Identifying drug couriers in airports

Author's Biography

Mike Oolman recently retired from the Phoenix Police Department after 20 years of service. He spent most of his career working on the Commercial Narcotics Interdiction Unit at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. During this time he worked inbound and outbound flights conducting consensual encounters. Behavioural characteristics were significant parts to many of these investigations and he developed an expertise related to these characteristics and behaviour observation. Mike has instructed domestically and internationally where the subject matter has mainly been Behaviour Observation. Mike is part owner of M3 Training and Consulting where he instructs Behaviour Observation and has been part of developing courses related to Behaviour Observation. Mike has a bachelor of science degree from Northwestern College also studied to become a paramedic at Creighton University. Mike spent almost five years as a paramedic prior to becoming a police officer, where he gained a higher level of knowledge related to the stress response in the human body. Mike continues to instruct for M3 Training and Consulting along with the US Department of State under the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program.

Mark Parker has over 20 years of local, state and federal law enforcement experience. Mark holds a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University. As an agent with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, he focused on drug interdiction, including airport, train, bus, hotel/motel, parcel and highway investigations. Through this investigative experience, Mark emerged as a recognised expert proficient in using behavioural observational techniques to identify the criminal element in varied environments. Mark continues to teach behavioural observation skills to law enforcement officers and security personnel. He is currently the training director and has served as the past president of the International Narcotics Interdiction Association (INIA), a premier interdiction training association. He has taught for the US Department of State both domestically and internationally. Mark has worked with the US Naval Research Laboratory to study and refine the technique of employing behavioural characteristics as a first line of defence for law enforcement and security personnel.

Nathan Meehan is the Director of Research and Development for Second Sight Training Systems. He earned his PhD from the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. Nathan led the JDLR (Just Doesn’t Look Right) Project research team while he was a Social Scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Adversarial Modeling Exploitation Office. At the NRL, he also successfully managed short- and long-term projects for the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security on topics ranging from crime analysis to the development of web-based research platforms for visual search. Nathan is also a Certified Law Enforcement Analyst and worked as the Lead Crime and Intelligence Analyst. As an analyst, he also assisted on an FBI Operation Safe Streets (OSS) Taskforce, targeting violent gang members. Nathan has also instructed a variety of online and traditional undergraduate college course for SUNY Albany, Excelsior College and the University of Maryland Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Alex Garinther is a doctoral student at the University of Oregon (UO). He works primarily in the Psychology Department as a member of the Groups and War Lab, where he and his colleagues use behavioural methods to study a range of cross-disciplinary topics. The lab is overseen by Dr Holly Arrow, who has been at the university for several decades, and who formerly directed the UO’s Institute for Cognitive and Decision Sciences, of which Alex is a part. As a complement to his doctoral degree in Psychology, Alex is also pursuing a Masters of Public Administration in the School of Planning, Public Policy, and Management. This secondary area serves as a bridge from the empirical work and training in psychology to the more applied realm of policy, programme design, evaluation and practice. In line with this applied orientation, Alex has been collaborating with Dr Nathan Meehan and colleagues since 2016, when he took a Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded internship in the NRL’s Adversarial Modelling and Exploitation Office.