This course covers and practices with handouts and exercises:
- The impact of a report on an investigation, prosecution, a victim, the department’s reputation, and on officer liability.
- Editing and proofing methods checklist.
- Elements of the crime: do the charges match the narrative?
- Interviewing and investigative skills and methods
- Narrative: tools for improving note-taking to final organizational copy
- Concise language versus jargon, wordiness, redundancy, and summary phrases
- Verbs and pronouns: maintaining the chain of custody of evidence, quotes, and statements
- Grammar: sentence structure, punctuation, spelling
