Final Blog

Image Source

Throughout the past semester, I have learned a lot in my Writing in Disciplines class. The material covered in class was not foreign to me at the beginning already, but I have learned how to polish my skills as a writer that will help me later in life in my professional career as a police officer and hopefully as an FBI agent. The main lesson I have learned in this class was to keep my opinions out of police writing. Through using the Documentary Project and the mock interview, I have learned how important it is to keep personal opinions out of professional writing.
For the Documentary Project, I chose the film Blackfish which is about the controversy of keeping captured killer whales in captivity. The assignment was that I had to summarize the film with only using the facts given in the film. We were not supposed to include personal opinion within the summary but it was more difficult than I had thought it would be. For me, when I write a paper, I just write nonstop for as long as my mind will let it and then I will go back over it and edit it. When I got done with my initial binge writing, I went back over it and had to edit pretty much everything because it had small indications of my personal opinion on the horrible subject... see I did it just there. It is hard to not speak your opinion because it is apart of human nature to express there opinions to communicate with one another. However, all said and done, I was able to correct my paper and turn it in with as little, if any, personal opinion in it. Police writing and report writing has to include nothing but the facts, there is no room for opinions. That is why I think after completing the Documentary Project, I have acquired the proper skills to minimize my opinion sharing within my professional writings.
    The mock interview was a fun little assignment when we, as a group, had to interview a member of the other group about a made-up crime. My group came out swinging automatically accusing the suspect of the crime based off of the opinions that we had already got the perpetrator. Granted it did make for a humorous and entertaining interview, it was not the proper way an officer should handle an interview, which I now know. It is important for a police officer to go into an interview, or even an interrogation with an open mind, completely opinion free. No matter how much the officer dislikes the suspect, the officer must treat them with respect in order to receive respect. Having the opinion that the suspect being interviewed is the one that actually committed the crime at the beginning of the interview process creates an unfair and unconstitutional bias. Everyone is supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. That is why personal opinions should be left out of suspect interviews and interrogations.

Draft of Final Blog

 During the past semester, I have learned a lot about criminal justice writing. Before this class, I never realized how much writing is incorporated with the criminal justice field. Some of the most important qualities within a police officer is his or her ability to write. Every action a police officer does has to be logged in a police report. The most important lessons I have learned from this semester is that police writings have to be very detailed, a correctly sized notebook means a lot in the field, and that search warrants are not as easily requested as the media makes it seem.

Image Source

It is important for police writing to be as detailed as possible because if it is not detailed properly. it could ultimately result in a guilty man go free or even have an innocent man be convicted for a crime they did not commit. If a police officer makes a description of a man that is not thoroughly detailed, an innocent person could possibly be mistaken for the real criminal. Likewise, if the description is not precise, the real criminal could go without being caught. During the process of evidence, it is crucial to document everyone who has come into contact with that piece of evidence. Once more, a lot of detailed writings that include date, time, for how long was the evidence in their hands, who held the evidence, where the evidence was found, and a whole bunch of minute details are so important to police writings.
A correctly sized notebook is important for a police officer because if a notebook is too big to carry, it makes it difficult for the officer to take field notes. Consequently, if the notebook is too small, it is equally difficult to write a lot of information in a small notebook. The notebook should have solid covers to give the officer a hard surface to write on, but must also be malleable enough to fit in the officer's pocket. If the officer does not have these qualities in a field notebook, it makes it difficult to write the police report. Before this class, I never would have thought about size and characteristics of notebooks to use.
In the media and television shows, the application for a search warrant takes less than a couple minutes and boom, their in the door of the fugitives home with guns blazing. Real life police life, is not like that at all. In order to get a search warrant, it requires pages and pages of information that describes the location that is going to searched, what the officers are looking for at this location, who should be at the location, and every other detail one can think of. All of this is just the basics, but then the meat of the search warrant application requires extensive details that show the judge that the officers have enough probable cause to search the home or whatever they need to search.
There is so much writing in a police officer's life, it is amazing that one can get a job in this field without holding a Masters Degree in English. Because of this class, I have learned the skill set, or at least understand the skill set, that separates a good officer from a great police officer. It is easy to arrest a person, but it is more difficult to convict a person in this judicial system.

