Post active-duty retirement and post Calibre Press, I taught freshman and sophomore criminal justice classes at a junior college for a few years. One of the courses I taught my first year was police constitutional law. I assigned my students, most of whom were not sworn police officers, to research a notable U.S. Supreme Court case and write a brief on it. I told them, “The brief need not be longer than one page. Three paragraphs: What was the focus of the case? What was the issue the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to look at? What was the court’s ruling?” Pretty simple—or so I thought. A brief by one young lad consisted of one sentence—17 rambling lines long—with no punctuation of any kind.
As a litigation consultant/expert witness, I read a lot of police reports. Although not as bad as those case briefs I had to critique, it’s evident young people today simply don’t know how to arrange their thoughts, prepare coherent sentences, or engage in logical or understandable verbal communication. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the words “like,” “huh” and “you know” were removed from the English language. Would verbal dialogue grind to a halt? Would effective communication between the young and not-so-young end? Maybe. With that as a prelude, let’s, like, move along.
Note: This article isn’t about how to speak or understand street slang, nor is it about “verbal Judo.” It’s a primer for law enforcement officers on how to effectively communicate with younger people who don’t have a lot of experience communicating—writing or speaking—with someone five to 10 years older than themselves. Although admittedly a little tongue-in-cheek, it should prove helpful.
Communication 101
Following are tips for communicating with the under-20 set gleaned from my classroom instruction at the FBI National Academy and time as a high school resource officer.
Keep it simple: I mean really simple. Don’t ask people younger than 20 hard questions. What’s hard? When trying to interview a young witness, don’t ask the person to “tell” you where they were standing when the car that fired the shots went by. You may get five or six answers: “right here,” when they mean on this block; “right over there,” when they mean around the corner; or “I was right here,” when they got there two minutes after the shots were fired. Ask them to “show” where they were when it went by. In fact, it might be better to divide the question into two parts: “Where were you when you saw the car?” Then, “Can you describe the shooter?” Also, avoid compound questions, those that require a dual thought process. Example: “What time did you leave work, and what route did you take here?” That question may yield “around 3 o’clock” or “the freeway,” but not both.
Ask obvious questions: Today’s cops must ask the obvious. Back 10 or 15 years ago, the obvious was, well, obvious. Today, you really have to be specific when seeking information from younger folks—unless, of course, you’re perfectly happy with getting a “kind of,” “sort of” or “not sure” answer. For example, when told by a witness that “Joe said he stashed the gun at his house,” it might be a good idea to ask, “Did you actually talk to Joe?” Young people today don’t appear to understand the difference between an “eye” witness and an “ear” witness. Ask the obvious question.
Open-ended questions work better than close-ended questions: “Yes-or-no questions” take mental analysis. For people who aren’t required to answer yes-or-no questions regularly, it’s way too much work to think through those types of specific questions. Open-ended questions allow young brains that aren’t forced to engage in critical thinking exercises to work through a question slowly and more thoroughly. Example: Instead of asking young Amber, “Did you go right home afterward?” try asking, “What did you do next?” Although it may take Amber six or seven minutes to work through her itinerary while walking to her house, you’ll probably get a lot more helpful information. Why? It just may be too trying for young Amber to process the phrase “right home.”
Use “one-issue, one-thought” phrasing: Conversationally deficient people who are used to “texting” rather than “talking” are experts in one-issue communications. Most text-enabled cell phones limit the number of characters you can send in one message. Also, young people use a form of text-messaging shorthand that allows them to limit their dialogue to single-issue messages. They’ve also learned that they don’t have to answer anyone if they don’t understand the message or don’t feel like answering the question. If you keep your questions focused on a single thought or issue, you’re likely to get a more thorough and accurate response.
If you’re trying to investigate who spray-painted the wall of the mall, focus your questions on the wall. Get all the information on that one issue first, and remember to ask the obvious questions early on. You can move on to the less obvious questions later. Thinking, for some young people, creates brain strain. To use our wall/mall example again, you might try, “What did you do after you got here?” rather than, “What time did you get to the mall?”
When interviewing (we can’t use interrogating anymore) a young person of interest (we can’t use suspect anymore), you might try, “tell me what you’ve been arrested for?” rather than “have you ever been arrested?” To the communicationally challenged, “arrested” might mean they’ve been tried, convicted, fined, put on probation and/or sentenced. To someone younger than 20, being put on probation, paying a fine or getting a suspended sentence might not even be considered an “arrest.”
Conclusion
Experience has taught me that young people today have probably scrambled their brains with hours upon hours of computerized video games that don’t require comprehensive rational thought, only impulse-driven reactions or responses. More than a few have fried what’s left of their brain cells with drugs or alcohol. When being spoken to by a law enforcement officer, a good portion of today’s high school graduates—or even college underclassmen—pay attention to only a fraction of what an officer is saying to them. That’s where the one-thought, one-idea concept becomes really important. By the way, this isn’t an indictment of the American public schools. One of my close friends is a retired high school teacher from upstate New York. He did 30 years in the public school system, 25 in the classroom and the last five as the teacher’s union president. He agrees with much of my assessment.
Until science perfects Mr. Spock’s Star Trek mind-meld technique, in which law enforcement officers can probe the minds of today’s young people with their fingertips, 21st century street cops must learn that effective communication between 30- or 40-something cops and younger-than-20 civilians is going to be, you know, like, a challenge. C u nxt mnth.