I really wish I knew this information about 16 years ago when I was still unbelievably naive. I was raised to answer police officers honestly, and to assume that they were also honest. And I still thought our criminal justice system worked properly and everyone was actually interested in justice. My first lesson that the world wasn't like Mayberry was a bit harsh.

Why does the guy sound like it's all a joke though?

this was well worth my time, thank you

Yeah, the police are good at this. I was investigated by the Secret Service once. Long story involving a sarcastic non-anonymous slashdot comment that was misinterpreted as a threat on the President's life. (Yeah, America is a strange place.)

Anyway, the agents came to my house, made a vague accusation, and asked me if I knew anything about this. Having watched a bit of Law & Order, my answer was, "I think I need to talk to my lawyer". They persisted, and provided me with a lot of false information. At this point, I was annoyed at how wrong they were and said "yeah, I wrote this" and pulled up the comment in question.

(Resolution: they read the comment, realized that someone Higher Up totally overreacted, and went away.)

Basically, detectives are trained to extract information, and they are good at doing so. (Worth noting that after they got the information they wanted, they were generally pleasant people. Real life can be very much like television. :)