New York and New Jersey police get trained in specific interrogation techniques as part of their professional development. These different techniques get refined over time and studied to see how effective they are. Each technique has its own advantages and disadvantages for law enforcement.
For example, techniques that rely on psychological pressure to obtain a confession can be efficient and especially effective on certain people, but they can also lead to false confessions.
On the other hand, techniques that rely more on comprehensive information gathering take more time and effort, and certain people can simply maintain a lie throughout the process. However, these techniques seem to be less susceptible to either the officer’s own biases or innocent people confessing to crimes they did not commit just to end the questioning.
Interestingly, even an article from the FBI’s Law Enforcement Bulletin acknowledges that human beings, including police officers, are simply not great at detecting lies by trying to read verbal or non-verbal cues.
A police officer’s best guess about who is telling the truth is as good as anyone else’s, yet they and prosecutors use their training and techniques to build their cases for a criminal conviction.
Sometimes, officers may even testify about their technique in court to give juries an impression that it is very scientific and thus more reliable.
People facing interrogation have the right to remain silent
No interrogation technique is prefect. Moreover, there is always a power differential between the police and the people they are questioning. Those who are being targeted for a police investigation should remember that they have the right to remain silent. The first line of defense is simply not to answer the authorities’ questions about an alleged crime.