Chapter 6 Concepts

Image Source

    Chapter 6 deals with writing police arrest reports. The most important lesson out of this chapter was to be as clear and concise as possible and make sure to include the information that gives the officer probable cause in the report. There are three ways to include probable cause: by using the five senses, by using the officer's training and experience and by using information gained during the coarse of daily activities. Without probable cause, an officer cannot make an arrest. Therefore, it is important to include probable cause within the police report. The rest of the chapter gave examples of police reports such as fill-inn-the-blanks forms and narrative reports. the fill-in-the-blanks form is self-explanatory, there boxes for they have a prescribed question to it and then the officer just fills in the blank. ;The narrative report requires more work on the officer. In the narrative report, the officer must manually write out what happened in chronological order and with as much detail as humanly possible.

Pedro's Experiment

Image Source

    My initial thoughts about Pedro's dressing up and then down experiment, was that I was not surprised by the results. I do not think this experiment is strictly about his race. People who dress well, do get treated better regardless about their race. I have noticed that when I dress in all black in skinny jeans and a band shirt with my long hair, people do act differently around me. Workers at stores look at me thinking I am some ordinary kid that is in there to goof off and break items. I specifically remember this one example when I was with two of my friends, all of us were wearing black skinny jeans, band shirt, and with long hair, we were in SEARS at the Louis Joliet Mall looking at beds. At the time, I was actually looking to buy a new bed, so I was sitting on beds as I was walking by, just testing them like everyone does. Then, one of the managers saw me sitting on all the beds and assumed we were goofing off and kicked us out of SEARS for the day. I was shocked when this happened because we were not goofing off any more than an adult would be goofing off, just having fun. I believe since the group of us looked as though we were young teenagers that looked like we were looking for trouble, actually got us into trouble. 

    Now when I dress, I usually wear a pair of blue jeans, a non-offensive band shirt (because I have been told by an elderly lady that one of my band shirts I was wearing was offensive, but that is a story for another day) and a nice jacket because I have noticed that people in stores are more polite to me when I dress like this. I still get some people that think I am a young stoner kid (mainly because I have long hair and I joke around a lot), but they usually realize I clearly do not do drugs once they find out that I am a criminal justice major that has aspirations to land a job in the FBI.  

    Therefore, I think this experiment can be recreated by using any person around the same age and of any race and still have the same outcome. I thought this experiment did a great job in publicizing how people treat others based on how they dress and how easily these same people come to judge others in how they dress. 

Making A Murderer Interviews

Image Source

    The Netflix series Making A Murderer shows the story of Steven Avery and the investigation of a murder he was allegedly involved with. Avery's defense was that the Manitowoc County Police Department framed Avery because of his past experiences with the police department. Avery was once convicted of a sexual assault that he was later found to be wrongfully convicted by the same police department. During interviews between the police department and Avery's lawyers, some of the officer's body language showed signs of stress and anxiety. 

    During the interviews, Sheriff Ken Peterson is seen fidgeting in his chair, constantly squeezing his hands, and interlacing his fingers multiple times. These can be taken as sign of stress meaning that he either knew something about the cover-up (if there was one) or that he was one of the officers involved. 

    District Attorney, Mark Rohrer, was interviewed and asked about the important information he allegedly  withheld from giving it to the Sheriff. During his interview, he can be seen as close to shaking like a leaf as humanly possible. His posture constantly changed from leaning forward and back in his chair. He folded his arms, fidgeted his heads, and even scratching his face which is another sign of stress. This can also be taken as he knew about the alleged cover-up and was nervous about getting in trouble. 

    After seeing this scene, I now see how bad posture and hand gestures can lead an interviewer to question ones integrity. In order to prepare for an interview I think it is just best to be honest whether or not that means you will get in trouble or not. It is better to have everyone know you messed up rather than having people debate and get emotional over it, which would make it a bigger deal than it could have been by admitting wrong. 

Notebook Post

A.)

Image Source

B.) 

Image Source

C.)

 

                 Image Source

I think the best choice of notebook for a police officer would be option A because it is small and durable which makes it ideal for taking notes out in the field. Option B is a regular composition notebook that is typically used as a journal or diary. A composition notebook is simply not tough enough to endure the elements faced by police officers everyday. Option C would be too big of a notebook for a police officer. It would be too big for the officer to carry on his persons when he or she is out of the squad car. These types of notebooks are most commonly used by students and are meant to hold a lot of information but not necessarily meant to be  comfortable to carry. 

