The methods of checking, questioning, interrogation, torture, and coercive interrogation were all completely different ways of treating someone.
Most of the time, the only thing ordinary people ever encountered was being checked, whether on the street or inside a law-enforcement agency.
The officers would stare at you with an expression that looked ready to eat you alive and ask you some routine questions.
Things like, "Where were you during a certain period of time?" "Who the hell can prove that you weren't lying?" and "What's your relationship with this person?"
They wouldn't beat you, much less use any methods designed to make you tell the truth. They would only glare at you with an intimidating expression.
Then came questioning. The questions would become more detailed, and your unwillingness to cooperate might drive the questioners mad, prompting them to take actions that violated the improper conduct restrictions mentioned in the Federal Government's law-enforcement manual.
But this process was still relatively safe. The greatest threat came from a limited amount of physical confrontation, and even that would not be too severe.
By the interrogation stage, the officers had already gained a certain understanding of the laws you had violated. They might even have obtained crucial evidence.
What they had to do was make you confess to your crimes yourself.
Under such circumstances, the questions would be highly targeted. They would repeatedly question you about several specific points.
Besides applying physical pressure, they might also greatly increase the psychological pressure by inducing exhaustion, creating fear, and using other methods to make you believe that you were finished and that it would be better to confess than remain silent.
In fact, at this point, everything was still under "control." You wouldn't be subjected to inhumane treatment simply because you kept your mouth shut.
But