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Dealing with interrogations
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1 Reply
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Here’s some interesting and relevant comments from under the John Oliver youtube video about police interrogations.
“Another important piece of advice: if the cops ever come to you and say, “Can you come to the station and answer some questions for us?” DON’T DO IT. They will often act chummy and assure you it will only take a few minutes. They’re lying. They’re actually trying to charge you but don’t have enough evidence for a warrant. If you willingly go with them, they’ll trap you in the station and keep you there until you confess. Instead, ask if they have a warrant and insist that you won’t go without your lawyer”
“In Australia (specifically NSW) police’s detention powers are quite limited. They have to arrest you to detain you for any period and in the case of arrest the longest they can hold you without formalising a charge is 8 hours. You basically don’t have to talk till you get a lawyer so can chill in custody and just not talk. Abuse of this procedure is grounds for exclusion of evidence in the event that the cops decide to charge you and the state prosecutes you for the offence”
“In 1988 I fell for that garbage. it was well before the internet, tv crime dramas that might have semi-useful information etc. I was so f@cking stupid I even hired the lawyer another cop “secretly” recommended to me. $23,000 and several months later my charges were lowered from distribution of a controlled substance, conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking, witness intimidation and several other lesser charges (FYI – yes I was guilty of selling drugs). Anyway this was in Hampshire County, Mass; and apparently CPAC (Crime Prevention and Control) , some judges and lawyers all colluded to target “rich” white students who they figured they could shake down. About 6 months later a lot of this was exposed…no one went to jail…of course. I was telling a friend the story and I will be darned if there is any record of it on the internet anywhere I could find…..sigh.”
“When a lying cop interrogator tells you they have all this evidence against you[and you know you are innocent], take a moment to ponder why they haven’t charged you yet if that’s true”
“I made so many stupid mistakes like that including admitting to owning weed when threatened. Turns out they knew nothing and qhere just fishing, while I crapped may pants (figuratively). You know nothing, you say nothing. And unless they have a warrant DO NOT let them in.”
“Counter point, when investigator interrogations lead to false confessions, the real perp got away, and someone who got away once is more likely to commit again. Which means you didn’t just let off a random criminal, you let off someone who is statistically more likely to commit.”
“Those false conviction rates are unacceptably high. Consider: for every false murder conviction, you have at a bare minimum doubled the number of victims since you now have the dead person plus the innocent person who’s life has just being destroyed by the false conviction. Add in the fact that if the wrong person is behind bars, then the killer is still free and potentially doing more harm. Heck, don’t you think getting away with murder would just embolden them to kill again and again?”
“”I Invoke my right to an attorney”. There have been cases where constitutional rights violations have been dodged by prosecutors and officers because they said “I’d like to speak to an attorney”. In those cases officers said “He said he WANTED to, that didn’t mean we had to” and they got away with not providing legal counsel.”
“I’m handicapped, and I was arrested a few years ago for something that was physically impossible. Was interrogated by some of the dumbest people I’ve met. One of the most weird experience of my life.”
“police aren’t hired for their intellectual capacity, but for physical strength and endurance and the ability to blindly follow orders. After hiring, there’s an interior vetting process. A senior officer slips you a bag with a few hundred dollar bills in it. If you ask what it’s for, they’ll answer vaguely about it being your share of things. If you take it, they know you’re corruptible, and you will soon be offered your first promotion. If you refuse it or report it, next time you call for backup, none comes. Or you suddenly find yourself being bullied or ostracized and shunned in the workplace. The dirty senior cops in the police force with established corrupt practices don’t want any honest cops in their blue gang. There are old cops, there are new cops, there are good cops and there are bad cops. There are no good old cops. …”
“This is a huge problem in Japan also. I was arrested and held for 15 days on a false accusation and the police lied to me several times. They hold you hostage there until you confess. A lot of discrimination against foreigners there. No checks and balances in place. Angering and terrifying at the same time.”
“The NYPD tried these tactics on me 20 years ago. I felt like I was talking to a Bond villain. Luckily I was able to get out of there unscathed. They’re despicable.”
“This kinda reminds me of that experiment when researchers tested if police officers were more accurate than college students without law enforcement training at reading body language for lie detection, and it turned out the college students performed better because the police officers who participated were overconfident in their evaluations”
“It’s always given me a bad feeling that the police can lie in an interrogation. To me, that no longer feels like they’re after the truth, but rather, they’re after a confession.”
“I remember reading a comment years ago, where the person’s father (who was a cop) told them that if they ever get arrested, to IMMEDIATELY request a lawyer, because the cops aren’t there to prove your innocence or to respect your rights, they’re just there to prove you’re guilty!”
“I’m starting to think that the problem isn’t a few bad apples in the police. But that the apples are exactly the apples the farmer wanted.”
” You can also walk out of a police interview. Unless they have something concrete to hold you on you are free to leave at any time”
“When does a interrogation end? That guy at the end who was in prison for 20 years had his interrogation last for 4 days. So does that mean they can just keep putting you in and taking you out of that room until you they get a guilty confession?”
“Invoke your right to have an attorney present, then invoke your right to silence. It will end then and there.”
“They can bring you to the interrogation room day after day only if you keep agreeing to talk to them without a lawyer”
“I studied law and my husband has a law degree, plus I binge watch interrogations and know about the Reid technique. Also, I’ve been interrogated, even as a child. I know that if I sat through an interrogation they could probably make me confess to something or look/answer in a guilty manner somehow. Never talk to police. You might have to sit in a cell, and it will suck. But nothing is ever worth talking to them for.”
“In regards to the body language thing, a lot of the body language they cite as indicative of concealment is just stuff most people do in an uncomfortable situation. People will usually take a “barrier posture” as a protective position because they are in an uncomfortable situation. I could mean they are lying, but more likely people are scared because they are being interrogated by the police.”
“Was interrogated by the police in college reason why doesn’t matter. They took my phone and since I didn’t have a lawyer I let them search it. Officer comes back and says “with what’s on your phone I could put you in cuffs right now”. I looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Okay”. I was released 30 minutes later, they’ll literally make things up.”
“would definitely advise people to read The confession from John Grisham. I used to think that lawyers were for guilty people when I was a kid. This book seriously opened my mind.”
“This is why you simply don’t talk to the police. Ever. They will try to say things like “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me” but the truth is that it’s highly unlikely that their goal is to help you. If their goal actually is to help you, they can go out and find some real evidence in the field or at the scene.”
“There’s literally a case from the 70s in Iceland where 4 people confessed to a murder they didn’t commit because the police kept putting them in solitary confinement and the suspects kept confessing to the crimes cause they just wanted to leave” [the cops probably suggested they might go home if they would only admit it. I’ve seen them use similar tactics on youtube interrogations]
“I recall seeing a video years ago saying something along the lines of, cops stick up for each other… and essentially many of them have an instinctual reaction when they hear legal language asserting their rights, and they tread carefully because 1. They might be related to a cop (and potentially a superior) , or 2. They might be related to a lawyer, and they dont’ want to mess with someone related to either.”
“I’m a criminal justice major and one thing I’ve told my friends is if you ever get put in a situation like this, demand a lawyer IMMEDIATELY and say nothing else until you have one. It doesn’t matter if you’re “just a witness”, it doesn’t matter if you have an ironclad alibi, it doesn’t matter if you had nothing to do with the crime. That guy was right, a skilled enough interrogator can extract a confession from almost anyone.”