DIPLOMA IN POLICING

AND INVESTIGATION

DPI 2413
CREATIVE THINKING
AND INNOVATION
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 DPI 2413
Lecture by:
LALITA ANBARASEN

CHAPTER 5:
ASSESSING THE
REASONABLENESS OF
 Course Learning
Outcome
2 & 5:

Support comments and remarks with justification and

evidence Select the best solution in solving problems.
5.1. ASSESSING BASIC INFORMATION.

For example: In the event of an incident, immediate action

to be taken may include making the area safe, preserving
the scene and notifying relevant parties. The investigation
begins even at this early stage, by collecting perishable
evidence, e.g. CCTV tapes, samples.

Information about the incident is available from numerous

sources, not only people involved or witnesses to the event,
but also from equipment, documents and the scene of the
incident.
 Getting basic information about an issue
you need to think of or you need to be
creative with will help you get to the final
destination steps by steps gradually as it
leads you to more hints.
5.2. WELL-FOUNDED INFERENCE
 Inference is using observation and background to
reach a logical conclusion. You probably practice
inference every day.

 For example, if you see someone eating a new food

and he or she makes a face, then you infer he does
not like it.

 Or if someone slams a door, you can infer that she

is upset about something.
Why is it important to make inferences?

 When facing a case/situation, the situation will

not include all the information for us. He/she will
expect us to read between the lines and reach
conclusions about the situation.

 When making inferences, you are looking

beyond what is stated in the situation/case and
finding the ideas of how or why such incident
happened. This makes you a more active reader,
observer and critical thinker.
 When making inference, you beyond what
is stated explicitly in the text to infer the
intended message by paying attention to
certain clues.

 You infer why things happen, why people

behave the way they do, and how
characters are feeling.
 For example: at a crime scene, you
see blood splatters on the wall,
then you think of what may
happened before. Perhaps victim
was killed near the wall, or
perhaps his blood projected to the
wall after being stabbed
 Inference is not necessarily a correct guess, but it
is an educated one, made based on all of the
information which you have at that time.
5.3. USE OF EVIDENCE.

 Evidence is used to establish proof that a

crime was committed. To prove something
(example: Ali killed Abu) is to eliminate
uncertainty regarding the truthfulness of the
conclusion.

 There are various levels for standard of

proof:
5.3.1 Probable cause.

 Exists when it is more likely than not that a

particular circumstance exists or the
degree of certainty is greater than 50%.

 Police often need enough evidence to

establish probable cause to justify a search
or an arrest.
5.3.2 Beyond a reasonable doubt.

 Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is

needed in a trial to conclude that a
defendant is guilty of the crime.

 This has most direct consequence to the

prosecutors who has responsibility to
present evidence to obtain conviction.
5.3.3 Reasonable suspicion.

 In order for police to legally stop and

frisk a person, police have to have a
reasonable suspicion about that
person's involvement in the crime.
 5.4 CAUSAL
EXPLANATION.
i. Two more specific notions of cause:

- The cause is sufficient to bring about the effect

(example: Dead battery is sufficient for car not
starting)

- The cause is necessary to bring about the effect

(example: Oxygen is necessary for combustion
or food is necessary to make human feel full)
ii. Partial or contributory causes:

- A factor that increases the likelihood of the

event occurring but may not be either
necessary or sufficient for the effect:

• Watching violence movie and its

association with aggressive behavior
5.5. GENERALIZING.

 In everyday language, a generalization is

defined as a broad statement or an idea
that is applied to a group of people or
things.

 Often, generalizations are not entirely true,

because there are usually examples of
individuals or situations wherein the
generalization does not apply.
In this respect, generalizations can be similar
to stereotypes in that they are sometimes
offensive.

5.5.1 Statements of Generalization

i. All parents try to make life difficult for their

children

ii. Every salesman lies to make more money on

a sale.
iii. Homeworks are always easy

iv. Homeworks are always hard.

v. The United States is always colder than

Europe.

vi. Women want to have big families.

There are two major MISTAKES ways of generalizing
the characteristics of a number of elements:

1. Generalizing from a very small sample (sometimes

just 1 or 2 elements) to the entire
population.

 This leads to the all so common error of thinking

you understand an entire class because you've
dealt with a couple of its members.
 Examples of this include:

The person who never met any rich

people, but they saw a couple of
them on TV a few times
and they seemed like arrogant
people, so they start believing that all
rich people are like that.
2. Generalizing from a large but
unrepresentative sample to the entire
population.

 This is when the sample is generous in size,

but the elements in it have some distinct
trait that the larger population does not
have, so generalizing to it from this sample
is incorrect.
 For example, let's say you live in Malaysia
and you want get to know the eating
habits of Malaysian, so you study 100
Malaysian people from your city and you
extend the conclusions to Malaysian on
the whole.
5. 6. CONDITIONAL REASONING

 Conditional reasoning is based on

an 'if A Then B' construct that
posits B to be true if A is true.

For example: if today is Monday, I will

go to baking class.
5.6.1 Conditional
Traps.
i. Denying the consequent

 Denying the consequent means going

backwards, saying 'If B is false, then A must
also be false.'

 Thus if you say 'If it is raining, will get wet',

then the trap is to assume that if I am not
getting wet then it is not raining.
ii. Denying the antecedent

 Denying the antecedent is making

assumptions about what will happen if A is
false.

 Thus if you say 'If it is raining, I will get wet

and is not raining, I might assume that I
will not get wet. But then I could fall in the
lake.
iii. Affirming the consequent

 This is making assumptions about A if B

is shown to be true.

 Thus if I make the statement 'If it is

raining. I will get wet', then if I am
getting wet it does not mean that it is
raining.
End of Chapter