Dan: [00:00:04] In police stations across the country, officers start their shifts in the briefing room.

Dave: [00:00:09] It’s a place where law enforcement can speak openly and candidly about safety, training, policy, crime trends, and more.

Dan: [00:00:17] We think it’s time to invite you in.

Dave: [00:00:19] So, pull up a chair.

Dan and Dave: [00:00:20] Welcome to The Briefing Room.

[The Briefing Room theme playing]

Dave: [00:00:36] Today’s Briefing comes at the request of someone you all know, Yeardley Smith. Hi, Yeardley.

Yeardley: [00:00:41] Hi, Dave. Hi. So happy to be here.

Dave: [00:00:44] We’re also joined by my brother, Dan.

Dan: [00:00:46] Hello. Yeardley’s question today is inspired in part by conversations we had last week with defense attorney, Lissa. So, Yeardley, I’m turning it over to you.

Yeardley: [00:00:56] Thank you, Dave. I’m really excited about this subject. So, we call this episode of The Briefing Room, The Dance, because you guys have often talked about the way you interview suspects. You call that The Dance. And I think it’s one of the most fascinating aspects of your job. It’s funny, you often gloss over it, but the way you interview, the way you do the dance is so nuanced that I think our listeners would really enjoy hearing your perspective on it, like, how do you conduct a suspect interview, particularly if you’re dealing with somebody who’s done a person crime, as you say, so they’ve hurt someone, injured them, violated another person in the worst possible way. So, how do you interview a person like that and gain their trust, so that they don’t shut down and say, “I want a lawyer,” and then the interview is over.

Dave: [00:01:55] Uh-huh. Interviews, for me, I separated them into two categories. One is, I’m familiar with the case, because I’ve been investigating it for days or weeks, even hours, and then suspect is taken into custody or comes in for questioning, and now I have a shot to take a run at the suspect. The other is, acute, like, incident, just happened, still have investigators out looking for leads, canvassing a neighborhood, et cetera. I’m waiting for reports to come in. A lot of those reports, if it’s an acute case, are going to be verbal, like face to face? You haven’t even written your report yet. So, my strategy is a little bit different depending on which case I’m getting, if it’s a historical case or it just happened today.

[00:02:51] How I prepare depends on the caliber of interviews that have already taken place in that case. So, say, it’s a case that I’ve already been investigating for days or weeks, and I’m very familiar with the initial reports that have come through. I’m already well versed in the facts of the case. When I go into an interview room, all I’m thinking is, “Let’s get the truth.” And I wonder what this guy or this– I’ll say guy because in my caseload is usually male offenders.

Yeardley: [00:03:23] We should tell our new listeners who might not know you that your former caseload was investigating sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave: [00:03:32] Right. On a case that I’ve been investigating, I’ve already done a ton of background on my suspect. I probably already run his computerized criminal history. So, I know what types of things he’s been arrested for in the past. If it lines up with the type of case that I have at this point, I’m going to look at social media. What kind of photos does the guy post? Is he family oriented? Does he have a bunch of biblical quotes on his page? Because those allow me to explore threads. Religious people know that, eventually, they’re going to be judged before God and they want to get things right while they’re on this earth. And part of that is the truth and validating a victim’s statement or a victim’s disclosure.

[00:04:19] So, there are people with consciences out there who are like, “I got to get this off my chest.” There are other straight evil people that just don’t give a shit and they’ll hurt whomever if it benefits themselves. They don’t care about the wake of damage they do.

Yeardley: [00:04:36] If you see somebody post a lot of religious scripture, let’s say, on their Facebook page, can you use that as a way in to say, “Hey, I know that you believe in God and you will be judged by God when everything is said and done”?

Dave: [00:04:55] I probably wouldn’t go to the judged piece of that, because my job as the investigator is to not judge. I’m there to arrange a potential meeting between a court, a DA, a defense attorney, and defendant. One of my big pet peeves with police officers is, you’ve seen the worst of humanity, day in and day out. You see horrible things, even if you’re a new cop. So, for a police officer to go into an interview and be judgmental or snippy or have attitude, I’m always like, “Well, either the game is too fast for you. You’ve lost sight of the finish line, which is, let’s just get to the truth. The act is already over with.”

[00:05:37] My feelings about the suspect and what they did are completely irrelevant. It has no bearing on the case whatsoever. The facts do. So, I want a police officer who’s doing questioning to be thorough, to be inquisitive, don’t just ask a question and move on. If they give you a little bit more narrative, I’m like, “Well, let’s go down that thread. I can get back to my–” Not prepared, but I had a general idea of what I wanted to do in an interview. If I think that I’m going to get a confession that day, I’m going to go for the confession. If it’s clear the person’s probably not going to ever confess to this, because they probably have previous exposure to the criminal justice system and everyone’s taught, they don’t ever talk to the cops. You see it all the time. So, someone who spent time in prison, I usually was like, “They’ve already been down this road. They’re probably not going to talk to me.”

Yeardley: [00:06:29] Do you Mirandize people at that point or are you afraid that if you read them their Miranda rights that they won’t actually talk to you that they’ll just clam up?

Dave: [00:06:40] Well, it depends. So, situations where you have to Mirandize versus some of the gray area versus you don’t have to Mirandize, there’s no gray area whatsoever. There’s differences. If you’re familiar with the differences, then there are times where I might be able to get more statements from someone totally lawful. I’m not violating anybody’s rights, but it’s all determined on this reasonableness. Would a reasonable person feel like they were free to leave? Would a reasonable person feel like they were being accused of a crime? In those situations, if somebody’s not free to leave and they feel like they’re being accused of a crime, I need to get Miranda out front. There are other situations where the interview turns and you realize, “Okay, now we’re getting into Miranda territory. I need to get that handled as soon as possible.” So, when we talk about familiarity with someone’s rights, someone being familiar with their rights, they’ve already been down this path.

Dan: [00:07:39] They’ve had attorneys in the past because of previous arraignments or previous court cases that they’ve gone through. So, they’ve heard all this advice. And lawyers typically tell their clients, “Don’t talk to the cops.”

Yeardley: [00:07:52] Don’t say anything.

Dan: [00:07:53] Don’t say anything.

Dave: [00:07:54] Right. In a situation where somebody’s not had that exposure to the criminal justice system, they’re going to want to cooperate. They’re going to want to talk. They want to explain themselves. They want to explain an alibi or why they did something or how they didn’t do something that they’re being accused of.

