Should I talk to the police if I'm innocent?

The instinct is understandable — you have nothing to hide, and staying silent feels like an admission. But the interview isn't a conversation, and it isn't structured to establish your innocence.

Several things go wrong even for people telling the truth. Memory is imperfect, and a detail recalled wrong becomes an inconsistency the State can argue was a lie. Accounts given twice rarely match exactly, and the mismatch gets characterized as a changing story. Innocent explanations can supply elements the State otherwise couldn't prove — placing you at a location, establishing you knew someone, confirming a timeline.

And the questioning is generally conducted by someone who has already formed a view. Questions are designed to test that view, not to gather your account neutrally.

Declining is not evidence of guilt and is not obstruction. If there's genuinely something helpful you can offer, an attorney can convey it in a controlled way — which is a different thing from an unrecorded, unprepared interview.