Statement Analysis

SCAN was developed and refined by Avinoam Sapir and has become one of the most effective techniques available for obtaining information and detecting deception from statements of victims, witnesses or suspects.  SCAN (analysis of statements) is an essential tool for law enforcement personnel, investigators, social service personnel, and anyone else who needs to obtain information from written material. Initially, it is best with a written statement, but once one has enough training, and experience they can just as easily do this with spoken words, which can be used in real time during an interview or interrogation. LSI provides SCAN training throughout the US and Canada, and also in Mexico, the UK, Israel, Australia, and other countries. More information can be found at a link on the bottom of this page 

1992 - SCAN (Scientific Content ANaylysis) was brought to Central District's Major Crime Unit. SCAN was a Linguistic Polygraph technique that at the time was so new the department it had never been heard of and as such, they refused to pay for the course. Officer Driscoll was coming back from a line of duty injury and had received a Workers Comp payout, Ken used a large part of that to pay for the training. Within a few years of  Driscoll showing it to different units throughout the department he was invited to help with various cases analyzing statements in just about every unit or division within the department; everything from Homicide to Sex Offense, to Robbery, Missing persons and all of the Theft Robbery an Burglary units. He started out being limited to "Area 1", and before long adding Area 2 and then Area 3 to his list of districts and units he could assist in cases. Statements for the State’s Attorney’s Office and various outside agencies like Baltimore County and Maryland State police were coming to him for help with cases and trust me, he was loving it. I know he used to come home and tell me and the kids about various cases which belong long had taught us how to use the technique, our youngest daughter was born in 1993 so she grew up learning this technique and often when her and her father get to talking it seems they both use the technique as if come second nature to them. I know what it did for Ken's career, and am seeing what it is doing for her's. One was a detective the other a psychologist, let's face it the truth is the truth, and knowing where the truth ends and deceptions begins will help anyone from any career path.  Before leaving the department in 2001, for surgery due to a LOD injury Det. Driscoll was asked to teach his introductory course to Baltimore's Homicide Unit. BTW His course was authorized by Avinoam Sapir, from LSI. Avinoam Sapir developed and refined Statement Analysis, and because of Det. Driscoll took it so seriously that he found several observations that had not yet been discovered, Avinoam called him a Guru on the subject. "Point of Perspective" - "Here" vs. "There" was just one of Kenny's many observations that were eventually included LSI's training after Kenny brought it to Mr. Sapir’s attention.

Kenny still uses the technique and practices reading statements even though he has been retired since 2003. One of the more known cases he was involved in was the Laci Peterson case, in which he contacted the Modesto, California Police and offered his assistance, providing an observation on Scott Peterson's words. These observations came within five days of Laci’s going missing. Based on something Scott said to the media about his wife's disappearance, Kenny knew she was dead, and not missing as Scott trying to report. To Det. Driscoll, it was easy if Scott Peterson knew she was dead when everyone else only suspected her as missing, then he must have killed her. At the time The Modesto, California Police said it was too early, they didn’t want to accuse him of anything too soon. But within the year they asked Ret. Det. Driscoll for a complete write-up of his observations. Kenny was able to tell them what room she was killed in, and what time she was killed, all based on Scott Peterson’s words. Within a year Laci’s Body was recovered, and Scott Peterson was arrested, tried and convicted of her murder. Other cases he assisted with included Haleigh Cummings, in which police were told to look more closely at the girlfriend, a few years later, it was determined the girl was taken from the girlfriend over money she may have owed them for drugs. The technique is very strong in the right hands and has been used to solve many cases throughout this country and internationally.  The first time it was actually used in a case for Baltimore police was about 6 to 8 months after Ken had started using it, he had come back to work after a surgery that nearly ended his career in 1993. he had been telling everyone about the course and how it worked. One night a call came out for a carjacking, within an hour of the report some officers in sector 4 found the car with a driver that matched the description given in the BOLO. The officers thought it would be an easy case for Ken and at the same time, he could get a quick confession making the court part easy one everyone. Ken sat down and had the suspect write a statement, Ken began to read and analyze the statement, after the first read over, he found nothing, so he read it again and again, but he couldn't find the deception. Confused for a few seconds, he began to doubt his ability with a technique that during training he never had trouble, he was 100% in training statements. Then it hit him, during training he never had a truthful statement, so he called the complainant in, and in order to get what is called a pure original statement, he explained he was just handed the case and knows nothing about it, so if he could, would he write down what happened. This was important because f you ask someone to tell you what happened, and then ask them to write it down, words in the written statement will be different from the spoken statement and those changes could be important, not that if they are not there, there wouldn't be other words to use, but life of an analyst is much easier if everything is pure. As the victim of this carjacking finished his statement and started to turn it 180 degrees from his seat to Ken's across the table from him Ken had glanced down and already seen deception on the page. Even more, was found when he read the entire statement. After being confronted by Ken and before leaving, the reporting person gave a new statement, one with no deception and that nearly matched word for word with the statement given by the suspect arrested in that car. This was important as it cleared a man of false charges made against him, charges that could have kept him locked up for anywhere from 6 months to a year before a trial may have set him free, and even then it would have been up to the reporting person to have come clean. So this started off big, and lead to Ken's being transferred to major Crime's where he would work for the last 10 years of his career and would receive 4 of his 6 Officer of the Year Awards. Now after being retired for 14 years, Ken received his 7th Officer of the Year Award which was written like a Life Time Achievement Award and can be found on another page I made for him that you can find by clicking HERE.

