All those 20/20 and Dateline specials and America's most wanted and it's clones as a kid(what were my parents thinking?) Was reintroduce by way of podcasts.
It was probably actual the movie Zodiac, which dramatizes the creation of true crime narratives more than it being true crime properly. Making A Murderer was probably my first real true crime thing that I was big into
My mom is a lawyer so she studied a lot of criminal cases and discussed them with me. She made it very clear to me that a lot of cases were a ‘mystery’ not because of criminal genius but because of money, class, corruption and police negligence. Also how the media and mobs get in the way of investigations at times. We’re not American but it is clear that the reality is like that in many countries.
yeah, i'm on the autism spectrum and used to get in trouble all the time as a kid for things i didn't do, because i "acted guilty." hope i never end up in an interrogation room lol
Yeah this is the worst assumption. People think that they can tell if someone is lying for example but are actually really bad at it. The people they think are lying are usually people who are just nervous or neurodivergent.
ugh, this so much. Neurotypicals are so weird about eye-contact... like, if you don't do eye contact they think you're lying, but if you do it some arbitrary length of time too much, then they think you're creepy/aggressive, and they get scared of you. There's no winning with them.
I never really understood the concept of civilians having to stay calm and collected under pressure when in the presence of cops in fear of being killed; but cops, who are supposedly trained to deal with pressure, are allowed to freak out and "act weird" or reckless the moment something doesn't go as planned
SAME; I was thinking about having seen unfortunately one of the videos and it just dawned on me how crazy it is honestly how some people are so calm in the face of a someone else pointing a gun on them, ready to end their life. I kept thinking, "shouldn't people be trained to be able to even hear anybody knowing that one wrong move can mean death?" I am fairly certain that if a cop pulled a gun on me or even worse, multiple cops did, that I would not a hear single word that was being said to me. I'd be too freaked out and possibly shot. It really would take training though to not engage in the fight or flight response that would kick in with knowing that someone is possibly seconds away from ending everything, and yet just seeing a police uniform is suppose to do something in the human pysche that should make the person calm enough to follow instructions given by again a person who has already shown that he/she can not be fully trusted to do what is reasonable.
yes! i saw a video of a cop shooting a puppy running up to him and he screamed at the owner nearby for screaming and crying? like, who do you think is overreacting right now buddy.
@@lucilovette5030Okay, but was this _actually_ a puppy running up to the cop or a big snarling dog running up for an attack and you're just trying to censor that?
@@rhondahoward8025 i saw the video myself and the dog was showing no signs of agression and was relatively small. regardless, the point of the comment was about his reaction to the owner being upset. not everything people say is an agenda theyre trying to push
realizing now that "acting weird means you're guilty" is literally the exact logic my 3rd grade teacher used to accuse me of harming a classmate - "crying means you're guilty" she said as she berated me in front of the class wow, wowowowow
This is why I can't take the 'genius serial killer' trope seriously anymore. The cops are usually just incompetent and apathetic, so no, the killer isn't some super chess master, as Penelope Scott sings. 'Ted Bundy was just never that fucking bright He was just sorta charismatic and White, alright '
Being a neurodivergent person that whole "don't act weird ever when the cops are around" thing is something I think about. Don't act weird when anyone is around, ever... /s
I've seen so many body language people trying to discredit celebrities and you tubers lately especially Megan Markle that I am paranoid that if my neurodivergent butt ever got famous I would be eaten alive for every single behavour I exhibit. It is kind of insane how people think that body language can tell them everything they need to know about a person even though they've never met them.
@@deihiru I'm not sure how much I buy in to Body-Language analysis being 70% effective. Like if you take the lie detector tests and the pseudoscience that drives it. If lie detector tests are based on pseudoscience, then how is divination based on body language considered an actual science? I think if we were to be honest with the techniques, the reason there is a 70% efficacy rate is generally due to these people being called in when there is already a good amount of evidence that support the individual's guilt. So it's not so much divination of their guilt based on the Body Language, but more a method of detecting what areas of a conversation is better for applying pressure. I dunno I am probably just a crazy person ;)
@@nerdjournal You're not, I agree with you. I mean, how hard is to indicate someone's lying when you know for a fact they were guilty/convicted? I swear people watch Lie to Me and Criminal Minds and think behavioral analysis works like magic.
"I'm not shaming her for being an addict--" No, you're shaming her for sentencing innocent people to death, which is ABSOLUTELY something to be shamed for.
I'm genuinely terrified that I'm gonna be framed for a horrible crime because I'm autistic and so my normal behavior is treated as suspicious by neurotypicals. Plus I act SUPER suspicious when I'm accused of stuff. It's terrifying to think about.
I’m not autistic (I don’t think) but I’m a twitchy guy by nature and it scares the living lights out of me because I’m also black and I don’t want to get beaten down or shot and killed because I moved awkwardly and too fast😬
If I'm ever on a jury I feel like my hometown policy of dealing with things among ourselves and distrusting the justice system will be my autopilot, so hopefully I'll never be involved I wrongly convicting anyone. I remember watching shows though and yelling, "These interviewers aren't your therapists, call for you fucking lawyer!" Everytime. Then if they do the team being all, "They so guilty!"
One of the major things I learned in my Legal Language class was that when you are talking to police, you are NOT innocent until proven guilty in their eyes. If they suspect you, as far as they're concerned, you're guilty. And they're not gonna tell you if you're a suspect. Also, if you don't say the exact words correctly when you are trying to exercise your rights, they will deny you those rights and that denial will be held up by a judge. For example, a person who said "I want to speak to a lawyer" was not given a lawyer and the judge ruled in favor of the cops. You literally have to say "I am exercising my right to a lawyer right now" and same with your right to remain silent. You literally have to tell them that you are exercising that right or else whatever harassment and bullshit torture they put you through to try to get you to talk will be considered legal.
"They were acting weird so they're guilty" is such a ridiculously ableist concept too, on top of everyone reacting differently to things and being pushed to acting different than their usual selves by the circumstances or outright pressure by cops/lawyer/etc, you got a bunch of neurodiverse people who have bits of behavior that don't align with what neurotypicals expect so "they were acting weird" is "No Karen, they were fidgeting with their hands and blinking hard because they're under extreme pressure and forced to be standing there statically".
Reminds me of that mini-series Sharp Objects, where the whole shitty ass town thinks the brother of a murder victim killed his little sister because he acts weird. "Weird" in this town is defined as "Expressing the tell-tale signs grief related to the brutal murder of your little sister who you clearly adored". Like the dude was closed off, not sexually active, and drinking. Gotta be the murderer! And once they got the scantest physical evidence & his gf (who also didn't understand the signs of a man in grief) to make a statement, they arrested him.
A lot of the 'tells' that someone is lying, accelerated heartrate, lack of eye contact, fidgeting, etc are all just things that are normal for many neurodivergent or mentally ill people. I get accused of lying so much by people who aren't used to my mannerisms unless I heavily mask, which is damaging to my mental health
I've had chronic bronchitis since I was twelve and I live in Texas. One year in high school, I was pretty frequently losing my voice for a couple hours during the day before it was slowly come back and I had no idea why. On one of these days, I got interviewed by a police officer because my friend got in big trouble and they were interviewing everyone to figure out what happened. I expressed to the officer that I lost my voice, so I participated with the entire interagation while writing my responses on a white board. The school called my parents afterwards just to make sure that they were aware that I talked to an officer that day, when they mentioned that I had lost my voice. My parents were confused because I was speaking just fine that morning before I walked out to the bus. Suddenly, I was getting pulled out of class and being forced to talk even though I kept expressing how much it hurt and my voice barely even sounded human. I was being scolded by school officials for being rude and hindering their investigation and I was so confused as to what I did wrong. I explained that my bronchitis sometimes acts up in the middle of the day and I had no idea why, and they were completely dismissive of me, not even believing that I actually had chronic bronchitis because I was only 15 at the time. I was so confused and my parents ended up grounding me when I got home, accusing me of the same thing. It took years for me to realize what was happening is that walking and standing outside to catch the bus in the early morning winter air was causing my bronchitis to act up to the point where I couldn't speak for a few hours. Cold winters are really rare in Texas, so I had no idea what was happening at the time.
The first true crime story that I really remember hearing about was Lindy Chamberlain, aka the 'Dingoes ate my baby' case. She was only recently exonerated, and even before she was convicted she was largely tried by the media because she 'didn't grieve properly'. As a conventionally attractive woman, she was painted to be some kind of heartless Jezebel who didn't care about the death of her daughter, when really she was likely doubly traumatised by the intense media invasion into her life.
I binged a lot of true crime content lately, and many of them really are scathing indictment of how feckless some cops are, yet they always frame cops as the underdog in those cases.
Me, an autistic adult who constantly sees people online screaming about someone being guilty based off of eye contact issues, inappropriately timed or lack of/limited outward showing emotions, timing of comments or how things are phrased, etc.: "This is fine" :) I also want to add, when comments about police in investigations who actually do their job and are mostly people expressing they're surprised it says a lot about the behavior of law enforcement
Talking about Columbine, my middle school did a whole thing showing us footage and spreading anti-bullying awareness, and my black ass somehow still sussed out the vibe of those little nazis even though that was never brought up. Was haunted as a child. Also, it's seriously insane how a lot of unsolved crime just boils down to incompetence and police malpractice.
there's a video series on here with interviews of columbine survivors. one of them is a black woman and she indeed confirmed not only their racism but racism in general in the school and town.
"If only those Nazi boys hadn't been bullied this wouldn't have happened" sound super victim blame-y to me like the kids of Columbine caused the school shooting to happen. Isn't it the fault of the shooters for being nazis? They choose to be Nazis.
My stepmom was a prison guard, she was a demon, so she was perfect for the job. Just from hearing how she talked about the prisoners, and how she bragged about mistreating them, prison sounds like absolute torture. I don't know if anyone deserves that.
Haha i think i know her. You are correct. It's bad. Its better than jail, but it's basically a trauma factory. And as we know, repeated trauma makes people more stable and productive and less likely to mask their pain with drugs/alcohol.
@@jessicavictoriacarrillo7254 I'm okay, not unscathed from dealing with her but honestly I just hope she stops working at that job for the sake of all the people stuck in prison ,,
@@Skag_Sisyphus Definitely. Prisons are egregiously ineffective at rehabilitating people, and regardless of what crime a prisoner may have committed, the conditions/abuse people face in prison are unnecessary and inhumane.
This is why I can’t understand the call for gun control in response to mass shootings. Most of these calls come from liberals who generally don’t trust the police. So why on earth would you want police to be the only ones with guns? Why are people so willing to give up rights that you will never be able to get back if it doesn’t solve the issue? Why wouldn’t you exhaust every other possible solution first, before giving up such a fundamental right? It really comes down to do we want to find solutions to make us actually safer or solutions that make us feel safer, but ultimately more vulnerable?
They're also under no legal obligation to protect you from harm according to the United states Supreme Court. So 'protect and serve' is a load of propaganda.
My problem with a lot of true crime podcasts/youtubers has been that, as a disabled person, with disabled kids, who works with disabled people, they often point from their armchairs to ppl who either have clear mental health issues, or a developmental disability, that are “obvious” or who have supposedly confessed to police or another authority figure. So these ppl, some of whom have very large audiences, are basically setting ppl up as targets. And I think that might go very badly one day.
It's happening now with amber heard and it's going to get so much worse for anyone trying to testify against high profile sexual harassers now that they have the idea to hit them with anti-defamation suits 😑
@@LKing-ue2jl I mean, my point was more on how easy it is to falsely convict a person with a developmental disability, but yeah, this has been frankly terrifying.
watching true crime has taught me a lot, here are some things: 1. always tell someone if you are going out somewhere. you can just quickly text a family member or friend about when you're heading out and when you are coming back. 2. always trust your gut when it comes to thinking someone or someplace might be off. it isn't worth the risk to yourself. 3. when first meeting someone do so in public where there are lot of people around and have a plan to get out of there on your own fast if you need to. 4. always bring a map/compass or radio phone if you walk out into the woods, way too many people go missing. 5. if someone is shady or has done something bad to you, let others around you know so that they can be cautious around that person too. even if they don't believe you, it is worth it.
