Paper

Paper, glorious paper. The great enigma of police work. If a crime occurred and nobody wrote a report, does it exist? Nah. Never happened. Can't be counted. Can' be prosecuted. There is no justice without paper.

Yes, paper, the great blight of police work. Would you believe I write more as a cop than in grad school or university?

Consider this minutia:

Joe Citizen is driving down the street. He blows the light. I see him. I write him a ticket. The whole stop takes five minutes from violation to citation. Then, the paper begins, starting with notebook entry detailing everything I wrote on the front of the ticket. Then, I write the details of the violation and diagram on the back of the cite. Next, comes data collection from the MDT. Checking boxes, I fill out the reason for the stop. I noted age, race, and sex of the driver. Did I search the car? what did I find? How did I resolve the stop?

If I'm fast, I can write up the stop in about five minutes. More likely, it'll take ten.

If Joe Citizen doesn't have insurance or license, the paperwork grows. There's an impound form and a tow report. By contract, the tow is required to arrive in 30 minutes. Normally, I finish my paper by the time the hook arrives.

As to crimes, a "simple came, saw, no suspect" in a cold car theft is a two page report plus the notebook entry. Suspect info? Three pages. Leg work? Four. Custody? Two more minimum, probably four. Used force taking the thief into custody? Two more. Each category with a new form.

There are Incident Reports, Custody Reports, Special Report, Continuation Reports, DV Founded Reports, DV Unfounded Reports, Use of Force Reports, Pursuit Reports, PIT Reports, Spike Strip Report, Fraud Reports, Weapon Function Reports, Presumptive Narcotic Test Reports, State Crime Lab Reports, Abandoned Auto Reports, Tow Reports, Impound Reports, P.C. Affidavit Forms, and Property forms. I am probably forgetting some, yes, there's a lot of paper Ollie.

Then, come the copies. I need to copy property reports for detectives. All felonies have case envelopes with two copies each, three if there are drugs involved with additional copies per suspect arrested and copies of the suspect's crime history, convictions, and my and the other officers' involved court schedules.

Some officers save their paper for the end of the night and end up being down multiple reports. Others, write it as they can and when they can, while the incident is still fresh in their memory, and before the big one buries you. I am in the later category.

Yes, that is me behind the school, or in the hidey hole writing paper in the mobile desk that is a patrol car.

Comments

[h.]

Ah, and wouldn't that make a marvelous TV show? An hour driving around in a police car, 5 minutes talking to a guy, 2 minutes adrenaline getting him into cuffs, 20 minutes to bring him to jail, and then 2 1/2 hours doing paper. Woo.... hoo...

[RD]

Yes. Reality and TV have little in common when it comes to policing.

RD

[Peppypilotgirl]

Caberet had it wrong - money doesn't make the world go around, it's paper.