Dan: [00:08:13] Well, and sometimes, they just flat out think they’re smarter than you. Really, the first part of an interview is, I’m gathering information. And they are too. A lot of times they’re gathering information. They want to know how much we know. So, holding on to some of those things as a strategy. Sometimes you hit them right in the face with it and you tell them what you know. I remember doing interviews where I started out the interview with a suspect that I was familiar with. And we got in the room. I read her Miranda rights to her, said, “Do you want to talk to me?” She’s like, “Yeah, sure.” I just pulled out a surveillance photo from Walmart, and I put it on the table, and I said, “Who’s that?” That was the first thing that I said.

[00:08:57] She looked at it and she goes, “I don’t know who that is.” [Yeardley laughs] I said, “Do you see that tattoo on the right arm?” And she says, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, you have the same tattoo on your right arm. That’s you.” And she’s like, “Okay, that’s me.” [Yeardley laughs] I mean, like, one minute confession, and then you go down the road. Now I can back up a little bit, and I can say, “So, what’s going on in your life right now that you are out committing these crimes?” Dave’s the same way, and I learned a lot from Detective Don, in watching him interview. You can have a game plan going in, but depending on the suspect, they’re either on board or not on board with that game plan. So, you better be nimble.

[00:09:42] I always found it. Of course, you have some sort of strategy. You have to cover the elements of the crime in your interview while you’re trying to get a confession. But you have to be light on your feet and adapt to whoever you’re talking to who’s across the table from you. Dave’s really good at that. I’ve watched his interviews. When Dave had a big case come in and he was going to sit down and interview somebody, I would always watch the interviews. A day or two later, if we ended up hanging out at my house or his house, we’d talk about it. He’d ask for feedback, and I’d give him feedback. I’d tell him what he did really well, and I would point out, like– In one of Dave’s first interviews, I pointed out, it was like, “You shouldn’t have taken a break right there. He was nibbling on the hook right there. He was almost going to bite.”

Yeardley: [00:10:32] The suspect was?

Dan: [00:10:33] Yeah. And you got uncomfortable and tired.

Yeardley: [00:10:37] And so, you literally left the room–

Dave: [00:10:39] Because I was uncomfortable. You’re a new-ish detective. Interviewing someone in plain clothes is different than interviewing someone in a patrol uniform. It’s a different vibe in the room. It’s a different look on camera. I have always gotten more out of people when I’m in playing clothes. My plain clothes, typically, unless I got called out in the middle of the night was business casual. Suit and no tie. Business casual. There’s a formality to that, but there’s also a casual quality to it.

Yeardley: [00:11:12] A comfortability, like, you’re comfortable in this environment and therefore, that might go a long way towards putting them at ease.

Dave: [00:11:20] Right. From the criminal or the suspect side of this equation, I’ve heard in the past, they’re like, “I want to talk to a detective.” Even when I was a sergeant, after having been a detective for a long time, I would have suspects who have no familiarity with me and they’d say, “Well, I’ll just talk to a detective.” And I’d be like, “Well, you’re going to be talking to a detective that I trained,” [Yeardley laughs] and has less than six months on this particular assignment. But I can arrange that absolutely, because I understand the dynamic. And how do new detectives get that exposure? You hand it off to them. “Here, this is your case. I’m certain you have more facts than I do. I’m just dealing with this person on this contact out in the streets.”

[00:12:04] This person has an attempt to locate flag on them. I call the detective that put this flag on them in the system. When the police come across you, your name is going to get run. They’re going to call a detective and they’re going to say, “Hey, see if that person is willing to come down to the police station. I’m driving in right now.” That detective, although new, is going to have more pertinent facts for the case than I am. So, I’d be like, “Absolutely, I can get you a detective. No problem.” Freeze up my patrol guys to go out and chase taillights and deter crime, do what we’re supposed to do.

[00:12:46] Going back to Dan’s interview with the female where he confronts her right away. He does that based on experience with the suspect familiarity and knowing, “Well, I’ve already been in this room before with this person and we did the runaround game for an hour and a half.” He got the hard part out of the way right at the beginning, and now it’s, “Okay. Well, you’ve admitted that this is you using the stolen credit card or whatever the case was.” Now we can go to what led up to this. That is powerful, because you can always go back to that person if they’re starting to stray and say, “Listen, you already admitted to the heaviest part of this whole case that it’s you committing this crime.” Let’s not worry about the other stuff. They might help you. They can help explain things.

Yeardley: [00:13:31] Dan, why in this particular case with this woman, for instance, who had the tattoo, why did you ask her, what’s going on in your life?

Dan: [00:13:39] I had a pretty good idea, and typically, it’s substance abuse, and I’m sensitive to that. So, you always want to know the why, right? I think that with these people, if I can empathize with them and try to get an understanding of what’s going on in their life, if they’re not happy with the direction of their life, some people, they just flat out aren’t ready to quit using and they’re going to commit crimes to support their habit until they’re ready. Sometimes, they’re ready in that interview room and they are begging for an intervention, and sometimes it’s the police that provide that intervention. So, I want to know those things.

[00:14:21] I think it also builds rapport and trust between me and whoever I’m interviewing. So, if they trust you, they’re probably more apt to tell you more. They’re going to give you everything. If they don’t trust you, they’re not. My job in that interview room is to gather information. Try to get a confession. Also, in a lot of the cases that I worked, I knew that there was going to be a lot of follow up on the back end. So, I’ve got, say, someone who burglarized the house, stole credit cards, stole guns, jewelry, I want to build trust with that person, and now let’s go down the road of trying to figure out where all that stuff is, so I can recover it and get it back to the victims.

[00:15:03] Many times, I would tell people like, “Hey, some of that jewelry you stole, those were heirloom pieces that had been in the family for hundred years. The woman’s ring was her grandmother’s wedding ring.” Those things are important. So, if I can track those things down, it’s really good for my victims, too. I’ve had victims just straight up break down and cry when I return property to them, because they thought it’s gone forever.

Dave: [00:15:29] Honestly, it’s in the suspect’s best interest too. They show compassion. They show remorse. They show, “Hey, I want to right this wrong that I did. I’m caught. Let’s just give the people back their property, or at least, I can tell them where I last saw it,” because property in this world of theft and substance affected folks, it’s probably changed hands a few times if it’s been more than a week. So, to track that stuff down is difficult, but it also shows some willingness on the suspect’s part to show some compassion, be contrite, and, “Hey, I screwed up. Let me try to fix it.”