Also if you have a partner that consents, some of those "spy" apps can keep you and your partner safer. They allow the other person to see the location and messages, so that if something goes wrong, the location can be found and recent texts as well. Most people will likely see this as invasive, but my partner and I are both physically disabled and autistic, so we are willing to allow each other to have access to personal information to increase our safety
Also in relation to your first point, if you suspect someone to be missing, IT IS NOT REQUIRED TO WAIT 24 HOURS BEFORE REPORTING IT. The first 24 hours can be crucial to a missing person's safety and well-being, and it can potentially be the difference between life and death. It's okay if you feel like you're jumping the gun, but it's better to be safe than sorry.** ** I'm not saying this to put fear in people. Obviously context matters and every situation ranges in severity (not every case is going to be the worst case scenario). Don't beat yourself up for waiting to report if you feel somewhat confident that that person is/is going to be okay, because sometimes they may be. But if you really are concerned for their safety, just know that you do not have to wait and can report a person as missing immediately upon suspicion.
Another thing that true crime podcasts and shows have taught me is to be afraid of is the Reid interrogation method. Like, just imagining all the mind games and the exhaustion over being interrogated for hours and hours, I can see myself just saying "yes, whatever you want me to sign" just to make it stop.
As someone who has the Reid technique certification... yeah the mind games are real. But just be as raw as you can. Answer short and concisely for most questions. If they accuse you, don't be polite. Be aggressive and bold with your denial. Push back against assumptions. Basically, just don't be shy about getting verbally aggressive in saying "NO." Better to just get a lawyer tho haha
@@leapofsren2159 (Sorry, I haven't seen the video yet) But is there a way out of it? Like, refusing to participate "without speaking to a/my lawyer first" or something? Cos that's really how the whole "justice system" works: to wear you down, weaken your defences, and leave you so exhausted that you'll take a plea bargain, sign a false confession, etc... I hope never to be in that situation, but it's shocking how easily & often a genuinely not-guilty person is dragged into this stuff. Cheers m8
44:00 Cases like this is why I’m against the death penalty. I don’t consider myself a noble person or anything I just think that as long as there’s a system there will be mistakes and human errors and that means that there is a chance an innocent person will be executed. I do not think it’s worth it.
Yes. While I wish we could execute rapists the fact that multiple people have been exonerated from death row means that we can't be trusted with this power. That and even the Supreme Court has said that the death penalty is applied almost randomly.
Same here. But also there's a huge ethical issue with killing someone, however horrible. Too often (always?) the execution is motivated by revenge, not justice.
Yeah, for every case where I want the perpetrator to be killed there's at least three more ones where people lost decades of their lives, or their lives, due to poor investigative work and/or lying witnesses.
I don’t agree with most cases that get the death penalty, but… you’ve inevitably come across some *really* fucked up people if you are really interested in true crime. There are cases that have so much torture inflicted on the victims that I want to kill myself just to avoid such a fate. I won’t, but it’s really appealing if you hear any details about those cases. It’s the people who deliberately torture others that deserve the death penalty- because we cannot legally put them through the same horrible fate that their victim met. People who do that shit won’t feel bad or guilty, so why bother spending resources on them in prison? What does rotting in prison do for people like that? Nothing.
@@smallandstressed2364 I rather they rot in prison and we waste some resources than an innocent person or a person that can be rehabilitated fall into death row.
Being from Ukraine, as a child I used to watch TV programmes about Soviet crime all the time. It really baffled me even then how useless and often straight up evil the police was. In every high-profile cerial killer case (like Chikatilo) several random suspects were tortured until they confessed, while the real murderer walked free for years.
"What is the point of prison?" Is a really important question that, as a society, we need to come together and find an answer to. Some people want it to be a deterrent, some people want it to be a punishment, some people want it to be rehabilitative, etc. but it does a pretty bad job of all of those things and many of our expectations for prisons are at odds with themselves.
You don't want to be on jury duty. You don't want to have a part in a broken system with no good options. I was in a first degree murder trial of a child and it opened my eyes to the corruption of both the system and the desperate ignorance of the general population as represented by the other jurors. I will die thinking about my part in that terrible episode, even though I feel I made the only possible choice.
Rewatching Forensic Files has been wild. The number of episodes where I'm left wondering "how does that prove anything???" or "But that's been shown to be junk science!" It's.....scary. Literally an episode that a person was convicted of murder because "no woman would ever go pick up her kids from the babysitter with grass seeds in her hair" I think my sister's obsession with Diane Downs got me into true crime.
Going from watching the Innocence Project to Forensic Files is downright horrifying. It ends up being a list of cases that need to be reinvestigated. I think that all evidence with any DNA needs to be tested, even if the person convicted of the crime is dead, just for the sake of their families. If I'd lost someone to a violent crime, and the person arrested was put away on really weak evidence, it wouldn't be comforting at all. It'd mean that the person who did it is probably still out there, and a horrible injustice is being committed against the person locked up. Another thing that I noticed about Forensic Files, is how often the murder could have been avoided if the abuse cycle could have been disrupted. My wife works at a domestic violence shelter, and according to her, people who get trapped are usually people in poverty, people without options (money, available/affordable housing) to get out of bad situations, which means that toxic relationships are allowed to fester and grow more and more and more violent. Recently, one of her client's ex killed their parents and kidnapped them and their child, then when cornered died in a shoot-out with police. If the police had listened when the client came to them, if they'd been able to get into housing that was safe and not their parents' couch, if the couple had been able to break up and go their separate ways instead of being forced to continue living together because there's a shortage of affordable housing... three people would still be alive, and the client and their kid wouldn't have gone through that horrible experience.
@@dreamingfifi Yeah, there are still a lot of great episodes, but in cases like the guy found guilty because his car belts made matched the "unique" marks in the body of the victim, or the one the couple was accused because nobody keeps movie tickets, it's very unsettling.
@@deihiru As someone who’s been saving movie ticket stubs for like a decade, that’s kind of terrifying! What is or isn’t considered “weird” behavior is sooo arbitrary.
@@reggie3993 I do the same with all kinds of receipts and other little papers. What scared me though, was the circular reasoning: "He kept the ticket to have an alibi for the murder." "But how do you know he murdered her?" "Because he kept the ticket!"
What surprises me, is how so much of the true crime “fandom” are so pro-cops when most, if not all, of the most prolific crime cases were caused by police malice, incompetence or both. I consume a lot of true crime content and it’s really hard to recall one case where the police aren’t somehow, partly or fully to blame. Not the most famous ones (Bundy, Dahmer, etc) nor the lesser known ones.
Loved the section on forensic science! We love to say “believe the science”, and we should, but without forgetting that all science has a human element. Who is doing the science? People who have their own motivations, interests, biases and character flaws. Trust but verify!
18:47 "if something smells like bitter almonds that's poison, that's arsenic" I know this section of the video is all in good fun but I just can't help it, it always bugs me how people get this wrong most of the time. No, arsenic doesn't smell like bitter almonds, that's cyanide, totally different poison, arsenic kills you slowly if you take it repeatedly for weeks, cyanide kills you in minutes if you're given a lethal dose. Also I know what bitter almonds smell like only because they are used to give flavor to pastry so I have many times eaten stuff that smells of bitter almonds and am still here. EDIT: I really liked the video BTW, keep it up!
The comparison of the smell of cyanide to bitter almonds is kind of misleading since the cyanide gas is only released from them if you break the bitter almonds up and add some water, which isn't exactly the process I'd personally choose to prepare something when I want to smell it. Also, cyanide is not the only odored compound released from this process, which further complicates trying to smell it in isolation. A TH-cam channel by the name of Nile Red actually produced some HCN gas both from bitter almonds and lab chemicals to test the theory that it smells of bitter almonds. After smelling it himself, he found the odor to be much more chemical, like an old pool towel. This is of course, by no means definitive proof (a sample size of 1 isn't exactly something to label as hard evidence), but I think it shows how unreliable smell can be for detecting these kinds of poisons. Hopefully this comment doesn't come off too nitpicky, I just figured it was relevant to the spirit of the myths around the smell of poisons. I agree with you that this video was a pleasure to watch though!
@@low5025 Holy macaroni! I somehow missed your post! Hi5! NileRed is awesome! ♡ Oh, my reply got nicked anyway. Just, y'all watch NileRed's video (with [the C chemical] or bitter almonds).
@@low5025 The sample size was 3, but that's hardly better, plus one was his brother, and genetics may or may not play a role in ability to smell it. Just noting. And fwiw imo no way 8+ bitter almonds can get eaten accidentally; they taste horrendous, & are V easily noticed.
One of the most fascinating/horrifying things I read recently was about the lead-crime hypothesis, which suggests that lead exposure rates tend to correlate fairly well with murder rates about twenty years later. IIRC, it's tracked at national, international, city, and even neighborhood levels... and the 90s are about twenty years after lead was banned from gasoline. Not necessarily related to true crime, but it definitely feels like its related to the 'no one knows what caused a downturn in violent crime since the 90s'
This hypothesis also partially explains why older poor neighborhoods that don't the resources to remove lead paint still have elevated crime levels and higher rates of ADD and other problems.
I also have read about that. It makes sense. It’s just so funny to think that we love to believe that we can raise children properly but so many things are out of our hands. Maybe our kid won’t end up in prison because of what their parents did, maybe they will because of environmental factors. Absolutely chilling. (I don’t have kids but always wonder why people end up how they do).
My true crime intro was watching "America's Most Wanted" with my mom as a kid. My mom was a former rape crisis counselor and domestic violence and incest victim advocate, which made her an interesting person to watch AMW with. I remember her pointing out a couple who were interviewed on TV one time, I don't think it was AMW, but my mom said, "the way that woman looks at her husband, her body language, and the shape of her face, I think she might be a battered woman..." At the end of the show, the narrator said ,"...'s wife was shot in a domestic accident..." My mom was like "oh, yeah, I'm SURE it was an accident!" I never forgot that. I've been into true crime since I was around 11, but I never bought into the "hero cop" story line, a standby of the genre of true crime books. I'd just heard too many stories of law enforcement guys beating their wives or protecting men who did. I'm glad guys like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy got caught, but they were caught kind of late by my assessment, and while they deserved their fates, I feel like the cultural lesson for prosecutors was "make every criminal a Ted Bundy and become a hero," instead of the real lesson, of law enforcement communicating across states and paying more attention to surviving victims. I also vividly remember Rodney King's beating on TV. I'm white, but I've never thought cops were heroes. Despite that insight, True Crime remains my main guilty pleasure. No idea why. I love this video!
AMW and COPS got me into it because they came on back to back in the 90s. It kinda made Law into a hobby of mine next two medical aspects. Since I would watch and remember if a cop messed up their own logic which happened in cops a few times. Personally, it's sad the show had to go off because it is one of the longest running shows that exposed people to what they do, then HOW TO AVOID being stupid and getting caught like those "Sting" Episodes. With the body cams these days they could have much better shows without having those camerapeople having to chase them and put in dangerous spots. I too remember Rodney King even if I was just a young kid at the time. It's what happened when something like the LAPD goes on for so long without getting checked. Since they're public servents they work for US, I dislike how we're supposed to see them as better when it's clearly the other way around. Well it's supposed to be that way
I have a similar relationship with police procedurals, my mom watched a lot of them when I was growing up so even as my trust for the police has rocketed downward in recent years, I'll still watch a detective show because mystery with a bit of action will always be appealing no matter the source lol
Too many cops are Proud Boys [& the like]. 1's too many! They have tattoos that'd keep them from most jobs, but it's fine on a cop?! "Nice tats, bro. Here's a gun, a baton, & all the mace ya can spray!" Sigh.
@@mookinbabysealfurmittens To call out the Proud Boys a very new group first is weak when really you should focus on Aryan Brotherhood. Proud Boys were formed my a mixed race group of men they don't mesh very well I've seen it.
