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  • Celebrating 20 Years of Training Excellence 2004-2024

Changing Predictable Behavior

For anyone who’s taken our three day Interview and Interrogation class, you know our opening spiel. As investigators, we get lied to on a daily basis. It’s our norm. When people lie to us, we typically don’t like it. We resent it, in fact. It insults our intelligence. If we show this resentment/disgust/frustration, the most likely result is that we still won’t get truthful information.

So let’s review what we can predict:

· We can predict that people will lie to us

· We can predict that our fundamental human response is that we will not like it

· We can predict that showing our disdain will not get the result we want – the truth

If we can predict all of these things, then eliciting truthful information from people means that we must make a conscious decision to take a different approach. We must choose to do something other than what comes naturally to us in order to earn people’s trust and cooperation. We can motivate a subject to change their behavior by exhibiting confidence, professionalism, fairness and flexibility.

Choosing a different approach from the one that comes naturally to us begins with acquiring the knowledge of what is more likely to work. People lie for a variety of reasons, but regardless of which reason it is, we should expect it and not be offended by it. It’s certainly not a personal attack against us. Remember that during the Interview Phase, a subject can lie all they want and we should not call him on it. During the Interrogation Phase, we do call the subject on his lie. However, we never call him, “a liar!” Instead, we minimizing our language and say something like, “Tom, we know you haven’t been completely honest with us.”

We must exercise the patience to listen and observe throughout the Interview Phase as this is how we learn the things we need to know in order to succeed later in the Interrogation Phase. Paying attention to the cues offered to us by the subject, we will learn what he values, his personal beliefs, and his alibi – all of which will assist us greatly later in the process.

What we do next is the subject of our training program. But what is important to understand today is that we are not entitled to the truth simply by virtue of our profession – we must earn the subject’s trust by building rapport. Once we earn the subject’s trust, our chances of obtaining the truth greatly increase if we have the desire, the drive, and the perseverance to endure.

  • The information presented was highly relevant to my job and was presented in a manner that was organized and very easy to digest.

    —Michael McGarvey, California State Prison, San Quentin
  • This training provided the useful tools necessary for assessing the veracity of a suspected child abuser, which goes a long way in helping to protect children.

    —Sunny Burgan, MSSW, LCSW, Social Work Supervisor, Santa Clara County DFCS
  • Effective teaching teams! The presentation of the material was consistently interesting, and intelligent without being too intellectualized.

    —Michele Keller, Deputy Probation Officer, County of Alameda
  • I will continue to use and pass on this information because I really believe in the instructors and their approach.

    —Kimberly Meyer, Washoe County Sheriff's Department
  • Incredible training with amazing real world instruction. I have been taking law enforcement classes for over 30 years and by far this is the best presented and most useful.

    —Det. Brian Dale, Portland Police Bureau
  • Your training gave me the confidence and tools to interview the suspect for over 5 hours and to bring a closure to the case.

    —Daniel Phelan, San Jose Police Department
  • This was, by far and away the best training I have received in 15 plus years of Law Enforcement. The instructors are experienced, engaging, articulate, and very entertaining. I will be recommending this training to multiple agencies.

    —Mark Paynter, Oregon DOC
  • This training by far has been the most informative and most effective I've attended. The instructors engaged the students in a manner that made me want to speak my opinion, ask questions, and participate.

    —Julio Ibarra, Merced County Sheriff’s Office
  • This was, by far, one of the most useful training classes I've attended since becoming an investigator.

    —Steven Aiello, Antioch Police Department
  • Your training has made the greatest and most direct impact on my assignment of any training class that I've taken.

    —Ken Gelskey, National City Police Department
  • It not often that you go to a training that you really, really want to pay attention to. Because of the high quality information and style of presentation, I knew that if I looked away I was going to miss out.

    —Quinten Graves, Oregon State Police
  • I highly recommend this training for any Probation staff who have the necessity to interview/interrogate individuals for investigation purposes.

    —R. Bret Fidler, Santa Clara County Probation Department
  • Instructional style is engaging and highly effective.

    —George Laing, Fire Prevention Captain, Investigator