Dan: [00:16:09] I would always tell these people, when I write my report, “This is going to go to the district attorney. Do you want them to read in this report that you are not cooperative and that you didn’t care about returning people’s property or the opposite that you were actually cooperative and you aided me in recovering this property? It’s going to look way better for you. You’re caught. You’ve got an opportunity here to help yourself out.”

Dave: [00:16:34] There’s huge value to that for a suspect. There’s huge value to that for the victim.

Yeardley: [00:16:41] Does the value to the suspect, will it necessarily or it might lighten their sentence? Is that what you’re saying?

Dan: [00:16:49] It can. Yeah. I think district attorneys that I’ve talked to will say, “This person, they weren’t cooperative at all. Why should I cut them a break?” Every detective, when you talk and present your case to a district attorney, those are conversations that are had. And DAs will flat out ask, “What do you think is appropriate in this situation?” And I’ll give them my opinion. They may take it, they may not. I’ve had DAs that said, “I don’t care that they helped out. They’ve committed four burglaries in the last two years. The first one, they did 13 months and they obviously haven’t learned their lessons. So, guess what? I’m hitting them with everything.” Yeah, those are all factors. I will say this, “I’ve never seen the court go harder on somebody who is cooperative.”

Dave: [00:17:39] I can say the same thing.

Yeardley: [00:17:41] Okay, good to know.

Dave: [00:17:43] Unless the court has no latitude.

Yeardley: [00:17:46] There’s a mandatory sentence kind of thing?

Dave: [00:17:48] Right. There’s mandatory sentences that have taken discretion out of judges hands.

Yeardley: [00:17:53] And, Dave, for your former caseload, which was sex crimes and child abuse, there are a number of mandatory sentences based on the kinds of things that you would find in their computer or the kinds of criminal acts that were committed. I think it would be interesting for our listeners to hear– Obviously, it’s all about gaining trust, so you get as much information as you can. But what if you’re faced with somebody for you, let’s say, Dave, the disclosure from the victim is highly credible. This person is a fucking scumbag. How do you present yourself like, “Hey, listen, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I think you made some bad decisions.”

Dave: [00:18:37] I have to eliminate any notion that I’m the judge here, because I am not. For me to put myself in that position, it shows a lack of professionalism. It shows a lack of skill. It shows a complete disregard for any strategy. You have to get someone to talk, because now you’re holier-than-thou and you’re standing in judgment. You think about kids, when they screw up and they have to go face their parents. They’ve got a frowny face to get their head down. Their posture is very submissive. I want a suspect to contribute to the conversation. I don’t want to have to carry that conversation. I want them to do most of the talking.

[00:19:19] I’ve never, ever seen someone be judgmental, a police officer, and have it turn out to be a success, because criminals and suspects and people with no exposure to the criminal justice process, we all know what it feels like to feel judged.

Yeardley: [00:19:34] Yeah, to feel shamed.

Dave: [00:19:36] And I’m like, “Well, I don’t want to talk to this guy. He’s sitting here judging everything I say.” When I’m in a room, even if it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard, I can always say, “Hey, man, I’ve been in this room, I’ve heard a lot of horrible things in this room. There’s nothing you’re going to tell me that surprises me. Is that a bluff? Is it a lie?” Sometimes, because you don’t know what they’re about to tell you, and then your bar moves, [Yeardley laughs] and you’re like, “Okay, well, now my bar is way up here. Holy shit I did not see that coming.”

[00:20:09] So, taking judgment out of your interview tactics, number one, be familiar with the elements of every crime that you’re confronting the suspect about, because some of those crimes have an element that if you don’t have that element up front, the rest of the elements below it don’t even matter.

Yeardley: [00:20:26] What do you mean?

Dave: [00:20:29] I’m talking about, like, there are crimes when it has to do with intent. There’s plenty of cases out there where somebody screwed up, but they weren’t meaning to. They were reckless or they were negligent. It wasn’t intentional.

Yeardley: [00:20:43] Right. I see. So, for example, intention can mean the difference between first degree murder, second degree murder, or manslaughter. In the scope of the law, how you charge somebody, a lot of that has to do with intent, right?

Dave: [00:21:00] Exactly. The hit and run case where the gentleman ended up on the top of the car had to go several blocks west before being taken off of the top of the car.

Yeardley: [00:21:09] Impact. Yes. That’s what we called the episode on Small Town Dicks.

Dave: [00:21:13] In Impact, there was no intent by the driver to hit this pedestrian in the crosswalk. Was there negligence and recklessness? I would argue both. Shouldn’t have been driving, should have stopped right there. The act became way more egregious because of the events that followed the several blocks that this person was riding on top of suspect’s vehicle. Part of my intent for one of the crimes there would be manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life. Now I would say, what, that suspect did in that case checks all the boxes. So, I know if I’ve got those elements and I just checked the big one, which is manifesting extreme indifference, I know that other things are going to be able to fall into place. I can fill in the gaps there.

[00:22:05] So, there are certain crimes where there’s an element that is essential, and then there’s other things below it that you also need to check the box on certain assaults with deadly weapons. Is it reckless? Is it negligent? Is it intentional? Is the weapon would it cause physical harm or is it capable of causing serious physical injury and or death? Different levels of crimes. One, the most serious crime and assault, especially involving a weapon, would have to do with what type of weapon is that, and when it’s used, can it cause serious physical injury or death? If I hit someone with a foam baseball bat, it’s different than hitting somebody with a tire iron. So, you have to be familiar with the elements of the crimes that you’re going to confront your suspect over.

[00:22:56] There are times where I’d be like, I’ve said it before. I don’t know what crime that is, but I’m certain you can’t do it, because it’s going to be in this family of crimes. So, I just got to find which elements fit that crime and not misapply that, because I’m going to forward this case to the district attorney’s office. They’re going to get my report and they’re going to do the same thing that I just did. They’re going to look for what crimes were charged and are the elements there. If I charge a crime and I’ve only checked two of the five boxes on the elements, that charge is getting dropped.

Yeardley: [00:23:28] Right. I see.

Dave: [00:23:30] Can’t prove it. You don’t have enough here. So, that’s a learning process for detectives and patrol officers as well is, “Oh. Okay. Yeah, I need that one too. Got it. All right.” It doesn’t make it a false arrest. It just means that I charged the wrong crime. This is why we have district attorneys and lawyers and grand jury processes, and judges. They can make those law determinations. I’m just a cop. [Yeardley laughs] I know how to read real good.

