Institute for Law Enforcement Education ILEE
Home    |   About Us   |   Contact Us   |   Search   |   Site Map  
Institute for Law Enforcement Education - ILEE Institute for Law Enforcement Education - ILEE
CoursesScheduleRegistrationWhat's New at ilee

Techniques for Improving Street and Formal Interrogations

Questioning Techniques in Vehicle Stops, Street Interviews, and Formal Interrogations

Body Language in Vehicle Stops, Street Interviews, and Formal Interrogations

Handling Deception in Vehicle Stops, Street Interviews, and Formal Interrogations

(Interviewing I, II, III, IV)

Course Number: CR-502 - 505
Course Length: 4 Days or 4 Separate Days

Highway safety, officer safety and most other aspects of professional law enforcement work involves interaction with motorists, witnesses, victims of criminal activity, and suspects on a personal level. This contact largely involves observation, oral communication, and other skilled interpersonal interaction. Highways are increasingly occupied with drivers who are impaired or otherwise disinterested in the safe operation of a vehicle. Officers frequently encounter persons under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, persons who endanger others through road rage incidents (sometimes using personal weapons), persons who are desperate to avoid detection and apprehension due to criminal activity, persons transporting drugs or illegal weapons in their vehicles, and others who risk death or injury through carelessness or indifference. Add this to the demands of preventive patrol, answering calls for service, and administering the rule of law, and interviewing becomes the most time-consuming function of most members of the criminal justice community.

The interviewing series (Interviewing I-IV) consists of four days of instruction in the art and science of gathering accurate and more complete information from persons by means of oral interviews, while assessing non-verbal communication. Although applicable to the entire law enforcement function, nowhere is this more important than during traffic stops and crash investigations. Motorists represent a cross-section of the population, and come into contact with traffic officers under a variety of situations: traffic enforcement, checkpoints, vehicle collisions, stolen vehicles, fleeing felons, drug interdiction stops, vehicle consent searches, traffic direction and others. In order to properly bring closure to these assignments, the officer needs to be able to gather all available information from the driver, passengers and others; evaluate the body language of the individuals involved; ask proper questions in the proper manner; and be able to detect deception, when present.

The investigative process involves oral interaction, interpretation of non-verbal behaviors, and assessment of deception. This process is discussed from the standpoint of various interviewing situations including traffic stops, vehicle collision investigations, interviews of victims and witnesses, and interrogations of criminal suspects. Beginning with Interviewing I, and progressing through Interviewing IV, the participant explores the alternatives available for obtaining information from those who wish to furnish assistance, as well as from those who attempt to conceal information. Each successive workshop builds on the preceding one, but is complete in itself. Through the use of videos, projects, and classroom exercises, participants discuss how to better conduct street and formal interviews. Interviewing methods introduced are discussed in light of both the routine interviews involved in traffic and foot patrol, as well as the interrogation of a suspect in custody.

By improving the ability of uniformed officers, detectives and other criminal justice professionals to interview persons both formally and informally, improvement in public service should result: increased success in removing drugs from the highway through development of probable cause and consent searches; improved collision investigations resulting in life-saving highway improvements; increased apprehension of impaired and dangerous drivers before their causing of deaths or injuries to self or others; improved prosecution of homicide by vehicle and other major offenders who contribute to the Commonwealth’s highway death rate; reduction of injury and death of patrol officers through recognition of deception and threatening body language; improving highway infrastructure by means of more detailed and accurate collision investigations; improved and more effective criminal investigations through use of proper interviewing techniques; better communications among interacting criminal justice agencies; and improved service to victims of the community.

Techniques for Improving Street Interviews This workshop covers the step-by-step approach to the field interview, as well as the formal interrogation. Starting with an overview of the benefits of separating “interview” techniques from “interrogation” techniques, this workshop discusses the overall strategy and tactics of conducting a successful interview, including avoiding the “traditional” police interview approach, qualities of the good interviewer, implementing the “Seven-Step Interview”, the use and interpretation of movement, building rapport, note-taking and terminating an interview. Contents include officer approach, questioning techniques, application of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” to all interviews, assisting victims and witnesses to remember and articulate details from memory, an introduction to the process of cognitive interviewing, interviewing the learning disabled, questioning children, and elements of oral and written statements. Exercises include enhancing memory and interviewing witnesses, as well as discussions of several videos.

