McCormick Student Interview Restrictions

The McCormick student interview conditions were safeguards imposed on police interviews after Ben Rifkin’s death, but they also limited the scope and pace of the investigation. They permitted interviews on school grounds under negotiated rules, balancing students’ rights and community concerns against investigators’ need to gather information quickly.

Negotiating Access

After school, plainclothes CPAC detectives went from classroom to classroom asking students to share information, including anonymously. The effort followed resistance from the principal, who initially refused to let investigators question students at will. The school board and mayor intervened with Lynn Canavan, pressing for a slower process. Investigators could interview students at school only under agreed conditions.

Scope and Safeguards

Students outside Ben Rifkin’s homeroom were off limits unless investigators had a specific reason to think they might know something. A student could have a parent, a lawyer, or both present, and could end an interview at any time, for any reason or no reason. Andrew Barber regarded many of these protections as rights the students were entitled to; the central purpose of the detailed rules, as he understood it, was to signal that the children were to be treated with care.

Investigative Cost and Consequences

The negotiations consumed time. At two o’clock, Barber and Paul Duffy took over the principal’s office to interview the highest-priority witnesses: Ben’s close friends, students known to walk through Cold Spring Park on their way to school, and students who had asked to speak with investigators. They had scheduled two dozen interviews between them, while other CPAC detectives conducted interviews in parallel. Barber later identified the delay in gaining access to the school, along with disputes about parental or legal presence, searches, and which students could be interviewed, as a reason the victim’s classmates had not been included in an earlier round of interviews.

The Interviews and Their Limits

After only a few conversations, Barber and Duffy suspected that some students were withholding information. The students did not merely deny knowing anything about the killing; some denied knowing Ben at all, despite investigators’ understanding that he had friends. The conditions enabled interviews while preserving students’ ability to decline or withdraw, but they could not compel cooperation or overcome the collective reticence Barber perceived. The resulting tension between protection and access made the rules consequential not only as procedural boundaries but as a source of delay and uncertainty in the inquiry.