The quality of the video isn’t as good as the hi-def fiction I can see any night of the week, but I am watching a DVD of a two-hour-plus interrogation that the Worcester Police recorded on Dec. Somebody smothered him,” snaps the relentless detective. “Oh my God,” the suspect groans in sobbing denial. “No you didn’t,” the detective snaps back. And based on the popularity of TV cop dramas over the years, including 'Law & Order,' 'CSI' and 'Homicide,' you’ve probably seen it pretty often. You’ve probably seen this confrontation before. “I did,” she pleads, and you can feel the air go out of the cramped room. “Now you said to me earlier you were going to tell the truth,” a cop barks from across one side of the table to the young girl on the other side. If these methods seem less brutal in comparison, they can be even more effective, as a growing number of scientifically proven false confessions have demonstrated.

Nowadays, police departments mainly rely upon psychological tools to extract confessions.

It was only in 1936 that the common practices of hanging suspects out of windows, hitting them with hoses, and plunging their heads under water were effectively outlawed by the U.S. The rack, the screw, dunking - a method applied to suspected witches in Salem - the old, recently revived art of waterboarding and the simple rubber hose that gave menace to “the third degree” in the black and white heyday of police detectives have all proven their worth in winning confessions. The world has always had its ways of extracting confessions. Kevin Pageau, right, and Detective John Doherty, left, interrogate Nga Truong, 16, following the 2008 death of her baby boy.

Part 1 of a series ( See more recent reports) Worcester Police Sgt. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 10 years old.

Trainer confessions part 1