Fourteen Months Later
You worked a fight in a bar parking lot on a Saturday at 23:10 and wrote your report at 01:30 the next morning. The narrative reads, in part: "At approximately 2310 hrs I observed subject Martinez, who was highly intoxicated and aggressive, assault another patron. I feared for my safety and took him into custody." You did not record the names of the two witnesses who gave you a phone number, did not note when police arrived or when you handcuffed him, and wrote, "the parking lot camera will confirm my account." Fourteen months later you are subpoenaed to testify. You have handled roughly 60 incidents since, and you have not looked at the report until the morning of court.
1. Identify the defects in this narrative and rewrite the first sentence so it would survive cross-examination.
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Defects:
- Conclusions instead of observations. "Highly intoxicated" and "aggressive" are your labels. The court wants the behaviors behind them.
- "Assault" is a legal term. Describe the act: what hand, what contact, where it landed, what the other person did.
- "I feared for my safety" without saying what specifically created that fear reads as boilerplate.
- No times for handcuffing, police arrival, or EMS; "approximately" is doing too much work.
- Missing identifiers for two witnesses - the most perishable evidence in the file.
- Referring to video instead of describing what you saw makes your account look dependent on something you may never have watched.
Rewrite: "At 23:10 I was standing at the north edge of the lot, about 25 feet from the entrance, when I saw Martinez, facing a man later identified as R. Cole, draw his right arm back and strike Cole once on the left side of the face with a closed fist. Cole fell back against a parked car. Martinez then turned toward me with both fists raised and stepped in my direction. I drew my radio, told him to stop, and radioed for police at 23:11. I handcuffed him at 23:13, after he stopped resisting."
2. Defense counsel asks: "Officer, you wrote that my client was highly intoxicated. How did you know?" What is the right way to answer?
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Answer with the underlying observations, and concede the limits of your training if they exist.
A strong answer separates what you saw from what you concluded:
- "I'm describing what I observed, not a medical finding. I did not test him and I'm not qualified to diagnose intoxication."
- Then list specifics: the odor of alcohol and how far away you could smell it; slurred or slowed speech, with a quote if you have one; bloodshot, watery eyes; unsteadiness on his feet, including what he used to steady himself; repeated or nonsensical statements.
If your report contains no such detail because you did not record it, do not invent detail on the stand to defend the word "intoxicated." The honest answer is: "My report says highly intoxicated; my recollection of the specific indicators is limited to the odor and his speech, and I did not write down more than that." That costs you some credibility and keeps you out of a perjury problem. Fabricated detail under oath is how a single weak report becomes a dismissed case and a decertified officer.
3. Counsel asks: "You didn't write this for two hours and twenty minutes after the incident. Isn't it true your memory had already faded - and isn't it true you used excessive force?" How do you handle both questions?
Read the worked answer
Take them one at a time. Do not treat a compound question as a single accusation.
On the delay: agree with what is true and explain what you did.
- "Two hours is longer than it should have been. I was managing the scene, speaking with police, and assisting with the injured patron. I sat down and wrote the report as soon as I was released, while it was fresh, and the times I recorded in it came from my radio log."
- If your memory and the report conflict now, say so. You may use the report to refresh your memory, and you should say plainly that you are doing so: "I don't have an independent recollection of that; I'm relying on my report, which I wrote that night."
On excessive force: do not answer "no" and stop.
- "He was handcuffed at 23:13, he was not struck, and he was checked by paramedics at 23:26."
- Describe the force used in concrete terms - hands, one hold, duration - and what he did immediately before it.
"I don't know" and "I don't recall" are legitimate answers. Guessing is what gets officers impeached.