"It does not take many words to tell the truth" Sitting Bull
This is very true, in fact, just as it takes few words to tell the truth, often it takes many words to burry a lie.

In 1993 the following statement was written by a citizen who had earlier in the night reported he was the victim of a carjacking. This statement was not written until after he filed his report with Southern District Patrol and a suspect was arrested within 45 minutes by Central District Officers while he was still in the car. The suspect in that arrest gave a statement, to a Central District Patrolman that had studied and learned a new technique that provided a kind of linguistic polygraph. It is interesting that after a year of trying to get this technique seriously looked at by the department, it took this case to change things.

Using the SCAN technique, the officer found the statement provided by the suspect in this case to have been credible. With this the officer called the reporting person into the district to tell him he had taken over his case, and that he wanted him to write a statement as to what happened, while the officer pulled reports. Within 15 minutes of reading the statement, the officer had a confession from the victim, stating that he had lied, and that he was not carjacked. He gave an account of the night’s events that matched more closely those given by the suspect they had in holding. As promised the guy they had in lock-up was released without charges. Making the first time this technique was used, in our agency, it was used to clear an innocent man from being charged with a very serious crime. The Officer was transferred to the District’s Major Crime Unit where he remained for the next 10 years, clearing the innocent, and gaining confessions from the guilty. He also trained and will still train any Baltimore City Officer interested in learning the technique for FREE.

Voice stress analysis (VSA) and computer voice stress analysis (CVSA) are collectively a pseudoscientific technology that aims to infer deception from stress measured in the voice. The CVSA records the human voice using a microphone, and the technology is based on the tenet that the non-verbal, low-frequency content of the voice conveys information about the physiological and psychological state of the speaker. Typically utilized in investigative settings, the technology aims to differentiate between stressed and non-stressed outputs in response to stimuli (e.g., questions posed), with high stress seen as an indication of deception.

The use of voice stress analysis (VSA) for the detection of deception is controversial. Discussions about the application of VSA have focused on whether this technology can indeed reliably detect stress, and, if so, whether deception can be inferred from this stress. Critics have argued that—even if stress could reliably be measured from the voice—this would be highly similar to measuring stress with the polygraph, for example, and that all critiques centered on polygraph testing apply to VSA as well. A 2002 review of the state of the art conducted for the United States Department of Justice found several technical challenges to the technology, including the same problem of determining deception. When reviewing the literature on the effectiveness of VSA in 2003, the National Research Council concluded, “Overall, this research and the few controlled tests conducted over the past decade offer little or no scientific basis for the use of the computer voice stress analyzer or similar voice measurement instruments”.^:168 A 2013 paper published in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics reviewed the "scientific implausibility" of its principles and "ungrounded claims of the aggressive propaganda from sellers of voice stress analysis gadgets".

Confession made following a voice stress examination was allowed to be used as evidence in a case in Wisconsin in 2014. In the case of the murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe confessions were made while three suspects were undergoing VSA which were later found to be false by a judge; the manufacturer of the VSA equipment later settled a lawsuit that alleged that it was liable for the harm the three suspects suffered. In a similar case, Donovan Allen falsely confessed to killing his mother after failing a VSA test. He was acquitted 15 years later based on exonerating DNA evidence. George Zimmerman was given a VSA after he fatally shot Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012.

  It was a long time after the Polygraph that two new techniques came along,
Polygraph Machine and Voice Stress Analysis

Information on the Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation can be found by clicking anywhere on this line.

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