Abstract
Frontline officers play a valuable role in the collection of witness evidence through interviews. Whilst there is some acknowledgement of the complexities of the environment where this takes place, little is known about the challenges these officers face. This article examines New South Wales frontline officers’ perceptions of why they interview witnesses and what is challenging when they do. This research finds the purpose of frontline interviews is to collect adequate information to fulfil evidentiary requirements as accurately and efficiently as possible, not to obtain as much detail on incidents as feasible. Findings also suggest a variety of challenges affect police–witness interviews including witness characteristics, the nature of the frontline role and context of investigation. These challenges act both singularly and simultaneously, and accordingly make the interview process complex. Finally, officers view on-the-job experience best prepares them for meeting these challenges.
Introduction
Frontline officers play an important role in gathering evidence from witnesses. They are first on the scene and conduct a high volume of interviews as part of their daily work. Interviews with witnesses allow officers to determine if a crime has been committed, who is responsible, if eyewitnesses are being truthful, and to collect evidence (Launay et al., 2022) ensuring just outcomes. Fisher and Geiselman (2018) suggest that most crimes are solved via the details collected in witness interviews. However, the way officers conduct interviews can impact the volume, accuracy and utility of information collected (Kebbell & Evans, 2020). Confident eyewitnesses provide influential evidence for jurors and police (Garrett et al., 2020) and in the absence of contrary evidence, witness accounts are generally accepted by criminal justice authorities (Wells et al., 2006). Police themselves consider interviews to be the most important leads to solving crime. Hill and Moston's (2011) survey of Queensland police found 58.1% rated investigative interviewing as very important, 33.6% as important. However, witnesses seldom recount the amount of information officers desire (Compo et al., 2012) and resultingly the reliability and detail of information provided in eyewitness interviews has been given much consideration in the literature (Fisher & Geiselman, 2018; Kebbell & Evans, 2020; Launay et al., 2021; Mendez, 2021; Walsh et al., 2022; Westera & Kebbell, 2018).
Frontline officers typically speak to witnesses first, in part to determine whether a crime was committed and if so, details of that crime (Launay et al., 2022; Simpson, 2021). In doing so frontline officers can arguably influence the quality of information provided later (Kebbell & Evans, 2020; Mendez, 2021). For instance, officer prejudices can “contaminate an interview”, undermining rapport, and reducing information accuracy (Mendez, 2021, p. 17). Whilst feedback from officers to witnesses about their accounts can inflate or decrease their self-perceptions of accuracy and lead to memory distortions (Dalton et al., 2021). Despite this and recognition that environment may influence interview outcomes (Mendez, 2021), little is known about the challenges facing frontline officers when interviewing witnesses. The purpose of this study is to fill that gap.
Investigative interviewing
The PEACE model of investigative interviewing has become the most influential model globally (Cullen et al., 2021). PEACE is a mnemonic for the five-steps of interviewing: Planning and preparation, Engage and explain, Account, Closure and Evaluation (Green, 2012). This model encourages officers to use evidence-based techniques like open-ended questioning, non-biased attitudes and active listening (Cullen et al., 2021). It is currently utilised by most Australian police forces (Cain et al., 2016; Jay & Pankhurst, 2020), and is the model recommended when interviewing suspects by the Australian and New Zealand Advisory Agency (ANZPAA) (Cain et al., 2016). Nevertheless, there is no cohesive implementation of the PEACE model nationally, rather training and conducting of investigative interviews varies between jurisdictions (Adam & van Golde, 2020; Jay & Pankhurst, 2020). The extent of variability is unknown due to limited transparency amongst Australian law enforcement regarding questioning methods and procedures (Adam & van Golde, 2020; Cullen et al., 2021).
In NSW the use of PEACE investigative interviewing is noted in both the New South Wales (NSW) Police Force Code of Practice for CRIME: Custody, Rights, Investigation, Management and Evidence and in the academy handbook for police recruits (CSU, 2024; NSWPF, 2007). The most comprehensive study into the use of PEACE in NSW assessed 75 recorded police–suspect interviews. Dixon and Travis’ (2007) found officers utilise the PEACE model in most interviews, but their skills need improvement. However, their study was limited to police–suspect interviews.
