"24" Cont. (Bryce)

All these things he does, however are not legal. They were outlawed quite some time ago. Beating a confession out of clients was outlawed in the 1940’s. Any violence at all, as a matter a fact was deemed illegal. Some officers would deprive suspects of sleep, deny them food and water, drug them, hang them from windows, even using unbearable smells to get a confession. In some cases, the police would get false confessions just so that they would stop their interrogation.
Most of the tactics used in “24” are actually far from what actual interrogators will do. As previously stated, the suspects cannot be harmed physically. Interrogators actually have a handbook they learn from. There are essentially nine steps they take towards getting a confession out of a suspect. Of course not all of them use the techniques stated in the handbook word for word.
New officers coming into police forces, the army, or any enforcement agency, at least some of them actually sort idolize Bauer’s use of violence. The military spoke out on what they think the show is doing, “…hurting efforts to train recruits in effective interrogation techniques and is damaging the image of the US around the world.” US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan said this when he actually came onto the set of “24” and met with the creative team. In an interview with Gary Solis, a retired law professor also said that many of his students took on Bauer’s motto of “Whatever it takes.” He then said, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.” How big is this actually becoming?
Some interrogators are using these techniques in the field. Actually, there has been a rise in these cases as the number of scenes of torture appear more frequently in the show. There have been more than seven hundred investigations of abuse within the Army. Out of that seven hundred there have been about twenty-five deaths that have been ruled as homicides. Many organizations are trying to push the point that torture by Americans is not tolerated within their ranks. The Human Rights Group is the one of the groups doing so. They were the ones who arranged the meeting between the creative team of “24” and the military officers.
There are some that however disagree with this, that Jack Bauer influenced these deaths within the custody of the army. Rick Moran of the American Thinker says that:“I have no doubt that General Finnegan and the agents are genuinely concerned about the show's impact on the troops. But the idea that some of the abuse of prisoners meted out by American soldiers is the result of watching a television show is absurd on its face. Blame it on our not giving the prisoners Geneva Convention protections or on poor discipline or leadership. But the intelligence professionals who carry out the overwhelming number of interrogations on prisoners can't all be that stupid. ...”
This is all somewhat correct. Anyone who gets to become an interrogator isn’t stupid enough to go against regulations and actually break the law by killing their suspects. They go through years of training, and know what is and what isn’t the correct way to go about things in the interrogation booth. This job requires a large amount of wit to be able to wage a psychological war against the suspect. I’m saying that in general, you have to be pretty smart to be able to meet the standards of this job. In the case of these homicides however, one death by one person represents the entire organization and shows that there is some sort of flaw in the system that allowed for this to happen. The people who have committed this atrocity have been prosecuted, but while this trend remains small, will it continue to grow as “24” continues? It will. 24 has the most torture scenes of any show on television to date. The methods of torture shown in the show are sometimes more creative than the one before it.
A show that illustrates torture as how we Americans get our work done is simply incorrect. It does not give those who watch it the right to act out what happens, it only puts a damper on our society and in general makes the US look bad. True, the demographic of death while in US custody is small; this represents the organization and everyone in it. Death is something to not be taken lightly, especially where it is not necessary in the least. That is why violence against suspects was outlawed in the first place, so this doesn’t happen.