GAPAN CITY COLLEGE

City Hall Compound, Bayanihan, Gapan City,

Nueva Ecija, Philippines 3105
Department of Criminal Justice Education

TRW 321: TECHNICAL ENGLISH 1 (Investigative Report Writing)

Prepared by: Aubrey B. Alfonso, RCrim

Name: _________________________________________ Week 4-6

Section: __________________
CHAPTER 3. POLICE REPORT
INTRODUCTION
Nearly half of a police officer's work involves writing, and because of this, the best arrests will go unprosecuted if the
reporting officers do not have the necessary writing skills to record their actions in a case clearly, concisely, and
accurately, with sufficient detail.

An officer's report must document every incident in a complete, clear, and concise manner. Any arrest, follow-up
investigation, prosecution, or administrative action that is to be taken as a result of the report must be initiated,
supported, or justified by the information contained solely within the body of the report.

Consequently, every police report must be able to withstand critical review and legal scrutiny, and must be truthful,
unbiased, and unprejudiced. Moreover, police officers have a moral and legal obligation to investigate all crimes that are
reported to them.

POLICE REPORT DEFINITION

Let's say you arrive home from work to find that your home has been broken into. The police arrive and write down
everything that you can remember about the series of events. But what happens to all of that information? It is used to
create a police report, a document that details all of the facts, circumstances, and timeline of events surrounding an
incident.

USES OF POLICE REPORTS

Police reports have many different uses, both within the criminal justice system and beyond:

1. Identification of Criminals

Police reports assist with the identification, apprehension, and prosecution of criminals by serving as a source
document for filing criminal complaints, by providing investigations, and providing a basis for additional follow up
investigations.

2. Investigative Record

Police reports aid prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other law enforcement agencies by providing records of all
investigations and serving as source documents for criminal prosecution, as well as documenting agency actions.

3. Court Preparation

1
TRW 321: TECHNICAL ENGLISH 1
 Police reports assist officers prior to or during court appearances by refreshing the officer's memory before
testifying or preparing to provide hearsay testimony at preliminary hearings.

4. Civil Liability Assessment

Police reports are essential for risk managers, insurance attorneys for use are for risk managers insurance
companies, and civil litigation attorney for use in determining potential civil liability by documenting events such as
accidents or injuries on city, county, or state property, workman's compensation type injuries, as well as to
presenting justification for an officer's behavior or actions in a civil complaint or lawsuit against the officer.

5. Statistical Analysis

Police reports assist police and civilian administrators as well as the community by providing statistical information
for analysis of crime trends, equipment needs, manpower issues, continued professional training requirements, and
assist in the evaluation of officer performance.

STEPS IN POLICE REPORT WRITING

Pre-writing
Pre-writing refers to any activity that a writer engages in prior to the actual writing to the draft. In a writing
class, activities under this category include brainstorming or generating ideas. In public safety report writing, this is
represented by the acronym GRO which stands for Gathering, Recording and Organizing Facts.

In the pre-writing stage, the author recommends the use of your own templates to aid you in writing your
formal report. Make sure that your designed templates will answer the 5W's and 1 H in your report. At least these
templates will help you from new crafting sets of question every time there is an incident report. Likewise, you have an
ample time to think salient information in every incident making it easier for you to write the report in the official
memorandum format than to write the same from disorganized notes or worse, from memory.

Gathering of Facts
Before writing your report, you need to be sure that you have the facts.
By facts, we mean the details of the incident or account as they happened and not as they are told by one who
was not present at the scene of the incident. Hearsay and rumors are not facts, and neither are opinions. Various ways
to gather facts include field interview of victim and witness at the scene of the incident, background investigation of
suspects and surveillance operation.

Recording and Organizing

Parallel to gathering of facts is data recording. For police report writing, you can refer to pages of your own
designed templates for offenses against person, offenses against properties, vehicular accidents, and complaints or
incidents, which may be useful in writing spot report or other official reports following memorandum format. The
template, as explained earlier, serves as essential tool in recording and organizing information.

Writing and Evaluating

Evaluating, on the other hand, is the stage in the writing process where you take closer look at the written work
both in content and form. Content evaluation or editing is checking whether the report has the qualities of good writing
such as accuracy, clarity, conciseness, objectivity, and completeness. This is also the stage where you add, remove,
replace, or rearrange word or phrases to exemplify the qualities and produce report well worth reading. On the other
hand, evaluating the form or proofreading focuses on the correct use of grammar, sentence structure punctuation,
capitalization, abbreviation, numbers, and spelling.
2
TRW 321: TECHNICAL ENGLISH 1
FIELD NOTES

An officer's field notes are the original source documents used to write a police report. For this reason, if field notes are
incomplete, poorly organized, or illegible, they will be of little use to the officer in writing the resulting police report. For
this reason, field notes should always be taken at the scene, especially when interviewing suspect, victims, or witnesses,
and whenever the officer wishes to remember specific details at a later time.

