Report writing

Three Types of Reports we write:

  • Incident Report- 

  • Information Report-  

  • Supplemental Report-

Good characteristics of a Good Police report

  • Clear

  • Consie

  • 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 LookOut)

  • 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.