Help With Police Report Writing Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

time: 2016 02 22 0:49 utc 1456112929 reporting this problem: the problem you have encountered is with a project web site hosted by sourceforge.net. This issue should be reported to the sourceforge.net hosted project not to sourceforge.net. if this is a severe or recurring/persistent problem, please do one of the following, and provide the error text numbered 1 through 7, above:

    contact the project via their designated support resources. Contact the project administrators of this project via email see the upper right hand corner of the project summary page for their usernames at user name @users.sourceforge.net
if you are a maintainer of this web content, please refer to the site documentation regarding web services for further assistance. This option may be re enabled by the project by placing a file with the name .htaccess with this line: writing a good police report as a sergeant, i now go through and read officer's police reports on a regular basis.

Berkeley Phd Thesis Library

In doing this, i've realized that there a lot of officers that are either making their police report writing more difficult then they need to be, forgetting important elements, adding more then needed, or just not making the police report flow. I've learned and understand now that every officer's police report will always be different in the way they are presented, and that's fine however, i'm going to try to explain and illustrate how my first training officer taught me, and how i personally think its one of the better ways to write reports. The reason is, you never want your reader to get lost, or wonder what's going on while they're reading. So the first rule of thumb in police report writing is sticking to basics and keeping it simple. When i begin a police report, i will literally just sit down and start typing what happened in chronological order. The first line is almost always the same just different dates of course , sir, on wednesday, march.3rd, 2008. Johnson as d 232, we received a call from 911 dispatcher name to 123 anywhere st.

This opening line literally answers several questions that i've seen a lot of officers include later in a police report, vaguely in a police report, or not even at all. As a result, the police officer could be questioned in court as to who they were working with, who gave them the call, the time of the call, and/or what the call was about. But most importantly, the reader totally understands what's going on at this point, and can even picture what you are doing as well, making the story flow. The next sentence, same paragraph, could be dispatcher name indicated that the subject was an ex boyfriend of the caller, and described him as a m/w male white , 5'8 , 185 lbs, wearing a blue t shirt with blue jeans.

He was also driving an older model ford expedition blue in color, and was standing outside of his vehicle in front of the residence. Its important to remember that the reader knows nothing about this call and should therefore be walked through everything as it happened in a way that you are literally painting a picture to the reader, so they can picture what is going one. Next paragraph in the police report could be, we arrived at approximately 1728 hrs.

As we approached, i observed an older model blue ford expedition parked in the driveway of 123 anywhere street. There was a m/w sitting in the driver's seat and i could see that there was a f/w standing in the front yard. With this line, there is again no confusion with your reader in this police report. The reader can literally picture you pulling up in your police car, and can see what you saw exactly as it happened. Some of the mistakes i see at this point in a police report with some officers is, they will start this second paragraph with something like officer me spoke with complainant who stated mr. What you saw as you approached which leaves the reader guessing, or learning later, what you saw when you approached.

Essay About Catering Service

Sure, it might not be important in some cases, but it really paints a simple picture of what actually happened. And for this particular case, it shows why you did what you did later in the story. Another point in this line is, you're referring to yourself as third person, which i personally feel confuses readers and doesn't sound natural. When you lay it out in simple language like this, its very simple for the reader to understand.

In fact, i tell officers this a lot: type your report how you would explain to someone in person what happened. When you're telling your friend or co worker what happened, you don't say yeah, we got this call, and reporting officer you spoke to complainant. You would say we received a call for a man with a gun, and when we got there, there was a guy standing in the front yard with a gun! it might not be word for word like this, but the point is, type your story how you would say it, and people will understand it much easier. I ordered the man to put his hands behind his back for my safety , and handcuffed him. Again, the reader is still with you, and can picture what has happened to this point perfectly.

Continuing, i checked the weapon and found it to be loaded with six live rounds, which i unloaded for safety. I secured the weapon and rounds in the trunk of our cruiser, while my partner began talking with the complainant who was the woman we initially saw standing in the front yard. We've hit all the important parts in this police report to this point in chronological order, in a simple step by step explanation.