Questioning Techniques This workshop has several distinct sections of discussion. It begins with the principles and suggested practices of facility enhancement – traffic stop, victim interview, witness report or arrested suspect’s statement. Where you interview, the stance you take, and under what conditions you interview affects the outcome. This workshop makes specific suggestions for improvement of any facility used to conduct interviews, with an emphasis on selecting the best available location, use of existing materials, and working to enhance its contribution to a successful interview. This is important, even during the interview at an accident scene or traffic stop. The next section involves improving oral communications. Participants discuss various techniques of making the initial assessment of each subject, and how to determine the approach that will maximize the quantity and quantity of information obtained. The types and uses of various questioning techniques are discussed, along with the causes and types of denials expected from suspects and non-suspects alike. The third main focus is on various questioning techniques. Included are discussions including manipulative versus confrontational interviewing, verbal probing techniques, personality-based interviews, and conversation management. Content includes developing baselines for determining honesty, using verbal neurolinguistics, eliminating scripts, using rationalizations, and making progressive accusations. The primary thrust of this workshop is to expose each participant to the potential and utility of different questioning techniques, and how to progress beyond denials. Exercises include improvement of interviewing facilities and locations and a second witness interview exercise. several videos are used to illustrate proper procedures.

Body Language This workshop is dedicated to the proposition that body language is a potential second language to be used by the trained interviewer. As such, it is two-way communication. This workshop focuses not only on the proper observation of a subject’s body movements and chosen spatial relationships, but also discusses the use of this modality by the interviewer to enhance the interview results. This workshop places the preplanning covered in the first session and the questioning techniques covered in the second session into perspective. By understanding the concepts and use of behavior symptom analysis, participants learn to recognize leakage, incongruence and deceptive behavior. This workshop focuses on posture, breathing gestures, eye movement and spatial relationships, as well as physical signs of stress as both tools to gain additional information and methods to assess the truthfulness of that information. Contents include the role of fear and other emotions in body movement, context and congruence of movements, cultural differences, influence of vehicle operation on citizen-police interviews, and using an officer's body language to control denials and obtain useful statements. The workshop details observations possible of a subject from head to toe, with extended sections on facial movements and eye movements indicative of deception. The officer safety section discusses danger signs during a traffic or street stop, body language clues to an “encounter deterioration”, and clues to the carrying of a concealed weapon. Especially for the patrol officer on a traffic stop, the ability to accurately assess body language indicative of either a threat or of deception is a major officer safety tool. Exercises and projects provide discussion tools for initial assessments of interview subjects, assessment of eye movement, and evaluation of various body position and movements. Several videos of actual officer street encounters are used for discussion of officer safety issues.

Handling Deception This workshop is the last of the interviewing series, covering an in-depth analysis of the various forms of deception and its detection. Participants discuss the major causes of deception and the three basic kinds of deception in interviews. They discuss the five stages of an interview of a guilty suspect, as well as factors that affect the selection of the proper approach to an interview. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion is presented as a model to be applied to interviews of all types to detect deception. Participants discuss the application of the stress reaction of “fight – flight – freeze” to deception detection, and how to detect anxiety, leakage and other symptoms of the fear of detection. This section applies especially well to the drug interdiction stop. Topics include deception indicators such as those seen in oral speech, oral responses to questions, “non-responses”, posture, attitude, specific body movements, and other indirect indicators. Participants become able to assess the diminished responses inherent in certain types of suspects, and discuss how to question them. The traits, attitudes, and defenses of the untruthful suspect are explored and recommendations made for improving communications with them. Contents include why persons “lie”, the handling of anger, development of admissions, avoiding false confessions, interviewing problems with sociopaths and psychopaths, strategies of the deceptive subject, and handling the compliant personality. The workshop ends with an examination of the goals of interviews, tactics and cautions, and how to design a successful approach for each encounter. Several exercises involve the class in assessing segments of actual cases and discussing a taped interview of a person involved in a famous murder case. Other videos will permit participants to detect deceptive clues covered throughout the training series.

Return to Criminal Investigation & Drug Investigation Related Programs


FAQs
Staff Contact


Institute for law enforcement education

Pennsylvania’s Leader in Law Enforcement Training

For questions and comments, please email ra-ilee@pa.gov

Copyright 2003 Institute for Law Enforcement Education. All rights reserved.
Web Development by The ARC Network