“It is just the police using weasel words to try to question them without actually telling them that they are a suspect and reading them their rights.”
Even if you call them “person of interest”, they better be read their rights and treated exactly like a “suspect” if the evidence created reasonable suspicion that this guy did the crime. That will certainly occur here, and will set him free if they do not yet still use anything he says. They aren’t trying to avoid reading rights,,, it is simply a term the like because they are afraid to use the term “suspect” for PC reasons.
You are correct. But I have heard on multiple occasions the police make the absurd claim that the “person of interest” wasn’t a suspect and they just wanted to talk to them.
Anther thing that gets my goat is the “Drug Task Force” that sit along the interstate highways and stop people for traffic violations and then attempt to intimidate the drivers into giving them permission to search their vehicles.