By John E. Reid & Associates

An investigator is asking a great deal from a guilty suspect to confess to a crime which may potentially involve substantial punishment. For this reason, the suspect must be allowed to make his first admission of guilt with as few words as possible and also in a way that allows him to save face. In the Reid Nine Steps of Interrogation, this is done by asking an alternative question.

An alternative question is one in which the suspect is offered two incriminating choices concerning some aspect of the crime. As an example, in a theft case a suspect may be asked the following alternative question;"Did you take that money and blow it on drugs and booze or did you need it to help pay bills? It was to help pay bills, wasn't it?" If the suspect nods his head in agreement with the investigator's question, the ice has been broken to obtain a fully corroborated confession. Of course, other than accepting the two alternative choices presented by the investigator, every suspect has a third option which is to say that neither choice is true.

 

 

by Hock Hochheim I
ILEETA Use of Force Journal

I was watching a gun training DVD last week and the featured, world famous instructor issued the statement, "It takes 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions to burn a movement into your body's muscle memory." There were those magic numbers again, I thought. "3,000 to 5,000." Again and again. It has become muscle memory chakra just to regurgitate those very stats. I've heard those numbers repeated hundreds of times. In the week before, I read these words of Officer Tom Crydell (I've changed the name) writing in a tactical journal, "Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. It has been said that it requires 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions to develop "muscle memory" or a subconscious response to an external stimuli.

While we know that our brain is the only part of our body that has the ability to retain memory, the consistent application and practice of these active listening skills allows us the ability to incorporate them into our daily communication patterns and ensure that they are available to us during critical hostage negotiation processes." In this example, Tom has extrapolated these numbers to audible listening skills. He suggests we practice... listening... 5,000 times? To what exactly? How exactly? Then we hear the numbers again from hundreds of martial arts instructors, I fear they have heard police quote the stats and they think that we are some reliable source.

But the numbers also transcend law enforcement, military and martial fields into sports. A famous golf instructor said, "It has also been determined that it takes between 3,000 and 5,000 repetitions of a movement pattern to learn an exercise."

 

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