always visible [2]. In this latter study, 85% of the investigators reported they supported electronic recordings or felt that the recordings did not have a negative effect on their job.
They further believed that electronic recordings generally decreased the length of a trial,
and that the recordings did not serve to benefit the defense.
After the oral confession is made, to assure the suspect that his admissions are accurately
recorded and to offer him the greatest protection, he should be instructed to put his confes-
sion in writing. The investigator can instruct the suspect to begin the confession by writing,
“My name is
, I am
years old, I live at
, I went to the
nth grade
in school and read and write the English language.”
The body of the confession should then follow. At the conclusion the interrogator
should instruct the suspect to write, “This (number of pages)-page statement is true and
correct, and I wrote it myself without any threats, rewards or promises from anyone,
knowing it can and will be used against me in a court of law because. . . .” At this point
the interrogator should ask the suspect why he decided to tell the truth. Regardless of
how the suspect answers (“I felt like there was a rock on my chest,” or “I wanted my feel-
ings known,” etc.), he should be instructed to add his answer to the statement. This addi-
tional insight into the suspect’s motivation for giving the confession will further validate
the process, because the biggest question in the minds of others is, “Why would a person
confess?”
If the suspect asks how to spell a word during the initial draft of the confession, the inter-
rogator should have the suspect spell it for himself and then correct it later and have the
suspect initial it.
The statement should be timed, dated, and signed. The interrogator should then take the
statement and pen from the suspect. The pen should be put away, and the interrogator
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19. STATEMENTS, RECORDINGS, AND VIDEOS
should then read the statement to the suspect out loud. At every mistake or spelling error in
the statement the suspect must make the correction and initial it with a pen of a different
color ink from the one used in the original draft.
At the conclusion of the statement, the suspect should be instructed to write, “I have
reread my (number of pages)-page statement, initialed all of my corrections, and find the
statement to be true and correct.” The suspect should again time, date, and sign the same
statement in the new color of ink.
The interrogator should have a typist type the statement. If the typist is extremely effi-
cient, instruct him or her to make sure there are a couple of typographical errors in it so
the suspect can again initial and correct them before dating, timing, and signing his state-
ment for a third time.
By now, the suspect will have read the confession three times and will have had every
opportunity to correct any errors or omissions. There will now exist, as part of the record,
documentation of three readings with three signatures in two different colors of ink, indi-
cating that the suspect understood, corrected, and voluntarily signed his confession.
If the suspect cannot read or write legibly, it is permissible for the interrogator to write
the confession for him. Then, the interrogator should tape-record the reading of it to the
suspect and have the suspect agree on tape that it is a true and correct statement. This will
clearly demonstrate that the statement was voluntary and he understood what was written.
This is the only exception to the nontaping rule because it eliminates the possibility of the
suspect later denying he understood what he was signing. This also serves to explain
why only one portion of the interview/interrogation process was recorded.
SUMMARY
• Recording interviews and interrogations has to be consistent; record both processes or
neither process. If required by state law, an informed consent form should be signed by
the interviewee indicating that he is aware that he is being tape-recorded and gives his
consent to it.
• Recording interrogations is a two-edged sword. While it serves to ensure that the rights
of the suspect were not violated, it also may serve to allow the suspect to “perform” or
may even interfere with the suspect’s desire to be truthful.
• Having the suspect include in his confession why he decided to confess will enhance the
value and believability of the process and confession.
• Having the suspect reread his statement and make and initial corrections in a different
color of ink, as well as re-sign and time the confession, will also make it more valid.
References
[1] S.M. Kassin, R.A. Leo, C.A. Miessner, K.D. Richman, L.H. Colwell, A. Leach, et al., Police interviewing and interrogation: a self report survey of police practices and beliefs, Law Hum. Behav. 31 (2007) 381 400.
[2] B.C. Jayne, Empirical Experiences of Required Electronic Recordings of Interviews and Interrogations on Inves tigators’ Practices and Case Outcomes, John E. Reid and Associates, Chicago.
C H A P T E R
20
Understanding Aggressive Behavior
and Dealing with Angry People
Imagine yourself walking down a dark street in a less than desirable neighborhood. It is
very late at night, and you are by yourself. Suddenly, out of the shadows of an alley, a man
appears. Your senses immediately heighten. Your pupils dilate to allow more light to enter
and give you better far vision. Your ears tingle as your sense of hearing is enhanced. Your
cardiac output increases, as does your breathing rate. Blood is redirected from your stom-
ach and digestive organs to your brain and to the big muscles of your arms and legs. This
redirected blood will better enable you to think, fight, or run as the circumstances allow.
