I'm a credible expert...Trust me
Two of the most important Ingredients - I’m a credible expert…Trust me
Two of the most important ingredients in your interview and interrogation pantry are I’m a credible expert and Trust me. I like to spread these ingredients throughout, especially at the beginning. I might start by thanking them for coming in. I’ll explain the rules of the house and custodial issues. Then I like presenting these two ingredients. Learn these. Use these. As always, don’t fixate on the exact words that I write. They reflect me as a person. Use the concepts and fit them to your style.
I’m a credible expert
When I watch investigators build rapport, I rarely hear them say anything about themselves. I think this is a mistake. You have a great opportunity to establish expertise and credibility without much effort. You can build credibility by describing life and professional experience that you may or may not have. You can establish expertise by simply occupying your position and telling them you have it. When people know (or think) that you are an expert, they are much more likely to listen to your opinions and recommendations.
Maybe you really are an expert. If so, great! Tell them about yourself and what makes you so great. If you aren’t, no problem! Tell them about your imaginary expert self and what makes you so great. It is perfectly fine to lie in an interview room.
What do we really know about the experts we take advice from? Did you check the school records of the doctor that treats you? Did you demand evidence from your financial advisor that their advice has proven effective? Did you check your mechanic’s license before they worked on your car? The truth of the matter is that we place a lot of trust in people simply because of the position they occupy.
A few days ago, I was interviewing a woman that allowed her son to be tortured for several months. This is a case that has a lot worth examining, but for now, I want to discuss the portion where I established credibility and expertise. It went like this (not a transcript but a fair representation):
“Samantha, I really appreciate you coming in to talk to me today. I know it’s a lot of information coming at you very quickly. I want to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Detective ****. I’ve been with the department for over 14 years. As an officer, I did patrol work, undercover work, and specialized unit gigs. Once I promoted, I found my true calling here in child abuse. You see, we investigate the physical and sexual abuse of children. My department believes that children are the most vulnerable of those we seek to protect. Only the very best get over to this unit.
According to my co-workers and supervisors, I’m one of the best in the unit. What makes me so good is that I care about the truth, not just what I can prove. I have life experience that lets me bring a level of understanding to complicated cases. I come from a big family. I have children and a family of my own now. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve forgiven mistakes from others. I’ve survived personal addictions, the addictions of others, and abusive relationships. All of this puts me in a position that allows me to understand complicated situations.”
Some of this information is true. Some of it isn’t. I’m in my late 30’s. I have been with my department for about 14 years. , but if I were in my late 40’s or beyond I would tell people that I have been with the department for over 20 years even if I had the same number of years on. Why not?
Look at “I’m one of the best.” That’s a powerful way to claim expertise. Am I one of the best? I don’t know. We don’t really have a ranking system like that. Think about it for a minute. If you went to a financial advisor and they told you that, how would you feel? I would think how lucky I was to have that person working on my portfolio. It would be particularly persuasive because I’d want it to be true. Explain to them why you are the best in a way that will be desirable for them. Here we say that it isn’t just what I can prove, it’s about the truth. You could build this out more if you want. Later, you could talk about how the truth is a thing that needs context where motivations really matter. If the suspect has some explaining to do, this might encourage them to explain themselves.
This presentation of I’m a credible expert leads right into a related but separate ingredient of Trust me. I put a break between them because I want you to start thinking about these as separate ingredients. Some ingredients like these two just go together. Just because they often show up together doesn’t mean that you can’t separate them for individual use as the situation demands.
Trust me
“…All of this puts me in a position that allows me to understand complicated situations.
Now, Samantha, I tell you all of these things about myself because I want you to trust me with the truth. My training and, maybe more importantly, my life experience allow me to understand that the truth isn’t always neat. Sometimes it’s messy. Everybody who comes in this room has made mistakes, but that doesn’t mean they are the very worst mistakes.
You know how people get in trouble? They get in trouble because they are embarrassed about the little mistakes. They don’t trust the person they are speaking with to understand the meaning and context of the little mistake. They worry that if they say they made a little mistake that the person they are talking to will believe they are guilty of the worst mistake. That’s not me.
I’m telling you right now that you can trust me to know the difference between serious mistakes and not so serious mistakes. I’m not going to take something small and make it something big.
I’ve found that in my experience the reason most people lie to investigators is not because they did something horrible but rather because they made small mistakes and don’t trust their investigator to know the difference. When that person doesn’t trust me with the truth. No matter how good I am at this, it makes you start to wonder. It’s very difficult to talk to somebody that lies about little things and NOT wonder if maybe they are lying about big things too.
For example, let’s say my kid shows up at the hospital with some unknown poisoning type symptoms. I don’t know what happened. I just want to make sure my kid is ok. When we don’t know what happened and therefore can’t provide the doctors and social workers an explanation of what happened, it brings more - not less - attention to the issue.
If an investigator comes to talk to me, and I don’t trust them to get the truth the right way, I might not mention that one time 2 years ago I found my kid with a bottle of Windex in their hands without really knowing if he drank any or not. This really happened to me. So if I ended up in that position, and didn’t trust the investigator to get it right, I might not tell him about that time because I worry it’s going to look bad on me. I’m worried he’ll think I’m inattentive or unsafe in the way I’ve organized my house.
But actually, there are a lot more things to learn from that incident with a bottle of Windex! For example, it shows that my kid can crawl and pick things up. It shows they are curious. It shows that they can open cupboards where we keep things like that. If I don’t share that story, the investigator isn’t going to have the complete picture. If my wife tells him that story later, he’s going to think I lied to him when I said nothing similar ever happened before.
So I want you to trust me. I’m very good at this. I’m not going to judge you for little mistakes. When you tell me the truth, you can trust me not to spin it out of context. I will hear your truth and recognize it for what it is.”
Do you see how powerful this can be? Don’t you even feel persuaded a little bit to tell me things? This only takes a few minutes to present to your suspect, and it will pay huge dividends. Make the story your own. Use my story if you want.
One caution on inventing things: I recommend lying to a suspect about your experience in a way that is as close to the truth as possible. If you don’t have kids, you could use what you know about your nieces and nephews and just sort of make them your kids. If your kids are 12 and 14 but the suspect has 3 and 4 year old children, your children are now 3 and 5. You want to be able to talk with a little bit of knowledge about whatever subject or historical event you decide to make yourself part of. Don’t say you’ve been through a divorce to mirror a suspect’s experience if you don’t know about lawyers and custody agreements (but if your friend went through one and you could then it might be worthwhile). Use this technique intelligently.
On the other hand, when you talk about real experiences you have, I recommend twisting them a little bit for two reasons. First, you don’t want to give a criminal suspect power over you in any way by knowing about your children or mistakes or anything like that. Second, it’s best to give a suspect just enough information to be able to imagine the rest in a way that will fit in with their thinking patterns, distorted as they often are.
When I talk about addiction - which is often but not always - I have some experience with it because it is true that I was addicted to tobacco. For over ten years I dipped a can a day. When I quit, it was the most difficult thing I can remember ever doing. I knew what it was like to need a substance. I knew what it was like to quit it and not be able to think about anything else for days on end while I went about my normal life. However, I rarely identify what the addiction is. I’ll say something like, “I’ve suffered from addiction too. I know how hard it is.” They get to put whatever they want on that. As far as they are concerned I may be a pill head or an alcoholic or any other sort of addict.
These ingredients are important. Learn them. Practice them. Don’t just say them in your head. Say them out loud. Get comfortable stringing these thoughts together out loud.