The Report Directive and One Bad Sentence
The following excerpt is from a fictional department directive written for this exercise:
'Officers shall complete an incident report before the end of the shift in which the incident occurred. A supervisor may authorize a delay of up to 24 hours when the officer is required to appear in court or when information needed for the report is not yet available. A delay authorization does not relieve the officer of the duty to enter a brief initial narrative in the records system before the end of shift. Supplemental reports shall be filed within 72 hours after new information is discovered. Officers shall not state opinions about a person's character; where possible, observations shall be recorded in specific, measurable terms.'
You are writing a report on a disturbance at a convenience store. Your draft contains this sentence:
'Me and Officer Reyes observed the subject who was intoxicated and appeared to be yelling at the clerk, and we approached him quickly.'
1. Under the excerpt, may you delay the full report because a records check is still pending? What must you do before the end of shift regardless?
Read the worked answer
Yes, but only inside the directive's conditions.
- The delay provision covers two situations: a court appearance, or information needed for the report is not yet available. A pending records check fits the second only if the result is genuinely needed to finish the report - not if you simply have not run it yet.
- It requires supervisor authorization, capped at 24 hours. Without that authorization the exception does not apply and the report is due at end of shift.
- Whatever happens, the directive states that the authorization does not relieve you of the duty to enter a brief initial narrative before end of shift. So the initial narrative is not optional and is not part of what gets delayed.
The reasoning to apply: the directive grants a narrow exception and then closes the loophole in the same paragraph. Reading the delay as covering the initial narrative would make the third sentence meaningless.
2. Rewrite the draft sentence so it complies with the directive, and justify each change.
Read the worked answer
Rewrite: 'Officer Reyes and I saw a man standing about three feet from the counter, swaying, with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech, yelling at the clerk. We walked toward him at a normal pace and stopped about six feet away.'
Justification, change by change:
- 'Me and Officer Reyes' to 'Officer Reyes and I.' The phrase is the subject of the sentence, so it takes the subject pronoun 'I'; convention also puts the writer second.
- 'Observed' to 'saw.' Simpler and still accurate. Officialese is not the same as precision.
- 'The subject' to 'a man' - the directive asks for character-neutral, factual description; 'subject' is not wrong, but the neutral noun is clearer.
- 'Who was intoxicated' removed. 'Intoxicated' is a conclusion, and with a character judgment attached it edges toward what the directive prohibits. Replace it with the observations that led you there: swaying, bloodshot eyes, slurred speech.
- 'Appeared to be yelling' to 'yelling.' If you saw him yelling, say so; 'appeared' weakens an observation you actually made.
- 'Quickly' to a pace and distance. 'Quickly' is not measurable; 'normal pace' and 'six feet' are.
3. On Friday at 1600 you learn that a witness lied. When is the supplemental report due, and what assumption are you making?
Read the worked answer
Due Monday at 1600.
Reasoning: the directive measures the deadline from the discovery of new information - 72 hours, which is three calendar days. Friday 1600 plus 24 hours is Saturday 1600, plus 48 is Sunday 1600, plus 72 is Monday 1600.
The assumption: the directive says '72 hours' and states no business-day or weekend exclusion, so the weekend counts. That is the correct reading of the text you were given, but it is an assumption about the full directive, which you do not have in front of you.
What to do about it:
- Check the full directive for a separate definition section, because deadline definitions sometimes live there rather than in the body.
- If the question matters, file earlier rather than later. A supplemental filed Saturday satisfies a Monday deadline; one filed Monday afternoon does not survive a Monday morning records request.
- Note the discovery date and time in the supplemental so the deadline is auditable.