Conversation With A Police Detective

Walt writes:

Hey Marc: Hope all is well with you. I recently had a nice talk with a cop -- I've attached some things that he told me.

Hi Walt:

Interesting stuff. I’m perturbed, however, that extreme patience in repeatedly explaining the same events over and over might be interpreted as a sign of guilt. I tend to be very patient with explanations and would hate to be misinterpreted.

CONVERSATION WITH A POLICE DETECTIVE

Recently, while waiting for a plane, I had a long talk with a police detective, and no, I was not a suspect. Here are some of the things I learned.

• Cops are permitted to lie to suspects. They can say “a witness made you”, or “your prints are all over the scene”, even when it’s not true. I did not realize this, although I should have. He said that they couldn’t carry out undercover operations otherwise.
• They ask a suspect to tell his version of events over and over, in order to determine whether he is lying. A person telling the truth will vary his story somewhat, but a made-up story will be repeated with little or no variation. Also, the detective said that innocent people will tend to get angry after being asked the same question a hundred times, while guilty perps will remain calm. He stressed that these are not hard-and-fast indicators of guilt/innocence, but items to consider.
• I wanted to know who holds up better under harsh questioning – white-collar criminals, or the blacks. He said it was a wash - guys from the hood have more experience talking to cops, but white-collar perps lawyer up quicker. Surprisingly, he told me that almost everyone picked up by the police feels compelled to answer questions to some degree.
• Despite the high reputation of drug-sniffing dogs, not all of them are worth their weight in dog food. Some can’t stay focused on the job, and some screw up a lot. They send the burn-outs to visit schools.
• This detective did not have a high opinion of small-town criminal justice. He told me, “If you kill someone, and there are no witnesses, keep your mouth shut and you’ll probably get away with it”.
• One time he was searching for a suspect on the lam, and he visited the perp’s mother. She claimed that she had no idea where her son was. While they were talking, she got a phone call, and the detective had a feeling it was the suspect. So, after the call, he asked a few more questions, and then made to leave. But, before walking out, he asked if he could use the phone to call home. She said yes, and he dialed *69, and got the number of the caller. After that, it was easy to look up the location, and he nabbed the perp.
• There is a big industry smuggling stuff into prisons. It’s not just drugs, but also things that are legal on the outside, like pornography. Some prisons are “smoke-free”, so the inmates are not allowed to have cigarettes. A pack of smokes can sell for $40 inside! Some prison guards are complicit in this. If an inmate wants to buy something, he will contact a “broker” inmate, who will in turn ask a certain guard to bring it in. All money changes hands on the outside. The buyer inmate will phone/write his cousin to give money to the broker inmate’s wife, who will in turn pay the guard’s brother. Some “broker” inmates are able to sustain their families this way, all without ever seeing any actual money.
• Money robbed from banks is FDIC-insured. I had never thought of that – when a bank is robbed, it suffers no financial loss, other than a deductible! Occasionally, a bank reports a robbery loss as higher than it actually was. If they’re found out, it’s not a problem – after all, anybody can make a mistake.
• The detective had some advice for under-cover cops: never tell anything to a corrections officer, or to a cop who works in a jail or prison. Every jail has a crooked jailer – someone who informs crooks about police doings. And every DMV has someone bad working there.