Two Kinds of Guys: Interview Techniques

Two Kinds of Guys
By Lt. Joseph Pangaro (Ret) CPM, CSO

It doesn’t matter what your role in law enforcement is. The need to establish a relationship with the people we interview, wherever we find them, is paramount to our success as officers. This story is about that kind of a relationship and how we can use a personal relationship to gain trust, build a bond and get a confession.

When I was a young patrolman, I was assigned to drive a young man into HQ from the field.  He had been arrested for the theft of an old woman’s purse at a shopping center. The detectives were on scene and I was told not to speak to the man, just drive him into the station and have him sit in the interview room of the detective bureau.

The detectives were investigating a series of these purse thefts from older women in the vicinity and it was clear this man was most likely the suspect responsible for all 10 strong-arm robberies. In a couple of the robberies the women, who were in the 70s, were injured when the suspect forcibly took their purses from them. There was no forensic evidence and the victims could not make positive IDs from photos or sketches.

On the ride in I could tell he was nervous.  He was in his late 20s and looked like a pretty strong guy. He was asking me what was going to happen to him, he even said he found the purse on the ground and was stupid for taking it. This was obviously his attempt to distance himself from the strong-arm robberies and try his story out on the first cop he could tell it to.

I told him I couldn’t talk to him, but he should just tell the truth when he spoke to the detectives. I knew enough to butter him up a bit and let him know the detectives were good guys, hoping it would help them when they spoke to the guy.

We got to HQ and I sat him down in the interview room and waited for the detectives. While we waited, I deflected his crime questions and tried to just talk about sports and family stuff to kill the time. He seemed to calm down. Eventually the two detectives came in and relieved me. I waited out in the bureau writing my report while they interviewed him.

After about an hour they came out saying the guy was sticking to his story and wouldn’t budge. He said he found the purse at the curb and took it. He ran when he saw the cop car because he knew the purse wasn’t his. One of the detectives asked me to go sit with him while they discussed what to do next.

I went back in and sat down. He seemed OK, but still nervous. He said he told the detectives the truth, but they don’t believe him. He said they were trying to pin a bunch of robberies of old ladies on him that he didn’t do. He said he had a grandmother and he would never do something like that to old ladies.

I listened to him and made a decision that could have gotten me in big trouble. I decided to try and talk to him a little more. I figured if the detectives didn’t get anywhere with him, what would it hurt? I didn’t know what a possibility was at the time, or what diminishing was, but I thought I might be able to get him to talk to me just based on the way he reacted to me.

My thought was this; he was scared to admit what he did because it was really a terrible thing to do. I also took note that he mentioned he had a grandmother and I figured he might feel guilty for targeting these older women as well.

Here’s what I said:

“You know I’m not a detective and I don’t know what you talked about with them, but I do know that they believe you did take the lady’s purse. The way I see it is this: There’s only two kinds of people that would be involved in something like this.”

He was not answering me, just listening. 

“The way I see is there one kind of guy that doesn’t care who he hurts. He wants money and he figured a good place to get money is from old ladies that can’t fight back.”

As I said this, I held my right hand, palm up at about face level. He looked at my hand and I saw revulsion on his face.

“The other kind of guy is somebody that needed money for something, money for medicine or food for their kids, whatever.  This guy would never purposefully hurt anyone, especially old ladies. This guy didn’t intend to hurt anybody he just needed the money”

As I said this, I held my left hand up, palm up just above my stomach, creating a real difference between the two hands.

The suspect stared at my hands-
“What kind of guy are you?”  I asked him.

What was interesting with this approach was that I only gave him two guilty choices. If he admitted to either one, he was admitting to robbing the victims. The difference was that one of the choices was morally reprehensible; the other was not so much.

I didn’t say anything; I just held my hands there. After a second he looked right at my lower left hand and said:

“I’m the kind of guy that didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Inside my head I was jumping up and down. I couldn’t believe he confessed to me. But I maintained my composure and said:

“That’s what I thought too.”

He shook his head up and down and asked me, “None of them ladies are hurt, are they?”

In reality, two of the 10 ladies did get injured, though they were not life-threatening injuries.

“No, none of them were hurt real bad. A couple of the ladies had sore arms when you yanked their purse away, you’re a big guy”

I then asked him if he would tell the detectives what he told me. He said he would.  I then said: “You know those ladies had a lot of things in their purses that they would like to get back, like pictures of their families and other personal things. Can you tell me where the purses are?”

He shook his head yes and said: “Yeah, they’re in the woods next to my house, I’ll take you to them”

I thanked him and shook his hand. As I was leaving he said, “Hey officer, will you tell the judge what kind of guy I am?”

I said I would and then I told the detectives what had transpired. I really thought they would be angry, but instead they were thrilled, telling me I did a good job.

Besides the satisfaction of solving the crime and getting the confession, I realized how much I loved talking to suspects and I wanted to do it better. I also realized that the way I talked to him was probably the most important part of that interview. Even without formal training what was obvious was that the suspect felt comfortable talking to me, and then I just tried to make it seem that what he had a reason to do what he did besides just being a dirtbag.

This story is an excerpt from my forthcoming book “The Art of Interview” from Loose Leaf Law Books.