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  • The Art of Report Writing

    Cops hate paperwork. Hell, everybody hates paperwork. But policing has more of it on a day-to-day basis than most occupations. And there’s an art to writing a good police report. I like to think my writing skills made me a better police officer. And it’s why as a professor I stress the importance of writing style and basic grammar.

    Most police reports are basically form letters and require little or no thought or creativity: “At such and such day and time I responded to so and so location and was met by the suspect, later identified as whomever. Further investigation revealed blah-de-blah. Suspected taken into custody without incident and transported to CBIF.”

    But life without personality is no fun. Take this DOA (who wasn’t, technically, deadon arrival. But it’s a pretty standard report for such an incident. Terse, to the point, and as short as possible while included all (and only) necessary details (I’ve changed names and the address):

    On 19 APR 01 at 0705 hrs responded to 1581 E Lafayette for an overdose. Upon arrival Mr Jackson was being carried to an ambo, medic 10, in full cardiac arrest. Mr Jackson was brought to Hopkins and treated by Dr. Arjun Chanmugam before being pronounced dead at 0737 hrs.

    Mr Jackson given medication at 1845hrs on 18 APR 01 by Ms. Ethel White.

    Mr Jackson was last seen in good health by Mr Henry David at 0200 hrs. At 0700 hrs Mr David saw Mr Jackson with “his eyes rolled up” and called for a paramedic. Mr Jackson was asleep in upstairs middle bedroom. No paraphernalia was seen.

    Mr Jackson on the following medication: Roxicodone, Prednisone, and Valtrax.

    Hearn at M.E. notified and accepted body for autopsy. Patton #6481 at homicide notified.

    That’s that. RIP, Mr. Jackson. Why did I notify homicide? He probably wasn’t murdered, but you never know; that’s not my call to make.

    But what strikes me is my completely superfluous inclusion of the quote, “his eyes rolled up.” It adds nothing but is a great reason to call for an ambulance! I tried to include a good quote whenever I could–especially if the quote included naughty words, which were otherwise taboo. If “fuck you Mike bitch” was going to be keyed in a car, you could be sure it would be transcribed verbatim in my report.

    When I wrote of a man throttling a woman on the ground, later I referred to this, “vehement emotional display.” In return I received this joking note: “Officer Moskos, Please stop using big words in your reports. I have a hard time understanding all of them. Thanks, OIC Woollen.” But the report was accepted.

    Once I chased a suspect from an alley. He was easy to catch because his pants fell down as he was trying to get away. I described him as fleeing “in a rather ungraceful manner.” It wasn’t relevant, but why not? Why pass up a chance to make my sergeant roll his eyes or let some ASA in the bowels of CBIF smile for a moment. You gotta have fun.

    But, more seriously, a well-written report can be and often is the difference between a case being dropped and the successive conviction of a dangerous criminal. If you don’t write it down, it’s like it didn’t happen. And there’s always room for a good writer’s eye. My favorite quote served such a purpose: “Squeaky beat me with a two by four, and then they came at me like locusts and beat me down.”

    “They came at me like locusts and beat me down”?

    Such Biblically-inspired language deserves to be inscribed. And since it added flavor to an otherwise dry description of a old man getting beat down, it helped in conviction. I wastrying to paint a story and help convict the guilty–all the while sticking to the objective tone police reports require.

    Other times the night was slow and I was simply bored.

    Once, on foot, I ran across a guy with a needle sticking out of his arm. He was homeless and bloody. He needed help, but none I could give him. Still, I had a job to do. I put on my latex gloves and slowly arrested him. Yuck. He was riding high. (Luckily CBIF took him.) Later I wrote in my Statement of Probable Cause:

    After getting a delicious hot cup of coffee, I … could not help but notice a man, later identified as Mr. Guizotti, with a needle in his arm. Mr. Guizotti stated that he was a heroin addict and that the substance he injected himself with was, “good shit.”

    All this comes to mind because Ellen Collett, who reviews police reports for the L.A.P.D., writes this fine piece in the Utne Reader, “The Art of the Police Report.” If you’re more into writing, I recommend reading the original version that appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle (but if words like “subtextual” and “syntactically” scare you, stick with the first link):

    Monday through Friday, I’m enthralled by a man I’ve never met. His name is Martinez and he’s a cop with the Los Angeles Police Department.
    …
    Crime reports are written in neutral diction, and in the dispassionate uni-voice that’s testament to the academy’s ability to standardize writing. They feel generated rather than authored, the work of a single law enforcement consciousness rather than a specific human being.

