It’s not an uncommon theme on television and in movies: The police, stumped on a case, employ a psychic - sometimes on a whim but many times because they work with the psychic somewhat regularly! - and this person helps them solve the crime.
Does this actually happen in real police precincts with real lives hanging in the balance? If not, where did this myth begin? If so, have they ever solved any cases?
Totally off topic but I initially read the title as “Do the police ever use physics?” which confused the heck outta me! 
I could have sworn Cecil had done a column on this.
Anyway : the truth is no, the police/FBI/CIA does not ever involve psychics in investigations. Certainly not regularly - a despairing investigator might do it of his own accord, if he doesn’t mind the vertiginous drop in credibility among his colleagues. Most often, however, they peddle their dubious services directly to the victims.
However, psychics themselves often claim they are working or have worked with the police. The technical term for that would be “horseshit”. Some do send letters containing predictions to the PD investigating a high profile crime, then when the crime is solved by solid police work and one of their hints was even vaguely, remotely connected to the facts if you squint just right, they go on TV and say they helped, or if they’re really brazen that the cops followed their instructions.
And just to add to the pile of data, here are the responses to a letter sent to all UK police forces. Not all responded, and some didn’t give a meaningful reply, but overall you will see that the basic pattern is: “no, although psychics often supply us with information of their own volition, which is invariably useless”
During the Caylee Anthony search, Orange County sheriff’s deputies actually investigated most of the 5,000 psychic tips they received. Even so, the psychics generally contacted the police, not the other way around.
In the end, of course, 5,000 psychics proved less useful than one curious meter reader.
I am almost sure he did—I seem to remember him saying that cops hate to dismiss psychics out of hand, as the authorities always want to at least look like they are doing everything possible to solve the case…
Not Cecil, but David in a staff report.
This isn’t correct. The article is a little ambiguous because it says that the tips were “prioritised” and investigated" but it says “most were too vague to help” and the Sheriff’s office comments “unless they’re very specific where do you start?”.
If most were too vague to help, then most can’t have been investigated meaningfully.
Sounds to me like “prioritised and investigated” is a subtle way of saying “read it, realised totally useless, thrown in bin”.
If I had to guess, I would say police feel compelled to at least read all tips they are sent in case one matches something they know in a sufficiently specific way to imply that the “psychic tipster” may be linked to the crime.
One relevant book is The Blue Sense by Lyons and Truzzi, which Amazon suggests can be purchased second-hand for as little as 1 cent. It purports to be a serious study of the role that psychics have played in official police investigations. It’s the sort of book that can serve as a kind of credulity Rorschach test. If you believe, the book seems to provide plenty of ‘cast-iron’ eveidence that psychics have helped in official investigations, sometimes achieving very useful results. If you don’t believe, you can see all the cracks between the pieces of the jigsaw.
So what’s the real answer? First of all, as with anything to do with psychics, the truth is that psychic ability is as real as you want it to be. Believers slice and dice the evidence one way, and skeptics slice and dice it another way. The difference is that the skeptics, while being far from perfect, are at least aware of confirmation bias and other fallacies, especially logical fallacies.
There are certainly psychics who claim that they help solve crimes and work with police officer and detectives. Some even write books about their work. They all have plenty of ‘evidence’ to back up their claims. It’s just that none of it ever amounts to good evidence.
There are some officers and detectives who believe psychics can help, and who have provided statements to this effect. They are very few and far between, but they do exist and the Blue Sense book cited above has details. However, all this proves is that a small number of officers and detectives believe psychics can help. It doesn’t prove that they are correct to believe this. Detectives can be prone to thinking errors.
In some cases, the picture gets a little cloudy. Suppose there is a high-profile case getting lots of media attention. Inevitably, psychics contact the relevant police team and offer their insights and assistance. The police have to investigate and follow-up every tip or lead that they can, so it’s possible they may take a statement from the psychic. Technically, the psychic can then legitimately claim to have helped the police with an investigation. And of course, if they bother to document their own guesses, and if the case is solved and there happens to be any coincidental similarity at all between their guess and reality, they will crow about it from the rooftops.
