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.
