Jurors who acquitted Noor Salman, the wife of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen in Orlando, Florida last Friday, told news reporters that one of the deciding factors in their decision was that the FBI agents interviewing Salman did not record the interview, but instead, hand wrote notes.
The reason the FBI did that in this case is that it is FBI policy to do so.
I am a serious critic of the bureaucracy of the FBI. There are many skilled investigators, who work for the bureau, but everything they do is so regulated by pencil pushers at headquarters who likely have never done a criminal interrogation in their careers, they hamstring those agents.
No technique is less efficient that handwriting notes in an interrogation. The interrogator is so busy trying to write down what the subject is saying, they don’t look at the person they’re interviewing, potentially missing non-verbal cues to questions; don’t engage them in conversation, and the vast majority of what the investigator is told doesn’t get written down.
Having a word for word, accurate record of what the suspect said is huge. Statements that don’t seem important enough to write down at the time of the interview, may become hugely important when the investigation is more complete and more facts are known.
I responded to a mass-shooter incident at Seattle Pacific University a few years ago. There were several hundred witnesses in need of interviewing. Dozens of Seattle Police detectives were there along with a handful of FBI agents who showed up to help.
We set up tables, and had witnesses report to a station for an interview.
I knew the FBI agents helping in the process. They were all good investigators. But the SPD detectives conducted four of five interviews for each one the agents did. Why? Because the agents were required to hand write their statements, while the SPD personnel recorded ours for future transcription.
This isn’t unique to the FBI. It is a problem with all federal agencies. They are much more interested in process than product.
I’ve often said: A brand new police officer, fresh out of the police academy, has much more descretion to act than a twenty-year FBI agent.
It’s time for federal agencies like the FBI to take the handcuffs off their agents and entrust them with decision making and discretion to act, which is necessary to conduct a high-quality investigation.