Energy that is stored in your liver as the sugar glycogen empties into your bloodstream,
and adrenaline is quickly released into your bloodstream as well, as a chemical backup sys-
tem to prepare your body for an emergency. Your face blanches as vasoconstriction causes
your blood to move to the deeper vessels in your body, helping you to survive lacerations
by minimizing blood loss from the superficial parts of the body. The hairs on your body
stand up (piloerection), as the base of the hair follicles become erect, helping you to cool
down through evaporation of perspiration, and perhaps in a more primitive time to make
you appear bigger and fiercer to your opponent. As this man approaches from the alley,
you get an intuitive feeling that he is no threat to you; possibly you can see he is a police-
man or even a harmless vagrant. As you pass each other, you give an audible sigh of relief
as you each continue on your separate ways.
We are certain that you have experienced something very similar to this scenario many
times in your life – both the internal changes described and the intuitive response as to
another person’s possible threat to you. By now, you should recognize the psychophysio-
logical changes we described as being an integral part of your evolutionary survival mech-
anism, defined earlier in the book as sympathetic arousal. Interestingly, in an actual attack,
&nb
sp; these changes will occur in both the aggressor and the victim. More importantly, they cause
clearly observable behavioral changes that can warn you of an impending attack. As an
interviewer and interrogator, understanding these signs and understanding how to deal
with angry people are very important skills for you to know.
With a scientific understanding of aggressive nonverbal behavior, you will have the abil-
ity and the advantage to understand and recognize behaviors that a potential attacker may
Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques
283
# 2011, Elsevier Ltd.
284
20. UNDERSTANDING AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR AND DEALING WITH ANGRY PEOPLE
FIGURE 20.1
exhibit. This knowledge will serve to forewarn you of a physical attack which is about to
happen. By being capable of observing and understanding these warning signs, you will
be afforded the opportunity to attempt to prevent the physical attack.
To reinforce your understanding of what happens when the brain perceives a physical
threat, let us reiterate that when such a situation presents itself, your body and mind will
be physiologically prepared to do one of three things: fight, flee, or freeze. All three of
these outcomes are accompanied by sympathetic arousal (“fight/flight”). If you perceive
that you can outrun your opponent, your first choice may be flight. If you perceive that
the circumstances require battle, you then fight. And, if you perceive you cannot outfight
or outrun your opponent, your brain may direct you to freeze, which is defined by some
as a state of “holding and hoping.” We often see “holding and hoping” demonstrated by
smaller animals. For example, think of what happens initially if you walk up on a rabbit.
It freezes, holding perfectly still and hoping you will pass by without seeing it. We all know
what an opossum does when threatened. And, as described earlier in this book, we also see
this “freeze” phenomenon with children, as they hide under their covers from the “boogie
man,” and unfortunately are often found tragically burned to death in fires, because they
attempted to “hide” in the closet or under the bed from the smoke and flames of a burning
house.
In Karate – the Art of Empty Self, Terrence Webster-Doyle writes about this phenomenon:
We may find that when we are challenged or threatened from without, we go into what psychologists
call a “fight or flight” reaction. This means that we react to the situation by recoiling into a defensive
20. UNDERSTANDING AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR AND DEALING WITH ANGRY PEOPLE
285
position or running away, or by attacking. This reaction to external threat is sometimes necessary for sur
vival, as when we need to avoid a car coming at us or defend ourselves from assault. But this reaction is
inappropriate when we react to supposed threats from within, and the fight or flight reaction is triggered
when we feel endangered psychologically.
Understanding how our brain and body react to an attack is not enough. In dealing with
a potential attacker, it is also important for us to have an understanding of exactly what
“aggression” is, and why it occurs. The simplest definition of aggression is any behavior
that intimidates, hurts, or could hurt someone else in the process of asserting one’s will.
The best part of this definition is that it is the “behavior” that determines whether it is or
isn’t aggression. Unfortunately, it does not take into consideration the actual intention of
the “actor.” If a person tries to hurt someone, but fails, he or she is still being aggressive.
Conversely, someone could do something that hurts another person without being aggres-
sive. Therefore, in our view, the best definition of aggression, which encompasses all of
these aspects, would be: any assertive action that is designed to psychologically or physi-
cally hurt* others.
To understand why people are aggressive, we must look closely at why and what causes
people to have aggressive feelings, and why and what causes them to perform aggressive
acts. In attempting to comprehend this we will consider four factors: pseudo-aggression,
instinct, frustration, and attack.
