Leaving Evidence of Presence

[Music] in the analytical and operational world we spend a lot of time training how to not leave any trace but sometimes the exact opposite is needed in the event that you are kidnapped or otherwise taken against your will a very important thing to do among other escape priorities is what we call leaving evidence of presence or lep the people and agencies that will be looking for you are very good at their job and they will find you eventually however they can use all of the help that they can get so by leaving forensic evidence of your presence you can significantly increase your chances of being recovered quickly the overwhelming majority of hostage rescues around the world from the rescue of prisoners of war overseas to the search for kidnapped children in the united states results in agencies finding the place where a person was kept but arriving there too late the captive having been relocated before the rescuing agency arrives in the field of hostage rescue the unfortunate norm is for the team to finally locate the place where a person is being held only to raid that location and find an empty room however this does not mean that all is lost a hostage recovery team is trained person is being held only to raid that location and find an empty room however this does not mean that all is lost a hostage recovery team is trained to conduct sse or sensitive site exploitation looking for any evidence that might point to anything from the location that the victim was moved to to the health and status of the captive remember your captors have limited time and resources but rescuing agencies have unlimited time and unlimited resources at their disposal to find someone as such leaving evidence of your presence will not only let the team know that they are on the right track but just how warm or cold the trail is so what does this actually mean well for the most part it means to leave as much dna behind as possible during the vietnam era american pow pows provided key intelligence as to who had passed through a location before them based on the names that were scratched into the walls of their cells pows who were lucky enough to successfully escape were able to provide critical intelligence as to which pilots might still be alive at the time a major obstacle for power recovery was knowing who was even a prisoner of war seeing as the north vietnamese government freq ill be alive at the time a major obstacle for power recovery was knowing who was even a prisoner of war seeing as the north vietnamese government frequently hid the fact that they had pows any escapee was able to point out who was still alive or who had been captured before them and their status and much of this intelligence was gained by a prisoner simply reading graffiti in their cell if your agency is high speed enough you will have pre-arranged a special symbol that you can scratch into walls or any surface that will trigger a certain set of actions such as searching for dna once you have a free moment in which you don't think you're being observed pull out a few hairs and place them around the room you're being held in under windowsills wedged in cracks and walls or any place where you think that your dna might stay as long as possible use whatever tools you might have to scratch your name into surfaces and leave as much covert graffiti as you can if you are being taken in the trunk of a car and cannot escape bite off the tips of a couple of fingernails and discard them in the trunk for a forensics team to find spit and leave saliva all over everything and rub your head all ov a couple of fingernails and discard them in the trunk for a forensics team to find spit and leave saliva all over everything and rub your head all over the inside of the trunk to pull out a few hairs on the rough metal surfaces anything to leave as much dna behind as possible if you're bleeding make sure to get blood stains everywhere you can but of course don't make your injuries worse by doing this blood is a very hard substance to get rid of and can easily confirm your presence in a location leave your fingerprints on everything you possibly can windows solid surfaces metal any hard surface you think might hold a fingerprint and don't forget the inside of surfaces the interior of packaging for food and medical supplies the undersides of tables the interior of any sort of packaging you might get your captors might try to wipe down the outside surfaces of your captivity area but the interior hard to reach areas are often forgotten or otherwise overlooked in haste and everything that you can do to make it harder for your captors to hide you increases your chances of being rescued exponentially [Music] [Music] you