Officers interviewing witnesses are “potentially reducing the amount of information retrieved” by talking too much, asking too many closed-end questions, and failing to adhere to science-based methods for mining memory, according to new findings by a Canadian research team. Analyzing a sample of 90 interviews with witnesses to violent crimes, the team discovered that: On...Read More
In one word, name a critical–and unfortunately common–mistake investigators make when interviewing police officers who have been involved in shootings. The answer, according to UCLA psychology professor, Dr. Ed Geiselman, is interrupt. “I’ve seen police officers–as well as other presumably cooperative witnesses–bursting at the seams to tell their account of an incident only to be...Read More