Thrill of the hunt
A NEW reality show sets out to find out if a fugitive from justice is able to stay off the grid and evade law enforcement officers for up to 28 days.
In Hunted, nine pairs of everyday civilians, known as Fugitives, are tracked by a team of real-life former police and intelligence professionals over a course of 28 days.
Any pairs of Fugitives who manage to elude capture during that time will win US$250,000 (RM1.07 million) each.
Hunted, which premieres tonight on KIX HD (Astro channel 729) at 9pm, has retired FBI commander Robert W. Clark as the head of a formidable team comprising investigators in both Operations and Intelligence to track the fugitives, as well as nine pairs of hunters who will go on the road to catch them.
The team will use the same methods of surveillance employed by actual law enforcement officers, including open source intelligence (publicly-available data), cyber expertise and interrogation.
The actual groundwork (and apprehending) is done by the hunters who consist of fomer law enforcement and military servicemen.
One of the key investigators is Lenny Depaul, who is the head of Operations.
Depaul was a former commander of the US Marshal's New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force, where he oversaw hundreds of criminal investigators from federal, state and local agencies.
He has spent more than three decades pursuing violent criminals, terrorists and drug runners.
These days, he is a private investigator, as well as doing work for private contractors.
It is one thing to pursue criminals in real life, but something else when it is staged for television.
In a recent telephone interview with theSun, Depaul said: "In my world, [I chase] real criminals, people who don't want to go to jail, people who would rather kill you than be apprehended.
"When you are chasing a human, it means trying to get into [the person's] brain as well as forecasting where [the person] is going to run.
"It is a challenge. For me, it is putting that puzzle together, and connecting the dots."
Being a part of Hunted was something that naturally interested him.
"Once that light turned green, we hit the ground running and did not stop until the 28th day, when the bell rang."
According to Depaul, at some point, fugitives will try to contact their friends or family, or get somebody to do it for them, either by cellphone or computer.
Those digital breadcrumbs enable law enforcement to track them down.
He added: "Human beings always make mistakes. They get complacent. They get comfortable.
"They will think: 'I am a week out into this, I can get a hamburger' or whatever.
"There are a whole lot of people out there who like to talk, who like to take videos. Then there are CCTVs.
"There are a lot of things out there for law enforcement to use."
In real life, there are always numerous sightings of missing people. In most cases, things don't pan out.
Depaul points out that a good investigator will look into all the leads and clues, even those that don't pan out.
He said a good investigator will exhaust all leads even at the cost of manpower and time.
"You have to sift through the nonsense that comes out."
He related a story about how enforcement agencies purposely informed the producer of a TV show called America's Most Wanted that a fugitive they were hunting was spotted in Texas even though the police suspected he was somewhere else.
This was in order to lull the fugitive into believing that the cops are on the wrong trail and flush him out.
As for the show, Depaul said they are told nothing about the Fugitives and their crimes until they got to the command centre.
"We got their pictures, we got the names and the address that they ran from. They also got an hour headstart on us.
"We were told how much money they had and what forms of communication they had.
"That was all we got about these people.
"With that little information, the team had to try to put together a puzzle and get them into custody within 28 hours."