Yeardley: [00:23:59] [laughs]

Dave: [00:24:12] So, I want to be non-judgmental, I want to be familiar with elements of the crime, I want to be familiar with the suspect and their movements, because if we’re talking and I say, “Where were you last Thursday night?” And I’ve already dug into your background and you say, “I was at home all night,” and I’m like, “Well, I got two friends I already talked to and they said that you were at their house for a party.” Oops. Or, “I was asleep all night, but there was a party going on.” “I have multiple people at that party saying that you were one of the drunkest and stayed up the latest.” So, I want to be familiar with these things, so when they drop them in an interview, I can confront them on that or I just put it in my back pocket and I’m like, “I’ll save that one for later when I get confrontational.”

[00:25:00] Usually when someone would lawyer up or invoke their right to remain silent or have an attorney, whatever, you can see that coming. It’s usually very early on, like, first two minutes of an interview. After, we get the, give me your name, rank in horsepower, like name, date of birth, social security number, what’s a good address, phone number, email. You move on from that the initial stuff where I don’t need to advise you Miranda to ask your name.

Yeardley: [00:25:28] No, we did that really interesting Briefing Room, where you encountered the man on a bicycle in the middle of a night. He said, “I don’t have to talk to you,” and you said, “You’re right. You don’t.” And then when you encountered him an hour later, you’re like, “Now you actually do have to talk to me,” because you had reasonable suspicion. And actually, that’s what we called that episode on The Briefing Room, Reasonable Suspicion.

Dave: [00:25:52] Yeah. So, the order of questions is all going to be dependent on how the first few minutes of that interview goes. Do I feel like I’m going to get straightforward answers? If I ask your name out on the street or in an interview room, and you start with, “Uh?” [Yeardley laughs] It’s bridging. “I need more time to think of the bullshit answer I’m about to give you.” “Have you ever been arrested?” “Uh” That’s a yes. [Yeardley laughs] And you’re making assumptions when you hear those things, but it’s based on a lived experience of, every time I ask this question and that’s the first part of the answer, it’s always bullshit. And you learn a lot about what to do in the interview room from your time on the streets.

[00:26:35] When I’m out on patrol, I have a whole different set of expectations when I’m doing an interview, as opposed to a controlled environment where I’ve got a suspect in the detective section. We’re in a small room. I’ve got video. Everything is accounted for. It’s different on the streets. And for new cops, it’s a place to really start to learn human behavior out on the streets, interactions with people, be nosy, be curious, ask a lot of questions. So, within a few months of being on the street was the first time somebody gave me a bullshit name. We’re doing the run around, they still can’t find this person in the system and your FTO is looking at you like, “Have you figured it out yet? Because I knew this after the first uh.”

Yeardley: [00:27:17] [chuckles] Right. They didn’t give you their real name.

Dave: [00:27:20] You need that life experience. But that happens quickly when you’re on the streets. It doesn’t happen so quickly in the academy. You can’t watch cops. I used to say to people all the time, they’d be like, “How long you been a cop?” “Well, I’ve been doing ride alongs on cops since I was five years old.” “But you’re not a cop.” “I’ve seen some things though.” “That show was invaluable to me growing up, because you can see when people are about to run on COPS and Live PD, cops can see it. People who are body language folks, you just step back and you’re like, “Oh, okay. His bladed stance, he just looked over his shoulder. Look at his hands. Oh, he’s clenching his fists like he’s about to punch or run or punch and then run.”

[00:28:01] You see these indicators on COPS and on LIVE PD when you’re watching like, “Oh, here he goes.” So, when you’ve seen that and then you experience it as a police officer, I know when I ask your age and you say, “Uh.” “What’s your date of birth?” “Uh.” I know I’m about to get bullshit. It just might be a tick, but this is why we do a little baseline information gathering. At the beginning, I want to see their tempo, their rhythm to how they speak, how articulate are they? Are they prone to providing open ended narratives? Are they yes and no? These are all things I want to gauge is how deep is this conversation going to be? How is the exchange going to be? Are we going to talk or is this going to be a Q&A? I want to have a discussion. I don’t want a Q&A. It’s very sterile. It’s not compelling. I want to see the emotion. When I bring up something to a suspect, I want to see the reaction. So, when they start talking about some horrible or regretful thing they did, I want to see their emotions, body language, those types of things.

Dan: [00:29:04] Dave’s talking about body language, and I will say this. Sitting in an interview room, there are some things– So, if you’re watching First 48, and they show a lot of the suspect interviews or just witnesses coming in. I watch those interviews, and I see body language, and I see how people place their chairs in a room or their body.

Yeardley: [00:29:28] The people being questioned?

Dan: [00:29:30] Yeah. And so, typically, if you’re going to have a conversation with somebody, you’re face to face. Our bodies are lined together. Sometimes, I would put the chair in the room a little cockeyed just to see if this person is actually going to arrange their chair, where they actually square up with me. That, to me, is an indication of, “Yeah, I’m willing to talk to you.” But when people sit down and they turn their bodies away or they physically turn their chair away from you, I think that’s a pretty good indicator of how that interview is going to go, the interview that I had in Cut and Run.

Yeardley: [00:30:10] The Small Town Dicks episode, Cut and Run.

Dan: [00:30:12] Yes, with one of our suspects. He did that and he was evasive in all the questioning.

Yeardley: [00:30:19] Meaning, he turned his chair not squared up with you.

Dan: [00:30:23] Correct. So, I was facing him. He was facing–

Yeardley: [00:30:26] With one shoulder towards you.

Dan: [00:30:28] Yeah, and looking at me during the interview over his right shoulder. I interviewed that guy for hours over a couple of days, and he wasn’t cooperative with me. He was information gathering is what he was.

Yeardley: [00:30:45] From you?

Dan: [00:30:46] From me. He wanted to know how much I knew. He also thought he was the smartest person in the room.

Dave: [00:30:51] And he’s also a convicted felon prior to that, correct, Dan?

Dan: [00:30:54] Correct. We’re talking about murder here. So, I caught him in a lot of lies, and every time that I caught him in a lie, he would posture with me. These were all indications of, “Back off, buddy.” So, I learned a lot in that interview. It was a long interview over the course of a couple of days. He never really gave us much. If I had him locked into a corner, if I had him pushed into a corner on something, he would admit to that. Anything else, he would deny. Deny, deny, deny, until I presented him with, “Oh, here’s a photo of you walking out of a store carrying a bunch of swords that just happened to be the murder weapons.” [Yeardley laughs] And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, that is me.” So, now, he’s got to explain that away. But it was constant. I had to keep doing that.

