What is a PERP WALK. Who Popularized the Perp Walk? Trump, Giuliani and the origin of the Perp Walk.

As a body language expert I have been analyzing perp walks for the media for many years. The perp walk or frog march is a practice of law enforcement of taking an arrested person through a public space, creating an opportunity for public scrutiny and these days the media to take photos and videos of the event. Historically it was done to show the public that justice was being done, that an arrest had been made and that the public could trust that the public officials were doing their jobs well and they would be safe from the bad guys. It's interesting that Perp walks are often associated with big cases in New York City because U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, wanted to be known as tough on crime, and he loved publicity so when suspects charged with felonies in New York he always had them perp-walked and typically did news interviews about the case. 

Here is more about it from Wikipedia. 

In the United States, once a person has been charged with a crime, the government may request that a judge either issue a summons for that person or an arrest warrant, which can lead to a perp walk. The choice of which to request is largely at the discretion of the prosecutor, with judges often deferring to it.^[4]

Since the arrest power is meant to ensure the defendant's presence in court, lawyers defending the white-collar criminals who have been perp-walked since the late 1980s have complained it is unnecessary and superfluous in their clients' cases, even if it does give the appearance of preferential treatment for wealthy defendants.^[4] Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron executive Andrew Fastow, cited the perp walk she was made to take even though she had expressed her willingness to surrender to a summons in an unsuccessful motion for a change of venue.^[5] Some, like Martha Stewart, have still managed to avoid being perp-walked by responding to summonses, or surrendering in the courtroom as soon as the indictment is presented in open court.^[4]

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.
     

Young Man Shot Through Door., Why Do Men Assume Someone Is Dangerous When They Are Not? ,Gender Differences in Reading Body Language, Ralph Star Shooting

Someone is knocking at the door.

Today I’m sitting at my desk, my puppy at her little dog bed desk working on a speech. As always, I look for the most recent scientific research to support my points and recommendations.

In my speeches, I often ask my audience who is more accurate at reading body language males or females. Because I know that that’s not fully inclusive the first thing, I looked for was any research on not just males' and females’ ability to read body language but, LGBTQ differences in ability. As I suspected, there wasn’t any research on that. You probably know that many research studies are just done on males because you must have so many more subjects in your subject pool to consider gender differences. In fact, In medical research often less than 6% of the research includes female subjects.

Overall, the research says that females are more accurate than males at reading body language. But here is something interesting. New research shows that women are more accurate at reading negative emotions such as anger and men are more accurate at reading happy body language cues. And one of the studies they were looking at displays of someone knocking on a door the men could more accurately read the happy knocking cues and the women could more accurately read the negative cues such as anger.  And were far more accurate at reading the neutral knocking.

And that made me think of the horrible Ralph Star Shooting Story in the news that broke my heart and continues to haunt me.
A young man went to pick up his siblings a few blocks from his house but accidentally went to the wrong house, and knocked on the door. The owner of the home opened the wood door but not the glass door, saw the young man look him in the eye, and said, “Don’t ever come back here.” and shot the teen in the head through the glass door then shot him again once he was down. Did the man do this based on racial profiling? How often are men’s violent responses to strangers also triggered because they are less able to accurately read facial cues of danger so they assume someone is dangerous when they are not? 

Also shattering me is the fact that when I went to look up the story again I googled young man shot through the door at pages of other stories about other young men being shot through doors came up. I am so upset. 

Here is the research study mentioned.

 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016/full#:~:text=The%20findings%20show%20that%20gender%20affects%20accuracy%20rather,to%20excel%20in%20recognition%20of%20hostile%20angry%20knocking. 

Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.