Description

Most officers leave the academy knowing how to make an arrest. Very few leave knowing how to get someone to talk. This 40-hour online course changes that. Built by working investigators for working investigators, RTI’s Interview and Interrogation course teaches a science-backed, legally defensible approach to getting information from suspects, victims, and witnesses. No guessing, no pressure tactics that courts throw out, and none of the training that was already outdated when your FTO went through it.

The course covers the full arc of an investigative interview: pre-interview planning and subject background research, interview environment and logistics, conversation management, advanced rapport development, constitutional and legal requirements, victim-specific interviewing including trauma response and tonic immobility, deception detection, strategic use of evidence, false confession awareness, and the PIRANHA methodology. PIRANHA is RTI’s structured framework for planning and executing interviews from introduction through final analysis.

This is not a course about tricks. It is a course about understanding why people talk, how to create conditions where they want to keep talking, and what to do when they stop. The curriculum draws from current published research including work by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), cognitive interviewing science, and the Scharff Technique, and it applies that research to the cases you are actually working.

What the Course Covers

• Interview vs. interrogation: goals, distinctions, and when each applies
• Subject background research and pre-interview logistics
• Active and empathetic listening as investigative tools
• Conversation management techniques
• Advanced rapport building across multiple modules
• Constitutional framework: 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments
• Miranda requirements, invocation, exceptions, and juvenile considerations
• Trauma-informed victim interviewing, including tonic immobility
• Witness interview strategies
• Deception cues, indicators, and verbal deception patterns
• Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE)
• False confession causes and contamination avoidance
• Open-ended questioning and cognitive interviewing principles
• The PIRANHA methodology: from planning through analysis
• The Scharff Technique for eliciting information without direct pressure
• Real criminal interview video analysis and practical application

POST-certified in Idaho. 40 credit hours. Online, self-paced.