I’ve watched police interrogations too and they are both fascinating and horrifying. Those interrogators have a lot in common with shady used car salesmen. They twist and contort the truth to get whoever they want out of the person being interviewed. Except unlike the car salesmen the good interviewers really know their shit and can “corner” a person in their own lies. (I suppose a good salesman is just the same though)
It’s a weird place to be when you are rooting for the child molester/arsonist/muderer hoping they’d come to their sense and fucking CALL A LAWER YOU FUCKING IDIOT and SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!!!
But oddly, I guess maybe it’s a good thing “rape the kids and wife, shoot them point blank and burn the house down” criminals are too stupid to exercise such a basic right. Even the scummiest of police investigators give these people the option to shut the fuck up and call the lawyer. Sure the person might have to wait an obscenely long time before the lawyer shows up but they still are given the out yet these moron criminals think they can outsmart a highly trained police interrogator and choose to dig their holes.
Usually these people already dug their hole well before they are drug into the police station though. The on the ground evidence usually pretty much points to them already. All the confession does is save the state millions of dollars taxpayer money with courtroom proceedings.
So yeah… really mixed on the whole topic. Of course these videos on YouTube are selected to be the most interesting of the bunch. There are probably a hundred more mundane interrogations that go unseen for every one that makes it to a widely subscribed YouTube channel.
> Sure the person might have to wait an obscenely long time before the lawyer shows up but they still are given the out
This is not to challenge anything you said, but you have two rights here: the first is to have a lawyer present while you are being questioned, the second (and more important right) is the right to remain silent.
Talking to a lawyer is obviously a good idea if you are in any sort of legal predicament. Even if you were not arrested or charged, but have certain legal obligations or are considering signing a binding contract etc.
But when it comes to police "interviewing" you, you don't even have to go as far as to ask for a lawyer. You can simply leave it at "I don't want to talk to you." Even THEN you don't have to go that far. You can literally communicate absolutely nothing. Catatonic non-responsiveness is not a crime. This applies whether or not you are under arrest or being detained. You can always refuse to speak. That is your constitutionally protected right.
> They twist and contort the truth to get whoever they want out of the person being interviewed.
It's possible I just haven't watched enough of them, but I've never seen that. Usually the interviewer is a calm and dispassionate Columbo type who asks clarifying questions and then lets the suspects slowly trap themselves in their own web of lies. It is fascinating to watch.
That said, even though I have a healthy respect for the criminal justice system, I will still NEVER talk to the police without a lawyer. (Whether or not I've committed a crime.)
>Usually the interviewer is a calm and dispassionate Columbo type who asks clarifying questions and then lets the suspects slowly trap themselves in their own web of lies.
This loses its ability to inspire awe when you watch a video of one of these where you know the subject is actually innocent and the interviewer manages to also catch them in their own web of lies and make them look and sound guilty.
Academia has reproduced this result a fair bit: under interrogation it's very easy to convince people to admit to events happening which didn't. Eyewitness testimony is thus intensely unreliable - and psychologically as far as can be told, the act of remembering something makes the memory itself labile - i.e. you rewrite a memory as you recall it.
So rounds of intense questioning on the same subject infect any recollection of the experience someone has - amplifying or even adding events which didn't exist due to the focus of it.
And this has very real consequences - it was one of the driving forces of the satanic panic in in the 1980s[1] - for which people went to jail on the basis of "recovered memories".
It’s a weird place to be when you are rooting for the child molester/arsonist/muderer hoping they’d come to their sense and fucking CALL A LAWER YOU FUCKING IDIOT and SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!!!
But oddly, I guess maybe it’s a good thing “rape the kids and wife, shoot them point blank and burn the house down” criminals are too stupid to exercise such a basic right. Even the scummiest of police investigators give these people the option to shut the fuck up and call the lawyer. Sure the person might have to wait an obscenely long time before the lawyer shows up but they still are given the out yet these moron criminals think they can outsmart a highly trained police interrogator and choose to dig their holes.
Usually these people already dug their hole well before they are drug into the police station though. The on the ground evidence usually pretty much points to them already. All the confession does is save the state millions of dollars taxpayer money with courtroom proceedings.
So yeah… really mixed on the whole topic. Of course these videos on YouTube are selected to be the most interesting of the bunch. There are probably a hundred more mundane interrogations that go unseen for every one that makes it to a widely subscribed YouTube channel.