Narrative Writing Rewrite

Image Source

Information Report
Location: 1647 Rancho, El Fuego
Occurrence Date: 7-25-15
Persons: Tunney, Carol P. DOB 1-21-66
Persons: Tunney, Katherine L. DOB 9-16-89

Details
On 7-25-15 at 1230 I received a radio call to meet reporting party Katherine Tunney at 1230 hours. Upon reaching the address I began by talking with Katherine Tunney. Tunney said she was getting ready to leave her residence at 1215 hours when she saw a white Toyota van wagon stopped in front of her residence in the middle of the street facing westbound. She said the sole occupant of the van was sitting in the seat facing her residence and taking pictures of her residence. From what she could see she described the person in the vehicle as a white male with gray hair.
Tunney made an attempt to confront the person in the van but once she exited her residence the person in the van closed their window and sped off. Tunney was able to see the license plate number. 836L92F. I looked up the license plate in the database and the results came up as a 2004 Toyota Wagon registered to Bond, Stephen D., 3381 El Balazo, El Fuego.
I talked to Katherine Tunney's mother, Carol Tunney, to  get more information about the incident. Carol Tunney said she filed a report in April because a man had approached her while she was planting and asked for her name. Carol responded by asking for his name but the man left after that. Carol saw the license plate. ISPYONU. I ran a license plate check and it came up as a 2008 SAAB registered to Toomey, Richard, 36 Paseo De Bonito, El Rancho.
I told both Carol Tunney and Katherine Tunney that no crime had been committed and the information has been filed.

Challenges Faced

    The hardest part about writing the film summary of Blackfish was condensing what I wanted to summarize. While I was watching the film, I took notes of every single scene which took multiple hours to finish. Watching a documentary, it was hard to decide what facts to include and what facts are not as important. I exceeded the length requirement for that reason. The entire film was worthy of summarizing because each scene had some information about why these killer whales were attacking the trainers. Ultimately, I ended up not condensing as much as I wanted because my summary was still four pages too long. I believe due to my attention to detail, it will not affect my grade too much.

                                Writing Reflection

    This is the first time I have ever had to write a summary about a documentary. Usually all the summaries I do are about books or articles, so this is new experience for me. I found it was easier to write about a documentary, but harder to revise than a book. When I am watching the documentary I feel as though I should include every scene in my summary making my summary longer than it usually would be for a summary about a book or article. Condensing my information is really hard for me because once I get in the mind frame of explaining everything thoroughly, it is really difficult to get out of that mind frame. I do not necessarily think it is a bad thing to be descriptive and detailed, but when my summary is two pages longer than the suggested length requirement, it does not help anything. When I was watching the documentary Blackfish I wanted to provide the readers of my summary enough details that they could visualize the documentary, without actually viewing it.  I think being very descriptive is a good thing for the field I plan on going into, criminal justice, because police reports should be as descriptive as possible. It is harder for me to not explain everything than it is to explain everything that I am seeing. 

    Another process I had trouble with was making the tenses line up. As I am watching the film, I noticed I always put the verbs of my paper in the past tense because I already saw it. I spent a solid hour or so going back through my draft correcting all my verbs to present tense. If i would have focused more on putting my writing in present tense as I was writing, I could have saved a lot of time on the editing process.

    When I get my degree and a job as a police officer, the skill of being able to describe what I am thinking onto paper is very important. In the criminal justice field it is very important to be very descriptive. Practice makes perfect and practicing my writing skills, will ultimately strengthen them. 