@@ExeErdna The Proud Boys are white with token non-whites. I've done my research. And the only reason I didn't mention groups like the AB is cos I'm sick of TH-cam deleting my posts cos I use a word it doesn't like. (4 of 6 today!) Also, Thought Slime has made several videos about the Proud Boys. Look em up, please. Super easy. And José just released one, if memory serves.
I grew up on the South Side of ****** and it wasn't until I got into much wealthier neighborhoods later in life that I realized people relied on the police for safety. The expectation growing up was that you were responsible for your own safety first and foremost, the police were not going to protect you, they only showed up after everything went wrong. This absolute invisible expectation of constant safety confused me, and the certainty with which the people from wealthy neighborhoods believed that they were always safe made people incredibly entitled and caused them to act in horrifying ways. If I had treated people the way they did, hands absolute hands, but the truth is that when you reform police you are accepting the fact that your safety relies first and foremost on yourself. That is a trade off I am willing to make, but man I can tell you some people do not have the life skills for it.
I grew up in a town that didn't even have police. The nearest police station was in a different town about half an hour away. The only time we really saw cops was the occasional state trooper driving through and if the cops were called because of an incident. It was a pretty peaceful town because people knew to act right lol
"I'm just a big tiddied idiot" is my new catchphrase. This was so well put together and a delight to watch! Thank you for the hard work you put in to this
As someone one who loves true crime and a prison abolitionist thank you for this video. Idk how folks watch true crime and don’t take away that we need to switch to a societal model that’s preventative and support marginalized folks. Also, ACAB.
Something that not a lot of people know but is VERY important to the conversation of the Criminal Justice System: EACH STATE HAS A DIFFERENT PUBLIC DEFENDER SYSTEM. That is a BIG. PROBLEM. There is no federal regulation for public defender organizations. For example: In my state, we have a dedicated agency with offices designated to represent defendants who allegedly committed offenses in that county. Becoming a public defender is a RIGOROUS process. Not just any attorney can apply and get in. We also have a union and they're always looking for every possible way to ensure everyone in the public defender's office (attorneys, office staff, investigators, paralegals, etc.) has their needs met and are advocated for. There are also private attorneys that are contracted with the office to pick up work that could be designated as a legal conflict (i.e. the victim in a case is a staff member, a multi-defendant case, etc.) This should be the default/ the expectation for how all offices should be. But it's not. In the next state over? I've heard of attorneys with double our office's caseload making $20,000 LESS than some of our newer attorneys that have been around for less than or equal to five years. They're just private attorneys that are asked to pick up cases for defendants that can't afford private counsel. We can't afford inconsistencies like this when our justice system is already as bad as it is! It needs to be ensured that one of the last bastions of the CHANCE of having an even remotely fair justice system is consistent state-to-state. No exceptions.
It's also, maybe not the plot of, but related to "Sharp Objects" and "Dark Places". Brutal murders? Better blame it on the "outcasts" who don't act like our good ol' boys. Gillian Flynn really likes bringing this up in her works.
"Acting weird" or "acting guilty" is completely subjective. Not making eye contact is suspicious, but so is making to much. Fidgeting a lot is suspicious, but so is keeping too still. If they think you are guilty they can always point to some way you "acted weird" during interrogation to confirm their biases.
As of late I've been listening to crime junkie and I appreciate them talking abt/pointing out how much the system let down indigenous/minority people. It's not every story they talk abt but it's much appreciated. They also give places to give tips/donate.
time to recite the list. the list of what to do around the cops if they want to talk to you. 1. don't talk to them 2. call a lawyer 3. lie detectors are the most woo woo garbage ever. do not take a test. like, sis. i'm sorry if you react "out of accepted/expected norms" in a bad/stressful situations, it's about to be harder for you to stay out of the line of proverbial fire. and hopefully not literal fire. edit: omg, Lazarus' crazy eyes are here, i almost forgot the eyes to rival chikatilo's crazy everything
Princess- the podcast You’re Wrong About has an episode dedicated to the Columbine myths and debunking a lot of the myths about murder you referenced. The TH-cam channel Fundie Friday’s also has a video about the religious based Columbine myths that have circulated as well.
The time I went in for jury duty, they gave the whole shpiel about how this country's justice system is incredible and fair and amazing and how everyone who takes part in it comes away with a new appreciation for how well it works. Which was remarkable, since the process described sounded incredibly boneheaded to me and explained why so many false convictions happen. And that was before I was familiar with abolitionism. Nailed it, I guess.
Love the Les Mis reference! Following his release from prison, Val Jean was so heavily stigmatized, no one gave him the time of day. The priest gave him compassion and stuck up for him, even when Val Jean tried to steal the silver. Val Jean had to change his identity to reform his life and become a productive citizen and javert couldn’t deal
I remember a video where an officer was asked to come talk to law students and the cop himself said "don't talk to the police without a lawyer, or you will lose the court case."
I literally requested Khadija to cover this subject, they haven't yet. Not sure if they ever will but I'm so glad you did! I love sociology and true crime. It's really hard to be ignorant of all the injustice in the world when you follow true crime cases. Has it made me paranoid as F? Yes. Did it open my eyes, also yes.
Lol, (their) comment saying (they) want to do this is literally below yours for me Edit: oh wait I misinterpreted it 😭, (they’re) gonna watch this later. (Thank you for correcting the pronouns)
I like brazilian true crime and often here, when a teenager disappears, the family will be told they need to wait 24 hours after the disappearence to involve the police. That is literally not true, since the first 24 hours are the most important in the investigation. They just assume that every teenage girl who disappears just "ran away from home", until they find her body smh
As someone from Baltimore who is familiar with the horror show that was the gun trace task force, thank you for making this video! I was so happy to see that you had uploaded. When you are informed about the corruption of the legal and justice systems, you cannot look at these cop shows and serial killer docs in the same way. You definitely Foucault-ed me lol.
This video hits all the spots, it indulged in my guilty pleasure for true crime while attaching it to broader scale issues, and deriving useful criticism from it. Maybe another good video along this line would be how cops are portrayed in cartoons and what we can take from that.
Re jury of peers, having a jury trial is a right not a requirement. As a defendant, you can waive your right to a jury trial, in which you have a bench trial instead, where the judge functions as jury as well.
This is what I'm talking about! I feel like the complaints I often hear about true crime are like "there's a lot of voyeurs" but there is that for war history too. True crime, in spite of the way its marketed, is history and journalism. Being like "well some people have bad intentions when they consume this" is not a reason it shouldn't exist. Also on the debate of "it shouldn't be monetized", ideally, nothing would be. But historians and true crime storytellers still need to eat and get a roof over their heads. I've been saying like the real complaints that should be had are when true crime hosts don't acknowledge how fucked up the system is, they just go "wow how could a cop ignore this/get away with that" as if this cop is an exception to the rule. Like this conversation is complicated and frustrating but I've always been so frustrated by the way critique of true crime seems to be as limited as critique of horror is sometimes. Like a lot of the time it's just "that's scary how can you watch it, something must be wrong with you" and I'm like. God they don't know there's like real problems here
Everything that I've personally experienced about jury duty has my whole self screaming that I don't want my future resting on the collective judgement of a group of twelve randoms.
Dude fr 😒 I didn't even get picked but the selection process they had jury members that straight up said they might have a bias for or against the defense and I just sat there like are u fucking kidding me..?
@Dylan Rodrigues It's not just one judge. It's a group of judges, who are professionals. I can only speak for myself, but I'm more comfortable them deciding about how the law should be aplied in the single cases, than a bunch of random people
That's how the MAGA-phone should always be handled. And yes, I know she technically didn't support him but if he hadn't said what he said about MYFATHER, she would have. And her husband's a plagiarist, a documented, FIRED plagiarist. It's not relevant to the clip or the essay at large, it just shouldn't be forgotten.
Really liked your video! As an Italian who grew up not far from where Meredith Kercher was killed, the narrative I grew up with about that crime is really different, and something along the lines of "the black guy from Africa goes straight to jail while the rich American woman protected by the USA gets to go home and get rich off of it even if the first thing she did was pushing false accusations on a completely innocent man". It was wild, and when I hear people from america speak about it I realize how really different the narrative around it has been.
The Lazarus case is wild, like imagine explaining to your husband that yeah, they're finally getting you for killing that girl you didn't like twenty years ago
Reminded me of that scene from Hoodwinked Red: You've gotta admit, a wolf stopping kids in the middle of the forest, it's pretty creepy. Nicky (frog): Right. Yes, yes. But we don't arrest people for being creepy. [TImmy Pig and Tommy Pig exchange glances] Timmy [on radio]: Yeah, Bruce. You know that guy we got in the tank? Bruce: The creepy one? Timmy: Yeah. Better let him go.
the excerpt from Foucault's book really reminded me of Carl Panzram - perhaps one of the most legendary serial killers that really embodied the cruelty of the prison system. He spent the majority of his life in prison and the brutality he faced made him both physically stronger (you really want to punish a violent criminal with manual labor that will make him even stronger) and increasingly hateful of the world. Once, a fairly liberal warden took over at one of the prisons where he was kept. The warden did away with almost all of the extraordinarily cruel punishments in place and made prison life as livable as possible, setting up activities for the prisoners (a prison band, baseball, other extracurriculars) and went out of his way to find something Panzram - one of their most hated inmates - could enjoy and be good at. He even tested Panzram by opening the gates for him and allowing him to leave the prison (a strange and misinformed choice), under the condition that he would not face further punishment if he returned - essentially trying to set up a system of trust between them. Panzram cooperated for some time until he eventually decided not to and ran away. Only to be recaptured, of course. In his own words, Panzram confessed that he could not understand the humanity that had been shown to him by the warden and felt crushed by disappointment and shame when he eventually let him down.
My first true crime hyper-fixation was a really depressing one. It was the story of Matthew Shepard, which I found when I was a kid and coming to terms with my gender identity and sexuality. It's why I think true crime content should be used in order to push for social justice. Really loved this video!
After learning about Adnan Syed and Alfred DeWayne Brown i started to realize the bigger side of corruption in the justice system. i’ve always hated the bias that people have against defense attorneys, especially in true crime media. their job and legal obligation is to provide their client with the best defenses possible to help protect the innocent from being locked away, yet people see them as defenders of the worst people ever.
If you want to talk about complete incompetence, I can't believe the DC Snipers story isn't covered more! Great podcast "You're Wrong About" had a 4 episode series on it and...I can't believe we hardly even remember it.
definately an event burned into the memory of millenials (& above) in the DMV area. That was.....an interesting 6 weeks that really felt like 6 months.
I lived near DC at the time. I remember getting drinks in a Border's Bookstore cafe with some friends, suddenly realizing that we were sitting in front of a huge plate glass window, and getting up and moving further into the store.
Yeah, definitely remember thinking that at least my school's second story was safe from shooters because of the angle from the ground and the nearby woods. But we still were warned not to be near windows or go outside.
So glad you included a point about weird not being a crime! I always get so uncomfortable when people analyze "weird" nonverbal behavior as someone autistic. You see so many myths popularized by these crime shows enforcing the idea that being weird makes you guilty.
The fact that people think the police do SO MUCH more than they actually do... they already do nothing about violent offenders and sex crimes so how could replacing that system be a loss in any way😭 This is such a great video, I'm definitely checking out more of your videos after this!
Don't get me wrong, there are clearly bad apples and room for reform, but to say they do "nothing" about these things is absolute BS. Do you have any idea how large the average number of casefiles is in a large county, let alone a major city? It takes time to do due diligence on dozens or hundreds of cases.
@@yellowblanka6058 I'm sorry but every person who pays taxes to police salaries should be able to reliably know that murder or violent sexual crimes will likely be solved. Like she said in this video, violent crimes are the LEAST likely to happen to you, and they are the crimes likely to go unconvicted. There's literally so many better systems that can be in place instead of a police force that is the most militarized in the world while being one of the worst at actually doing anything in the grand scheme of things. Remember, the full phrase is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch"
It took me awhile to remember to remember what got me in the True Crime but I eventually did it was Dateline. I don't remember the specific episode the part I remember was this poor woman who got wrapped up at a drug bust at a party she was at. And she pleaded guilty because she couldn't afford to stay in jail for a month because she was a single mother. Completely ruined her life and around a year later it was found there was no evidence of any drugs on the premises and all this was based on a tip by someone who had a grudge against whoever was throwing the party. That's when I learned don't cooperate it literally does you no good.