[00:31:48] Every time if I went down a line of questioning, he would deny, deny, deny, and then I would have to present something that would pull him out of that that he had to actually answer to. He would posture and he would get loud and angry. He got angry. He always pointed at his arm, because he would get goosebumps when he got fired up. And so, during that interview, he would look at me if I was going somewhere that he didn’t want to go, he would point at his forearm.

Yeardley: [00:32:22] What a strange reaction.

[00:32:32] This brings me to another question. You guys have said in casual conversations with just the three of us that you would rather have a list of provable lies from your suspect than a confession, because a confession could be thrown out in a suppression hearing, but provable lies, you can present to a jury and destroy the suspect’s credibility. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Dan: [00:32:57] Oh, I would say that I’d rather have the confession.

Yeardley: [00:33:01] Oh, you would?

Dan: [00:33:02] But done correctly, where it’s bulletproof that you Mirandized correctly that you weren’t coercive in any way, which are things that I’ve seen. I’ve seen promises being made in interview rooms.

Yeardley: [00:33:16] You mean like, “I can get you a lighter sentence if you tell me the truth?”

Dan: [00:33:20] Yeah, that’s coercive. I can’t make those promises. That’s the DAs job. One thing that always bothers me, and I went to The Reid school of interviewing, and it’s valuable for some things.

Yeardley: [00:33:32] Can you explain what it is or what it’s based on-ish? It’s like an FBI technique, right?

Dave: [00:33:38] No, it’s a private firm that’s got a bunch of former law enforcement people in it.

Dan: [00:33:42] Yeah, it’s a nine-step process of an interview. To me, it’s very formal.

Dave: [00:33:47] It’s very structured like, “After this, you go to this, unless they do this, then you jump up to this.” It’s rigid.

Dan: [00:33:54] So, I see when I watch First 48 too.

Dave: [00:33:58] Like theTulsa guys.

Dan: [00:33:59] For anyone who hasn’t seen the show, these guys are much more conversational. They’re far less rigid. It’s more of a free-flowing conversation. And that’s the kind of technique that I usually employ in the interview room. But I have seen other departments who are much more focused on the Reid Technique.

Yeardley: [00:34:15] I know this because when Dan and I watch those shows together, he goes, “Oh, Reid.” And now I know, if you have two detectives questioning a suspect and they’ve pulled their chairs right up to the suspect, and then there’s bodily contact where, say, a detective puts their hand on the person’s shoulder to say, “Hey, listen, you could tell me the truth or whatever.” Isn’t that a Reid Technique, get right up in their grill?

Dan: [00:34:39] It is. There’s a time for that.

Dave: [00:34:43] The utility of Reid is limited in certain circumstances. Like you guys, I recognize little things in the Reid Technique, especially when part of the training for Reid is, leave the room, leave the suspect in there for several minutes, act like you got shit to do. And then come back with a folder full of papers, even if they’re empty.

Yeardley: [00:35:07] You mean even if the pieces in it are blank?

Dave: [00:35:10] Completely. It’s a prop. And you stand 3ft to 6ft away from the suspect while they’re seated, and you tell them like, it’s like a scripted, “My investigation shows that what you’ve just told me is incorrect.” And you drop the file folder on the table. “My investigation shows X, Y, and Z.” It’s a Reid 101. When detectives who have taken Reid training, see it, they’re like, “Oh, there’s another one.”

Yeardley: [00:35:39] What happens if they open that folder and all the pages are blank?

Dan: [00:35:42] You better not.

Yeardley: [00:35:43] [laughs]

Dave: [00:35:44] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:35:44] That’s incredibly risky.

Dave: [00:35:46] I hated bluffing suspects. I wouldn’t bluff until I got way desperate like, “Okay, we’re nearing the end where this is a last chance effort.” I did not bluff. I hated lying to suspects, even though we’re able to. I love when people like, “You can’t lie to them.” “Fuck yeah, I can.”

Yeardley: [00:36:06] They lie to you. [laughs]

Dave: [00:36:08] They lie to me all the time. I can’t threaten, intimidate, coerce, or otherwise, promise things, but I can lie to you.

Yeardley: [00:36:14] I believe in the UK you are actually not allowed to lie to your suspect.

Dave: [00:36:18] Oh, thank God, we broke away.

Yeardley: [00:36:20] [laughs]

Dan: [00:36:22] Typically, here’s a lie that we might say in an interview. [cat meow]

Yeardley: [00:36:26] Oh, boy. Zipper is here offering her opinion as only Zipper can do. Please go on.

Dan: [00:36:32] Say, there’s two suspects and you say, “I just talked to your buddy in the other interview room and he’s talking.” Maybe you haven’t even talked to the guy yet.

Yeardley: [00:36:40] To the other suspect.

Dan: [00:36:41] To the other suspect, but you tell this person. That’s a lie that you might tell, but that’s a bluff too. I think bluffs are risky. I’d rather just be upfront and honest with people. I’m not going to give you everything though. I’m not going to show you all my cards. I want you to tell me what my cards are.

Dave: [00:37:01] Well, and part of that is because of what we’ve seen get suppressed is that this claim– the police were feeding the suspect info and facts, and basically, it was a Mad Libs of the confession that the suspect only gave a word here or there, but the rest of the narrative was written up by the detective. That’s not useful. I’ve seen it interviews too, where I’m like, “Oh, I can see where the defense would probably say, ‘This is a leading interview,’ and they’re just putting words in my client’s mouth.” That’s why Dan wants to hear it from the suspect. “I want to hear the facts from you. That way nobody can claim, ‘Well, you just fed him a bunch of information.'” In the 1970s and 1980s, they would have suspects that gave written statements, and then later on, there’d be this claim that, “Well, that statement was written by the police, and the suspect just signed it.” That’s a bad look. Even if it’s bullshit, it’s still a bad look. It better be in the suspect’s handwriting.

Dan: [00:38:02] Yeah. Now that most of our interviews are recorded by video, if someone writes it out, then you’ve got video proof of someone writing out a statement.

Yeardley: [00:38:11] But better be the suspect. It better not be the detective.

