“Almost everything a police officer does must be reduced to writing,” written by Orlando W. Wilson and Roy C. McLaren more than 30 years ago in their book Police Administration. There are many types of police reports, some use box style forms, others use narrative style reports. Although there are many different forms of report they all have the same uses and some of the same context. Reports are expected to “express facts not to impress the audience.” The simplest way to think of a police report is to think of it is who, what, where, why, and how. Most if those questions will be answered at the crime scene, where an officer should be taking careful notes. Nevertheless, who, why, and the how will sometimes take more investigative reasoning. The narrative is to written in chronological order. Start off with time, date, type of incident, also how you became involved with the case. Next should be the information that was given to you by the victim, and or witness (es), for every new person create a new paragraph. After the information has been documented next comes what you as the officer did after learning this information. The final paragraph would be the disposition, how the case was closed. …show more content…
The biggest constraints is the writer must be constantly un-basis and truthful. “A fact is a statement that can be proven.” Opinion have no place in a police report, there is no way to prove person preference to be the truth in court. Although it would sound redundant to say but reports must be accurate. Nevertheless saying three men entered the bank when it was two men and one woman, then the report would then be inaccurate. Asking people to respell their names and things like such would be beneficial. When a report has opinions and inaccuracies, the consequences could be life or