I used the article from the baltimore sun in an anti-cop essay back in high school so the moment you said "baltimore sun" I knew exactly what we were getting into. That story alone has gotten me to convince 3-4 people to stop having faith in the police
I've had to turn down jury duty every time due to financial hardship because I wouldn't be paid during that time what I make at my job and thus cannot afford to miss work. It really disturbs me that the system relies on pulling only from a specific group of people that have both time and money to sit on a jury for an extended time. Anyway, great video as always!
As a prison abolitionist I have a very strange relationship with true crime. It’s an avenue to demonstrate the fucked up nature of the us justice system, but then it makes people believe that policing and prisons are the answer. It also gives an understanding of what makes people commit awful crimes, and that everyone starts out as an innocent, regular child. Everyone is always making it a point to talk about how happy they are that killers are getting death row or life in prison, when there is so much more to say about mass incarceration and prison abolition!!! I wish I was more well written or well spoken, I’d totally do a true crime prison abolition chatty channel, but idk if I ever will.
I love listening to different true crime podcast and how the tone different shows take when talking about law enforcement. The way say My Favorite Murder will discuss police vs Last Podcast on the Left is really interesting to me. I've been thinking about the ethics of true crime for a while and you came at it from a very different angle than I was thinking about it. This was a fantastic video and I can't wait to see what topic you cover next.
*Small Town Dicks* is an interesting listening experience, like *My Favorite Murder* kind of is. i think listening to both critically is pretty crucial, both have said stuff that make me go, "hmmm, that privilege must be nice", but nothing is ever black or white, right?
@@k.morningstar7983 Oh yeah and no shade to them but it's very clear to me that they have very different lived experience. Some true crime podcasts do better than others with their subject matter and I personally find My Favorite Murder on the more voyeuristic end of the spectrum but I don't think they need to be wholeheartedly condemned.
Yeah, TLPotL have their moments of viewing these things in a very darkly tone deaf and not at all insightful way, but it did make me see that a lot of these serial killers weren’t super geniuses like the media portrays them. A lot of them were straight up idiots and got away with a lot of shit because law enforcement was incompetent, lazy, stupid or straight up racist. Even they would call it out like in the Dahmer one where they constantly mentioned how a reason he wasn’t caught was because he targeted the LGBT+ community and minorities a lot, so cops didn’t give a shit. That opened my eyes into seeing how a lot of “true crime” stuff is often times over exaggerated for the sake of entertainment.
I really love the podcast "Criminal" by Phoebe Judge for this reason. She covers stories that aren't in the mainstream media, often from the point of view of people who have been victimized by law enforcement. Well worth a listen.
I'm still at the beginning of the video but I am already relieved that your take isn't "if you consume true crime content you are bad/making a spectacle of tragedy" like that's obviously a problem with some true crime media, but people who use that as their only critique often miss the important things we can learn by consuming true crime media. If anything I think more people should consume it to get a real grip on what the problems with our justice system are. Most people have no idea how broken it is, or only have a vague idea that it isn't perfect. Consuming true crime stories has certainly been eye opening for me.
This whole video reminds me of "Il Mostro di Firenze" a serial killer who killed couples in the province of Florence in the '70s and '80s. That case really showed the flaws of the Italian justice system, especially at the time and it basically ended because the serial killer stopped they either died or got tired of it.
From what you say, it seems like ‘case cleared’ includes situations where the police have pressured the victim into not pressing charges, so perhaps the figures should be even lower.
The amount of times ive consumed some type of true crime media and heard someone say a person was suspicious bcs in their trial they "showed no emotion" like!!! Their lawyer probably told them to not react to anything so their emotions arent used against them. Or maybe they shut down emotionally bcs going to court can be stressful and traumatising, particularly if its high profile or televised. Or maybe theyre neurodivergent or stoic and thats just how they are.
the end of policing is a great book. i really love this recent commentary on “true crime”. most of the entertainment channels that discuss crime come from a perspective that police help. i’ve always felt this to be entirely naive. especially when you watch how frequently they botch these cases. we are basically indoctrinated to believe that it’s their job even though their purpose beyond that view seems much more nefarious.
I used to buy into a lot of stuff that you’d hear from the “Anti-SJW” crowd here, but recent events and experiences in my life have shed new light on how messed up a lot of things in our society really are. Now that I’ve had time to actually look over a lot of what people have covered regarding things like this, my perspective has shifted dramatically. The fact is that there really is a lot in our society here in America that just needs fixing.
I studied forensic chem in school and those classes are big reason why I hate/distrust our justice system today. I took my degree and I work in a different industry.
The Conviction podcast is also pretty good about exposing problems in the justice system. The first season covers the Satanic Panic of the 80s and how so many people were wrongly convicted using bunk "science" and stayed in jail for years, sometimes dying before they could get appeals or serving their full sentences without getting appeal for crimes that didn't they not only didn't commit, but crimes that never happened in the first place.
Glad you’re back and feeling better! My only thing I wished you mentioned on the video was how many cops are involved in domestic violence and covering that up.
One of my favorite videos on TH-cam is a fifteen minute speech by a law professor explaining why the US Fifth Amendment is so important, and that you should never talk to the police. He says something to the effect of "It's not 'anything you say can and will be used to _help_ you.'"
"We've been told there are serial killers around every corner." I used to watch crime shows with my mom as a teen. The usual lineup, CSI, Law and Order, NCIS, and Criminal Minds. But it was Criminal Minds that affected me the most. I got so paranoid about serial killers and such all hunting me down, I had to stop watching the show. Once I did though, I felt less paranoid, because the people I actually interacted with weren't the ultimate evil, just people. I feel safer walking around alone as a woman than I did watching a TV show with my mom.
Fantastic video, as always!! As an English & History double-major, I really enjoyed your segment on Foucault and your point that these arguments have been made since 1842. Honestly, documents critiquing the justice system, imprisonment, and the death penalty go as far back as the 1500's (at least in Europe). The Early Modern period is absolutely brimming with works that question punitive justice, even if some are in the form of "think pieces" more than pieces of official legislation due to the constraints of courtly politics and general classism. (Thank you, monarchy) This debate has spanned centuries and yet here we are, still arguing in circles. Oof.
I really loved this video. I used to listen to a lot of true crime, but had to stop when I heard someone describe it as "mental self harm" and realized that that was how I was using the sensational aspects of it. In addition, I started working in more leftist spaces, like police accountability, and the podcasts I was listening to were not framing the law enforcement system in context to systematic oppression and I got frustrated enough that I stopped listening. This video does a really good job of synthesizing all of these contextual pieces together and so many times Princess mentioned something I thought "YES!! SOMEBODY SAID IT"
What an epic breakdown.... I only watch older true crime (nothing after 1920, really) so it's at more of a remove, but i really appreciate how you tie all the issues together into this analysis and also point out ways we can try to do better now.....
True crime is one of the many reasons why I became a criminal justice major I slowly started to notice the holes in the justice system so it's definitely played a huge role in how I think while im in my courses
As someone who works on a true crime team, this was a wonderful watch. I will say my increasing interest in prison abolition does not always fit well into the genre...
As someone who has a degree in Criminology pretty much everything Princess says is backed up by the research. All of the papers I read sound like they are shouting into the void because they mostly are. If you want another really good example, look up the research on scared straight. Also, if your congress person uses the phrase "common sense" in respect to crime policy, it means that it has no research to back it up and is probably going to backfire horribly.
My dad always told me “never talk to a cop, because you suck at it” and he’s right, I’m high functioning autism and even then I struggle to not miscommunicate or “sound weird” as a cop might say. To think that just being pulled over even as a white person and then being suspected of something worst than speeding is a horrifying thought.
@@staticaleel5068 I've been pulled over various times and I have never not been asked "why are you nervous right now" to me, usually followed by asking about drug or alcohol use. I'm very grateful I am white because I get away but I know one day I won't be so lucky. Also autistic :(
like someone can already dress up as a cop if they really want to trick people, but to say you have to just do wahtever anyone with a gun says ???? what life is this
Hilariously enough, there’s an episode of one of the CSIs that devotes most of the thing debunking bad arson science and going off on the ‘experts’ who used it.
Let me know in the comments what was your True Crime introduction and I'll shout you in the next video!
All those 20/20 and Dateline specials and America's most wanted and it's clones as a kid(what were my parents thinking?) Was reintroduce by way of podcasts.
It was probably actual the movie Zodiac, which dramatizes the creation of true crime narratives more than it being true crime properly. Making A Murderer was probably my first real true crime thing that I was big into
Justice Files changed my life. Turned me into a true crime junkie at the age of 12. Just grew up really hating the legal system.
My mom is a lawyer so she studied a lot of criminal cases and discussed them with me. She made it very clear to me that a lot of cases were a ‘mystery’ not because of criminal genius but because of money, class, corruption and police negligence. Also how the media and mobs get in the way of investigations at times. We’re not American but it is clear that the reality is like that in many countries.
20 most horrifying Hollywood murders.
as a neurodivergent person i'm very afraid of getting accused of a crime and Acting Weird or whatever
ALSO im very glad you're back!
same!
yeah, i'm on the autism spectrum and used to get in trouble all the time as a kid for things i didn't do, because i "acted guilty." hope i never end up in an interrogation room lol
Yeah this is the worst assumption. People think that they can tell if someone is lying for example but are actually really bad at it. The people they think are lying are usually people who are just nervous or neurodivergent.
ugh, this so much. Neurotypicals are so weird about eye-contact... like, if you don't do eye contact they think you're lying, but if you do it some arbitrary length of time too much, then they think you're creepy/aggressive, and they get scared of you. There's no winning with them.
I never really understood the concept of civilians having to stay calm and collected under pressure when in the presence of cops in fear of being killed; but cops, who are supposedly trained to deal with pressure, are allowed to freak out and "act weird" or reckless the moment something doesn't go as planned
SAME; I was thinking about having seen unfortunately one of the videos and it just dawned on me how crazy it is honestly how some people are so calm in the face of a someone else pointing a gun on them, ready to end their life. I kept thinking, "shouldn't people be trained to be able to even hear anybody knowing that one wrong move can mean death?" I am fairly certain that if a cop pulled a gun on me or even worse, multiple cops did, that I would not a hear single word that was being said to me. I'd be too freaked out and possibly shot. It really would take training though to not engage in the fight or flight response that would kick in with knowing that someone is possibly seconds away from ending everything, and yet just seeing a police uniform is suppose to do something in the human pysche that should make the person calm enough to follow instructions given by again a person who has already shown that he/she can not be fully trusted to do what is reasonable.
yes! i saw a video of a cop shooting a puppy running up to him and he screamed at the owner nearby for screaming and crying? like, who do you think is overreacting right now buddy.
@@lucilovette5030Okay, but was this _actually_ a puppy running up to the cop or a big snarling dog running up for an attack and you're just trying to censor that?
@@rhondahoward8025 i saw the video myself and the dog was showing no signs of agression and was relatively small. regardless, the point of the comment was about his reaction to the owner being upset. not everything people say is an agenda theyre trying to push
@@lucilovette5030 Okay, thanks for clarifying
realizing now that "acting weird means you're guilty" is literally the exact logic my 3rd grade teacher used to accuse me of harming a classmate - "crying means you're guilty" she said as she berated me in front of the class
wow, wowowowow
This is why I can't take the 'genius serial killer' trope seriously anymore. The cops are usually just incompetent and apathetic, so no, the killer isn't some super chess master, as Penelope Scott sings. 'Ted Bundy was just never that fucking bright He was just sorta charismatic and White, alright '
He wasn’t even that charismatic
They literally could've caught the Zodiac Killer if they weren't so focused on a nearby black guy lol
Serial killers arent smart if we know who they are and what they did.