Some psychics claim that their involvement goes far beyond just giving a statements, and that perhaps a detective working on a case is actually assigned to work with them (work with the psychic). This sounds quite impressive. However, there’s always another view. I have been told by a retired police officer here in the UK that sometimes, during an investigation, the team handling the case want a way to divert any sources of ‘help’ that they regard as noise, interference and nuisance. They can’t really be seen to say ‘Get lost, we think you’re a nutter and you’re wasting our valuable time’. So an easy way out is to say ‘Officer X is your official police liason officer, and he has been appointed to receive your information and handle your calls and correspondence. Please channel all your communications through him’. This gives them an easy way to shunt the psychics off to the side where they can’t get in the way. However, when the psychic brings out his next book, you read ‘The police took my work very seriously. They were so impressed by my amazing insights that they even appointed a detective to work alongside me in the investigation’.
The police are just like the rest of us. In other words some of them will be the type of credulous people who swallow this psychic nonsense hook, line and sinker. (I sincerely hope that the proportion of such people is less than in the general populace though.) Some of these Gullible Joes may be at Sheriff level and will bring in a psychic (unofficially, of course) on some case or other. And it’s precisely this type that, after the case is solved by routine police work, will give the broadest interpretation to the psychic’s ‘predictions’ and insist they gave valuable help, no matter how off base they were.
The psychic proudly adds the hick sheriff’s commendation to her credentials, gets the story into her local rag and one more piece of insubstantial fluffery is added to the corpus of police/psychic ‘successes’.
Once in awhile (when I’m channel surfing) I’ll watch a psychic show on the History or Discovery channel. I’ve seen a few cases where cops verified that a Psychic provided some useful information. Usually the cop will say, “I don’t believe in this stuff, but Madam Seer did help us.”
There are reasons why the police do check out any firm “insight”- if the psychic did get it right and the police didn’t check it out it looks bad.
There are two other rare but excellent reasons- sometimes the “psychic” is a crazy who really was an eyewitness. Sometimes the “psychic” is a “psychotic” and is the killer. These aren’t too hard to winnow out though.
See “real” “psychic” visions are so vague as to be useless: “I see a tree, there’s water, and somewhere a red building”:dubious: which will cover nigh 99% of any rural area. Even if one of the “hits” is wrong, it can usually be strained to fit- there are no trees but there’s a Cell tower that looks a little like a tree.:rolleyes:
There’s no use checking these out. However- “the body is buried under the vacant lot on the corner of 4th & Elm” certainly is worth a check. If the body is really there, it’s always either a witness or the killer/accomplice.
Never has a “real” “psychic” ever produced any solid clues that were useful. Once in a great while, the police may even be desperate enough to announce that a “real” “psychic” is helping them “find the body”, in the faint hope the killer will panic and go move it, giving them another chance to catch him.
The TV show Medium, about a psychic who helps the police and district attorney by seeing what will happen in the future or pointing them to clues, is based on a real-life person, Allison DuBois.
According to DuBois’ wiki entry:
The show itself is pretty standard TV cop/investigative fare, with a supernatural twist, but anyone who takes it as anything other than pure fiction is pretty silly, i think.
I remember reading somewhere ( sorry no cite)
cops claimed that a psychic helped them
just to cover the fact that information leading to apprehension of a suspect
was obtained by using illegal wire tap.
Robert Ressler, former FBI profiler and author of Whoever Fights Monsters, is a believer in at least some psychics. He cites one who predicted the President would be shot on a particular date, and a president was–the President of India. I think profilers are only slightly higher on the credibility ladder than psychics; no profiler has ever accurately named a killer. His book is nonetheless worthwhile.
My experience has been yes, law enforcement will consult “psychics”, but not for the reasons Sylvia Brown and the show “Medium” suggest. In fact someone like Sylvia Brown would be completely useless for the reaons, a police officer might want to talk with a local spiritual advisor about a crime. People including criminals (who are often a very supersitutious group) will tell their psychics, fortune tellers, spiritual advisors, etc., a lot of things they won’t tell anyone else. None of this information falls under any sort of professional priviledge as after all psychic readings are “for entertainment purposes only.” Bounty hunters will even stack-out psychic busineses because some criminals will skip bail, but won’t skip town without consulting their supernatural advisor first.
And cowardly. Don’t forget the cowardly.