Dan: [00:38:14] Oh, no. I’ve never written– I’ve asked a suspect or a suspect said, “Can I write a letter to the victim right now?” “Sure, I’ll go grab you a pen. How many pieces of paper do you think you’ll need?”

Dave: [00:38:26] Absolute gold.

Dan: [00:38:28] So, I would let people do that. I would ask them if they were comfortable doing that. But you’re going to get their version of what happened. I’m not going to sit there and ask them questions while they’re writing that. I want them to just write it out and give me their version. And then you read it, and sometimes it’s a page and a half long, sometimes it’s like five sentences, but it gives you a gauge on how open this person is. If they’re not going to write everything out, if they’re going to give me three or four sentences, they’re not really being forthcoming.

Yeardley: [00:39:02] But it’s still a measure of culpability.

Dan: [00:39:04] Absolutely.

Dave: [00:39:06] However, you get a district attorney and a defense attorney that look at a five-sentence statement and all says is, “I’m sorry. I’ve always loved you. Take care of the family. I wish none of this had happened.” It doesn’t say anything. “I wish none of this had happened,” meaning, me being in an interview room and having to write a letter about me being sorry, in a very general and ambiguous way. That doesn’t help anything. I can understand when an attorney would look at that and say, “Well, you could have just thrown that in the trash because it’s worth nothing.” I love when people are like, “Well, that’s a confession.” “What did he confess to? Didn’t confess to anything. He just said he’s sorry, that he loves them, and he wish this didn’t happen.” That could mean any number of things.

[00:39:48] I used to ask my guys– and be specific. If you remember a certain day where there was a bad interaction with you and the child after something happened, reference it. It’s probably in their memory as probably the worst time this ever happened. If you take accountability for that, that’s huge. So, I would encourage specificity. Some guys gave it to me. Some guys would be like, “I’m not going to write a letter because they already know what’s up. I’m going to take a photocopy of that, I’m going to put it in the file, and I’m going to give the photocopy to the family and be that.” And say, “For what it’s worth, this is what suspect had to say to you and your child.”

[00:40:24] There’s utility in that and it is gold when it’s specific enough to address a name, a place, a location, a date, a certain type of interaction with the victim where you can be like, “Oh, they’re referring to this particular crime on this date that happened at this house when the child was eight.” That’s huge. So, written statements are gold. You just want it to be specific.

Yeardley: [00:40:54] Sure. Well, your fifth grade English teacher wouldn’t stand for this in place of a specifically referenced noun as in an act or a crime or something.

Dave: [00:41:04] Right. And I’ll say even police officers that I’ve been around that maybe don’t have the exposure to a suppression hearing or being in trial from suppression hearings all the way through the verdict and sentencing, if you don’t have the exposure to the utility of having a letter or having been in the room with somebody who’s confessing to horrible things, you might not know how to address that in your initial investigation, because you just don’t have any exposure to it. I learned these things from Don, sergeant David, Jeff, my former partner, 20 plus years working sex crimes and child abuse. But talk about working right next to an encyclopedia. I took a lot of things from him. He had a certain way of doing things very commanding in a room.

[00:41:53] I’ve always said like, “If I had a family member that was sexually abused or a victim of a crime in that family of crimes, I want Jeff to be the assigned detective on it.” Because I’ve seen him in an interview room, and the guy is fluid. He knows when to step on the gas. He knows when to push the brakes. He knows when to confront and say, “Get out of the car,” figuratively speaking. He knows all these things, because you think in 20 plus years, how much exposure to sex offenders, and personality types, and types of crimes has Jeff been involved in? Too many to count. There are times where I felt like I was getting nowhere in an interview, I would come out and Jeff would tell me, “It’s time to crawl on this guy’s face.”

[00:42:44] When we say crawl on somebody’s face, it doesn’t mean like the Hollywood version of, “Let’s turn the lights down. There’s just one light [Yeardley laughs] dangling down over the table, and I’m going to screw my gun into the side of his head.”

Yeardley: [00:42:56] Like a Black Ops kind of interrogation. [laughs]

Dave: [00:42:59] It’s nothing like that. He means, it’s time to confront this guy. I remember the first time I used it– It’s a Reid Technique, but it’s effective. Jeff told me, it was this suspect that I had on video committing this crime, but he just would not admit to it. All you see is the shoes in the video and I’m like, “Same shoes you’re wearing, dude.” “But tell me about what happened in this house.” “That’s not me.’ So, finally, I take a break. I think suspect asked to use the restroom, I was like, “Perfect,” because I need to retool my strategy here. Let the person use the restroom.

[00:43:32] I go out, talk to Jeff, and I’m like, “You want to take a shot at him?” He goes, “I’ll take a shot at him, but I want you to do this first. I want you to walk in there, start down that same path again, but physically put your hand up in front of yourself like a stop sign. I want you to put your hand up in between you and him, like you’re telling him, ‘Stop.’ I want you to actually say, ‘Stop. We are way past that.”‘ He goes, “Just try it.” This guy goes down there, we’re about two minutes into this other portion of the interview, and the guy’s not going to go there, and I just said, “Listen, man, stop. Stop right there. We are way past that.” And he just dropped his head and he’s like, “All right, I’ll tell you.”

Yeardley: [00:44:11] Wow.

Dave: [00:44:13] Jeff told me later, he’s like, “You interrupted his train of thought. Everything he’s about to tell you said, ‘I don’t want to hear any of that shit. I want the truth right now. Tell me what happened.'” He gave it up. Jeff knew that because he’d probably been watching me for 30 minutes going, “Just put your hand up and say, ‘Stop. We’re way past that.”‘ [chuckles]

Yeardley: [00:44:33] Right. But you wouldn’t think such a gesture though demonstrative would actually work. I don’t know. You just feel like if somebody’s hell bent on not telling you something, they’re not going to tell you. But in fact, that’s not true.

Dave: [00:44:57] I learned this from Dan. When he’s talking about the guy who would get very confrontational and his body language, I remember that case. But Dan just told Sergeant Dave, he’s like, “He’s too comfortable lying to me. He’s used to lying to me. I need someone to take a run at him, because he’s gotten so comfortable telling me bullshit that he’s not going to come off of it, because he knows what’s this guy going to do.” You got to introduce a new face to the interview room. We didn’t have a policy where we would interview with two detectives in the room. I would do that on occasion, if there was another detective who had additional information for me or there’s security risk. I’ve been in interview rooms where you’re like, “Fucking hope, this guy doesn’t come over the table, because he’s going to eat me up.”