Can't wait for your to join the police force and show it's how it's done. Ohhhh wait, it's easier to blather on the internet? OK then.
@@mercster lol u mad bro?
THIS IS IN THE QUEUE BUT I'M LEAVING A COMMENT AND A LIKE FOR THE ALGORITHM
❤️🔥❤️🔥 you are the best sending you all the good energy
Same
Got hit with a full LotR trilogy worth of video essays today.
@@dillon1037 well have I got a video for you…
I love seeing one of my favorite content creators on another one of my favorite creators videos!
Being a neurodivergent person that whole "don't act weird ever when the cops are around" thing is something I think about. Don't act weird when anyone is around, ever... /s
Same. It's why I kinda hate the whole culture of body-language and how it's a great tool to assert someone's lying.
I've seen so many body language people trying to discredit celebrities and you tubers lately especially Megan Markle that I am paranoid that if my neurodivergent butt ever got famous I would be eaten alive for every single behavour I exhibit. It is kind of insane how people think that body language can tell them everything they need to know about a person even though they've never met them.
@@deihiru I'm not sure how much I buy in to Body-Language analysis being 70% effective. Like if you take the lie detector tests and the pseudoscience that drives it. If lie detector tests are based on pseudoscience, then how is divination based on body language considered an actual science? I think if we were to be honest with the techniques, the reason there is a 70% efficacy rate is generally due to these people being called in when there is already a good amount of evidence that support the individual's guilt. So it's not so much divination of their guilt based on the Body Language, but more a method of detecting what areas of a conversation is better for applying pressure. I dunno I am probably just a crazy person ;)
@@nerdjournal You're not, I agree with you. I mean, how hard is to indicate someone's lying when you know for a fact they were guilty/convicted? I swear people watch Lie to Me and Criminal Minds and think behavioral analysis works like magic.
What’s does “ /s “ mean?
"I'm not shaming her for being an addict--"
No, you're shaming her for sentencing innocent people to death, which is ABSOLUTELY something to be shamed for.
I'm genuinely terrified that I'm gonna be framed for a horrible crime because I'm autistic and so my normal behavior is treated as suspicious by neurotypicals. Plus I act SUPER suspicious when I'm accused of stuff. It's terrifying to think about.
Same 😞
I feel this here too. Autism diagnosis here too
Same
I’m not autistic (I don’t think) but I’m a twitchy guy by nature and it scares the living lights out of me because I’m also black and I don’t want to get beaten down or shot and killed because I moved awkwardly and too fast😬
If I'm ever on a jury I feel like my hometown policy of dealing with things among ourselves and distrusting the justice system will be my autopilot, so hopefully I'll never be involved I wrongly convicting anyone.
I remember watching shows though and yelling, "These interviewers aren't your therapists, call for you fucking lawyer!" Everytime. Then if they do the team being all, "They so guilty!"
“Defund the police!”
>“ok so what’ll happen to all the rapists and murderers?”
“they’ll lose their jobs!”
amen. cause for black ppl especially, these ppl don't get punished by the 'legal system' anyway
🤣 I'm stealing this one!
oh
So your solution is let murderers and rapist get away with it. The solution is to get them off the streets from society.
@@lisah8438 You didn't listen to a damn second of this video.
One of the major things I learned in my Legal Language class was that when you are talking to police, you are NOT innocent until proven guilty in their eyes. If they suspect you, as far as they're concerned, you're guilty. And they're not gonna tell you if you're a suspect.
Also, if you don't say the exact words correctly when you are trying to exercise your rights, they will deny you those rights and that denial will be held up by a judge.
For example, a person who said "I want to speak to a lawyer" was not given a lawyer and the judge ruled in favor of the cops. You literally have to say "I am exercising my right to a lawyer right now" and same with your right to remain silent. You literally have to tell them that you are exercising that right or else whatever harassment and bullshit torture they put you through to try to get you to talk will be considered legal.
"They were acting weird so they're guilty" is such a ridiculously ableist concept too, on top of everyone reacting differently to things and being pushed to acting different than their usual selves by the circumstances or outright pressure by cops/lawyer/etc, you got a bunch of neurodiverse people who have bits of behavior that don't align with what neurotypicals expect so "they were acting weird" is "No Karen, they were fidgeting with their hands and blinking hard because they're under extreme pressure and forced to be standing there statically".
Reminds me of that mini-series Sharp Objects, where the whole shitty ass town thinks the brother of a murder victim killed his little sister because he acts weird. "Weird" in this town is defined as "Expressing the tell-tale signs grief related to the brutal murder of your little sister who you clearly adored". Like the dude was closed off, not sexually active, and drinking. Gotta be the murderer! And once they got the scantest physical evidence & his gf (who also didn't understand the signs of a man in grief) to make a statement, they arrested him.
!!!
^^^^ this, I am constantly afraid I'm going to get in some sort of trouble for "acting weird" bc I didn't make eye contact or some shit.
A lot of the 'tells' that someone is lying, accelerated heartrate, lack of eye contact, fidgeting, etc are all just things that are normal for many neurodivergent or mentally ill people. I get accused of lying so much by people who aren't used to my mannerisms unless I heavily mask, which is damaging to my mental health
I've had chronic bronchitis since I was twelve and I live in Texas. One year in high school, I was pretty frequently losing my voice for a couple hours during the day before it was slowly come back and I had no idea why. On one of these days, I got interviewed by a police officer because my friend got in big trouble and they were interviewing everyone to figure out what happened. I expressed to the officer that I lost my voice, so I participated with the entire interagation while writing my responses on a white board. The school called my parents afterwards just to make sure that they were aware that I talked to an officer that day, when they mentioned that I had lost my voice. My parents were confused because I was speaking just fine that morning before I walked out to the bus. Suddenly, I was getting pulled out of class and being forced to talk even though I kept expressing how much it hurt and my voice barely even sounded human. I was being scolded by school officials for being rude and hindering their investigation and I was so confused as to what I did wrong. I explained that my bronchitis sometimes acts up in the middle of the day and I had no idea why, and they were completely dismissive of me, not even believing that I actually had chronic bronchitis because I was only 15 at the time. I was so confused and my parents ended up grounding me when I got home, accusing me of the same thing.
It took years for me to realize what was happening is that walking and standing outside to catch the bus in the early morning winter air was causing my bronchitis to act up to the point where I couldn't speak for a few hours. Cold winters are really rare in Texas, so I had no idea what was happening at the time.
The first true crime story that I really remember hearing about was Lindy Chamberlain, aka the 'Dingoes ate my baby' case. She was only recently exonerated, and even before she was convicted she was largely tried by the media because she 'didn't grieve properly'. As a conventionally attractive woman, she was painted to be some kind of heartless Jezebel who didn't care about the death of her daughter, when really she was likely doubly traumatised by the intense media invasion into her life.
I binged a lot of true crime content lately, and many of them really are scathing indictment of how feckless some cops are, yet they always frame cops as the underdog in those cases.
exactly
I’m always shocked a cop heard I was raped and didn’t just walk away
Oh, the poor cop couldn't solve the crime because of their own incompetence.
I can't remember whether this was Stephanie Harlow or Bailey Sarian (maybe both), but at least one of them highlight the incompetence of the police.
Copaganda exists for a reason
Me, an autistic adult who constantly sees people online screaming about someone being guilty based off of eye contact issues, inappropriately timed or lack of/limited outward showing emotions, timing of comments or how things are phrased, etc.:
"This is fine" :)
I also want to add, when comments about police in investigations who actually do their job and are mostly people expressing they're surprised it says a lot about the behavior of law enforcement
Talking about Columbine, my middle school did a whole thing showing us footage and spreading anti-bullying awareness, and my black ass somehow still sussed out the vibe of those little nazis even though that was never brought up. Was haunted as a child. Also, it's seriously insane how a lot of unsolved crime just boils down to incompetence and police malpractice.
I want to see a video that makes the connection between nazis and antisocial behavior
there's a video series on here with interviews of columbine survivors. one of them is a black woman and she indeed confirmed not only their racism but racism in general in the school and town.
@@SpecialBlanket Jewish people can be nazis too, same as how black people can be antiblack and how trans people can be transphobic i.e. Caitlyn jenner
"If only those Nazi boys hadn't been bullied this wouldn't have happened" sound super victim blame-y to me like the kids of Columbine caused the school shooting to happen. Isn't it the fault of the shooters for being nazis? They choose to be Nazis.
I really appreciate intellexual media's take on true crime, the way she highlights how the system fails Black victims of crime is illuminating
@@malink2658 intelexual since you wanna get specific
Lexie is brilliant, love her work.
My stepmom was a prison guard, she was a demon, so she was perfect for the job. Just from hearing how she talked about the prisoners, and how she bragged about mistreating them, prison sounds like absolute torture. I don't know if anyone deserves that.
Damn, how are you?
Haha i think i know her. You are correct. It's bad. Its better than jail, but it's basically a trauma factory. And as we know, repeated trauma makes people more stable and productive and less likely to mask their pain with drugs/alcohol.
@@jessicavictoriacarrillo7254 I'm okay, not unscathed from dealing with her but honestly I just hope she stops working at that job for the sake of all the people stuck in prison ,,
@@Skag_Sisyphus Definitely. Prisons are egregiously ineffective at rehabilitating people, and regardless of what crime a prisoner may have committed, the conditions/abuse people face in prison are unnecessary and inhumane.
@Thomas G. Linn That sounds like a you problem, dude. It's not normal to wish horrible things on other people.
"we allow it to remain broken because we believe our safety has to come as the result of someone else's loss of rights" this is a very powerful truth
This is why I can’t understand the call for gun control in response to mass shootings. Most of these calls come from liberals who generally don’t trust the police. So why on earth would you want police to be the only ones with guns? Why are people so willing to give up rights that you will never be able to get back if it doesn’t solve the issue? Why wouldn’t you exhaust every other possible solution first, before giving up such a fundamental right? It really comes down to do we want to find solutions to make us actually safer or solutions that make us feel safer, but ultimately more vulnerable?
Cops are *NOT REQUIRED* and are *ADVISED AGAINST* testifying on the behalf of an innocent person
They're also under no legal obligation to protect you from harm according to the United states Supreme Court. So 'protect and serve' is a load of propaganda.
@@galactic85 i wouldn’t say it’s propaganda. They certainly protect each other and serve themselves.
My problem with a lot of true crime podcasts/youtubers has been that, as a disabled person, with disabled kids, who works with disabled people, they often point from their armchairs to ppl who either have clear mental health issues, or a developmental disability, that are “obvious” or who have supposedly confessed to police or another authority figure.
So these ppl, some of whom have very large audiences, are basically setting ppl up as targets. And I think that might go very badly one day.
It's happening now with amber heard and it's going to get so much worse for anyone trying to testify against high profile sexual harassers now that they have the idea to hit them with anti-defamation suits 😑
@@LKing-ue2jl I mean, my point was more on how easy it is to falsely convict a person with a developmental disability, but yeah, this has been frankly terrifying.
watching true crime has taught me a lot, here are some things:
1. always tell someone if you are going out somewhere. you can just quickly text a family member or friend about when you're heading out and when you are coming back.
2. always trust your gut when it comes to thinking someone or someplace might be off. it isn't worth the risk to yourself.
3. when first meeting someone do so in public where there are lot of people around and have a plan to get out of there on your own fast if you need to.
4. always bring a map/compass or radio phone if you walk out into the woods, way too many people go missing.
5. if someone is shady or has done something bad to you, let others around you know so that they can be cautious around that person too. even if they don't believe you, it is worth it.
Also if you have a partner that consents, some of those "spy" apps can keep you and your partner safer. They allow the other person to see the location and messages, so that if something goes wrong, the location can be found and recent texts as well.
