While taking good notes might not be the most exciting or sexy part of police and security work it is critically important. Here I delve a little deeper into the subject and dabble a little into police interview tactics used on the street as I discuss note taking at more critical incident types where information is time sensitive. Please also watch my first video about note taking for more information on the topic in general.

   • Video  







As a police field training officer (FTO) one of the most common issues for probationary officers/deputies/trainees to have is poor paperwork skills. Be it filling out forms or writing citations properly.

Note taking is integral to Police work, and is rarely trained to any standard outside of more advanced homicide investigation classes that street cops rarely get the opportunity to attend. I think this is a shame.

By teaching new officers/deputies/guards how to take effective notes we can greatly enhance their effectiveness on scene, increase their usefulness later on in an investigation, and give them the core requisite skills to write better Police reports.

Key to this is giving new recruit officers a structure on which they can make their own system for note taking. It isn't enough to just scribble things down on paper if we can't decipher them later on to write the report and, just as importantly, in a couple weeks when a detective has a question about the case.

Also critical is knowing how to conduct a good Police/Sheriff/Security field interview. In this video we dip into the topic of eliciting accurate and useful information from the person we are interviewing.