The trainee established a professional tone and successfully challenged the suspect’s alibi, but relied too heavily on closed questions and made the challenge personal, undermining rapport.
2strong3getting there1not yet· 6 of 21 skills tracked
Section A
Skill rollup
What was strong, what was getting there, and what was missed.
01
Professional tone-setting
p.42 — avoids direct accusation opener
Strong
Opened with a professional, non-accusatory statement that set a neutral tone and made voluntariness explicit.
“Thanks for coming in. I’m Detective Reyes. Before we start, you are not under arrest. You can leave any time. I just want to walk through your afternoon yesterday with you. In your own words, take your time.”
02
Uninterrupted narrative
p.42 — elicit, don’t extract
Getting there
Asked for a narrative but immediately began asking specific questions after the suspect’s brief initial statement.
“Tell me more about it. What were you watching?”
03
Use of open-ended questions
p.13 — use open-ended questions to elicit narrative
Getting there
Started with an open question but quickly resorted to a series of closed and specific questions during the account-gathering phase.
“Anyone home with you, or did you order any food?”
04
Avoidance of poor question types
p.14 — avoid leading or negative-tag questions
Not yet
Used a clear leading question with a negative tag to lock in the suspect’s alibi.
“And you didn’t step out at all, not even for a minute, right?”
05
Principled challenge of inconsistencies
p.42 — focused attack on the account, not the person
Getting there
Correctly identified the suspect’s changed alibi but made the challenge personal by calling him a liar.
“That’s a lie, Danny. You just told me you were at home all afternoon.”
06
No coercion, threats, or promises
p.55 — ensure voluntariness; avoid threats or promises
Strong
Explicitly stated at the outset that the suspect was not under arrest and was free to leave.
“Before we start, you are not under arrest. You can leave any time.”
Section B
Coaching notes
4 short notes · every timestamp jumps to that moment in the video.
01
You started the interview very effectively. Your opening at 0:03, where you introduced yourself, clarified that Danny was not under arrest, and stated he could leave, was textbook. This immediately established a professional, non-coercive tone, which is critical for making the suspect feel comfortable enough to talk. By explicitly avoiding a direct accusation in the opening, you followed the guide’s advice on p.42, leaving room for Danny to offer his version of events without going on the defensive.
02
Your transition into the account phase had a strong start with the open-ended question, “What did the day look like?” at 0:20. However, you didn’t manage to elicit the uninterrupted narrative the methodology calls for. After Danny’s very brief initial account, you immediately began probing with specific, closed questions like “What were you watching?” at 0:38 and the compound question “Anyone home with you or did you order any food?” at 1:07. The goal here is to let the suspect provide a long, narrative response first. By jumping to questions, you shifted from eliciting information to extracting it, limiting the potential for Danny to volunteer details or contradictions on his own.
03
You correctly used a series of questions to lock Danny into his initial alibi, culminating in the poor — but effective — leading question at 1:21: “And you didn’t step out at all, not even for a minute, right?” This set up the subsequent challenge well. You successfully detected the shift in his story when he moved from “I was home the whole time” at 1:28 to “I did step out for a bit” at 1:50 after you presented conflicting evidence. Your initial challenge was strong and fact-based.
04
However, you made a critical error when you escalated the challenge by making it personal. At 2:21 you stated, “That’s a lie, Danny.” The guide on p.42 advises a “focused and reasoned attack on the suspect’s account,” not on the person. Calling him a liar is a personal attack that predictably gave him an escape route — he immediately pivoted to accusing you of twisting his words, derailing your momentum. A better approach would have been to juxtapose his two statements factually: “A moment ago you said you were home the whole time, but now you’re saying you went for a walk. Can you help me understand which one is true?”
Section C
Mapped to outcomes
How this session’s skills roll up into the four learning outcomes.
LO1
Apply
Conduct a structured suspect interrogation following the five-stage sequence — Preparation & Planning, Engage & Explain, Account Clarification & Challenge, Closure, Evaluation.
LO2
Apply
Use a principled question typology that favors open-ended and probing questions while avoiding leading, compound, and accusatory forms.
LO3
Analyze
Detect resistance, deception cues, and inconsistencies in a suspect’s account; adapt approach without coercive tactics.
LO4
Apply
Comply with Miranda/voluntariness, non-coercion, and presumption-of-innocence safeguards.
Analysis generated from the session transcript and the 21-skill course taxonomy. Six of the twenty-one skills were assessed for this scenario.