The Police Can Get You to Confess to Any Crime with These Tricks
The Police Can Get You to Confess to Any Crime with These Tricks
Even if you're innocent
One of the most damaging and dangerous piece of evidence the police can have on someone is a confirmed, seemingly un-coerced confession.
The police know this and try their very best to get a suspect to confess through various sneaky tactics which might seem unethical but actually aren't. Number one on the list is;
Pretending to be Your Friend:
Once you're brought to the station for interrogation, the first thing they'll try to do is make you feel relaxed and build up some kind of rapport. They could do this by bringing you snacks, turning on the AC, and trying to establish a point of commonality.
Once you’re relaxed, the officer usually proceeds to tell you that they know you did it, they have more than enough evidence to wreck you, and all they want to know is why you did it.
The police call this method Positive Confrontation and trust me, it works. This brings me to the next technique;
Legally Lying to You:
Do you know the police are actually allowed to lie about having incriminating evidence (such as finger prints, Dna, and witnesses) against you?
They could come up to you and say "There’s no need to keep dragging this, we were able to get the cctv footage and we’ve seen everything"
This was very clear in the famous case of Central Park 5 (link’s below the article) where the policeman told each of them that the other had implicated them.
Here's another thing that might shock you: The cops are legally allowed to conduct a lie detector test and manipulate the results to their taste. If you're actually the culprit, there's a high chance it'll spook you into a hasty confession.
The truth is that lie detector tests are barely admissible in court and judges almost never take them seriously, any decent lawyer knows this.
Apart from the fact that lie detector tests are a complete hogwash, you're not even legally obligated to take one in the first place.
Lying about having incriminating evidence might be an extremely effective method but it has a downside; it also affects the innocent.
A very good example is that of 17yr old Marty Tankleff. Marty woke up and found his mom stabbed to death and his dad unconscious from stab wounds.
Marty called 911 and while his parents were taken away(don't know if his dad eventually died), he was arrested as a prime suspect. The police spent hours trying to get the truth out of him but couldn't.
Out of frustration, an officer lied that when his dad was brought in, he was able to identify him as the culprit.
Marty was very confused, he knew he wasn't the culprit, but what he didn't know was that the police were legally allowed to lie to him.
This made him begin to think he could have done it while he was drunk, in other words, he didn’t know what to believe anymore.
With the fake evidence before him and a lot of pressure from the officer, Marty decided to confess, and even though he immediately took it back, he still ended up spending 17 years in prison before he was eventually found innocent.
It's scary how many people are rotting in jail right now because of methods like this, or worse, in death row.
Another Method They Use Is to "Bully" You:
When I say bully, what I mean is they strip you of all the confidence needed to defend yourself. They shut down/interrupt any form of denial immediately to make you feel powerless.
"I told you, I couldn't have killed her, that's not even my baseball—"
"Don't even bother! We're already passed that, your fingerprint was all over the bat when we found it"
"I f*cking swear to God, it couldn't have been mine, I —"
"Please, help us, and we’ll try to help you. You’ve already hit a dead end here...."
Notice the pattern? The interrogator was trying to make the suspect feel like there’s absolutely nothing he can do. They may not always rudely cut you off but the concept is basically the same, it’s all about stripping you off your confidence.
This usually leads to the next method which is;
Minimization:
"I had a sexual assault case and while I was talking to the suspect, I mentioned how hot the woman was and told him how I perfectly understood where he was coming from. The moment he heard this, we became best buds and started talking. He’s still in prison right now" Officer George Birch
This method basically has to do with the interrogator trying to play down the gravity of an offense, justify it and make it seem like it’s what anybody would have done in that given situation.
They'll rewrite the story in a way that makes you more sympathetic, and the crime more justifiable.
"Your track records show you're a very good person, but everyone makes mistakes. I understand you lost your temper, bosses can be a serious pain in the ass, we could work something out if you tell us everything"
It could also work on the innocent.
A woman is falsely accused of poisoning her husband's coffee, she's brought in for questioning where a mountain of fake evidence is brought before her.
Hours upon hours pass and she still insists she's innocent, the police keep feeding her lies that the whole case isn't looking good for her at all, and that she's most probably going to be charged with first degree.
The woman is shaking, and in the midst of her mental turmoil, the officer goes "Look, these things happen, maybe you didn’t remember all the details. Who knows, you might have kept the poisonous substance carelessly and it accidentally spilled into his coffee, everyone makes mistakes"
The officer goes on and on about how she’ll receive a lower sentence if she falls under the other scenario, and that they have a ton of evidence against her, so much that it could even cost her the death penalty.
She weighs the two options and decides to confess to leaving her substance carelessly lying around.
The unfortunate part is that when they confess to the minimized scenario, it usually doesn’t even help their case, it’s usually a lose-lose situation.
These are the few reasons why the police are very good at getting criminals to confess, unfortunately, this also affects the innocent.
Conclusion:
If there are two things I'd want you to learn is that;
The Police can lie to you, there’s no code of ethics or whatever.
If you’re invited for questioning, do not say a word until you get a lawyer.
Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Tankleff
https://innocenceproject.org/police-deception-lying-interrogations-youth-teenagers/