http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/09/131209fa_fact_starr
The most terrifying thing that happened to me last semester had nothing to do with school.
I was interrogated for 2 hours by the university police as a suspect in a laptop/iPad theft from the summer. No matter that I had also had my wallet stolen around the same time -- since I was one of the roommates and I just happened to work at MGH (where a wifi signal was apparently traced to), there was reason enough to consider me as a particularly juicy suspect for the case.
At first they were reasonable. I had chatted with them over the phone during the summer regarding the case, so I figured this meeting was simply a follow-up to make sure they had the details straight.
Oh, but was I mistaken.
After some not-so-pleasant pleasantries, the lead interrogator promptly whipped out a voice recorder and a massive 50 page stack of documents, presumably all "proof" that I was the criminal. In retrospect, I should have realized that this whole thing was a massive farce; in the 5-10 seconds that I was able to sneak a glimpse at the stack of papers, all I could see was complete gibberish.
But I was too frightened to be rational. In truth, I was shitting bricks.
See, I had always thought it would be easy to prove your innocence if you were, in fact, innocent. There's that saying "if you're innocent, then you have nothing to fear," and I'd say in many situations, that's probably true.
But when you're dealing with a duo of supremely biased "investigators" with the tunnel vision of an earthworm digging in a dung pile, you would be surprised how difficult of a task it can become. Correlation and coincidence is their energy source, and if you gather the courage to point that out, they invariably exclaim that "you're hiding something from them."
I have to admit, they were so insistent on saying that I was responsible that at one point, I almost started to believe them. They were winning this game of psychological intimidation, and I was terrified.
Yet, they began to slip. Their questions became less and less specific. When I asked to know precisely what "all of this
evidence" actually was that they kept referring to, they said
"knowledge of that evidence is not necessary." And when I kept denying that I was the thief and that their entire case was built on circumstantial evidence that they couldn't even produce to show me, they asked If not you, then who?
I didn't have an answer to that idiotic question. Of course I don't fucking know who did it. Did it ever occur to you two monkeyheads that if I knew the answer to that question, no one would still be missing their wallet/laptop/iPad?
I was still shaken at that point, though. What really did those two interrogators in was what they asked next:
"Would you say that you usually walk up the stairs pretty quickly?"
Uh....what the actual fuck did you just ask me?
"Because we know that on the night of the theft, you climbed 3 flights of stairs in a very short amount of time. Why were you in such a hurry?"
Okay then, this interrogation is probably going to end in five minutes, tops.
Having lost a major chunk of their credibility, I almost caught myself scoffing when they closed the interrogation with "We'll be in touch, Ryan. Here's my card if there's anything you want to tell us. Remember that it will look favorable for you in court if you cooperated with us now."
Yeah, and after I cooperate with you two, let me tell you about this one time my pet cow flew to the moon and back..