    So how can I identify Martinez from a single sentence? Why do his reports make me feel pity, terror, or despair? Make me want to put a bullet in someone’s brain—preferably a wife beater’s or a pedophile’s, but occasionally my own? How does he use words on paper to hammer at my heart? Like all great cops, Sergeant Martinez is a sneaky fucker. He’s also a master of inflection and narrative voice.
    …
    That poster-child for cop writing, Ernest Hemingway, once observed, “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” A good incident report also gives us the necessary shape of the thing, but spares us the cluttering details.
    …
    Choose strong verbs. Beware of modifiers. Shun figurative language. Be leery of parentheticals. Avoid abstractions. Eliminate superfluous ornamentation. Omit needless words. Be concrete. Show what happened; don’t explain what it means.

    There was a sign in the police academy: “We’re not just report takers. We’re the police.” There is more to writing a good report than just getting down the facts. For most incidents, the responding officer isthe investigation. Nobody will even be as close to some form of objective truth. Yes, reports need to maintain a objective tone. But if there’s a guilty SOB, it’s got to be clear in the written report. You only have one chance. The report is true, but certain facts may be selectively left out if these details distract from some greater truth. For instance, in a case of child abuse where the wasfood in the kitchen, you probably wouldn’t mention that in the report (other times, less nobly, facts may be left out simply to avoid more paperwork).

    Collett’s advice is good for writers and good for police officers. And allpolice officers, like it or not, are writers of stories: “Like Martinez, a good story always has an agenda. Like Martinez, a good story is a sneaky fucker.”

  • DEA Runs Out of Money

    Don’t I wish! Actually, the DEA is just out of money to help localities clean up meth labs after they’re raided.

    Cleaning up a meth lab costs $2,500. Last year the DEA allocated just $10 million to the cause. Obama’s new budget cuts this funding. I guess when you’re as lean and trim as the DEA with their annual budget of $2,602,000,000 (enough to clean more than one-million meth labs), there really is no other choice.

  • Mother of shot suspect: Cops “did their job right”

    Now that’s something you don’t hear every day!

  • Guess the speaker…

    Here’s the quote. Who said it?

    Will America be led by a president elected by a majority of the American people? Or will we be intimidated and blackmailed into following the path dictated by a disruptive radical and militant minority?
    …
    In my view, this Fall, any candidate in any party who voices radical sentiment or who courts or enjoys the support of radical elements ought to be voted out of office by the American people. It’s just too dangerous.

  • The Rumbler

    I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think this is a good idea.

    I generally hate loud sounds, especially high-pitched loud beeps that seem to be more and more common. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bit autistic, but whatever. I’ve thrown eggs at honking cars. Hell, I’m proud of that: They were honking at the sanitation workers picking up trash, for crying out loud! And I tried talking to the honkers first. They told me to get stuffed. F*ck ’em. And then there was that time I slashed the tires of a car whose car alarm kept me and my neighbors up, literally, for hours.

    (Did I just admit that? It was years ago. Just two tires… and I first called the police a few times, who did nothing. And I did, after releasing my anger on the right front and rear tires, leave a note making very clear that this was most definitelynotsome “random” act of vandalism.)

    This new siren is half the perceived volume (10 dB less) of a standard siren. That’s great if you happen to be pedestrian or bike. It’s low frequency, which is great if you happen to be in a car. If this means less high-pitched siren use, I’m all for it. If it’s just another sound to add to an already too loud city, I’m against it.

    And who knows… maybe people willactually get out the way of emergency vehicles. That would be a change.

    But just for fun, I wish officers would have to put a quarter in a machine on the dash to activate “The Rumbler.”

  • Invest in Police

    RAND has a study showing that in tough economic times, it still makes sense to spend money on police: “Returns on investments in police personnel are likely to be substantial.”

  • South Philly

    South Philly

    I had a good time in Philadelphia. It struck me a bit like a big version Baltimore. And I like Baltimore. And I like big. So there you have it.

    Hungry and roaming the Old City, not wanted to eat lunch in some Frat Bar that smelled like last night’s beer, I remembered I have a friend from Philly. So I texted him: “In Philly. Where to eat lunch?” In seconds he replied, “Pats Steak, 9th and Wharton.” So off we went.

    I got nothing against cheesesteak, but as your city’s signature food, it ain’t all that. Nor does it compare to a Baltimore crabcake, a Chicago Hot Dog, or even a good New York slice of pizza (which is actually not that easy to find). Still, Pat’s was just what the doctor ordered (if your doctor is drunk). The service was efficient. The cheesesteak was good. And I loved the hot peppers for the taking!