There is limited academic literature commenting on the use of PEACE investigative-interviewing in NSW. In her account of the future of investigative interviewing, Green (2012) reported senior police officers trained in a streamlined version of PEACE perceived improved results from victim interviews. Later, Howe's (2020) study into interpreters’ perceptions of police–witness interviews suggested more training was required in some phases of the PEACE interview technique. A gap remains in relation to frontline officers’ perceptions of the challenges they face when interviewing witnesses.
Police interview techniques in practice
Interview techniques used by police can demote or advance witness memory accuracy (Westera & Kebbell, 2018; Westera & Powell, 2017). Those that promote psychological factors, like free recall and mutual trust, can elicit detailed and accurate accounts from cooperative witnesses (Fisher & Geiselman, 2018; Jay and Pankhurst, 2020; Mendez, 2021; Vriji et al., 2014). This is because they “make witnesses feel heard, elicit contextual detail, enhance witness credibility, reduce defensiveness and anxiety, and counteract witnesses’ natural inclination to withhold information” (Zekiroski et al., 2024, p. 318). Whereas techniques that limit and foster specific responses, via directive questioning, narrow information retrieval (Zekiroski et al., 2024), and have been linked to witness errors (Mendez, 2021) and false confessions (Gudjonsson, 2021). Yet officers continue to employ standard interviewing techniques like closed questions and interruptions (Compo et al., 2012; MacDonald et al., 2017). Dalton et al., (2021) reviewed 81 interactions between 45 frontline police officers and 141 witnesses collected on body worn camera in the United Kingdom over a 15-month period. The footage, filmed at the scene of incidents showed officers often failed to utilise best-interview-practice. They found more than 50% of interview questions were unsuitable, most commonly because they were leading. They also observed officers interrupting witnesses as they were recalling incidents, causing possible reductions in detail. One reason suggested for standard interviewing amongst police is the practice of pursuing information to write statements rather than free-flowing, uninterrupted evidence (Milne & Powell, 2010).
Mount (2018) interviewed 40 Queensland frontline officers about their perceptions of training in, and application of, PEACE. He found officers negatively associated investigative interviewing with the time required to plan and conduct them, the mismatch between what they learnt at the academy and formats utilised in frontline practice, and an occupational culture averse to conducting formal interviews where possible (p. 129). His findings also suggested frontline officers were not “confident in their ability to integrate [PEACE investigative interviewing skills] effectively and consistently in an interview”, irrespective of training (Mount, 2018, pp. 151–152). However, as his research focus was training, it was unlikely to identify the broader contextual factors affecting the police–witness interview process, such as witness characteristics and location and whether these influence their actions.
Frontline officers–witness interviews
Frontline officers interview most witnesses they have contact with to determine what has occurred, modes of offending and to prevent loss of life or destruction of evidence (Westera & Powell, 2016). As such, the investigative interviews they conduct vary greatly in content and scope (Launay et al., 2022). Frontline officers are time pressured and typically only have resources to write statements based on witness accounts (Simpson, 2021). To respond suitably they need methods that equip them to extract pertinent and trustworthy information in minimal time (Westera & Powell, 2016).
To date several studies have attempted to refine the interview process to make it more practical for police officers (Dando et al., 2011; Gabbert et al., 2012; Gawrylowicz et al., 2014; Hanway & Akehurst, 2018; Launay et al., 2021), however most of these were in controlled environments (Dando et al., 2011; Gabbert et al., 2012; Gawrylowicz et al., 2014). Calls have been made to cultivate methods that consider the range of scenarios police face daily (Westera & Powell, 2016). Whilst discussion shows some awareness of the challenges confronting frontline officers in conducting witness interviews (Simpson, 2021; Walsh et al., 2022), the evidence is anecdotal. One step to improving protocol is to determine the challenges in practice. The purpose of this research is to identify the challenges facing frontline officers when interviewing witnesses.
