Question for LEO's

[Drunk Fat Man]

I am currently a Criminal Justice student at the University of Toledo. I am enrolled in a writing class and would appreciate your thoughts. The class is about written forms of communication.

1. What typical documents do you LEO's write? (reports, booking, etc.) If
reports what kind are they? (What is there function?)

2. What kind of writing is used? (email, letters, reports, memos, etc.)

3. Approximately how much time is spent writing each day?

I would truely appreciate your respones.

 

[Sir William]

TONS! It is agency dependent. There are briefings, policy and procedure changes, training attendance, FOF sessions, wanted packets and even weapons, vehicles and other equipment check out forms and documents. That is only the beginning. There are forms for everything. There are even generic fill in the blank forms for when there are not forms. MDTS have many paperless documentation capabilities today. Detectives have to log pretty much every breathing moment. Even corrections have many forms and logs to maintain.

 

[sendec]

The rule of thumb is that every, and I mean every, activity is documented, down to bathroom breaks and gassing the cruiser. FYI, in your state a police academy student gets 12 hours of report writing classes, versus 4 hours for how to conduct patrol - that should give you some idea of the importance placed on writing skills.

This is just a wild guess but I'd bet that on the average at least 25% of an officer's time is spent writing - logs, citations, reports, supplements, it just never ends.

 

[Capt. Charlie]

This is just a wild guess but I'd bet that on the average at least 25% of an officer's time is spent writing

For here, at least, I'm going to up that to 40-50%, especially when a call involves a search & seizure, use of force, or serious injury. But those are mostly fill-in-the-blanks forms. The actual narrative and supplements in reports (mostly everything here is computerized) are one of the most important things an officer does. An officer's report writing skills, including grammar and spelling, can make or break a case. I've seen officers ripped apart on the stand for bad spelling, as it is one tactic for discrediting a witness. Ethically questionable, but effective. A police report must be able to tell a complete story, often times to a jury made up of people with limited education, and to do that effectively requires skills that even the editors of the NY Times would envy. The days of 3-line reports containing something like "I saw John Doe hit Jane Doe, so I arrested him" are long since history.

 

[Drunk Fat Man]

Thanks for all the input fellas, it will be put to good use.

 

[yorec]

Yep - lots of time at it...

In addition to the all important report previously mentioned, I commonly wrote:

Affidavit's when applicable to the case - they are a sworn statement from which most charges are filed in court. Cut and pasted a lot from the report, but had to edit them down a lot since there were simple probable cause statements and reports contain everything.

Also, don't forget the ol' forms to fill out, everything from citations to fueling the car has it's own form.

Course when you get into administration later in your career, you get to write neat things like grants, statistical reports, and even draft new ordinances on occasion...

I'm sure there's still plenty we've missed.

Writing is very fundamental to law enforcement officer's jobs...

 

[stevelyn]

There is a redundancy of paperwork. When you aren't chained to the computer bangin' out police reports, accident reports, search warrant applications, incident reports, criminal complaints, affidavits, memos and correspondence you'll be somewhere in the field scratchin' your life story in your notebook, scratchin' citations, FI cards, accident reports and incident reports.
That doesen't even include those of us who have extra assignments like DARE, or police instructors who have to plan and prepare class outlines for training and schedule training.
You have ample opportunity to get writer's cramp and carpel tunnel in the same day everyday.