Centenary Colleges Institute for Law Enforcement & Emergency Services Education (ILEESE) held its fourth annual major in-service training event to educate the law enforcement community, on The Tactical Interview Program, on June 5 at Centenary College in the David and Carol Lackland Center. A total of 252 members of law enforcement were in attendance. The seminar was funded at no cost to participants through a grant from the United States Department of Justice.

Jerry Lewis, who is a consultant in the areas of behavioral science and statement analysis, led the seminar. Topics included a psychological analysis of the interview from the viewpoints of the investigator as well as the subject and how an investigator may determine truthfulness, deception and their relative value in an interview. The strategies are designed to enhance interviewing skills through the application of scientific principles and persuasive techniques.

Lewis specializes in the areas of law enforcement and education. He spent 25 years in the New Jersey State Police. During his tenure, he supervised the Violent Crime Analysis and Polygraph Unit. He currently maintains a relationship with law enforcement agencies throughout the United States as both a consultant and instructor in his areas of expertise. He possesses a Masters Degree in Education from Seton Hall University, holds an adjunct faculty position with Northwestern University and has been a guest lecturer at the Delaware State Police Homicide School, New Jersey Homicide Investigators Association Conference and the New Jersey Missing Persons School.

He has conducted interviews and analyzed statements in thousands of cases involving every type of criminal case. The techniques he developed over 30 years of experience are based on the science of the mind and result in confessions from 90 percent of guilty subjects, regardless of culture, upbringing, or intelligence. In 1988, he developed the five day New Jersey State Police Interviewing and Interrogation School. He has customized training for numerous federal, state, county and local law enforcement agencies such as U.S. Customs, IRS, Chicago Police Department, Delaware State Police, Anne Arundel County Maryland, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ontario Provincial Police, Magloclen, and regularly presents his four-day course at police academies through New Jersey.

This program will be extremely useful for these professionals, says Mark Noll, director of the Institute for Law Enforcement & Emergency Services Education at Centenary College. The seminar not only illustrated what to ask and what not to ask, it also outlined how one may analyze statements so as to determine truth and deceit.

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Centenary College hosts tactical interview program