Methodology
This article reports on data collected from semi-structured interviews with 21 frontline police officers from two NSW Police Districts (PDs) – one regional and one metropolitan – given research has found policing in regional and rural areas contrasts considerably from metropolitan policing due to the impact of distance and propinquity within regional/ rural communities (Rodgers & Asquith, 2022). These PDs were selected, in accordance with their population data and the Office of Local Government guidelines (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023; Your Council, 2020), to reflect differential policing collectives, thereby enriching the data and giving voice to varied populations (Creswell, 2019). Frontline officers from those PDs were then purposefully selected by senior officers to ensure a mixture of genders, ages, ranks, backgrounds, and lengths of service. Lengths of service ranged from 6 months to 28 years and there were 13 female and eight male officers. Sixty-two percent were senior constables (n = 13), followed by constables (n = 5), sergeants (n = 2), and probationary constables (n = 1). The majority of those interviewed were Anglo-Saxon (n = 19), with the remainder Aboriginal and multicultural. Officers ages ranged from 25 to 52. Almost 48% had served in the police for 6–10 years (n = 10), 29% for 5 years or less, and almost 24% for 11–30 years (n = 5).
Frontline officers were chosen as the focus of this research because, as first responders to most calls for assistance from the public to the police (Iddles, 2016; Simpson, 2021), they have the most knowledge of the challenges police face in the field. Three primary questions were asked of frontline officers: (1) What is your objective when interviewing witnesses? (2) Do you perceive any challenges to that process? (3) Do you feel equipped at dealing with those challenges? Once these challenges were nominated, officers were asked to expand on each: recounting it, citing examples, detailing how they dealt with it, and nominating how equipped they felt at dealing with it. At the commencement of each interview, it was clarified that the term “witness” included victim and non-victim witnesses. Approval to conduct the research was granted by the Griffith University Human Research Ethics Committee.
Data collection and analysis
All interviews occurred face-to-face and lasted 13–56 min. Semi-structured interviews were utilised to encourage officers to share their range of knowledge and so the author could listen and learn about the topic as interviews progressed,targeting relevant aspects as they emerged (Morse, 2020).
Thematic analysis (Braun et al., 2019; Braun & Clarke, 2022) of the data was undertaken, guided by the following research question:
What are frontline officer's perceptions of the challenges in police–witness interviews?
Initially a coding tree was developed deductively around existing theories of policing practice and interview use, such as challenges in interviewing young children. Then, inductive analysis (involving independent line-by-line assessments of transcripts by two researchers to discover and collate short phrases signifying common experiences) was used to code and table the interview transcripts into potential themes (Braun et al., 2019), that is, the inductive codes “workplace learning” and “training utility” were grouped into the potential theme “deal with challenges”. Discussions between those researchers, about the discovered categories and themes, highlighted significant agreement in individual understandings of frontline officer responses and their categorisation. At that stage, frontline officer challenges were grouped into subcategories (e.g., “emotion”) which were reviewed by both researchers and refined into three intersecting thematic challenges perceived to obstruct frontline officers when conducting interviews: (1) Witness Characteristics (WC), (2) Nature of the Frontline Role (NFR) and (3) Investigation Context (IC) (see Table 1). Two other themes which developed were: the primary purpose of interviews, and officer's self-perception of their ability to deal with challenges.
Themes and sub-themes.
Limitations
This study is of a small purposefully selected sample of NSW frontline officers therefore the findings may not be representative of officer populations elsewhere. It is not known if broader jurisdictional or demographical differences may alter the challenges experienced by frontline officers and/or the ways that they deal with them.
Findings
Frontline officers encounter a wide variety of complex challenges when interviewing witnesses, including the requirement to conduct interviews in far from ideal situations. According to some officers, these include crime scenes where there is confusion over whether witnesses are perpetrators, traffic incidents with trapped or injured witnesses, and domestic situations with distractions including children, animals, and electronic devices. Furthermore, officers are consistently pressured by time and operational constraints. For instance, “versions” collected at the scene, (as statements or contemporaneous notes) are typically handwritten in a notebook, whilst standing.
According to participant officers, the primary purpose of witness interviews is to obtain as much evidentiary value as possible and in doing so strive to meet the proof of alleged offences. Officers listed several challenges that hindered their ability to achieve this goal to varying degrees, beginning with witness characteristics.
Witness characteristics
All frontline officers interviewed identified the complexity of dealing with a wide range of witnesses as challenging. Variations in witnesses extended from transient characteristics like intoxication through to cultural idiosyncrasies and permanent physical and mental conditions. For instance, most officers stated substance affected witnesses are troublesome. They explained this is because witnesses are unable to give detailed and chronological accounts and what they do provide is not useful to investigations because it was neither credible nor coherent. A large percentage of investigations conducted by officers were noted to be with substance-affected witnesses.
