Page 17 - Top Cover Issue 9

TOP COVER ISSUE 9 17

the investigating officer’s overall objective of the interview. 1. What was the position of the subject’s head?
Reformulations by investigators can repackage the witness’s 2. What was the position of the subject’s body?
account into the appropriate format to satisfy the procedural, 3. What was the position of the subject’s arms?
investigative and bureaucratic concerns of the criminal justice 4. What was the demeanour of the subject?
system such as the court’s preference for sequential or linear 5. What was the facial expression of the subject?
narratives. This is a common phenomenon at court and police 6. At what pace did the subject move?
officers are frequently criticised by their restructuring of the This specific IPCC method of retrieval greatly affected error rates
witness’s verbal account. within officer accounts, errors rose from 3% from their free recall
Principal Officers, when writing their own statements, are likely statements (MG11) to 40% (+) for cued recall questions designed
to use a different style of statement wording as opposed to the by investigators. These results perhaps highlight why officers wish
‘constructed’ and reformulated potential of an IPCC, PSD/DPS to write their own statements, since credibility directly influences
statement. Reformulated statements generate disagreements over legal outcomes.
meaning, phrasing and potentially create an additional set of new In summary, while under the status of significant witness, the
difficulties at Inquest. manner with which officers provide their accounts cannot be
The act of interviewing, be it IPCC or PSD/DPS, may have a dictated, either by police regulation or legislation. Any attempt
real impact on the interviewee. In the context of the investigative to enforce a specific method will run into subsequent judicial
interview the question/answer format has itself been described problems in relation to coercion. Federation legal advice generally
as a way in which power is displayed and accomplished by the supports the position that firearms officers control their flow of
investigator. The presence of interviewers can increase psychological information, constructing their thoughts in a timely and deliberate
load on the witness as a result of the autonomy of the speaker being way when writing their detailed statements.
compromised, people become self conscious, and this diminishes Yes, conferring may potentially induce errors into police
the witness’s capacity for accurate memory recall. accounts, but so too can the style and manner of interviewing
In 2013, to examine the quality of evidence produced by or statement taking adopted by investigators. These facts, widely
different reporting methods the MPS in conjunction with reported in academia, are seldom ever mentioned by the IPCC.
University of Portsmouth conducted a study in which firearms Perhaps they fail to appreciate that their proposals for immediate
officers were required to provide individual free recall accounts of statement taking and then interviews will introduce significantly
a simulated fatal shooting incident. Officers provided statements greater errors into firearms officers’ accounts … then again, perhaps
and then were asked to answer many questions similar in design to they do appreciate exactly what will likely happen?
the constructed questions of IPCC investigators. These mirrored Well, so much for ABE! ■
the style of questions (268) presented by the IPCC to the Principal
Officer V53 in Duggan.

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