FARGO--If police call you a "person of interest," it's not a friendly remark about how fascinating you are.
It means you know something and police want to talk with you about it.
"We use that term when we really don't know what their involvement is," said Fargo police Lt. Mike Mitchell.
Unlike another common police term--"suspect"--the words "person of interest" do not imply culpability.
http://www.grandforksherald.com/new...5-how-does-someone-go-person-interest-suspect
Officially, "person of interest" means..well, nothing. No one has ever formally defined it not police, not prosecutors, not journalists. The terms "accused," "allege," "arrest" and "indict" all are dealt with in the Associated Press Stylebook, but there is no listing for "person of interest." Similarly, the U.S. Attorneys' Manual the official guide to federal criminal prosecution uses the terms "suspect," "subject," "target" and "material witness," but "person of interest" gets no mention.
http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=4042
Whats the difference between a suspect and a person of interest?
Q: In some stories, you list a criminal as a person of interest. Sometimes you actually call them a suspect. Why do you keep changing between the two? Do police tell you to do this?
A: Theres a difference between a suspect and a person of interest.
A person of interest is someone police want to talk to for information about a case; a suspect is somebody officers think may be involved in the crime, Bellevue police spokesman Greg Grannis said.
Sometimes a person of interest becomes a suspect, but not always, he said.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle91...e-between-a-suspect-and-a-person-of-interest/
What does 'person of interest' mean? Nothing
[...]
"It's a really bad term to use, because the public reads 'suspect,' " said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a national journalism training institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Donna Shaw, a journalism professor at The College of New Jersey, said she believes federal law enforcement officials invented the phrase in the mid-1990s to satiate journalists hounding them for information. Soon, local law enforcement officers began to pick up on the phrase.
Shaw studied a year's worth of stories with the term "person of interest" in 2006, interviewing representatives from local police departments on why the term was utilized.
"Some of the police told me, ' We don't know what it means but it makes reporters happy,' " Shaw said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/17/yale.person.of.interest/index.html?iref=24hours#cnnSTCText
Person of Interest Law & Legal Definition
Unlike "suspect" and "material witness," "person of interest" has no legal definition, but generally refers to someone law enforcement authorities would like to speak with or investigate further in connection with a crime. It may be used, rather than calling the person a suspect, when they don't want their prime suspect to know they're watching him closely. Critics complain that the term has become a method for law enforcement officers to draw attention to individuals without formally accusing them.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/person-of-interest/