Yeardley: [00:45:42] Oh, like you feared for your bodily safety?

Dave: [00:45:46] Yeah. I had a child pornography suspect who’s passed while he was in prison. But Dan remembers this case. Guy was enormous, bodybuilder. I mean, shredded. I don’t know what type of guy this guy is. I know what he’s into because I just served a search warrant on his house.

Dan: [00:46:02] That guy was like 6’7″, 260 and ripped.

Dave: [00:46:06] Less than 10% body fat. And he’d spent time in prison. He was nothing but a gentleman throughout our entire interaction. Even in the interview, he lawyered up. It was just because he told me, he goes, “The only reason I’m lawyering up is because I’ve been through this before.” He’s like, “I want to talk to you, but there’s no explanation for it and I’m not going to speak to you. It’s not personal. You won’t have any hassle out of me.” Well, it’s getting to be close to time to go to the jail and lodge him for X, Y and Z. He starts having a heart issue, his demeanor. Everything has changed about this guy. I think he’s having a– we call it a significant emotional day. Significantly emotional event in your life where he’s like, “Oh, shit, I’m going back to prison and this is bad stuff.”

[00:46:54] Previously been to prison for drugs, some pursuits, some thefts. Shit, we deal with in the law enforcement world all the time. Child sex abuse material is a different look when you’re a prisoner and he knew it. Well, he has this heart related event to the point that I call for an ambulance and fire personnel show up at the police department, go into the room, and they’re like, “He’s having an event. We got to get him to the hospital right now.” I was like, “Is this guy– is he playing me? Is he trying to get to where I’m going to be in an ambulance or in a hospital room with him and now he’s going to try to get away?” Total gentleman threw out. He apologized. He wouldn’t talk specifics. He said, “I’ll talk to you about anything,” and I said, “It’s all off the record, man. You already lawyered up, unless you tell me I want to go back on the record, none of this will go on my report.” I was at the hospital for six hours that day.

Yeardley: [00:47:47] And was he having a heart attack?

Dave: [00:47:49] Yeah, he had a heart attack. So, he gets lodged the following day in the jail, gets lodged in the jail, goes away to prison, pled guilty. Total gentleman. I don’t like what he did. I wasn’t judgmental of him. He was remorseful. Never gave us a problem. But it’s one of those where initially, I was like, “I don’t want to be in the room alone with this guy. I don’t know what he’s capable of.” I mean, he had whole cans.

Yeardley: [00:48:14] Right. [laughs] Snap you like a twig.

Dave: [00:48:16] Right. So, some departments have a policy where you’re going to have two detectives in there. It’s useful in some situations. You’ll have a detective. I typically want one voice in that room. So, when I see another detective jump, like when another officer shows up and you’re the primary officer on the call, but the cover officer shows up or a third-party shows up, and they start running people’s names and barking out orders and giving directions, I’m always like, “Oh, hey, you’re jumping my call right now. It’s my call. Don’t jump my call.” Same thing in an interview room. If you’re the secondary, unless I prompt you, I typically don’t want to hear you ask any questions. I want you to be able to point out when we take a break like, “Hey, let’s tease this out a little bit. He said something that I caught on.” I was never huffy about it, but it was my preference that I’d rather there just be one voice in that room.

Dan: [00:49:08] Yeah, that other officer, a lot of times too is just simply observing body language and making observations.

Yeardley: [00:49:15] An extra set of eyes.

Dan: [00:49:17] An extra set of eyes, because I’m not watching the suspect the whole time. I’m looking down at notes or whatever. This other detective can be in the room seated in a way where we talk about runners’ stance. I’m not saying all things about Reid Technique are bad. Reid Technique also teaches you a lot about body language interviews. That was my main takeaway from the Reid school that I went to was, those observations that I can make with people where I can tell that they’re being evasive or deceptive, those were important things to me. So, that’s what another set of eyes in that interview room can do is make those observations.

Dave: [00:49:57] Yeah. And I don’t fault agencies that do it that way. It’s just a personal preference. I’m sure there are detectives out there like, “I want two of us in the room every time.” Some of my preference was formed around dealing with detectives like Jeff and Don, and Sergeant David. Others were being around district attorneys who are like, “I don’t want a physically imposing presence at council table during the trial.” So, lots of times, the lead they call the case agent will be up at the table with the district attorney during the trial. I used to sit up there with certain district attorneys. I had others who I was an unknown commodity when I first started. They’re like, “You’re going to be in the front row. You’re not going to be with me at the table,” because there’s usefulness in having me at the table.

[00:50:42] So, the attorney, when he hears something, he’s like, “Is that a fact?” He would have to turn, roll his chair back, talk to me in the front row. In other situations where I’m at the table already, they just write a little note on their yellow legal pad, pass it over. It’s non disruptive. You answer it yes or no or, let me check. It’s useful to have the case agent up at the table, but attorneys, they don’t want it to look like the government needs five people piling on this suspect. It looks heavy handed. So, you limit the optics of that. Now, I’ve been in trials where there were three co-counsel with the suspect, and it’s just the DA and me in the front row. If I had that situation, I do agree. I think it’s a better look to have fewer people from the government up at the table.

[00:51:30] I’ve never seen two detectives up at the table. Only a couple of cases where there was co-counsel on the prosecution side. There are several cases where there were two defense attorneys with the suspect. Their strategy is the same. One of them is doing the questioning, the other one’s observing, recording, checking the case file, like, “Does this statement on the stand differ than what they gave the police officer eight months ago when they were first interviewed?” Doing valuable work for their client. It’s the same thing on the police side. I don’t want two people at the table. On the law enforcement side, I don’t want two people in the interview room. There are exceptions.

Yeardley: [00:52:06] Right. I think these conversations are so fascinating, gentlemen. Thank you so much.

Dave: [00:52:13] Lots more to talk about on that vein.

Yeardley: [00:52:16] Absolutely. We could definitely revisit this topic in the future. It’s just a great conversation with so much to learn about how you both do what you do. I can’t get enough. I loved it.

Dan: [00:52:30] Thank you. I would just add this on. My number one strategy going into an interview room was be respectful. Show them respect. Sometimes that’s all these people have is their own self-respect. So, you don’t want to take that away from them.

Dave: [00:52:44] Yeah, it’s poker. You can’t show emotion in there. The minute you act like, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard somebody do to somebody else,” now we’re back into judgmental land and probably it’s going to be a short conversation after that.

