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.