Image Source

  
                                         Blackfish Blog
    The documentary Blackfish by director Gabriela Cowperthwaite deals with the killer whale attacks in the famous amusement park, SeaWorld. While watching this film, I found myself feeling bad for the whales and understanding why they did what they did, meaning the attacks. Whales are enormous creatures, they need space to swim. Granted the tank they were put in was the biggest tank I have ever seen, the whales need open water to swim. The scene that impacted me the most was the scene where the mother whale gave birth to her offspring and then the crew took away the baby from the mother. The mother whale was screaming just like a human would if their child were to be taken away from them. The whales can feel emotions like humans do. Earlier in the film, the researchers took an MRI of a whale's skull looking at the brain and made the discovery that whales have an extra part of their brain that allows them to feel emotions. This fact just made the scene even worse because viewers could tell the whale was very upset when they took away her baby. The whale would scream in distress and for days to come, she would just float in the corner, not wanting to have any part in anything, similar to a human during depression. The trainers of these killer whales seemed to have a serious emotional connection with these animals, so it was not like the whales were being emotionally neglected. The whales were just not happy with being incarcerated in a pool away from their original pack.
    At one point during the film, I became very angry with SeaWorld, one specific point. The point where I found out that the trainers were not notified of all the attacks by the killer whales on the trainers. SeaWorld just sent them in the water with no background information about these animals other than the fact that they will get paid for their services. This country is so motivated by money that a multi-million dollar company would send human life in the water with a potentially deadly animal, just for an audience to be entertained.

Image Source

                                      Blackfish Reflection

    I watched the documentary Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and my initial reaction was just utter disbelief. The fact that SeaWorld had known about what really happened to Dawn Brancheau but insisted that is was her fault she got attacked and there was no sign of aggression in the attack. The whale, Tilikum, had had a record for attacking and killing trainers. The fact that they keep Tilikum is surprising because he is unpredictable. Trainers should not be allowed in the water with these whales and the court decision coming out of Dawn's case, supports my theory and now trainers are not allowed in the water with the whales. I was shocked and even angry after watching this film because I learned a lot about how the whales feel about being held captive at SeaWorld. The whales show signs of frustration and sometimes aggression because they cannot move freely like a wild animal is used to. Every once in awhile, the whales lash out with frustration and attack the trainers. I learned that there were almost eighty accounts of killer whales attacking trainers while in captivity, some of them leading to the death of the trainer, yet very few, if any accounts of attacking people in the wild. Even more shocking, the trainers in the film were not notified about the previous attacks by the whales before they got into the water with them. This is negligence on part of SeaWorld, letting the trainers go into the water with dangerous animals without telling them about their previous signs of aggression. After watching this film, I am against holding killer whales in captivity. Tilikum showed signs of frustration and aggression and should serve as a learning curve for us in realizing that killer whales are majestic, beautiful, and powerful animals that should not held in captivity, but thrives in the wild.

Image Source

                              Making A Murderer Music Influence

    There is no question, music does have an influence on emotions. When we are sad, we usually play sad music, when we are happy, we usually play happy music. It is so common that we do that that we do not always recognize when music influences us in other situations. In the Netflix original series, Making A Murderer, the background music can influence the audience to change their opinions about Mr. Avery. At first, when the story was talking about all of the past crimes Mr. Avery had committed, the music was dark and had the viewers rooting against him. However, later on in the episode where we start to learn more of the facts about the crimes, we start to feel bad for Mr. Avery and the music lightens up. The producers use music to engage our sense of hearing to alter our perceptions about Mr. Avery. They do this to make us feel like we have a connection with Mr. Avery even though most of us have not personally met him. It is for this reason that people return to the show and continue to watch it.

                                 Making A Murderer Reflection
     The story about Steven Avery is a shocking display of corruption in the justice system. The Manitowoc County Police Department showed many aspects of corruption. Avery was suspected and convicted of violently raping a woman. I found that it was shocking that the police did not investigate Gregory Allen for this crime even though he had a history of violence and sexual assault and was in the Manitowoc County area. Manitowoc County detective Thomas Bergner told Manitowoc County Sheriff, Tom Kocourek, that he believe Gregory Allen was the perpetrator in this case, but the Sheriff did not believe the detective and continued to charge Avery with the crime even though he had a solid alibi. The Sheriff's Department seemed to have a grudge with Avery because of his past run ins with the law. The investigation was mainly driven off of emotions instead of actual evidence.
    It was relieving when Avery was released from prison because of new DNA evidence that concluded that the real assailant in this case was Gregory Allen from before. Evidence found, soon pointed that the Sheriff's Department must have known that Avery was innocent but continued prosecution against him. Avery never stopped fighting to prove his innocence during the 18 years he was incarcerated and it finally paid off.