IT?S not exactly a profession he?d recommend to his son, but being an NBI agent is something that Medardo G. de Lemos doesn?t regret a bit.

Not that it?s a dream job, either, confesses this lawyer who joined the National Bureau of Investigation out of curiosity about law enforcement. A former NBI regional director who has recently been re-assigned to the National Capital Region, De Lemos reveals that ?encounters with suspects on a daily basis could slowly erode one?s belief in the innate goodness of man.?

Despite that, he has stayed on, he says, because he feels gratified at those instances when the Bureau solves difficult cases, feeling himself rewarded by the moral certainty that ?we are prosecuting the right perpetrators.?

But catching felons and criminals is a long and difficult process fraught with physical risks, De Lemos says of the worst aspects of his job. To prepare for his posting, he recalls reading tons of materials on law enforcement and making sure he was physically fit. People mistakenly arrested or suspects who have been interrogated can easily bear grudges and get even, he explains.

A good agent, the NBI official adds, should also be ?skeptical and must possess a questioning mind and an eye for details.?

He or she should have the stamina to withstand ?the pressures to come out with their findings within a set deadline.?

And, based on his experience, De Lemos notes that a good investigator must have the moral fortitude to stand firm on principle against the forces of public opinion. He recalls one high-profile case that involved the son of a prominent politician who was suspected of having ordered his wife?s murder. Although the Bureau?s findings exonerated the suspected hired gun, the public would not be appeased; they wanted the man?s blood. After all, the suspect belongs to the same religious group as the husband, so it would be most convenient for him to be the hired gun, went the popular thinking. Public sentiment is a difficult mistress to please, says De Lemos ruefully, but so far it has not influenced his judgment.

What he finds more challenging, says this agent, is ?disagreeing with a superior on the correct way to approach an investigation of an assigned case.?

Although all crimes under the Revised Penal Code and special laws may be investigated by the NBI, the Bureau has a perennial shortage of agents, says De Lemos. So they prioritize ?national interest cases like large-scale commercial fraud, human trafficking, public corruption and sensational killings.?

How different are NBI agents from the police as far as arrest procedures, custody and interrogation tactics are concerned?

?There is no difference really,? he says. ?We are just lazy in applying modern interview techniques. We in law enforcement in general, mistake a firearm as an instrument to effect arrest. But a firearm and the use of deadly force are justified only to eliminate the threat of death and serious physical injury to the officer and the public.?

De Lemos, who has been sent abroad to study FBI interrogation techniques on several occasions, recalls how they once cracked a sensational case involving tax fraud. ?There was mechanical switching of funded checks in depository banks and the funds were diverted to personal accounts. The break came when we used interview techniques developed in the US called neuro-linguistic programming [NLP].?

According to expert sources, the basic premise of NLP is that ?the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, they will create an underlying problem as long as we continue to use and to think them.?
In short, our body knows if we are telling a lie, and will subconsciously manifest its unease by shortcircuiting our usual gestures and responses to normal situations.

Applied in interrogation sessions, De Lemos says, NLP encourages the agent or investigator to read non-verbal cues to find out if the suspect is telling the truth or hiding some information. This means focusing on body language, eye movements, breathing patterns, changes in the rate of speech, jerky reaction to the invasion of their personal space, among others.

?For example, did you know that when you?re thinking, you tend to look up at the ceiling and cock your head and focus your eyes either to the left or right, depending on whether you?re right-handed or left-handed? So an agent can ask a series of seemingly harmless questions just to check how the suspect tilts his or her head when telling the truth about insignificant matters. Now, will that head tilt change when a sensitive question is asked? And if it does, does this mean the suspect is hiding something??

Other tell-tale signs include nervous tics like tapping one?s foot or wringing one?s hands. Suspects too may be asked to sit in a fixed area, while the interrogator freely moves around, suddenly swooping down on the suspect in the course of the questioning to ?invade their personal space and unnerve them.?

More than torture, such unconscious cues would be more effective in extracting information from suspected felons, says De Lemos. To improve crime investigation in the country, he?d like to see the NBI adopt and use modern interview techniques.

?A review of the procedures and processes used in investigating cases should also be put in place,? he adds. ?As an institution, the NBI should clearly define and limit the cases that it handles to prevent overlapping and the duplication of investigations conducted by other agencies.?

Despite the occasional bad press that the NBI gets, De Lemos says he has no regrets about joining the Bureau. He admits though that he has to keep himself in check as he sometimes has difficulty separating his role as an investigator and law enforcer for the past 25 years, from that of being a husband and father.

?I remember how once my daughter committed a misdemeanor. She came home late or something, and I wanted to know what happened. Before I realized it, I had raised my voice and was getting into an interrogation mode. My daughter must have been terrified. Fortunately, my wife was around and she gently reminded me, ?Anak mo ?yan, hindi ?yan suspect [She?s your daughter, not a suspect].? Only then did I realize how I?ve blurred the lines between my role at work and at home.?