Even worse, they can pretend they have evidence that they don't, pretend they believe the evidence, and pretend it's enough to convict you by itself.
They can tell you to just say you were there, and they'll go easy on you. You lie and say you were there, now they have evidence that can actually lock you up, even if you are a random person off the street.
To a degree, but I also think this will be changing over time as more and more innocent people are found to have been convicted on false statements used through coercive lying tactics by the police.
But they went on to say it was still acceptable to lie to suspects... I imagine this murky area of the law will eventually say that police cannot lie to suspects. The Central Park Five is mentioned in that article and is a blatant example of police lying to coerce testimony and then putting innocent children in prison.
Even Worse than all of that, they can use all of those things, while threatening you with dozens of charges and decades of imprisonment then say "but if you act right now and sign this we will only give you a couple of years and then you will be free"
in any other context these tactics themselves would be illegal, and i am firm believer that you can not enforce the law by breaking, and that the police should NEVER how the power to do things the public can not
They can tell you to just say you were there, and they'll go easy on you. You lie and say you were there, now they have evidence that can actually lock you up, even if you are a random person off the street.