Making your own designed templates in your notebook will help you to avoid more time in recording information. When
writing field notes, officers should consider that field notes are typically more reliable than memory, especially since
reports are typically written several hours after a specific incident or crime has occurred. This time lapse can often cause
an officer to easily forget or confuse certain types of information, especially times, observations, addresses, and key
words and phrases from statements. Moreover, the judicious use of field notes can minimize or even eliminate the need
to re-contact the involved parties in a case later.

Every event, incident, and crime are different, and for this reason, the facts and information needed by the officer to
write a police report is different. However, field notes should always be able to answer the questions what, where,
when, who, how, and why regarding the incident.

Regardless of how the individual officer decides to take field notes, the following information is a snapshot of the items
that should be included in field notes.

NOTE TAKING AND CONDUCTING FIELD INTERVIEWS

Typically, field notes are obtained from the officer's direct observations and from field interviews with suspects, victims,
and witnesses. The field interview, however, is where the officer will learn most of the information about a crime or
incident. Therefore, the statements taken during a field interview are often critical to learning about the specific facts of
a case, because the existence of certain crime elements may only be revealed from the statements of witnesses, victims,
and the suspects of a case.

An effective field interview should generally follow the following five step format:

1. Separate the involved parties. This minimizes distractions and interruptions. Separating the involved parties
also focuses their attention on speaking to the officer, rather than each other, and minimizes manipulation of
witness statements by other involved parties.
2. Establish rapport. Be courteous, considerate, and patient. Briefly tell the person being interviewed why the
interview is being conducted and describe the interview process to the individual.
3. Listen attentively. Ask the person what happened and allow them to talk about it freely. Let them explain it in
terms that they understand. Be sure to keep the person focused on the main subject being discussed in the
interview. If they begin to get off topic, guide the person back to the subject, and always use active listening
skills to encourage the person to talk. Listen carefully and pay attention to the details of the incident. Don't take
notes at this point in the interview!
4. Take notes/Ask questions. Ask the person to repeat their account of what happened, but stop the person and
ask questions for clarification, where necessary. Take notes, but write in short, simple statements, highlighting
the important thoughts or ideas. Be sure to obtain accurate identification information for the person at this
point and ask any additional questions that are necessary for clarification.
5. Verify information. Repeat specific information to the person being interviewed from the notes taken in the
previous step, to ensure accuracy, and give them an opportunity to add facts. Be sure to confirm direct quotes,
time relationships, weapons information, and physical descriptions of suspects. Be sure to verify any changes
made in this stage.

3
TRW 321: TECHNICAL ENGLISH 1
 It is important to note that while some officers may elect to record an interview with a digital voice or tape recorder,
the use of a recorder may inhibit an individual from talking freely. Also, electronic devices can malfunction or fail,
thereby eliminating the information from the interview. If interviews are recorded, officers should also take written
notes as a backup in the event of mechanical or device failure.

IMPORTANT FIELD INTERVIEW SKILLS

One of the most important skills that officers are required to have while conducting a field interview and taking
field notes is determining the difference between opinions, facts, and conclusions in a statement given by a suspect
or witness. Another important skill is being able to determine what information is relevant to the case or incident.
Opinions are statements that can be open to interpretation, or expresses a belief not supported by the facts of a
case, while a fact is a statement that can be verified or proven by the facts of the case. A conclusion is a statement
that is based upon the analysis of opinions and conclusions, and a conclusion should always be accompanied with
the supporting facts and opinions.
Generally, relevant facts typically establish the facts of the case or elements of the crime, on the other hand,
usually furnish details that are not elements of the crime, or irrelevant provide information that may dilute the facts
of the case.

QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY AN EFFECTIVE REPORT The facts and questions that an officer includes in his or her field
notes should typically provide the foundation for an effective police report. As discussed earlier, an effective police
report should always answer the questions who, what, where, when, how, and why (5W's and 1H).

SECURITY CLASSIFICATIONS OF DOCUMENTS:

A. TOP SECRET - Information and material (matter) the unauthorized disclosure of which would cause exceptionally
grave damage to the nation, politically, economically or from security aspect. This category is reserved for the nation's
closest secrets and is to be used with great reserve.
B. SECRET MATTER - Information and material (matter) the unauthorized disclosure of which would endanger national
security, cause serious injury to the interest or prestige of the nation or of any governmental activity or would be of
great advantage to a foreign nation.
C. CONFIDENTIAL MATTER - Information and material (matter) the unauthorized disclosure of which, while not
endangering the national security, would be prejudicial to the interest or prestige of the nation or any governmental
activity or would cause administrative embarrassment or unwarranted injury to an individual or would be of advantage
to a foreign nation.
D. RESTRICTED - Information and material (matter) which requires special protection other than that determined to be
TOP SECRET, SECRET or CONFIDENTIAL.

MARGIN RULES:
Top - first page (without printed letterhead), typed letterhead, 3/4 inch from the edge of the paper;
Top - second page and succeeding pages, 1 1/4 inches from the top edge of the paper;
Left Margin - 1 1/4 inches;
Right Margin - 3/4 inch; and
Bottom - 1 1/4 inches

4
TRW 321: TECHNICAL ENGLISH 1