Customer Reviews

Just the Facts: Investigative Report Writing (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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I am a Field Training Officer for a large Southern California law enforcement agency and the most difficult part to teach new officers is how to write a proper report.I have trained over 30 law enforcement officers with various educational backgrounds and all of them have had problems with police report writing. I consider this book to be an excellent reference to improve your report writing skills. I have encouraged every new officer that I have trained to purchase this book.

The book explained the basics of investigation, note taking, rules of narrative writing, describing persons and property,and issues in writing. The book also explained how to write a search warrant and how to dictate your reports.

The overall content of the book was excellent and my only complaint was that the book should have provided sample narrative reports from several different agencies. The law enforcement agency that I work for uses headings(Assignment, Victim Interview, Suspect Statement, etc.)for the narrative portion of the report while other agencies do not. Hopefully, the author will include some sample burglary,theft,vandalism, robbery and other criminal reports in a future edition that will show reports with and without headings.

In closing, if you are a rookie or veteran law enforcement officer that wants to write quality police reports without the traditional police lingo then buy this book and follow the advice in it.

I teach report writing for one of our state universities, and am a recently-retired cop myself. I adopted this book for this quarter's class, and my students have given it very favorable reviews. I use this book as the foundation reading for my lecture and practical exercises, and so my students are "dialed in" much more quickly. I rate this book as the best of the available choices for introducing this essential skill to current and prospective criminal justice employees.

It has some useful information in it but I think the author could have put it all in two chapters.