Police are suspicious. If you change your story between statements they want to know the reason why. If witnesses contradict each other about a visit they want to know why. They don't think it's normal.
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Yes they do think it is normal that there will be 'contradictions' and 'discrepancies in the various statements from witneses. The police understand the fallibility of memory and how different people will have different recollections of the same events.
Quote
In a crime situation memory is influenced by many factors such as stress, the presence of a weapon and even just the desire to help police solve the crime.
"Police know how fallible the memory can be," says Steve Retford, a former head of the investigative skills unit at GMP and now specialist interviewing adviser with the force.
"They also know this is usually not through mischievousness on the part of the witnesses, but through stress and shock."
Take the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot at Stockwell Tube station in 2005 by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber.
Eyewitnesses said he had vaulted a ticket barrier when running away from the police. In fact it was later shown by CCTV that Mr Menezes had walked through the barriers, having picked up a free newspaper, and only ran when he saw his train arriving.
End quote
ALSO
Quote from DC Ferguson (JT's rogatory statement)
4078 “You know, we can take a statement from people, if an incident happened outside and there was a group of people watching it, everybody would have a different take on what they had seen”.
Unquote.
It is also known that witnesses can later remember something which they had previously forgotten. That is why everyone knows what ''having your memory jogged'' means. It is also normal for policemen to ask witnesses to contact them straightaway if they later remember anything else.
You appear to think that none of any of the above can possibly apply to the McCanns or their friends. Inexplicable.
Some sceptics will of course continue to delude themselves that discrepancies must mean that lies are being told because that is what they want to believe - but fortunately professional policemen know that is not the case. In fact they would be more likely to be suspicious if there were NO discrepancies as that would suggest collusion.