ABSTRACT
It is taken for granted that eyewitness evidence is critical for police investigations. Indeed, this intuitively obvious belief has been confirmed in several recent surveys of police officers in the United States and the United Kingdom (Kebbell & Milne, 1998; Rand Corporation, 1975; Sanders 1986). For instance, in Kebbell and Milne’s survey of British police officers, 86.6% of all respondents indicated that witnesses usually, almost always, or always provide the major leads for an investigation. Despite the stated importance of eyewitness evidence, 52.6% of the respondents claimed that witnesses rarely or never remember as much information as the interviewer wants. Something is amiss.