Most people will likely see this as invasive, but my partner and I are both physically disabled and autistic, so we are willing to allow each other to have access to personal information to increase our safety
6. the cops arent there to help you
Also in relation to your first point, if you suspect someone to be missing, IT IS NOT REQUIRED TO WAIT 24 HOURS BEFORE REPORTING IT. The first 24 hours can be crucial to a missing person's safety and well-being, and it can potentially be the difference between life and death. It's okay if you feel like you're jumping the gun, but it's better to be safe than sorry.**
** I'm not saying this to put fear in people. Obviously context matters and every situation ranges in severity (not every case is going to be the worst case scenario). Don't beat yourself up for waiting to report if you feel somewhat confident that that person is/is going to be okay, because sometimes they may be. But if you really are concerned for their safety, just know that you do not have to wait and can report a person as missing immediately upon suspicion.
7. Always ask for a lawyer
8. Stay out of the woods. Theres nothing there for you.
Another thing that true crime podcasts and shows have taught me is to be afraid of is the Reid interrogation method. Like, just imagining all the mind games and the exhaustion over being interrogated for hours and hours, I can see myself just saying "yes, whatever you want me to sign" just to make it stop.
As someone who has the Reid technique certification... yeah the mind games are real. But just be as raw as you can. Answer short and concisely for most questions. If they accuse you, don't be polite. Be aggressive and bold with your denial. Push back against assumptions. Basically, just don't be shy about getting verbally aggressive in saying "NO." Better to just get a lawyer tho haha
I learned about this technique in forensic psych class, and it instantly rubbed me the wrong way.
@@leapofsren2159 (Sorry, I haven't seen the video yet) But is there a way out of it? Like, refusing to participate "without speaking to a/my lawyer first" or something? Cos that's really how the whole "justice system" works: to wear you down, weaken your defences, and leave you so exhausted that you'll take a plea bargain, sign a false confession, etc... I hope never to be in that situation, but it's shocking how easily & often a genuinely not-guilty person is dragged into this stuff. Cheers m8
@@leapofsren2159 everything you said is my autistic worst nightmare.
44:00 Cases like this is why I’m against the death penalty. I don’t consider myself a noble person or anything I just think that as long as there’s a system there will be mistakes and human errors and that means that there is a chance an innocent person will be executed. I do not think it’s worth it.
Yes. While I wish we could execute rapists the fact that multiple people have been exonerated from death row means that we can't be trusted with this power. That and even the Supreme Court has said that the death penalty is applied almost randomly.
Same here. But also there's a huge ethical issue with killing someone, however horrible. Too often (always?) the execution is motivated by revenge, not justice.
Yeah, for every case where I want the perpetrator to be killed there's at least three more ones where people lost decades of their lives, or their lives, due to poor investigative work and/or lying witnesses.
I don’t agree with most cases that get the death penalty, but… you’ve inevitably come across some *really* fucked up people if you are really interested in true crime.
There are cases that have so much torture inflicted on the victims that I want to kill myself just to avoid such a fate. I won’t, but it’s really appealing if you hear any details about those cases.
It’s the people who deliberately torture others that deserve the death penalty- because we cannot legally put them through the same horrible fate that their victim met. People who do that shit won’t feel bad or guilty, so why bother spending resources on them in prison? What does rotting in prison do for people like that? Nothing.
@@smallandstressed2364 I rather they rot in prison and we waste some resources than an innocent person or a person that can be rehabilitated fall into death row.
Being from Ukraine, as a child I used to watch TV programmes about Soviet crime all the time. It really baffled me even then how useless and often straight up evil the police was. In every high-profile cerial killer case (like Chikatilo) several random suspects were tortured until they confessed, while the real murderer walked free for years.
не знаю чого, але стрічаючи своїх у коментарях своїх англомовних підписок, кожен раз відчуваю шось таке дивне тепло-радісне
"What is the point of prison?" Is a really important question that, as a society, we need to come together and find an answer to. Some people want it to be a deterrent, some people want it to be a punishment, some people want it to be rehabilitative, etc. but it does a pretty bad job of all of those things and many of our expectations for prisons are at odds with themselves.
In the US.
You don't want to be on jury duty. You don't want to have a part in a broken system with no good options. I was in a first degree murder trial of a child and it opened my eyes to the corruption of both the system and the desperate ignorance of the general population as represented by the other jurors. I will die thinking about my part in that terrible episode, even though I feel I made the only possible choice.
Rewatching Forensic Files has been wild. The number of episodes where I'm left wondering "how does that prove anything???" or "But that's been shown to be junk science!" It's.....scary. Literally an episode that a person was convicted of murder because "no woman would ever go pick up her kids from the babysitter with grass seeds in her hair" I think my sister's obsession with Diane Downs got me into true crime.
Going from watching the Innocence Project to Forensic Files is downright horrifying. It ends up being a list of cases that need to be reinvestigated. I think that all evidence with any DNA needs to be tested, even if the person convicted of the crime is dead, just for the sake of their families. If I'd lost someone to a violent crime, and the person arrested was put away on really weak evidence, it wouldn't be comforting at all. It'd mean that the person who did it is probably still out there, and a horrible injustice is being committed against the person locked up.
Another thing that I noticed about Forensic Files, is how often the murder could have been avoided if the abuse cycle could have been disrupted. My wife works at a domestic violence shelter, and according to her, people who get trapped are usually people in poverty, people without options (money, available/affordable housing) to get out of bad situations, which means that toxic relationships are allowed to fester and grow more and more and more violent. Recently, one of her client's ex killed their parents and kidnapped them and their child, then when cornered died in a shoot-out with police. If the police had listened when the client came to them, if they'd been able to get into housing that was safe and not their parents' couch, if the couple had been able to break up and go their separate ways instead of being forced to continue living together because there's a shortage of affordable housing... three people would still be alive, and the client and their kid wouldn't have gone through that horrible experience.
@@dreamingfifi Seriously!
@@dreamingfifi Yeah, there are still a lot of great episodes, but in cases like the guy found guilty because his car belts made matched the "unique" marks in the body of the victim, or the one the couple was accused because nobody keeps movie tickets, it's very unsettling.
@@deihiru As someone who’s been saving movie ticket stubs for like a decade, that’s kind of terrifying! What is or isn’t considered “weird” behavior is sooo arbitrary.
@@reggie3993 I do the same with all kinds of receipts and other little papers. What scared me though, was the circular reasoning: "He kept the ticket to have an alibi for the murder."
"But how do you know he murdered her?"
"Because he kept the ticket!"
What surprises me, is how so much of the true crime “fandom” are so pro-cops when most, if not all, of the most prolific crime cases were caused by police malice, incompetence or both.
I consume a lot of true crime content and it’s really hard to recall one case where the police aren’t somehow, partly or fully to blame. Not the most famous ones (Bundy, Dahmer, etc) nor the lesser known ones.
Loved the section on forensic science! We love to say “believe the science”, and we should, but without forgetting that all science has a human element. Who is doing the science? People who have their own motivations, interests, biases and character flaws. Trust but verify!
18:47 "if something smells like bitter almonds that's poison, that's arsenic"
I know this section of the video is all in good fun but I just can't help it, it always bugs me how people get this wrong most of the time. No, arsenic doesn't smell like bitter almonds, that's cyanide, totally different poison, arsenic kills you slowly if you take it repeatedly for weeks, cyanide kills you in minutes if you're given a lethal dose.
Also I know what bitter almonds smell like only because they are used to give flavor to pastry so I have many times eaten stuff that smells of bitter almonds and am still here.
EDIT: I really liked the video BTW, keep it up!
Also, not everyone has the ability to detect the bitter almond scent of cyanide.
The comparison of the smell of cyanide to bitter almonds is kind of misleading since the cyanide gas is only released from them if you break the bitter almonds up and add some water, which isn't exactly the process I'd personally choose to prepare something when I want to smell it. Also, cyanide is not the only odored compound released from this process, which further complicates trying to smell it in isolation. A TH-cam channel by the name of Nile Red actually produced some HCN gas both from bitter almonds and lab chemicals to test the theory that it smells of bitter almonds. After smelling it himself, he found the odor to be much more chemical, like an old pool towel. This is of course, by no means definitive proof (a sample size of 1 isn't exactly something to label as hard evidence), but I think it shows how unreliable smell can be for detecting these kinds of poisons. Hopefully this comment doesn't come off too nitpicky, I just figured it was relevant to the spirit of the myths around the smell of poisons. I agree with you that this video was a pleasure to watch though!
I caught that too, bugged me. Other than that I loved everything about this video!
@@low5025 Holy macaroni! I somehow missed your post! Hi5! NileRed is awesome! ♡ Oh, my reply got nicked anyway. Just, y'all watch NileRed's video (with [the C chemical] or bitter almonds).
@@low5025 The sample size was 3, but that's hardly better, plus one was his brother, and genetics may or may not play a role in ability to smell it. Just noting. And fwiw imo no way 8+ bitter almonds can get eaten accidentally; they taste horrendous, & are V easily noticed.
One of the most fascinating/horrifying things I read recently was about the lead-crime hypothesis, which suggests that lead exposure rates tend to correlate fairly well with murder rates about twenty years later. IIRC, it's tracked at national, international, city, and even neighborhood levels... and the 90s are about twenty years after lead was banned from gasoline. Not necessarily related to true crime, but it definitely feels like its related to the 'no one knows what caused a downturn in violent crime since the 90s'
Hmm, and that reminds me of that study that found that toxoplasmosis has an incredibly higher rate amongst inmates than in the general population.
@@shushia1658 Yes people should not keep cats due to getting brain worms.
This hypothesis also partially explains why older poor neighborhoods that don't the resources to remove lead paint still have elevated crime levels and higher rates of ADD and other problems.
I also have read about that. It makes sense. It’s just so funny to think that we love to believe that we can raise children properly but so many things are out of our hands. Maybe our kid won’t end up in prison because of what their parents did, maybe they will because of environmental factors. Absolutely chilling. (I don’t have kids but always wonder why people end up how they do).
Damn thats deep
My true crime intro was watching "America's Most Wanted" with my mom as a kid. My mom was a former rape crisis counselor and domestic violence and incest victim advocate, which made her an interesting person to watch AMW with. I remember her pointing out a couple who were interviewed on TV one time, I don't think it was AMW, but my mom said, "the way that woman looks at her husband, her body language, and the shape of her face, I think she might be a battered woman..." At the end of the show, the narrator said ,"...'s wife was shot in a domestic accident..." My mom was like "oh, yeah, I'm SURE it was an accident!" I never forgot that. I've been into true crime since I was around 11, but I never bought into the "hero cop" story line, a standby of the genre of true crime books. I'd just heard too many stories of law enforcement guys beating their wives or protecting men who did. I'm glad guys like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy got caught, but they were caught kind of late by my assessment, and while they deserved their fates, I feel like the cultural lesson for prosecutors was "make every criminal a Ted Bundy and become a hero," instead of the real lesson, of law enforcement communicating across states and paying more attention to surviving victims. I also vividly remember Rodney King's beating on TV. I'm white, but I've never thought cops were heroes. Despite that insight, True Crime remains my main guilty pleasure. No idea why. I love this video!
AMW and COPS got me into it because they came on back to back in the 90s. It kinda made Law into a hobby of mine next two medical aspects. Since I would watch and remember if a cop messed up their own logic which happened in cops a few times. Personally, it's sad the show had to go off because it is one of the longest running shows that exposed people to what they do, then HOW TO AVOID being stupid and getting caught like those "Sting" Episodes. With the body cams these days they could have much better shows without having those camerapeople having to chase them and put in dangerous spots.
I too remember Rodney King even if I was just a young kid at the time. It's what happened when something like the LAPD goes on for so long without getting checked. Since they're public servents they work for US, I dislike how we're supposed to see them as better when it's clearly the other way around. Well it's supposed to be that way
I have a similar relationship with police procedurals, my mom watched a lot of them when I was growing up so even as my trust for the police has rocketed downward in recent years, I'll still watch a detective show because mystery with a bit of action will always be appealing no matter the source lol
Too many cops are Proud Boys [& the like]. 1's too many! They have tattoos that'd keep them from most jobs, but it's fine on a cop?! "Nice tats, bro. Here's a gun, a baton, & all the mace ya can spray!" Sigh.