Emotion is another demanding witness characteristic, with many officers identifying crime-related trauma as problematic when conducting interviews. This was said to be due to recall disturbances, increased witness fatigue, lack of focus on required information, and impaired coherency. If they’re highly emotional and crying and things like that, their head might not be in the right frame of mind to provide you the answers you want, and their brain might be quite scattered, so they’re not thinking straight and then you’re not getting your chronological order and then it's quite time consuming as well. (Officer 14)
A critical aspect of this issue is the unpredictability of when shock appears. Sometimes it's there on scene, on the day and you speak to them an hour afterwards and you can get a whole story. Other times, it's not there whatsoever and you get little bits and pieces and then you try to talk to them at a later time and they can’t talk. (Officer 17)
These comments suggest issues with evidence quality and interviews requiring longer to accommodate emotion are an impediment in their time-pressured environment.
Physical and mental /intellectual disabilities were also witness characteristics forwarded by officers as exigent, although mental /intellectual disabilities were mentioned by more officers. Mental health issues cited ranged from learning disabilities to psychiatric illnesses. Officers perceived that mental health presented multi-faceted problems including witnesses reacting inappropriately, a lack of criminal understanding, and perceptions of unreliability. If it can be avoided, they’re not used for statements or interviews because some, through no fault of their own, generally aren’t reliable or have a different perception on what's actually happened. (Officer 14)
Witnesses from non-English speaking backgrounds, culture, religion, Aboriginality, and gender were also raised as challenging by many officers. For example, limited English skills make investigations problematic. Officer 6 explains, We had to put her in the truck, take her back to the station, calm her down, and we were able to get a little bit of English out of her but then bring in a family member who was able to speak English and do the translation for her. Up until then we didn’t really know what was going on. But then by that time it's three or four hours later and we’d lost him.
Moreover, language challenges can persist despite an interpreter's presence, as illustrated in this example. If you have somebody that's extremely upset or even a bit defensive or hostile, or whatever, that is a victim, or a witness, then even telephone interpreters, you can’t use them because you can’t hear, and they don’t want to listen, they talk over [the] top. (Officer 17)
Cultural differences were said to create different obstacles, like the reluctance to share information. He did not want to talk to me. He did not want to tell me anything. He was, ‘No woman! No woman!’ Well, I’m all you got. So that was kind of very challenging. (Officer 9)
Male officers noted female victims’ aversity to detailing sexual assault, whereas female officers found some male witnesses were unfocused during interviews. In an interview I conducted, the guys kept saying that if and when he got out of jail, possibly could we hook up… that was quite distracting. (Officer 9)
Whereas Aboriginality was perceived as problematic due to entrenched hatred towards police, witnesses’ perceptions that officers were racist, and advice given to witnesses not to speak by Aboriginal legal services. Though Officer 11 noted for him over time, trust and experience lessened this obstruction. It's just breaking a barrier I think after about 15 months being out there. I was finding in each group there was somebody who you’ve now dealt with, and they do, they make, they do have that trust for you.
