Interview Between A Police Officer And A Female Victim

The interview in question takes place between a police officer and a female victim. The interview is a recount of what had happened earlier in the day regarding a theft. The interviewer exemplified some strong non-verbal and verbal communication; however, he also portrayed some adverse non-verbal and verbal behaviour. The overall aspect of the interview was well in that the interviewer got a significant amount of details needed in order to further investigate the theft, however, there were a few areas of improvement for the interviewer in regards to his lack of empathy.

Non-Verbal

In the interview, the interviewer at the beginning started off with strong no-verbal communication. He kept eye contact, and sat facing the interviewee to show interest in the matter. Also, the interviewer throughout the whole interview kept a calm tone of voice, which portrayed a feeling on empathy for what she had went through (An Overview of Investigative Interviewing, 1988). The strengths of this are that these non-verbal signs show that he is involved in the interview, and that he is being empathetic towards the interviewee. At

As stated above the non-verbal shows empathy for the interviewee, however, the interviewers verbal communication as noted above shows a lack of empathy. The previous example would suggest a lack of empathy to someone who is not attuned to non-verbal communication since one is more likely to pay attention to the verbal signs than non-verbal. In saying this, the interviewer did ask appropriate questions to obtain more evidence from the interviewee, from what the suspect looks like (An Overview of Investigative Interviewing, 1988, 16:08), to clarifying questions (An Overview of Investigative Interviewing, 1988). Overall the interview was conducted professionally and got the evidence that was needed to hopefully help apprehend the suspect in