@@mookinbabysealfurmittens To call out the Proud Boys a very new group first is weak when really you should focus on Aryan Brotherhood. Proud Boys were formed my a mixed race group of men they don't mesh very well I've seen it.
@@ExeErdna The Proud Boys are white with token non-whites. I've done my research. And the only reason I didn't mention groups like the AB is cos I'm sick of TH-cam deleting my posts cos I use a word it doesn't like. (4 of 6 today!)
Also, Thought Slime has made several videos about the Proud Boys. Look em up, please. Super easy. And José just released one, if memory serves.
I grew up on the South Side of ****** and it wasn't until I got into much wealthier neighborhoods later in life that I realized people relied on the police for safety. The expectation growing up was that you were responsible for your own safety first and foremost, the police were not going to protect you, they only showed up after everything went wrong. This absolute invisible expectation of constant safety confused me, and the certainty with which the people from wealthy neighborhoods believed that they were always safe made people incredibly entitled and caused them to act in horrifying ways. If I had treated people the way they did, hands absolute hands, but the truth is that when you reform police you are accepting the fact that your safety relies first and foremost on yourself. That is a trade off I am willing to make, but man I can tell you some people do not have the life skills for it.
I grew up in a town that didn't even have police. The nearest police station was in a different town about half an hour away. The only time we really saw cops was the occasional state trooper driving through and if the cops were called because of an incident. It was a pretty peaceful town because people knew to act right lol
I was really confused for a moment coz you have the same name as my brother and I was like: We didn’t grow up South Side…
@@sophiajacobski8677 Its cool the Ben collective has agents everywhere. ;)
"I'm just a big tiddied idiot" is my new catchphrase. This was so well put together and a delight to watch! Thank you for the hard work you put in to this
As someone one who loves true crime and a prison abolitionist thank you for this video. Idk how folks watch true crime and don’t take away that we need to switch to a societal model that’s preventative and support marginalized folks. Also, ACAB.
Ooh Oooh! I know how! They’re big-ass racists
Something that not a lot of people know but is VERY important to the conversation of the Criminal Justice System: EACH STATE HAS A DIFFERENT PUBLIC DEFENDER SYSTEM. That is a BIG. PROBLEM. There is no federal regulation for public defender organizations. For example: In my state, we have a dedicated agency with offices designated to represent defendants who allegedly committed offenses in that county. Becoming a public defender is a RIGOROUS process. Not just any attorney can apply and get in. We also have a union and they're always looking for every possible way to ensure everyone in the public defender's office (attorneys, office staff, investigators, paralegals, etc.) has their needs met and are advocated for. There are also private attorneys that are contracted with the office to pick up work that could be designated as a legal conflict (i.e. the victim in a case is a staff member, a multi-defendant case, etc.) This should be the default/ the expectation for how all offices should be. But it's not.
In the next state over? I've heard of attorneys with double our office's caseload making $20,000 LESS than some of our newer attorneys that have been around for less than or equal to five years. They're just private attorneys that are asked to pick up cases for defendants that can't afford private counsel.
We can't afford inconsistencies like this when our justice system is already as bad as it is! It needs to be ensured that one of the last bastions of the CHANCE of having an even remotely fair justice system is consistent state-to-state. No exceptions.
#FreeAdnan
‘Man acts weird and gets accused of murder for it’ is like, literally the plot of Gone Girl lmao
It's also, maybe not the plot of, but related to "Sharp Objects" and "Dark Places". Brutal murders? Better blame it on the "outcasts" who don't act like our good ol' boys. Gillian Flynn really likes bringing this up in her works.
She got 18 months for thousands of false convictions? I thought I was jaded but...wow...
"Acting weird" or "acting guilty" is completely subjective. Not making eye contact is suspicious, but so is making to much. Fidgeting a lot is suspicious, but so is keeping too still. If they think you are guilty they can always point to some way you "acted weird" during interrogation to confirm their biases.
As of late I've been listening to crime junkie and I appreciate them talking abt/pointing out how much the system let down indigenous/minority people. It's not every story they talk abt but it's much appreciated. They also give places to give tips/donate.
time to recite the list. the list of what to do around the cops if they want to talk to you.
1. don't talk to them
2. call a lawyer
3. lie detectors are the most woo woo garbage ever. do not take a test. like, sis.
i'm sorry if you react "out of accepted/expected norms" in a bad/stressful situations, it's about to be harder for you to stay out of the line of proverbial fire. and hopefully not literal fire.
edit: omg, Lazarus' crazy eyes are here, i almost forgot the eyes to rival chikatilo's crazy everything
The creator of the lie detector said its bullshit I don't get why it's even being considered
Princess- the podcast You’re Wrong About has an episode dedicated to the Columbine myths and debunking a lot of the myths about murder you referenced. The TH-cam channel Fundie Friday’s also has a video about the religious based Columbine myths that have circulated as well.
I love Fundie Fridays!
I love You're Wrong About, their DC Snipers episodes made me cry multiple times.
Last Podcast on the Left’s episodes about Columbine are fantastic
@@Primordial_Soup and their never ending OJS series is great as well, I’m so glad i found em, they made quarantining easier.
caitlin doughty (ask a mortician) also made a great video about columbine
The time I went in for jury duty, they gave the whole shpiel about how this country's justice system is incredible and fair and amazing and how everyone who takes part in it comes away with a new appreciation for how well it works. Which was remarkable, since the process described sounded incredibly boneheaded to me and explained why so many false convictions happen. And that was before I was familiar with abolitionism. Nailed it, I guess.
Love the Les Mis reference! Following his release from prison, Val Jean was so heavily stigmatized, no one gave him the time of day. The priest gave him compassion and stuck up for him, even when Val Jean tried to steal the silver. Val Jean had to change his identity to reform his life and become a productive citizen and javert couldn’t deal
I remember a video where an officer was asked to come talk to law students and the cop himself said "don't talk to the police without a lawyer, or you will lose the court case."
I literally requested Khadija to cover this subject, they haven't yet. Not sure if they ever will but I'm so glad you did! I love sociology and true crime. It's really hard to be ignorant of all the injustice in the world when you follow true crime cases. Has it made me paranoid as F? Yes. Did it open my eyes, also yes.
Lol, (their) comment saying (they) want to do this is literally below yours for me
Edit: oh wait I misinterpreted it 😭, (they’re) gonna watch this later.
(Thank you for correcting the pronouns)
@@crayonburry 😭 I can still hope. 🤞🏻
Hi, just a gentle PSA that Khadija uses they/them pronouns
@@starrychan33 noted editing now
they commented saying it's in their queue ^_^ i'm sure it'll drop in the next coming months
I like brazilian true crime and often here, when a teenager disappears, the family will be told they need to wait 24 hours after the disappearence to involve the police. That is literally not true, since the first 24 hours are the most important in the investigation. They just assume that every teenage girl who disappears just "ran away from home", until they find her body smh
As someone from Baltimore who is familiar with the horror show that was the gun trace task force, thank you for making this video! I was so happy to see that you had uploaded. When you are informed about the corruption of the legal and justice systems, you cannot look at these cop shows and serial killer docs in the same way. You definitely Foucault-ed me lol.
“Stop sending people to prison because you don’t like the cut of their jib.”
😂🙌
What if they are a sailor and the jib killed someone?
@@nerag7459 If the "jib" killed someone, that has nothing to do with "their jib" and everything to do with the fact that they killed someone lol
This video hits all the spots, it indulged in my guilty pleasure for true crime while attaching it to broader scale issues, and deriving useful criticism from it. Maybe another good video along this line would be how cops are portrayed in cartoons and what we can take from that.
Re jury of peers, having a jury trial is a right not a requirement. As a defendant, you can waive your right to a jury trial, in which you have a bench trial instead, where the judge functions as jury as well.
This is what I'm talking about! I feel like the complaints I often hear about true crime are like "there's a lot of voyeurs" but there is that for war history too. True crime, in spite of the way its marketed, is history and journalism. Being like "well some people have bad intentions when they consume this" is not a reason it shouldn't exist. Also on the debate of "it shouldn't be monetized", ideally, nothing would be. But historians and true crime storytellers still need to eat and get a roof over their heads.
I've been saying like the real complaints that should be had are when true crime hosts don't acknowledge how fucked up the system is, they just go "wow how could a cop ignore this/get away with that" as if this cop is an exception to the rule.
Like this conversation is complicated and frustrating but I've always been so frustrated by the way critique of true crime seems to be as limited as critique of horror is sometimes. Like a lot of the time it's just "that's scary how can you watch it, something must be wrong with you" and I'm like. God they don't know there's like real problems here
Everything that I've personally experienced about jury duty has my whole self screaming that I don't want my future resting on the collective judgement of a group of twelve randoms.
Dude fr 😒 I didn't even get picked but the selection process they had jury members that straight up said they might have a bias for or against the defense and I just sat there like are u fucking kidding me..?
I'm from germany and we stopped having a jury duty system in 1924. I'm so happy we don't have them (anymore)
@Dylan Rodrigues It's not just one judge. It's a group of judges, who are professionals. I can only speak for myself, but I'm more comfortable them deciding about how the law should be aplied in the single cases, than a bunch of random people
*12 randoms who absolutely don't want to be there and are probably missing work/paycheck
@@Companion92 that’s so much more sensible.
Megan McCain: You don't have to listen to m-
[hard cut]
lmao editing perfection right there
That's how the MAGA-phone should always be handled. And yes, I know she technically didn't support him but if he hadn't said what he said about MYFATHER, she would have.
And her husband's a plagiarist, a documented, FIRED plagiarist. It's not relevant to the clip or the essay at large, it just shouldn't be forgotten.
"I don't respect the French, but Foucault's pretty poppin'" is one of the funniest things I've ever heard; congrats
Really liked your video! As an Italian who grew up not far from where Meredith Kercher was killed, the narrative I grew up with about that crime is really different, and something along the lines of "the black guy from Africa goes straight to jail while the rich American woman protected by the USA gets to go home and get rich off of it even if the first thing she did was pushing false accusations on a completely innocent man". It was wild, and when I hear people from america speak about it I realize how really different the narrative around it has been.
The Lazarus case is wild, like imagine explaining to your husband that yeah, they're finally getting you for killing that girl you didn't like twenty years ago
Reminded me of that scene from Hoodwinked
Red: You've gotta admit, a wolf stopping kids in the middle of the forest, it's pretty creepy.
Nicky (frog): Right. Yes, yes. But we don't arrest people for being creepy.
[TImmy Pig and Tommy Pig exchange glances]
Timmy [on radio]: Yeah, Bruce. You know that guy we got in the tank?
Bruce: The creepy one?
Timmy: Yeah. Better let him go.
This comment section isn’t the place where I expected to find a reference to Hoodwinked, but it’s a welcomed surprise.
@@elishakikbun3907 I gotta rewatch that movie now
the excerpt from Foucault's book really reminded me of Carl Panzram - perhaps one of the most legendary serial killers that really embodied the cruelty of the prison system. He spent the majority of his life in prison and the brutality he faced made him both physically stronger (you really want to punish a violent criminal with manual labor that will make him even stronger) and increasingly hateful of the world.
Once, a fairly liberal warden took over at one of the prisons where he was kept. The warden did away with almost all of the extraordinarily cruel punishments in place and made prison life as livable as possible, setting up activities for the prisoners (a prison band, baseball, other extracurriculars) and went out of his way to find something Panzram - one of their most hated inmates - could enjoy and be good at. He even tested Panzram by opening the gates for him and allowing him to leave the prison (a strange and misinformed choice), under the condition that he would not face further punishment if he returned - essentially trying to set up a system of trust between them. Panzram cooperated for some time until he eventually decided not to and ran away. Only to be recaptured, of course.
In his own words, Panzram confessed that he could not understand the humanity that had been shown to him by the warden and felt crushed by disappointment and shame when he eventually let him down.
My first true crime hyper-fixation was a really depressing one. It was the story of Matthew Shepard, which I found when I was a kid and coming to terms with my gender identity and sexuality. It's why I think true crime content should be used in order to push for social justice. Really loved this video!