Cultural differences surrounding Socio-Economic Status (SES) and education were also considered a hurdle for officers, some describing SES as creating barriers through hostile behaviour. They [lower SES witnesses] don’t work, they have a dislike for police. They’re raised that way. They don’t like us. It's common, you can see it from when they’re really little, they don’t like us, and that's inbred into them. (Officer 6)
The witness characteristic “education” was labelled taxing both with witnesses who lacked the education to understand what was required of them and highly educated witnesses. Sometimes it's easier to get something from somebody who hasn’t got an education… because their words, they [the less educated] word it better; like they’re not trying to use these big words. (Officer 11)
Finally, the age of witnesses was perceived as testing by many officers, with references to children, youth, and the elderly. Although (by officer acknowledgement), specialised teams typically deal with young witnesses, frontline police typically initialise investigations or interview child-witnesses to crimes like domestic violence and attempted abductions. A classic example in these days is where kids walk home from school, and they’re approached by someone in a black and white van. As General Duties you attend the house of the child and basically what you need from them in front of their parents, ‘Was it you? Who? What? Where? When and how?’. (Officer 1)
In these instances, levels of understanding, susceptibility to be led by questioning, and limited concentration spans were perceived as difficult. They get very distracted very easily, some kids. They’re off in space. They want to tell you everything that relates to nothing. And it's hard because they’re the ones that you really don’t want to lead into an answer, because you could get a false answer. It's challenging trying to word a question that they will understand. (Officer 4)
Officers explained child-witnesses take more time, or require finding support people, to ensure they don’t feel intimidated. Children were also said to have an inability to conceive time frames or to separate what they have seen elsewhere from what they experienced personally. Whereas juveniles were detailed as challenging interviewees due to obstructive behavior resulting from peer pressure. He was belligerent, they were all giving police stick, …. obviously, there's peer pressure on to have to put on a certain appearance before police. (Officer 18)
Older witnesses on the other hand tested officers with memory problems, a tendency to sidetrack, and witness’ perceptions that officers lacked experience. You’re interviewing people over domestic incidents, who have been married longer than you’ve been alive, and who have had problems probably longer, for 20 years, when you’ve only been alive for 19. And you come and you’re trying to speak to people and sort these problems out. And who am I? I’m not married. I’ve never been married. I’m only 21 years old. I don’t have this life experience … the way people perceive you as well, because they’re like, ‘Who's this kid?’. (Officer 5)
In sum, witness characteristics were perceived as being challenging by frontline officers when they impeded the evidence gathering process. Regardless of the characteristic the main modes of hindrance involved communication or personal barriers that limited the degree of clear information collected, the requirement of additional time and resources, an influx of irrelevant information, and a lack of accurate chronological recall.
Nature of the frontline role
The second challenge described by frontline officers was the nature of their role when conducting interviews. This included the interview location, time and occupational knowledge and skills.
Several frontline officers cited deficiencies in their or others’ professional knowledge and/or skills, which slowed the intake and accuracy of information during police–witness interviews. Amongst the skill deficits cited were writing, typing, rapport building with witnesses, shift-based fatigue, and using the right questioning technique. Handwritten statements elicited by officers were considered difficult because they made the level of content difficult to evaluate and did not provide the editing opportunities typed statements did. At the station I can sit here, and I can concentrate, and I can look at what I’ve typed. Whereas when you’re sitting down there writing in your notebook, you’re writing as fast as you can and your hand cramps. But I think I miss more out there than what I do in here. At least this way I can go back and add it in to the computer, whereas in your notebook you can’t do that, you’ve actually got to try and remember, oh, I’ve got to go back to that point there and pick up, but I’ve got to write it down here. (Officer 4)
Typed statements were also cited as testing, I’m not a real quick typer… They start talking really quickly and you’re trying to keep up with them and they start talking really quickly and they’re probably four or five lines ahead of you then you’ve got to stop ‘em. (Officer 11)
In these instances, requests for witnesses to pause, were said to affect the flow of witness’ recall and therefore statement quality. Also problematic, the way officers approach witnesses verbally. If you show up to a job and you’re all puffed up and you’re all big … and you’ve got a big booming voice, people will take a step back, they don’t want to talk to you. (Officer 9)
The inability by peers to build rapport causing a negative flow-on effect for future witness-officer encounters. If a police officer before me, or three police officers in a row have behaved in a way, or have been negative, or been a smartass, or sarcastic or something towards somebody, what chance am I going to have of being able to get any information. (Officer 10)
Fatigue was also nominated as a testing aspect of the nature of policing. When you’re very tired it's hard work, you just think if I could just talk normally, but it is part of the process that we’ve got to do. So, fatigue, yeah, in the later part of your shift is really hard. (Officer 16)
Additionally, officers stated that it could be difficult knowing the right questioning technique so as not to influence witnesses. You’ve got to be careful not to put words in their mouth, you’ve got to ask open sort of questions to find out what happened. (Officer 20)
The wide variety of locations that are not ideal environments for interviewing witnesses, was also perceived to add complications. For instance, interviews may be at a crime scene, its surrounds or in witnesses’ homes, to determine what happened at the scene of a crime, or to ensure a statement is given. Interviewing in the field was identified as more problematic than at the station due to distractions. You’ve got kids running around, you’ve got animals running around, they’re getting up to attend to the kids, they’re side-tracked, then you got to bring them back. So, there are a lot of factors in that when you’re out in the field. (Officer 4)