    It also reminded me that in Baltimore I would sometime ordered a “chicken cheesesteak no cheese.” It’s just a chicken sandwich. But it always amused me to order a “cheesesteak” that contained neither.

    Across the street was a competing store. I liked the presence of a police memorial.

    And a memorial to police officer Daniel Faulkner, who was assassinated by Mumia Abu-Jamal.

    Less to my liking is anti-immigrant sentiment reflected in a “plaque to a patriot” telling customers to speak English.

    Now, at my computer, I see that this has been in the news a bit. Gino said: “If you don’t speak English, how can you read the sign? If you do speak English, how is the sign offensive?” I’d bet money that Gino’s great-grand parents didn’t speak English when they came from Italy. And they faced discrimination. And now Gino is returning the favor. Anyway, luckily we weren’t hungry so I didn’t have to decide whether I wanted to give my money to Gino, who loves to wrap himself in the flag. Of course, the other way to stay warm on 9th street is make barrel fires.

    You can’t quite see the flames, or the smoke it caused at the start of the burn. This was strange… not because you don’t much see barrel fires these days, but mostly because it actually wasn’t cold. Anyway…

    Back to speaking English… In all my travels I’ve seen seen a sign requesting me to order in the native tongue. If I could, I would. But I can’t. And I’m in your country so thank you for treating me kindly while I fumble along in the language I do speak. Of course it’s not theirfault I don’t speak their language. And yet they’ve still all been pretty nice to me.

    Nativism does not equal patriotism. And this was near the menu selling “Freedom Fries.”

    Hey, it’s 2011. Can’t we all now admit that renaming french fries–a truly bizarre fit of anti-French hysteria in 2003–was perhaps the stupidest idea to ever come out of right-wing America?

    First, let’s leave aside the fact fries aren’t particular french to begin with (unlike, say, the “National” Cherry Blossoms, which actually did come from Japan).

    Second, let’s also leave aside that fact that we owe a deep debt to France for our very independence (and also the Statue of Liberty). Just like they owe us for WWII–we’ve always had each others’ backs.

    What does perhaps matter is that when it came to the War in Iraq and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, you know what? The French were right. We were wrong. We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq!

    Freedom fries… that kind of jingoist ignorant nonsense, “patriotism lite,” resulted in a rush to a war that killed thousands of Americansoldiers. Wrap yourself in that.

    More to our liking was the store that had 20 signs in all different languages welcoming customers. Even dirty Greeks like me.

    Leaving politics aside, all this makes for a great neighborhood and a wonderful afternoon in South Philly.

    They call the market a “curb market,” which is just the kind of market I love. Everything is out on the sidewalk. You can walk down the street and see everything. Why don’t we have more of them? It’s a nice mix of stores: old-school Italian, new-school Italian, Mexican immigrant, some yuppie cafes, some hipster record stores, and around the corner tasty Vietnamese places lurk enticingly.

    I like signs like this:

    And a local man’s hustle:

    Back at beautiful 30th Street Station, I took me ages to figure out what this sign meant: “Amtrak Celebrates Black History Month in the North — Waiting Room Located Behind Stairway 7.”

    Huh? Why not celebrate in the South? And I just knowAmtrak is not celebrating Black History Month with a segregated waiting room behind track 7.

    Anyway, after much thought and consternation, my wife told me it meant the “North Waiting Room.” So I went there. There was no celebration.

    Punctuation, people. It matters!

  • Philadelphia

    I’m off to Philadelphia for a conference. Just for the record I got nothing against the city. But one of my students just cracked me up by saying, “Philadelphia? What a dump. Imagine if New York and D.C. had a baby. …And beat it.”

    Ouch.

  • Union Teachers Teach Better?

    From Montclair SocioBlog.

    Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

    * South Carolina – 50th
    * North Carolina – 49th
    * Georgia – 48th
    * Texas – 47th
    * Virginia – 44th

    If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. Let’s keep it that way.

    I haven’t verified these stats. But I do want to point out that teachers unions are often accused of looking out for themselves before looking out for their students. Perhaps the same should be said of union busters.

    Also, consider this–it’s not so crazy–perhaps what’s good for teachers isgood for students.

  • It’s the Inequality, Stupid

    It’s the Inequality, Stupid

    From Mother Jones. Worth a look. If you don’t support “income redistribution,” can we at least stop redistributing income from poor to rich?

    A huge share of the nation’s economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.