Report writing Notes

Three Types of Reports we write:

  • Incident Report- 

  • Information Report-  

  • Supplemental Report-

Good characteristics of a Good Police report

  • Clear

  • Concise

  • Chronological 

  • Grammatically Correct 

  • Complete

  • Truthful

  • Accurate

  • Specific

5 W’s and H

  • Who-What-When-Where-Why-How

Who reads your reports

  • Everyone

Does a crime need to happen to write a report

  • NO

What proper noun is 

  • Specific place, person, or thing. Proper nouns are always capitalized in English

Reports should be written?

  • Write in 1st person

What are the three types of writing styles police reports are in? 

  • Narrative

  • Descriptive

  • Expository (Telling a Story)

Qualities of good reports

  • Objective and Clear

To establish venue of a business what order do we list them in:

  • Name, address, city, state, county 

Police reports primarily convey What: 

  • Reports protect everybody including victims… (EVERYONE)

  • Field Notes are the primary source of information for your report

Abbreviations 

  • DOB (Date of Birth)

  • ATL (Attempt to Locate) 

  • BOLO (Be on the Look Out)

  • GOA (Gone on Arrival)

  • CHK 

What qualifies as who, what, when, where, why, how

  • place, person, or thing. Write how you professionally speak…

Field Sketches

  • Used to reconstruct the crime scene, for both graphical representation and better written description of the scene

  • Most commonly used for accident scene-rough sketches of lanes, points of impact, reference points 

Must contain two indispensable elements:

  • It MUST be accurate

  • It MUST communicate the information completely.