Distractions were perceived to impact on witnesses, officers, or both. The proximity of the interviewee to others’ earshot or an offender remaining at the scene is an example of this. Normally, if I’ve arrested them [offender], they either get brought back by another car crew, just to make the victim feel a little bit safe, and that way it's easier to take the statement and to get their version of events than having him [offender] yelling downstairs or in the back of the truck, going off. It happens. (Officer 4)
Time-related issues were cited by officers as problematic. These include investigative time constraints [i.e., the NSW Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act (2002) s.115 limits the time some can be held in custody whilst police investigate], time within which officers perceived witness recall is accurate, the need to complete interviews quickly and the draining nature of prolonged interviews on witnesses. We only have a very limited window of opportunity. Here, it's mainly domestic violence, so you usually walk into an incident where there are the victim and the offender, you end up arresting the offender pretty much straight off the bat, and then your [six]-hour window starts for investigation purposes, and what we have to do is we have to sit down and get a quick witness statement from the victim. (Officer 7)
Additional operational time constraints included the time impact of interviews on resources, such as losing a “response vehicle because [the officers assigned it] have to do an interview” (Officer 15). Whereas time delays in initiating interviews, due to work commitments or witness hospitalisation were considered problematic because they looked bad in court or affected memory. I’m off for the next four days and I make an arrangement for them to come in on the Thursday. They have a four-day window of opportunity for that person to either speak with other witnesses that are involved in the incident or play it through their mind for five days and actually put things in that didn’t really occur. (Officer 1)
Context of investigation
The context of investigation was perceived as challenging in acquiring accounts that met probative requirements, due to the credibility and reliability of witnesses, and when witnesses’ reluctance impeded the gathering of investigative information. Most officers described “unwilling people that don’t really want to be interviewed” (Officer 3) or those with the “mentality, ‘do not speak to the police’” (Officer 5) as exacting. They noted witnesses could be uncooperative due to past experiences with the police, fear of “blow-back” or retribution, an unwillingness to get involved, awareness of the consequences for others, and upbringing. The type of investigation also precipitates reluctance, Our bread and butter is domestic violence. Of course, they don’t want to tell us what their husband/partner/boyfriend/whatever did, so they’re very reluctant because they know that you might end up with the fact that this is his “enth” charge and he's now going to go to gaol, and nobody is going to provide for the family. (Officer 7)
Unwilling witnesses were perceived as prohibitive because they restrict officers from obtaining information required to prove offences, at times resulting in repeat visitation by officers to no avail.
Officers also identified assessing the credibility and reliability of witnesses as difficult. Are they telling the truth this time, or aren’t they? So, it's a bit of a challenge to try and work out what's true. (Officer 3)
This could be due to overstating, the reliability of witness statements, in determining whether someone is a witness or perpetrator, or when witness details were unintentionally inaccurate. People's perceptions in regard to colour, time, date, distance, all those sort of things that they see… someone might say 50 m, someone else might say 70, someone might say he had a blue shirt on, someone might say he had a green shirt, all those different things… everybody sees and interprets things different. It can be challenging. (Officer 14)
The data suggests acquiring an investigation expedient account tested many officers. This included features like sufficient detail, relevance to the incident being investigated (in isolation from past events), and clear offence chronology, I need it in chronological order, what happened today… It's easy when you’re on the computer because you can just go back to where it happened and type it in, but when you’re doing a written statement in your notebook, it's quite messy, and you have to go this happened before that, before you write it down. It gets really confusing. (Officer 15)
Equally challenging, is where information witnesses provide, is not relevant to a “current” investigation. This includes witnesses’ inability to “stay on track”, the provision of hearsay evidence, and differential versions, where details vary amongst witnesses. Witnesses who omit details, and need to be coaxed to provide particulars, were also considered problematic. You’ll say, ‘tell me what happened’, they’ll give you the really speeded up version where you kind of go hang on, slow down… there's too many things, or it's a really abbreviated version. They leave bits out because they don’t think it's important. (Officer 9)
Self-perception of ability to deal with challenges
Whilst many frontline officers perceived themselves equipped to deal with the challenges they cited, some stated they were not or felt unsure. Many stated they received none or limited formal training in dealing with witness challenges and most acknowledged learning how to address them in the field because, What they teach you [at the academy] is best practice but a lot of the time when you are on the job it's just different. Things turn to crap real easy, and you could think it's going one way and it doesn’t. And you can’t just stick to a textbook answer. (Officer 18)
The over-riding narrative amongst frontline officers was that regardless of training, it was experience, both on the job and in life, which they perceived afforded them skills in most circumstances. Each officer was able to verbally illustrate, through examples, how they dealt with singular challenges in modes unique to events and the officers themselves. For instance, Officer 6 asked family to translate when interviewing a witness with limited English, whereas Officer 4 accessed a shopping centre security guard, to assist with translation, and Officer 1 used event and place markers to assist child-witnesses in presenting incident details.
