This isn't strictly torture, but one of your earlier posts said you may be able to help with interrogation. MC has been kidnapped and they are trying to get information out of her. She is questioned in two separate instances, by a LEO and a civilian. What would the differences be in the two? MC is kind of a smart-ass and doesn't have the information they want. Would the LEO have a specific way of dealing with this? Thanks for any help you can give.
Weeeell Ihad to google LEO cos I am old and can not internet.
It’s agood thing I did to because well it doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. Iassumed that you were referring to someone who might actually have expert training on interrogation. In reality most law enforcement officers do not.
I’veposted this quote before but it really is worth doing it again-
“-the average law enforcement officer in theUnited States in their career receives between eight and fifteen hours of[suspect] interview training. What fills in the rest? People use words and techniques from popular culture and what’strendy.”
JoeNavarro, retired FBI interrogator, emphasis mine.
Police inthe UK get a little bit more trainingbut it’s not huge. And the result is that theremight not be much difference between an officer and a civilian when it comes tointerrogation.
Both of them are likely to be acting based on whatthey’ve seen on TV.
So…..thisscenario largely depends on you.
I cangive you a really realistic worse casescenario, based on actual torture cases in the states by police officers.But it’s not any more realistic than thebest case scenario.
I thinkreally the deciding factors are the civilianand police characters themselves with perhaps a side in what you the author want to say about thepolice and treatment of suspects.
I mightbe wrong but the LEO acronym gave me a US vibe. I’m aware that there are a fairnumber of issues to do with US police departments at the moment and whileI’ve got opinions I don’t think it’s my place to tell you how to handle theseissues. That would be too much like telling you what your story should be.
As I seeit there are….four main possible combinations. Both interrogators are againstforceful tactics and torture, one or the other might think it’s a good idea, orthey could both be sadistic assholes.
Psychologyexperiments have repeatedly shownthat we tend to obey people in authority. So if your LEO is in favour of‘pushing hard’ whatever that entails, the civilian is statistically likely to go with that even if they disagree.However if the situation is reversed the LEO will probably be able to restrainthe civilian.
So thislargely comes down to your LEO as acharacter.
Eventheir experience and the amount of interrogations they’ve conducted are negligible factors compared to theirpersonal attitude to the process. Abuses aside the whole thing is likely to go better if the interrogator goes in to itwith an open mind. If the LEO goes in assuming your MC ‘knows something’the whole situation is more likely to go badly. Though not necessarily in aphysically abusive way.
The truthis interrogations are a pretty shit wayof getting information. Humans have terrible memories and we’re very proneto editing our own memories without consciously being aware of it.
A good police officer with a lot ofexperience would probably be aware of that. But a bad or inexperienced officer might not be.
There are some techniques that don’t so muchhelp with getting information but help spot inconsistencies in a story. I getthe impression that is what you’reafter over a history of police torture so-
Get the MC to tell their story backwards. That tends to make anyinconsistencies much more obvious when compared to the version they toldforwards. Lies are difficult to keep up when someone does this.
Get one of the interrogators to write down orrecord everything. They’llneed to go over it all later, something that should take several hours.
Try and build a repartee with the MC. Different people do this indifferent ways but the basic idea is to create a congenial and friendlyatmosphere, to put the suspect at ease. Thiswill be difficult or impossible if the ‘suspect’ has been kidnapped.
This movereeks of desperation on the part of the kidnappers. Because a good investigation relies primarily on people willingly volunteering information,then on forensic evidence and onlylastly on interrogations. This kidnapping has the potential to utterly ruin the trust between policeofficers and the public, crippling future investigations and cutting off a potential source of evidence for this one.
Additionallyit’s likely to cost the police officer their job, and because they’re unlikely to gain the MC’s trust by kidnap they’reunlikely to get any information even if the MC had it. Because the stress and fear from being kidnapped wouldaffect the MC’s memory the same way torture would (though to a lesserdegree).
I thinkyou should consider whether this scenario is something you really need for yourstory. It seems very unlikely to end well for either interrogator. The factthat they’re attempting it or considering it at all suggests to me that they’renot overly concerned with evidence, procedure and facts.
It makesit sound as if this LEO is a uselesspolice officer and that paired withthe desperation of the scenario does make me think ‘torturer’ is a real possibility.
Of coursewith a desperate and personal enough situation, something this particular LEO would risk everything even jail or death for,that doesn’t have to be the case. They’re your character, and at the momentfrom what you’ve sketched out everythingcomes down to the motives, experience and personality of the police officer.
With aninexperienced officer, someone who doesn’t necessarily know that interrogationsare rubbish, you have more range to play with. They could be well meaning andgenuinely mistaken- Whatever sort of motive or personality an inexperiencedofficer in this position has their interrogation skills probably won’t hugelydiffer from the civilian’s.
With anexperienced officer you end up with something more polarised: either a police officer who knows this is notgoing to actually work but tries to conduct it properly anyway, or a probable torturer who stopped doing real policework a long time ago in favour of beating ‘information’ out of anyone whosepath they cross.
In whichcase their style will really differfrom the civilian’s. Either by following some of the interrogation techniques Ioutlined above or by a lot of open-handed slaps and electric shocks (probablyfrom stun guns, Tasers or riot gear).
I….appreciatethat this answer is probably a bit more open than you were hoping for. I’mperfectly happy to take more questions, let me know if you need any more help.
