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Does the full moon bring out more strange crime? Cops share their stories

    

..........   anche la polizia        "guarda la Luna"!!

At 5:45 Saturday evening, a full moon will rise over the Saddleback Mountains and shine down upon Orange County.

As it does, will the moonbeams bring mayhem and madness with them?

Maybe.

But rest assured, the county’s law enforcement officers will be more than ready to keep the peace.

There has always been a perception among cops, firefighters and emergency room personnel that there’s more (and often stranger) crime on the night of a full moon.

“When something crazy or weird happens, I look up at the sky to see if the moon is full,” says Newport Beach police Officer Bill Hume.

“The full moon seems to bring out the nightcrawlers – people who come out at weird hours and lurk around aimlessly. You know they’re up to no good.”

This belief is so strong that the International Association of Chiefs of Police spent the money to commission a study in the late 1970s to find out if there is any scientific evidence to support this belief. They found nothing definitive.

And if you look through the Department of Justice’s reference service, you’ll find a half-dozen or so more studies that also point to no precise scientific explanation.

So if you want to determine the relationship between the full moon and crime, you’ll just have to rely on the anecdotal evidence of policemen around the world.

One of those cops is David Hunter, 69, who spent 32 years as a deputy in Knox County, Tenn. His book,""" “The Moon Is Always Full,” """published in 1989, is a collection of police officers’ full moon stories.

“I suspect the phenomenon is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Hunter said.

“Most cops are adrenaline junkies. If nothing happens on their graveyard shift, they get disappointed. So the full moon gives the cop a reason to investigate things he might usually ignore.”

UC Irvine criminology Professor Charis Kubrin agrees. She uses the term “confirmatory bias” to explain the phenomenon.

“The officers are looking for evidence that confirms their belief,” she said.

What kinds of things are said to happen during the full moon?

Hunter has a favorite full-moon story.

“I’d been on the job for only two months,” Hunter said, “and we responded to a call of a 69-year-old grandma who was brandishing a shotgun under the light of a full moon.”

It took four of Kentucky’s finest to subdue granny.

“She was definitely psychotic,” he said.

Some cops point to the “lunar effect” to explain the moonlight madness. There’s a speculation that the moon’s gravitational influence can bring about changes in people who have mental imbalances.

Brian Downs, an 11-year veteran of the Anaheim Police Department, says he’s observed the effect himself.

“On nights of a full moon,” he said. “We usually get call after call after call involving people with mental issues.”

We turned to the scientific community to weigh in on the tie between the full moon and strange criminal behavior.

Professor Elizabeth Loftus teaches cognitive science at UCI. She speculates that this lunar effect may just be folklore. Being a scientist, she wouldn’t say outright that there was a correlation between the moon and craziness, but conceded that “maybe mentally ill people get weirded out by the full moon and behave in strange ways.”

In 19th century England, lawyers would use the defense of “not guilty by reason of the full moon” to make claim that their “lunatic” client was not accountable for his actions.

Which brings us to the story of Anaheim police Officer James Brown and the Wolverine.

“Six years ago on the night of a full moon I responded to the report of a fight at a hotel in the South district,” Brown said. “The dispatcher described one of the men as ‘looking like the comic book character Wolverine.’”

Sure enough, Brown saw a shirtless man who could have been the superhero’s doppelganger.

“I ordered the man to lay down on the pavement but he refused. ‘Wolverine bows to no one!’” he said.

Brown called upon his knowledge of comic book heroes and told the man, “The Wolverine is dealing with Captain America now.”

Brown was eventually forced to use his Taser to subdue the man: “Pain is my power,” Wolverine said during the struggle.

When the man was eventually taken into custody, he sighed, “Wolverine loses to Captain America ... this time.”

To this day, some of Brown’s fellow officers still refer to him as Captain America.

So fear not, citizens.

“Any time the full moon brings trouble to your city,” Brown quipped. “Just call for Captain 

America!”

Articolo da:

Orange Country Register 

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/moon-701015-full-brown.html