Bait Behavior – What You Should Know

For decades now, as part of officer survival and defensive tactics training, law enforcement professionals have been taught to look for certain behaviors and body language and were indicators of an imminent attack. Sometimes the warning was as simple as a subject walking aggressively toward you, fists balled up, stating, “I’m gonna whip your @$$!” That was an obvious act and statement of aggression and few people would ever fault an officer for acting in a defensive fashion against the imminent assault. Sometimes, though, the body language was more subtle: a man who takes his hat off, rolls his sleeves up, or simply keeps stealing glances at your holstered weapon as he adjusts his position in relation to you in small but repeated increments. Those hints that he might be planning an assault are equally observable but not as easily articulated or as readily accepted by the general public as signs of a pending assault.

With the advent of body cameras roughly two decades ago now, law enforcement officers had the added protection of video evidence showing the subject’s threatening behaviors. When a subject’s behavior and language were threatening, or even outright assaultive, it was recorded and used as evidence to justify the officer’s defensive response followed by the arrest of the subject. Even back then, though, when there was only the officer’s dash camera or body camera – or combination of the two – the video evidence was often argued.

Those captured videos were often analyzed and saved for future use as training tools where valuable. Some of those videos showed the assault and/or murder of law enforcement officers and they remain hard to watch to this day. It’s unthinkable that some of those suspects, caught on video committing their heinous crimes, were somehow not found guilty of first-degree murder but whose lawyers found loopholes to get them out of the harshest of sentences. The videos are used to show where the subjects displayed body language that should have served as a warning for the officer(s) involved. Those lessons never change and unfortunately continue to get made by officers due to our nature: we’re human. We make mistakes. None of us is perfect. We try… but it is difficult, at best, to remain 100% vigilant 100% of the time.

Then came the advent of cell phone cameras and, soon thereafter, the realization by mainstream media that a plethora of video could be carefully edited to create the image, however false it may be, that an officer performed an unjustified action. The videos used were edited down to (in general) 30 seconds or less of a total interaction time that often spanned well over 30 minutes. After a few well publicized such events where large civil suit settlements followed a trial in the court of public opinion, some of the bad guys started getting smart… and greedy. That will unfortunately never change.

Now we see situations wherein disorderly subjects will actually plan a trap for law enforcement officers, not to kill them but to bait the officers into arresting them in what appears to be an unnecessarily physical fashion. This bait behavior includes aggressive gestures and language and will often incorporate a host of more subtle behaviors that officers have been trained to watch for. As the suspect continues to ramp up his aggressive behavior, all the while aware of the “crowd” around s/he and the officer, there is careful manipulation with the intent of inciting an anger, fear or panic response from the officer. The end goal for the suspect is to push the officer into an unprofessionally conducted arrest.

The challenge and largest concern for law enforcement professionals is this: there is absolutely no way to distinguish between the subject who is just looking to get some damning video for the purposes of a lawsuit and the subject who is looking to murder the officer.  The warning behaviors and language are identical. So, how does an officer avoid becoming the targeted star of an unprofessional video clip?

Communication is always a great tool.  In the past, this author has found himself facing a suspect who was demonstrating several body postures indicating a potential assault. Rather than waiting to see if those behaviors were the indicators they seemed to be and defending from an assault, I would come right out and tell the suspect how I interpreted his body language and what that meant for his immediate future.  On several occasions I watched subjects either make repeated targeting glances at my holstered handgun or that of another officer. I’d call them out in a heartbeat. “Sir! I don’t know why you keep looking at my/that officer’s weapon, but to us those repeated looks mean you’re trying to figure out how to grab that weapon and get it out of the holster.”  Such an approach tends to put them in an immediate defensive posture and has them rethinking their actions. They’ve been put on notice: I won’t be an easy target and you aren’t getting away with whatever you think you might be planning. And the warning is on your body camera video, recorded to further protect you from false accusations.

Increasing reactionary gap is a good thing to do if circumstances permit it. If you find yourself facing a potentially aggressive subject but you can’t tell if he’s truly aggressive or just trying to set you up to star in his friends’ cell phone videos, creating a bit more space is good. Additionally, telling him why you’re creating that additional space (because his behavior is too erratic and giving indications of a potential assault), you’re documenting your actions for your own body camera. That articulation recorded on your system can be an invaluable defense tool.

If the subject has already given you sufficient cause for an arrest then do it. The sooner they are in handcuffs, the less time they have to attempt to manipulate the situation. Bear in mind, that no matter how angry you are about anything they’ve done or said, your demeanor while affecting the arrest must be 100% professional and your language needs to be the same. “That minimum force necessary to affect the arrest,” is a control that must be observed and while you can do that while your language is less than professional, having your language be full of concern and respectful statements helps. It is, after all, all being recorded, right?

“Sir, stop resisting!”

“Sir, I don’t want to fight you, but you must stop resisting arrest!”

“Sir, don’t make me ____________.” Fill in the blank with anything from “tase you” to “spray you” to “shoot you” if the circumstances warrant it.  Get it on your recording that you expressed your desire not to do this individual harm and you expressed that respectfully, but unfortunately his behavior didn’t change and you had to take the necessary action to defend yourself and affect the arrest.

What we, as law enforcement professionals, need to keep in the forefront of our minds is that while we must always ensure we go home at the end of our shift, we need to do so secure in our bodies, minds, emotions and finances. Too many people on the street today are simply out to make a buck and not actually meaning to do us harm. They are seeking to motivate us to do them harm for the sake of suing us after the fact. While we may not have the time or information to separate those folks from the people who intend to do us harm, we can initially treat them both the same way and improve how anyone will perceive us based on audio/video evidence. Further, if we have acted in such a professional manner and have the audio/video evidence to prove it, it is far easier to refute carefully edited damning video from those looking to sensationalize an event for the purpose of profit.