After learning about Adnan Syed and Alfred DeWayne Brown i started to realize the bigger side of corruption in the justice system. i’ve always hated the bias that people have against defense attorneys, especially in true crime media. their job and legal obligation is to provide their client with the best defenses possible to help protect the innocent from being locked away, yet people see them as defenders of the worst people ever.
If you want to talk about complete incompetence, I can't believe the DC Snipers story isn't covered more! Great podcast "You're Wrong About" had a 4 episode series on it and...I can't believe we hardly even remember it.
People who lived around DC or around Doswell remember it. I had recess canceled for a week because of this guy.
definately an event burned into the memory of millenials (& above) in the DMV area. That was.....an interesting 6 weeks that really felt like 6 months.
I lived near DC at the time. I remember getting drinks in a Border's Bookstore cafe with some friends, suddenly realizing that we were sitting in front of a huge plate glass window, and getting up and moving further into the store.
Yeah, definitely remember thinking that at least my school's second story was safe from shooters because of the angle from the ground and the nearby woods. But we still were warned not to be near windows or go outside.
So glad you included a point about weird not being a crime!
I always get so uncomfortable when people analyze "weird" nonverbal behavior as someone autistic. You see so many myths popularized by these crime shows enforcing the idea that being weird makes you guilty.
Incredible as always. I never got into true crime stuff but thank you for the insight and work you put into it. Also your magic wand is cool
So nice to see two universes collide
The fact that people think the police do SO MUCH more than they actually do... they already do nothing about violent offenders and sex crimes so how could replacing that system be a loss in any way😭 This is such a great video, I'm definitely checking out more of your videos after this!
Don't get me wrong, there are clearly bad apples and room for reform, but to say they do "nothing" about these things is absolute BS. Do you have any idea how large the average number of casefiles is in a large county, let alone a major city? It takes time to do due diligence on dozens or hundreds of cases.
@@yellowblanka6058 I'm sorry but every person who pays taxes to police salaries should be able to reliably know that murder or violent sexual crimes will likely be solved. Like she said in this video, violent crimes are the LEAST likely to happen to you, and they are the crimes likely to go unconvicted. There's literally so many better systems that can be in place instead of a police force that is the most militarized in the world while being one of the worst at actually doing anything in the grand scheme of things. Remember, the full phrase is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch"
It took me awhile to remember to remember what got me in the True Crime but I eventually did it was Dateline. I don't remember the specific episode the part I remember was this poor woman who got wrapped up at a drug bust at a party she was at. And she pleaded guilty because she couldn't afford to stay in jail for a month because she was a single mother.
Completely ruined her life and around a year later it was found there was no evidence of any drugs on the premises and all this was based on a tip by someone who had a grudge against whoever was throwing the party.
That's when I learned don't cooperate it literally does you no good.
I used the article from the baltimore sun in an anti-cop essay back in high school so the moment you said "baltimore sun" I knew exactly what we were getting into. That story alone has gotten me to convince 3-4 people to stop having faith in the police
I've had to turn down jury duty every time due to financial hardship because I wouldn't be paid during that time what I make at my job and thus cannot afford to miss work. It really disturbs me that the system relies on pulling only from a specific group of people that have both time and money to sit on a jury for an extended time. Anyway, great video as always!
As a prison abolitionist I have a very strange relationship with true crime. It’s an avenue to demonstrate the fucked up nature of the us justice system, but then it makes people believe that policing and prisons are the answer. It also gives an understanding of what makes people commit awful crimes, and that everyone starts out as an innocent, regular child. Everyone is always making it a point to talk about how happy they are that killers are getting death row or life in prison, when there is so much more to say about mass incarceration and prison abolition!!! I wish I was more well written or well spoken, I’d totally do a true crime prison abolition chatty channel, but idk if I ever will.
Pls do so!! The imprisonment system in America/Canada needs 2 b replaced; your podcast could b foundation for replacement!!!
I love listening to different true crime podcast and how the tone different shows take when talking about law enforcement. The way say My Favorite Murder will discuss police vs Last Podcast on the Left is really interesting to me. I've been thinking about the ethics of true crime for a while and you came at it from a very different angle than I was thinking about it. This was a fantastic video and I can't wait to see what topic you cover next.
*Small Town Dicks* is an interesting listening experience, like *My Favorite Murder* kind of is. i think listening to both critically is pretty crucial, both have said stuff that make me go, "hmmm, that privilege must be nice", but nothing is ever black or white, right?
@@k.morningstar7983 Oh yeah and no shade to them but it's very clear to me that they have very different lived experience. Some true crime podcasts do better than others with their subject matter and I personally find My Favorite Murder on the more voyeuristic end of the spectrum but I don't think they need to be wholeheartedly condemned.
Yeah, TLPotL have their moments of viewing these things in a very darkly tone deaf and not at all insightful way, but it did make me see that a lot of these serial killers weren’t super geniuses like the media portrays them. A lot of them were straight up idiots and got away with a lot of shit because law enforcement was incompetent, lazy, stupid or straight up racist. Even they would call it out like in the Dahmer one where they constantly mentioned how a reason he wasn’t caught was because he targeted the LGBT+ community and minorities a lot, so cops didn’t give a shit. That opened my eyes into seeing how a lot of “true crime” stuff is often times over exaggerated for the sake of entertainment.
I really love the podcast "Criminal" by Phoebe Judge for this reason. She covers stories that aren't in the mainstream media, often from the point of view of people who have been victimized by law enforcement. Well worth a listen.
I'm still at the beginning of the video but I am already relieved that your take isn't "if you consume true crime content you are bad/making a spectacle of tragedy" like that's obviously a problem with some true crime media, but people who use that as their only critique often miss the important things we can learn by consuming true crime media. If anything I think more people should consume it to get a real grip on what the problems with our justice system are. Most people have no idea how broken it is, or only have a vague idea that it isn't perfect. Consuming true crime stories has certainly been eye opening for me.
This whole video reminds me of "Il Mostro di Firenze" a serial killer who killed couples in the province of Florence in the '70s and '80s. That case really showed the flaws of the Italian justice system, especially at the time and it basically ended because the serial killer stopped they either died or got tired of it.
Both you and CJ The X uploading docuvideos both more than 1 whole hour is the near-crossover that we didn't know that we needed.
From what you say, it seems like ‘case cleared’ includes situations where the police have pressured the victim into not pressing charges, so perhaps the figures should be even lower.
Being weird is NOT A CRIME!!
The amount of times ive consumed some type of true crime media and heard someone say a person was suspicious bcs in their trial they "showed no emotion" like!!! Their lawyer probably told them to not react to anything so their emotions arent used against them. Or maybe they shut down emotionally bcs going to court can be stressful and traumatising, particularly if its high profile or televised. Or maybe theyre neurodivergent or stoic and thats just how they are.
the end of policing is a great book. i really love this recent commentary on “true crime”. most of the entertainment channels that discuss crime come from a perspective that police help. i’ve always felt this to be entirely naive. especially when you watch how frequently they botch these cases. we are basically indoctrinated to believe that it’s their job even though their purpose beyond that view seems much more nefarious.
I used to buy into a lot of stuff that you’d hear from the “Anti-SJW” crowd here, but recent events and experiences in my life have shed new light on how messed up a lot of things in our society really are. Now that I’ve had time to actually look over a lot of what people have covered regarding things like this, my perspective has shifted dramatically. The fact is that there really is a lot in our society here in America that just needs fixing.
Commenting for the Algorithm, but also lost it at "If you get Murdered, high chance it might get cleared, but also you'll be dead."
I studied forensic chem in school and those classes are big reason why I hate/distrust our justice system today. I took my degree and I work in a different industry.
I love to point out that the actors in the Law& Order universe ( through their charity work) have done more to solve crime than actual cops.
The Conviction podcast is also pretty good about exposing problems in the justice system. The first season covers the Satanic Panic of the 80s and how so many people were wrongly convicted using bunk "science" and stayed in jail for years, sometimes dying before they could get appeals or serving their full sentences without getting appeal for crimes that didn't they not only didn't commit, but crimes that never happened in the first place.
Yes Melina is back!!! Your content makes my days so much better
I love how you put "law and order has taught me" in quotes. Law and order doesn't teach you anything. It "teaches you"
Glad you’re back and feeling better! My only thing I wished you mentioned on the video was how many cops are involved in domestic violence and covering that up.
One of my favorite videos on TH-cam is a fifteen minute speech by a law professor explaining why the US Fifth Amendment is so important, and that you should never talk to the police. He says something to the effect of "It's not 'anything you say can and will be used to _help_ you.'"
"We've been told there are serial killers around every corner." I used to watch crime shows with my mom as a teen. The usual lineup, CSI, Law and Order, NCIS, and Criminal Minds. But it was Criminal Minds that affected me the most. I got so paranoid about serial killers and such all hunting me down, I had to stop watching the show. Once I did though, I felt less paranoid, because the people I actually interacted with weren't the ultimate evil, just people. I feel safer walking around alone as a woman than I did watching a TV show with my mom.
Fantastic video, as always!! As an English & History double-major, I really enjoyed your segment on Foucault and your point that these arguments have been made since 1842. Honestly, documents critiquing the justice system, imprisonment, and the death penalty go as far back as the 1500's (at least in Europe). The Early Modern period is absolutely brimming with works that question punitive justice, even if some are in the form of "think pieces" more than pieces of official legislation due to the constraints of courtly politics and general classism. (Thank you, monarchy)
This debate has spanned centuries and yet here we are, still arguing in circles. Oof.
I really loved this video. I used to listen to a lot of true crime, but had to stop when I heard someone describe it as "mental self harm" and realized that that was how I was using the sensational aspects of it.
In addition, I started working in more leftist spaces, like police accountability, and the podcasts I was listening to were not framing the law enforcement system in context to systematic oppression and I got frustrated enough that I stopped listening.
This video does a really good job of synthesizing all of these contextual pieces together and so many times Princess mentioned something I thought "YES!! SOMEBODY SAID IT"
What an epic breakdown....
I only watch older true crime (nothing after 1920, really) so it's at more of a remove, but i really appreciate how you tie all the issues together into this analysis and also point out ways we can try to do better now.....
True crime is one of the many reasons why I became a criminal justice major I slowly started to notice the holes in the justice system so it's definitely played a huge role in how I think while im in my courses
As someone who works on a true crime team, this was a wonderful watch. I will say my increasing interest in prison abolition does not always fit well into the genre...
True crime team! What do you do?
@@nectarshrub Video editing! How about you?
So, if someone murdered your friend or family member, yo wouldn't mind them walking the streets? The will kill again.
@@lisah8438 you are such a bad fate actor...
As someone who has a degree in Criminology pretty much everything Princess says is backed up by the research. All of the papers I read sound like they are shouting into the void because they mostly are. If you want another really good example, look up the research on scared straight. Also, if your congress person uses the phrase "common sense" in respect to crime policy, it means that it has no research to back it up and is probably going to backfire horribly.
As an aspie who knows a lot of other neurodivergent people, I appreciate 'Being Weird is NOT a Crime'. Don't talk to cops, get a lawyer.
My dad always told me “never talk to a cop, because you suck at it” and he’s right, I’m high functioning autism and even then I struggle to not miscommunicate or “sound weird” as a cop might say. To think that just being pulled over even as a white person and then being suspected of something worst than speeding is a horrifying thought.
@@staticaleel5068 I've been pulled over various times and I have never not been asked "why are you nervous right now" to me, usually followed by asking about drug or alcohol use. I'm very grateful I am white because I get away but I know one day I won't be so lucky. Also autistic :(
if "plain clothes" cops come at you with guns, how are you supposed to know they're not just random guys about to murder you????????
like someone can already dress up as a cop if they really want to trick people, but to say you have to just do wahtever anyone with a gun says ???? what life is this
thank you for calling out prison sexual abuse jokes.
Hilariously enough, there’s an episode of one of the CSIs that devotes most of the thing debunking bad arson science and going off on the ‘experts’ who used it.