Discussion
This study found NSW frontline police officers perceive a variety of complex challenges impede the police–witness interview process. These challenges relate to the nature of witnesses, the investigative process and the role, skills, and abilities of the officers themselves.
A major contribution of this study was that it looked at the challenges facing NSW frontline police officers holistically. Research to date has considered aspects of the police–witness interview process through narrow parameters such as the problems with eyewitness recall (Kleider-offutt et al., 2015), the influence of alcohol or emotion on memory (Hagsand et al., 2013; Sharma et al., 2023), appropriate mental health responses (Freeze & Campbell, 2024), the impact of culture (Hope et al., 2022), and frontline police officers perceptions of the utility of investigative interview training (Mount, 2018). This study instead asked frontline officers themselves what they perceive to be the challenges officers face when interviewing witnesses. It revealed that frontline officers in NSW face a broad variety of dynamic challenges that interact with each other.
A better understanding of the complexity of frontline officer–witness interactions has important implications for interviewing theory and research. The findings suggest these challenges do not act in isolation but interact with each other throughout the interview process. This is because challenges can both compound or fuel one another and because the most direct action in dealing with certain challenges can be in opposition with the best line of attack for others that co-exist. For example, a substance-affected witness who has been assaulted and is for a period incoherent and aggressive, whilst the alleged offender is in custody and must be charged or released within a set period.
The intricacies of these challenges mean that, while experimental studies examining specific factors of the interview process are useful, a more complex approach into understanding the impact of how frontline officers conduct these interviews operationally is needed to ensure they achieve the collection of best evidence (Westera & Powell, 2016). Research suggests, this should involve conducting more research in the “real-world” of policing (Fisher & Geiselman, 2018; Hope & Gabbert, 2019). That is, into the purpose of frontline officer–witness interviews, perceived and actual challenges facing officers during witness interviews and interview best practice for the elimination or control of proven challenges. Most importantly, because unless the challenges facing frontline officers when they conduct interviews are addressed, the utility of interview models like PEACE may be compromised (Westera & Powell, 2016). This is exemplified in the finding that NSW officers perceive that pauses can impact recall flow, which is counterintuitive to free recall principles (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). The complexity of the working environment of these frontline officers may explain why some officers have commented on the poor utility of interview methods. It could also account for the poor uptake of free recall methods amongst frontline police recorded in other studies (Compo et al., 2012). Although misconceptions of interview models like PEACE being inflexible, rather than as a “tool belt” from which investigative interviewing options can be tailored may also impact its utilisation (Milne et al., 2019, p. 18).
The findings demonstrate frontline officers perceive themselves ill-equipped to deal with a variety of challenges but innovate ways of dealing with them. One example cited by a current study participant was borrowing a training folder from a detective in taking sexual assault statements when faced with an emotional sexual assault complainant who didn’t want to be interviewed. Despite officer perceptions that policing, and life experience bridged their skills gap, the study found no relationship consistently existed between participants’ experience and self-perceptions of being equipped to deal with the challenges. An officer with over 6 years’ policing experience, relied on common sense and previous experiences in dealing with challenges but felt ill-equipped due to the uniqueness of each incident. Another with under 5-years’ experience, felt equipped due to that experience and personal attributes. Milne et al. (2019) suggest that individual officer skills, lateral thinking skills and adaptability may each impact here, however, this lack of relationship suggests more research is needed to understand how officers negotiate these challenges before protocols are further developed.
