn't seem to be of much or any use. But that will probably not be possible because most police officials won't or can't admit to using psychic information at all.
 
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