Reviewing a Use of Force Narrative
You are the reviewing officer for a use-of-force file. A junior officer has submitted this incident narrative about an incident in the special management unit:
'At about 7.30pm on Tuesday I was doing rounds when I noticed smoke coming from cell 22. The inmate is a known troublemaker and clearly started it deliberately. I called for backup and we went in and got him out. He was resistive so force was used. The fire was put out. No further action required.'
The file will go to the Assistant Commissioner's use-of-force review and may be tendered in a coronial inquest or criminal proceedings. The CCTV shows the extraction took 40 seconds, three officers were involved, and the inmate received a 3 cm cut to the left forearm that was treated in the clinic at 20:15. The draft contains no times, no names, no reference to the injury, and no reference to the authority under which officers entered the cell.
1. Identify at least five deficiencies in the narrative and explain why each matters.
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Deficiencies and their consequences:
- No precise times and no date. 'About 7.30pm on Tuesday' cannot be matched to CCTV, radio logs or medical records. The first thing a reviewer or a lawyer does is build a timeline; a vague time makes every later claim harder to verify.
- Opinion stated as fact. 'Known troublemaker' and 'clearly started it deliberately' are conclusions for the investigator, not the officer. They are prejudicial, unsupported by the narrative, and give a cross-examiner an easy attack on the officer's objectivity.
- No names or roles. 'We went in and got him out' conceals who did what. In a use-of-force review every application of force must be attributable to a person, and officers who used force are entitled to have it accurately recorded.
- Force described in four words. 'He was resistive so force was used' omits the type of force, target areas, duration, warnings given, and any de-escalation attempted. Without that, a reviewer cannot assess proportionality at all.
- The injury is missing. A 3 cm cut treated at 20:15 is a significant particular. Omitting it looks like concealment even when it is just laziness.
- No authority for entering the cell. The narrative never states who authorised the extraction or under what power, which is a threshold question for the review.
- 'No further action required' is not the officer's decision. That is a recommendation for the delegate or review panel.
Underlying point: the narrative is written as if the only reader is a supervisor who already knows what happened. The actual reader may be a coroner.
2. Rewrite the narrative opening as a factual chronology of four to six sentences, using the details available.
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One workable version:
At 19:28 on Tuesday 4 March 2025 I was conducting the evening rounds of the special management unit with Officer B. As I passed cell 22 I saw smoke coming from the gap under the cell door and smelled burning plastic. At 19:29 I broadcast a request for assistance to cell 22 on channel 2 and notified the control room. Officer C and I entered the cell at 19:31 after the officer in charge authorised entry; the occupant was standing near the toilet block holding a lit item, and I directed him three times to move to the rear of the cell and lie down. He did not comply and adopted a bladed stance, and at 19:32 officers guided him to the floor and applied handcuffs. The cell fire was extinguished by Officer D with a fire blanket at 19:34, and the inmate was escorted to the clinic at 19:50, where a 3 cm cut to the left forearm was treated at 20:15.
What changed: times, names, roles, the authority for entry, the warnings given, the specific force and its duration, the injury and treatment. Note the tone - no adjectives, no conclusions about motive, no statement about what should happen next. The reader can now test the force against the CCTV in 40 seconds.
3. Explain the difference between fact and opinion in a report of this kind, with examples from the draft, and why 'no further action required' is not the officer's call.
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A fact is something a reviewer could verify independently: a time, a location, a quoted direction, a described action, a recorded injury. An opinion is a conclusion drawn from those facts: 'clearly started it deliberately', 'known troublemaker', 'resisted', 'no further action required'.
Converting the draft's opinions into evidence-based statements:
- 'Clearly started it deliberately' becomes 'the inmate was the only person in the cell; a lit item was in his hand; the ignition source was not identified at the time.' The investigator can draw the inference; the officer supplies the material for it.
- 'He was resistive' becomes 'he did not comply with three directions and adopted a bladed stance' - a description the CCTV can confirm or contradict.
- 'Known troublemaker' should not appear at all. Prior history belongs in the intelligence or history section if it is relevant, labelled as such, not used as atmosphere.
Why 'no further action required' is not the officer's call: the officer's role is to report what happened; the decision about consequences sits with the delegate or review panel, who have the full file, the CCTV and the policy framework. An officer who writes the conclusion has effectively decided the outcome and signalled to the reviewer that there is nothing to examine. It also creates a real risk: if the matter later escalates, the report reads as an attempt to close it down.
Practical test: write as though the person reading it does not know you, does not like you, and will ask 'how do you know that?' after every sentence. If the answer is 'because I saw it' or 'because it is recorded', keep it. If the answer is 'because that's what he's like', cut it.