The stress of paperwork!!!!!

[njpo]

HELLO ALL,


I AM ALMOST 1.5 MONTHS OUT OF THE ACADEMY AND HAVE BEEN PATROLLING IN MY OWN PATROL VEHICLE FOR ABOUT ABOUT A WEEK NOW. THINGS ARE GOING GREAT, I HAVE MADE MULITPLE ARREST ALREADY, I HAVE WRITTEN A FEW DOZEN TICKETS AND I FEEL I AM ON THE WAY TO BECOMING A GOOD COP. THE SINGLE THING THAT IS STRESSING ME OUT AT THIS POINT IS ALL THE PAPERWORK. THERE IS SO MUCH OF IT AND THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN WHEN DOIG IT PROPERLEY
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE THAT CAN RELATE.

NJPO

[DelC]

Welcome to the paper side of LE. Do you hand write your reports or type them??

[njpo]

WE TYPE EVEYTHING, SO THERE IS ALOT TO LEARN ON THE COMPUTER..

[i tell u where to go]

:eek: I TOO AM NEW WITH ONLY SIX MONTHS ON THE JOB AND WITH THE NUMEROUS ARREST ALREADY I GOT BOMBARDED WITH PAPER WORK. EACH ARREST TAKES AT LEAST 1 1/2 HRS :confused:

[five-oh]

This job it is necessary to have good time management skills. Good typing skills don't hurt either. I try to balance my self-initiated activities by how much paper I'm down. If I start the night clean I hunt until I find something, then I write. Depending on your dept. policy some reports can wait longer than others to be finished. I can hold a minor traffic collision report for a week along with reports that are just going to the DA for complaint.
There are times when you will be so buried in paper and all of your free time will be spent writing.

[TANKMGA8]

Time management is critical. I am lucky that one of my busy nights is on Sat. I have the shift on Sat and Sun to get all my paperwork done for Monday morning. If I get something late Sat, I get the paperwork done on Sun. If something happens on Mon or Tues, I don't go back out or go home until it is all done. Department policy requires that all paperwork be done for the next normal work day for records and the courts. If not done then you go see the SGT and then it gets done. Try talking to other officers and seeing what time saving steps they take to get it all done correctly and in the shortest amount of time. Try some different approaches and find what works best for you.

I wish but don't believe that the paperwork will get to be any less of a hassle or require less time, so learn it as well as you can. I also don't recommend holding onto reports more than is really necessary, take the time and get them done in a timely manner.

[DelC]

Originally posted by njpo
WE TYPE EVEYTHING, SO THERE IS ALOT TO LEARN ON THE COMPUTER.. Here's a tip, the key on the far left, marked "Caps Lock", will let you type without everything being in all Caps.

[williamssd]

I've seen some of the reports used in Wisconsin, and everyone I know in LE has told me to be ready for the mountains of paperwork.

I'm curious about what format the "typed" reports are in on the computer. Are they forms in MS Word, or something else? Is it proprietary?

If all of mine were on the computer (when I finally get hired somewhere), I would love it. I can clear 65 to 70 wpm (more under ideal conditions). The only thing that would take time would be sketches/drawings, and even this can be aided by computer.

My idea, was to have reports in Adobe's PDF format. You can search through entries made in the reports that way, and you can generate them to continue narratives/information on to additional pages if necessary automatically. Plus, since PDF's are fully cross-platform (Mac, PC, flavors of UNIX, etc.) sharing information would be much easier.

Then again, in a perfect world, there would be one giant LE computer, and all agencies/states would have agreed upon universal types of reports.

Sorry for the "wanna-be" babbling.

Stay safe,
- Steve

[DelC]

With my last dept they didn't care if I used MS or a reg typewriter, all they were interested in was the final paper product. I used word for my reports. Course, the rookies were required to submit theirs on a floppy along with the paper version, as their reports would always have to be edited, in which case they were required to use the same format that the editors used.

[stein810]

oh yeah.... i know everyone here can relate. in the academy they fail to tell you how much paperwork is involved. just take it with stride, eventually you will get the whole idea. what i do is make a photo copy of every pcr i write. i always like to go back over and read them in case i get a similar arrest and i forget what inmportant little things to include. just the other night, my and my parter at 11:30 locked up someone for a ccw/mv. took is almost 3 hours and we knew what had to be done and how to write it. just in the nature, paperwork takes awhile.


Originally posted by njpo
HELLO ALL,


I AM ALMOST 1.5 MONTHS OUT OF THE ACADEMY AND HAVE BEEN PATROLLING IN MY OWN PATROL VEHICLE FOR ABOUT ABOUT A WEEK NOW. THINGS ARE GOING GREAT, I HAVE MADE MULITPLE ARREST ALREADY, I HAVE WRITTEN A FEW DOZEN TICKETS AND I FEEL I AM ON THE WAY TO BECOMING A GOOD COP. THE SINGLE THING THAT IS STRESSING ME OUT AT THIS POINT IS ALL THE PAPERWORK. THERE IS SO MUCH OF IT AND THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN WHEN DOIG IT PROPERLEY
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE THAT CAN RELATE.

NJPO

[Masscop]

Originally posted by njpo
HELLO ALL,


I THERE IS SO MUCH OF IT AND THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN WHEN DOIG IT PROPERLEY
IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE THAT CAN RELATE.

NJPO

We can all relate. Every day there is a new form to fill out. With all the liability issues and accountability, soon there will be a form to fill out when you have to use the rest room.

Don't worry. You will get the hang of it. Pretty soon you will be making an arrest 15 minutes before the end of your shift and dragging out that 1.5 hour report to 3 hours. lol.

[Newcop]

Let me try this again, computer fowl up. Every day, this instructor would enter the room and wrire "POLICE WORK = PAPERWORK" on the board. Got us students thinking, ya know? Incidentally this instructor was concerned not only with the content of our papers but format, grammer and neatness. All things needed in good report writing.