Anonymous 
I've noticed a LOT of rather poorly written reports lately. I'm not even kidding, the other day I read one where the list of charges took about twice the space the narrative did. While I understand the reasoning behind it (we're here to have fun, not do work!) reports are a fairly important part of role play here in Crack Den, especially if a suspect wants to go after your ass with a lawyer. Hopefully this thread helps explain what a good report should be, and why it's so important that you take the extra two minutes it will take to actually explain what happened.
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What is a report? A report is a formal, written presentation of the facts surrounding a case. Reports pertaining to law enforcement can be classified into two main groups; Administrative, and Operation. For the most part, we only deal with Operation Reports. These can include Incident Reports, Bookings, and Citations while Warrants tend to fall under the Administrative group.
Operations reports are used to examine past events, to keep other officers informed, to provide legal counsel with relevant facts, to coordinate law enforcement activities, to plan and revise current and future law enforcement strategies, management, and for keeping records. This means that reports are an extremely important part of law enforcement. Many officers when asked what the most important tool they carry is will even reply with “My pen.” When you ask them why, they’ll cite the very reasons that I just listed. Given the importance of your reports, it’s also important that they are well written.
A well written report will be factual, objective, concise, written in standard English, accurate, complete, clear, and submitted on time. Submitting a report on time is especially important in an RP setting because other people rely on the time that you submit a report. When I say that it needs to be clear, I mean a reader should be able to glance it over and get a good idea of what exactly happened without spending a half an hour trying to figure out what the author was talking about. A bad report can be difficult to read and understand, which will occasionally slow other role plays down if, for instance, the suspect decides to hire a lawyer. It also reflects poorly on the department. Whether you realize it or not, all of our reports are accessible by the public via the public terminal in the lobby of the PD. If someone reads your report and thinks “Sheesh, this person has no idea what they’re doing” it makes the rest of the department look bad, and reflects poorly on you as a character and a player, which can sometimes dissuade people from wanting to role play with you.
A good rule of thumb to go by, is your report should be at least one paragraph (3-5) sentences for a minor scene such as a drug possession charge. Two paragraphs or more should be used for larger scenes such as assault on a police officer, sexual assault, etc. Once you start getting into three and four paragraph reports, you should consider taking non-essential items out in order to make it easier on readers, and easier on yourself.
I understand that many people despise doing reports, but it’s a part of the role. Real police departments would have their officers fired if they tried turning in a report that was only two sentences long on an assaulting an officer charge coupled with possession, and other forms of assault, which I have seen from people in the HPD. This makes it rather difficult for other officers and lawyers to understand what exactly is going on in your report, so please, take the extra few minutes and type up a narrative that actually makes sense, and describes what happened.