Pseudo-aggression is defined as fake or exaggerated anger. This is sometimes the strategy
of deceptive suspects. By acting angry, they hope to create a situation that will lead to an
argument and allow them an excuse to escape the situation. In the investigation of the beating
and drowning death of a 9-year-old boy, his 16-year-old uncle soon became the prime sus-
pect. After the suspect was interviewed, an interrogation ensued. A firm statement of guilt
was made: “There is no question you have not been truthful about your nephew’s death.
You did this, didn’t you?” The young man immediately lashed back, “You mother*******!
Are you calling me a f***ing liar?”
One of the basic teachings in the martial arts deals with the concept of Um-Yang
(Korean), more popularly referred to as “Yin-Yang.” This concept states that there are oppo-
site but complementary forces in the Universe that actually give balance to one another. If a
person uses a straight attack, the defender should use a circular counter-attack. Faced with
the pseudo-anger attack of the suspect just described, using power against power would
have been a mistake, allowing the suspect to suddenly escape the confrontation. Instead,
softness was used: “Jimmy, I have not raised my voice to you. I have not cursed you.
I am here to try and help you. I do not know if you deliberately did this to your nephew,
or if you acted in self-defense (alternatives). What I do know is you did this (firm statement),
didn’t you (hook)?” This led to a full confession, which probably would not have been the
outcome had power been met with power.
Many of the famous early psychologists believed that aggression was an innate quality of
humans. That is, we are born with a drive to assert our primacy, just as we are born with
*Hurt can be a very subjective word. In our use, it means to inflict injury psychologically, that is, “You are ugly. I never wanted to give birth to you,” or physically, with a punch to the stomach, a scratch, and so
forth.
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20. UNDERSTANDING AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR AND DEALING WITH ANGRY PEOPLE
a drive to have sex or to eat. Freud believed there were only two basic drives in man:
(1) Libido, which constituted man’s constructive drives, such as sexual energy, and
(2) Thanatos, which made up his aggressive and destructive energy. Recent research
indicates that instinct does not appear to offer a complete explanation of aggressive
behaviors in higher-level animals such as humans. Psychologists believe that frustration
creates aggressive feelings. Frustration is generally defined as an emotion we experience
when something stands between us and achieving a goal we desire.
If you wanted to do or get something, or had a desire to fulfill a need, and someone
or something prevented you from accomplishing this, you would become frustrated. The
level of frustration you experience, and the likelihood that aggressive behavior will follow,
depends on your intellectual ability to comprehend the motive of the person causing you
this frustration. Consider an individual who belongs to a minority
, running late for an
airplane flight, who is highly motivated to get to the airport quickly. If he or she sees a taxi
cab coming and waves for it, but the driver just passes by, that person will immediately
experience frustration. The level of frustration can differ dramatically depending on
whether or not the taxi was empty: whether the person trying to hail it perceived that its
driver drove by and did not stop because of prejudice, rather than recognizing that the taxi
already had a fare. Here, the frustration is subjective.
Circumstances where aggressive behavior is not the result of frustration occur when the individ-
ual is exposed to pseudo-aggressors or is actually attacked by another individual. One of the
authors recalls driving to a store in Philadelphia one day. He had just come off Interstate
95 onto Front Street and was about to make a left turn onto Oregon Avenue heading
west. As his light was changing from green to yellow, a driver heading east on
Oregon Avenue, which had been stopped at the red light, suddenly accelerated,
blowing his horn, and just as suddenly hit his brakes. It was a scary situation! As the
author turned to look at the other driver, he noticed that he had a can of beer in his hand
and was laughing. This other driver actually was not blocking the way. He did not, in fact,
try to prevent the author from reaching his goal, getting to the store. He had challenged
the author with what in his perverse way he perceived as a “funny,” pseudo-vehicular
attack. The author, however, seriously considered resorting to physical violence. To put
it bluntly, the author’s desire for aggression had been aroused! It is clear to anyone who
has experienced such a situation that frustration, pseudo-aggressors, or attack all can
ignite aggressive emotions. This aggressive emotion is the major ingredient in acting
out aggressively.
When we experience aggressive feelings, we do not and/or cannot always act them out.
Maybe the person who has caused the feelings of aggression to arise within us is too power-
ful for us to retaliate against. Maybe he or she is not even present when the feelings arise.
Who has not received an important letter or erroneous bill on a Friday afternoon when you
cannot reach the appropriate persons because of the weekend?
Nathan J Gordon, William L Fleisher Page 42