Consistent with other research (Chung et al., 2022; Fisher et al., 2011; Hill & Moston, 2011), most of the NSW frontline officer participants perceived they lacked basic training, with training described as minimal and academic at best, lacking in ways of dealing with people outside of a perfect world where one solution was a fix-all. Investing in training frontline police in better dealing with witnesses could be organisationally and judicially beneficial. Effective interpersonal communication in policing is important (Davies & Kelly, 2014; McDermott & Hulse-Killacky, 2012) and benefits of training police officers in interview techniques have been demonstrated (Walsh & Bull, 2010). As suggested by Chung et al., (2022), to increase the utility of interviews this training should be developed through practice, so as to incorporate context, and remain ongoing. This is because effective interviewing requires a complex collection of skills, which typically require several, rather than singular training sessions (Acka et al., 2021) There are possible risks in failing to train police with effective communication skills. Davies and Kelly (2014) argue these risks are demonstrated by police–citizen exchanges that have resulted in injury or tragedy. Poor communication skills can also result in reduced public confidence in police (Chung et al., 2022).
The second contribution of this study is the documentation of the scope of challenges NSW frontline police perceive they face that include accommodating the idiosyncrasies a broad range of witnesses alongside challenges unique to the frontline role. Central to all of these, was the ability of those challenges to impede the evidence gathering process. Like Simpson (2021, 2024) officers in this study noted the potential of distractions at crime scenes to complicate interviews, the negative impacts of operational time constraints, officer fatigue, and self-perceived deficits in skills like typing, and specific witness characteristics which reduced the chronology, reliability and credibility of evidence. This needs to be considered given that investigative interviewing comes at the beginning of the judicial process, with the credibility of witness evidence yet to be evaluated at trial (Denault & Talwar, 2023).
The third contribution this study makes is regarding the perceived purpose of frontline officer–witness interviews. Existing research has been based on the assumption that the purpose of police–witness interviews is to obtain the most comprehensive and accurate versions of incidents, determine whether crimes have occurred, identify an offender, gather evidence for prosecution and determine witness reliability (Launay et al., 2022). Moreover, the argument that eyewitnesses rarely recall as much information as officers require has been the rationale for studies into improving eyewitness recall (Ali et al., 2019). This study found NSW frontline police officers perceive the primary purpose of witness interviews is to determine if an offence has occurred, and if so, obtain only enough evidentiary information to meet the proof of alleged offences. Witnesses’ inclusion of extraneous information, time constraints and lack of chronological recall were considered challenging by study participants. As such this study found officers perceive the purpose of frontline officer–witness interviews is to acquire quality, not quality and quantity of information (Westera & Powell, 2016). This concurs with research findings that police prosecutors’ have concerns about the lack of chronology, length, and relevancy of information frontline police provide them with when using free recall techniques to gather audio-visual interview evidence (Simpson, 2021; Westera et al., 2015). In addition to arguments that the singular use of a one-size-fits-all interview type for “multiple purposes can create a conflict of needs” (Westera & Powell, 2016, p. 19). These findings appear to support their suggestion that overall the roles of various populations within police forces have vastly different objectives, constraints, and access to resources. For the frontline police interviewed here, that is chronological investigation and prosecution relevant information, as expediently as possible.
Conclusion
NSW frontline officers perceive they face a variety of complex challenges that interplay with each other when interviewing witnesses, such as witness characteristics, the nature of the frontline role, and investigation contexts, which make the acquisition of probative accounts requisite. Whilst previous research has addressed some of these challenges individually, this study considered the way frontline police officers perceive they combine to impact the way they conduct interviews with witnesses within their role. It found that whilst training is provided it lacks utility, leaving many to learn to deal with these challenges at work and in life. Finally, as was suggested by Westera and Powell (2016), NSW frontline officers identify the purpose of witness interviews is to efficiently gather enough information to fulfil evidentiary requirements, not obtain as much detail as possible.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the support and assistance from the New South Wales Police Force (NSWPF), Mary Cassar and Dr Nina Westera in undertaking this research. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the NSWPF and any errors of omission or commission are the responsibility of the author.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.