MY INTERN'S REVIEW ON MY S.P.E.A.R INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE

 

Robert Lustyik

8/20/25

 

My Experience with Investigative Interviews

 

My time spent with CPI investigations this summer proved to be invaluable in more ways than the term can properly define. In pursuit of a career in law enforcement, I always worried mostly about the environment and the personalities I’d be surrounded by. One can learn and read on his own to gain insights into the mindset and the lifestyle of an investigator at any level, but it provides a whole new perspective on it all when you get the opportunity to be in the same room as these esteemed individuals such as my boss Detective Judd Bank. I was gifted with this chance to experience a glimpse into the personalities and ideologies of an investigator with over thirty years of experience in the field. Going into things, I was very nervous about how I might feel in this realm or whether I could even hope to belong in the same room. I was quickly welcomed and reminded that I am merely a student of a generation that is in need of insightful knowledge from the former. Mr. Bank introduced me to his lifelong field of work and study in an exceptional manner, providing me with his comprehensive blogs and an informative packet that follows the basis of his strategical approach to an investigative interview. 

This strategy is known as S.P.E.A.R., which stands for strategy/structure, planning/preparation, engaging, accounts/clarification, and review/evaluate. Following this baseline strategy, I learned that it is necessary to do things as such because things can quickly become disorganized or you as the investigator can easily lose your foothold in an interview. To have a strategy gives you an instant advantage over the person sitting across from you, as they won’t have something nearly as prepared in response to you unless they are a special class of criminal/individual. The importance of each step proves crucial to winning in an investigative interview and an investigation in general. I carefully use the term “winning” because this is how it must be viewed to defeat the person sitting across from you. There are basic principles everybody should follow regarding morality when dealing with one another on a regular basis, but in an investigative interview these bets are off. 

You must view the person across from you as the opponent in an almost complex version of a chess match. A person trying to hide something illicit from you will do whatever they can to lie and sneak their way out of that room unscathed, and it's your job as an investigator to take advantage of their desire to escape and force them into telling you the truth, whatever the truth may be. The methods of this process range widely and can be employed in multitudes of situations from varying angles, but they all have a simplified trigger to guide the investigator towards their chosen approach. Mr. Bank created a process of identifying approaches through the teachings of a historical samurai known as Miyamoto Musashi. This process does not follow the exact same principles Musashi spoke of in his book called, “The Book of Five Rings”, but it uses the teachings in a modernized recreation. Using different elements of the earth to classify an individual's state of mind makes employing the tactics of an investigator much easier to the alternative of just going with the flow of things. This is not to say that things will always be this simple and a person might be classified as strictly let’s say fire, but having this format remains useful regardless. You can switch the tone at any moment to react accordingly to a suspect’s approach, but you must not take things too far because it’ll be impossible to bring them back down from that level. The approach should typically remain that you as an investigator are trying to befriend the suspect and give them the illusion that you are there for their benefit and their benefit alone. If you decide to tune up the intensity of the interview and put too much pressure on the suspect too soon, you lose the advantage of your befriending illusion and have now become a hostile entity in the eyes of the suspect in question. Retaining posture and employing these more visceral tactics only when necessary is an art that I learned needs perfecting and practice constantly. 

Intuition is a massive factor in this process because it will guide you in the right direction through subtle queues and nuances that only a trained eye can pick up on. To be intuitive in these settings, you must have this knowledge already holstered within your subconscious so that you can react accordingly without having to dwell on any given instance for far too long. Training this instinct is crucial to gain a better understanding of an investigative interview and also to just understand the nature of humans at a much higher level. Only after training in these teachings and techniques can you start to pick up on the subtle queues that might give your insight into the suspect’s mind or better yet the ideas, he is trying to convince you of. This was another massively important thing I learned with my time spent there, which is that you need to be looking for the character the suspect is trying to portray and why they are trying to portray this. People in an uncomfortable situation like this that have something to hide will typically try to convince you of something that expresses their innocence, but it's the investigators job to figure out why they want you to believe this false narrative to decipher which questions to press on further. Understanding this reasoning for a suspect's story opens the doors to which parts of their story need clarification and deeper questioning from the investigator. 

I also had the privilege of witnessing these teachings in real-time being used in an interrogative interview. Sitting in the room gives a completely different perspective as opposed to watching it on YouTube or television. I got to see firsthand what it feels like to be on both sides of the coin in these scenarios because you can feel the tension hanging in the air like no other. All these teachings are just that if you don’t get the chance to see them in practice and truly grasp the reasoning behind their usefulness, so this experience was truly informative. I won’t get into the details of it but it’s safe to say that everything I was taught and am still learning holds true in this environment. 

To conclude, my experience with CPI investigations was that of something I don’t think I could acquire anywhere else. These are not things you can learn so efficiently from any class or YouTube video on the internet. Having Mr. Bank share his lifetime experiences and active working knowledge with me proved to be more useful than most classes I have taken in my entire college career. Learning is just that without the real-world experience to apply it or practice, so it truly was a gift to be a part of, and I will continue to value and practice what I gained for the rest of my life and foreseeable future career.