I was fortunate to grow up exposed to some of the best cop programs ever. The immortal lines of those TV detectives were pure gold: “Book ‘em, Danno!” (Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-0), “Elementary my dear Watson” (The adventures of Sherlock Holmes), and, my all-time favorite, “Just one more thing” delivered so brilliantly by Lieutenant Columbo. Who hasn’t watched a police series, especially when the suspect is being questioned, and thought, ‘I can do better than that!’? If you have then you are probably right as TV has created an illusion that police interviewing is somehow an adrenaline-charged game of cat and mouse devoid of any legal safeguards.
The reality is that real-life police interviews are pretty laborious, often foreseeable, and lack the excitement that many amateur sleuths associate with this…