Yeardley: [00:52:59] Yeah, definitely. Nobody wants to be shamed, even if they did the worst thing. Thank you, gentlemen, so much.

Dan: [00:53:06] You’re welcome.

Dave: [00:53:07] Thank you. It was a great question.

Yeardley: [00:53:09] Thank you. I just tried to do my part.

Dave: [00:53:11] I’m sure you listeners have some questions of your own. Feel free to drop us a line one of our social media accounts. Next week on The Briefing Room, we’ve got Paul Holes. He joins us to talk about forensics. It’s going to be gruesome and great. Can’t wait to hear it. And now for a little Briefing Room feedback.

[00:53:32] So, the first two episodes of our new podcast, The Briefing Room, we talked about active shooter response in schools. And as part of those two episodes, we had a discussion with two teachers from Texas. It was quite apparent there was a distinction between one school district and the other when it came to the caliber of training and the opportunities for training that these two school districts offer to their employees and their students. We got a lot of feedback from the first two episodes and many questions had to do with, “How do we ensure that our school district is getting up to date quality high caliber training to our teachers and our students?”

[00:54:22] My answer would be and I think probably most school resource officers would agree is that, reach out to your local police department or sheriff’s office, and ask them if they are conducting any active shooter response, any critical incident traumatic event type trainings, and get on the police department’s training calendar, and offer your school and say, “We want to have a training at our school. It’ll probably be on a teachers in service day or on a weekend, and we’ll run all the teachers and staff through this active shooter training.”

[00:55:01] It does two things. It gives the police officers an ability to really do some reconnaissance of the school grounds. They become familiar with the buildings they could potentially be entering. It also inoculates the folks who are being trained into a little bit of a stress response. I know that Dan has done that to varying degrees, but at some point, that training felt very real to some of the folks who weren’t used to hearing gunfire, even though they were shooting blanks. It’s not just a drill. It’s stressful.

Yeardley: [00:55:36] I remember, Dan, when you talked about participating in going to a training at a school, and you played the bad guy and you were so good at it, you made the teacher cry. So, when Dave says, “Yes, it’s a drill, but they’re trying to make it as realistic as possible,” and of course, you weren’t trying to make her cry.

Dan: [00:55:55] Not my proudest moment, but I wasn’t even shooting blanks. I had basically a Nerf gun that I was using. But I was heartless. I played a heartless person. I think that’s alarming to people that someone could be so heartless that a bad guy would not care at all about your misfortune or the pain you’re in. It’s a reality that we have as police officers, because we see it every day.

Dave: [00:56:22] I love that Dan made it real. That makes the training worthwhile and not just a waste of everyone’s time. I want you to be uncomfortable.

Yeardley: [00:56:31] Because also, chances are the actual incident will be hundred times worse than what Detective Dan was able to bring on that day.

Dan: [00:56:39] I’ll tell you what, the first time you hear a gunshot go off and you’re not wearing your protection, it rattles you. And so, I had a Nerf gun that day. I can’t imagine what these people would go through if it was a real incident and how loud a gun going off is. It’s not like television. It is loud.

Dave: [00:56:59] But to bring that back to the training piece, folks can reach out, their school district can reach out to the fire department and the police department, and they can team up together to create an active shooter or a critical incident trauma response training that can combine medics, and fire personnel with police, and schools’ staff and students. You can do that. Reach out to your police department and ask if they can help you coordinate an active shooter training. That’s a public service. The police department, they should jump at it.

Dan: [00:57:38] Yeah, and couple that with a stop the bleed training.

Yeardley: [00:57:42] Some triage.

Dan: [00:57:43] Not just triage, but, like, let’s really work on the first aid aspect of the aftermath because if we’re ignoring that part, then we’re failing too. Dave and I talked about it. We were buddies with some firefighters in our local town. We had a boat, so we wanted to make a first aid kit. Not that Dave and I are going to get hurt out at the lake, but what if somebody else gets hurt out the lake? It’s dangerous. Somebody gets hit by a prop on a boat.

Yeardley: [00:58:10] A propeller?

Dan: [00:58:11] Yeah, in the boating world’s cup prop. [Yeardley giggles] But there’s going to be a lot of blood, and Dave and I wanted to be prepared to respond to something like that if it happened. If I was a teacher, I think in our town, I think teachers could probably go down to the local fire department and say, “Hey, can I just get some basic supplies if the worst thing ever happened and there was a shooter at my school?”

Yeardley: [00:58:38] For first aid.

Dan: [00:58:39] For first aid. “Would you guys give me some of those things?” I would bet that the fire department would say, “Yeah, what do you need?”

Yeardley: [00:58:47] And they’d say, “I don’t know, can you help me?”

Dan: [00:58:49] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:58:49] Then the fire department would say, “Okay, this is what you need.”

Dan: [00:58:52] Yeah. But honestly, the schools should be paying for all this stuff. There’s no excuse.

Dave: [00:58:58] There truly is no excuse. The stuff that teachers and staff are putting on their own personal credit cards is embarrassing.

Yeardley: [00:59:05] I agree.

Dave: [00:59:07] They shouldn’t have to do that, but I agree with Dan. If you went down to a local firehouse, they’ll hook you up. They’re happy to, if you tell them what it’s for, “I need stuff to stop bleeding.” They’re going to say, “You need tourniquets and you need big gauss, pressure bandages, stuff like that.” Stuff that soaks up blood and puts pressure on wounds.”

Dan: [00:59:27] Yeah. I would say at a minimum, you should have some tourniquets in your classroom available. They’re not that expensive. You can actually get them on Amazon. If your school district or your school won’t pay for those things, go on Amazon, look at tourniquets and learn how to apply it correctly. It’s invaluable. I’ve watched a tourniquet save a life.

Dave: [00:59:51] Thanks to everyone who listened for all the thoughtful comments we’ve received. We read every one of them. So, keep them coming.

Yeardley: [01:00:02] The Briefing Room is produced by Gary Scott and me, Yeardley, Smith and coproduced by detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Gary Scott, and me. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our social media is run by the one and only Monika Scott. Our researcher is Delaney Britt Brewer. Our music is composed by Logan Heftel. And our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell. If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the podcast, please visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com/thebriefingroom. Thank you to SpeechDocs for providing transcripts. And thank you to you, the best fans in the pod universe for listening. Honestly, nobody’s better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]