A NOTE TO INVESTIGATORS

Remember, your work product – and your reports – are a direct reflection of who you are. Sloppy written reports reflect poorly on your investigation; a jury will be led to believe that a sloppy report reflects a sloppy investigation. Just think embarrassment on the witness stand. Spelling errors in a report reflect poorly on your investigation. Some detectives have turned to the word processor to help in this aspect, but keep this in mind – spell check is different from intent-check. Spell check can fix, or even highlight, misspellings, but cannot identify what you meant to say. It does not know the difference between the word “to, two and too” and which word should have been used in the context of the sentence. If you misspell a word but your misspelling is actually another word, it is not going to be corrected and if left in the report that way, looks sloppy and unprofessional. It also shows that you do not proofread your work. If you have pre-set wording for common tasks, such as for an interview of the complainant, or photo viewing, you need to make sure that the wording is proper; otherwise you’ll be duplicating the error every time you utilize it. If you prepared a pre-set wording text and left items out to be filled in, make sure you fill them in. A common example would be a sentence wording where you “fill in the blank” appropriately, i.e. “On the above date I xxx the complainant for an interview”, wherein you would appropriately enter “called”, or “visited” in place of the xxx. If you fail to do this, your report will most certainly be brought up for review – and potential embarrassment - at trial. Proofread your pre-set wording! Remember – a detective writes reports – be sure your reports properly reflect your work.