December 22, 2009
Anticipate
Make Your Move Before Your Route Gets Blocked
Your eyes are fixed on the Subject’s vehicle. You are determined not to lose him today as the case is getting old and it looks like this guy is on his way to do his once a month errand. A bus turns onto your street between you and the Subject. No problem, you can still kind of see him on the left side. A senior citizen then pulls onto the road and drives right beside the bus. The Subject gets smaller and smaller and disappears into the horizon. You call up your boss and say, “I lost him. The roads are crazy, filled with buses and old people.”
Other drivers and their inanimate objects with wheels are not at fault. You did not read your environment. Routes were being closed down in front of your eyes while you were fixated on the Subject’s vehicle.
What is coming in your direction from the sides? From the back? What is ahead of the Subject?
You should have seen the bus before it arrived at the intersection and then turned in front of you. What could you have done?
In driving school they teach you to perform “Defensive Driving”, which is basically anticipating that other drivers are idiots and are just looking to hit you.
While on the surveillance follow you need to do the same. All other drivers are just looking to cause you to lose your Subject. All traffic lights are designed to cut you off. All pedestrians are poised to walk slowly across crosswalks in front of you. All trains try to intercede on the Subject’s behalf. All construction vehicles need to back up onto the road between you and the Subject’s vehicle.
Spotting these things before they happen (sometimes mere moments) is what separates the good investigator from the one who goes home moping around 9:30 am.
The follow was the hardest skill for me to learn. It took about five years for me to develop a good system and good instinct for the follow.
For my first year in this business my eyes were glued to the Subject’s vehicle. During my next few years I learned to read/time several sets of lights ahead of me, learned how to use momentum to insure that I got through intersections, and learned how to keep my follow simple (simple means that for the most part stay behind the Subject and avoid “paralleling”, “front follows” and shooting past a turning Subject and having to pull a u-turn).
It was not until my fifth year that I developed a style of “Controlling my Environment”. This means that instead of worrying about what is going on along the follow route and what other drivers are doing along the follow route, control the environment, control the events along the route and control the other drivers along the route. Position your vehicle to not lose the Subject when you see a narrowing of the lanes at a constructions site up ahead; position your vehicle to not let that slow senior citizen creep up ahead of you and drive in sync with a school bus blocking both lanes; position your vehicle to keep both the straight lane and the turn lane free of other vehicles until you are sure of the direction being taken by the Subject; and position yourself to take control of two lanes when you need to get thru an intersection. Control your environment.
As you develop your follow your mind will operate like a computer with the ability to rapidly process information from all your senses. You will develop the ability to process information from your peripheral vision as fast as from your focused vision. You will not only see individual cars around you but you will see the overall flow and movement of traffic. You will be able to detect any variance in the Subject’s driving style which may indicate that the Subject is lost, has overshot his turn, is on or has gotten off a cell phone, is becoming suspicious of your vehicle or has even turned on his radio.
The first few possible reasons will cause you to react by allowing more or less distance in case of a turn or u-turn, a changing of lanes yourself to allow for a quick turn by the Subject or a cessation of the follow in case the Subject becomes suspicious. You will be able to count the times that the Subject has had the opportunity to see your vehicle and you will be able to adjust your following style accordingly.
As you develop your follow, your driving (work or non-work) will be safer, you will be able to put full days on even those Subject’s who have one hundred errands for that day, your frustrations about the job (most of them are about the follow) will slowly dissipate and you will fend off Alzheimer’s as you will be exercising more than the only ten percent of your brain that scientists say we use.
Johnston Blakley