As police supervisors, it is your responsibility to ensure police reports contain the necessary information needed to apprehend criminal suspects. Remember, the investigation begins with the patrol officer preparing the police report.
“As a Sergeant, I’ve read thousands of police incident reports — many with very poor descriptions of suspects,” said Bob Del Torre, a retired sergeant from a San Francisco Bay Area police department. “I’ve spoken with many officers and supervisors in my department, as well as supervisors in other departments about this problem.”
The reasons given for obtaining a vague and poor description by a patrol officer were as follows:
1.) Officers are simply in a hurry to just fill out the report and go back in service
2.) Officers feel the crime has been committed and there is little or no chance the suspect(s) will ever be apprehended
3.) Officers simply check off the boxes on their report and do not ask any more detailed questions
4.) Officers think in terms of handling a crime report as only administrative and they are not thinking it should be investigative
5.) Officers in patrol, rarely are part of the investigative process. If they were, I am sure they would be obtaining a very detailed description, as it would benefit them greatly
6.) Officers do not see great statistics in the apprehension rate of the suspects — if they did see greater arrest rates, their investigative process would improve dramatically
“It is important to note that there are police officers who are extremely diligent when preparing a report and take phenomenal descriptions. These are usually the cases where the suspect is identified and apprehended,” Del Torre said.
Del Torre believes — and I agree — that supervisors must train those officers who are lacking in this area. We both believe that roll call offers a training opportunity that is often overlooked. A great deal can be accomplished during a 10-minute daily instruction session. Del Torre believes the following three steps can help you in your roll call training.
1.) Explain why a report is taken.
Obviously to report the incident, but more importantly, to apprehend the suspects! How are we going to apprehend anyone with poor descriptions? The answer is we’re not!
So, if as police officers you’re comfortable with just responding to a call and writing a report with a description that describes about 1,000 subjects in your district, you have missed the whole point of our job. Our job is to catch the bad guys.
2.) Think investigative — not administrative!
Stress this point and explain to your troops what the absolute goal of writing a report is. It is to document what crime occurred so we can identify and apprehend the suspect(s) responsible.
3.) Encourage patrol officers to actively work their cases.
Have them follow up leads, interview victims, and witnesses a second time, be involved in the case more than just filing the initial report. They will take better descriptions if you can afford the luxury of giving them the time to work on them.
“Once the arrest rate goes up, other officers will take notice and hopefully figure out that taking a good detailed description was the key. If a good arrest was made because of their conscientious report taking, reward them,” Del Torre said.
Acknowledge their good work in lineup and place a “documented good work” memo in their personnel file.
“Lastly, if we don’t know what the suspect looks like and we don’t ask more detailed questions, we will never ever catch the bad guy!” Del Torre said.
