DICTATING REPORTS, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, AND THE THIRD DEGREE - 043

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This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, dictating reports, domestic violence, and the third degree. I'm Adam Richardson and this is The Writer's Detective Bureau.

Welcome to Episode Number 43 of The Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. I'd like to thank Gold Shield Patron, Debra Dunbar, from debradunbar.com and Gold Shield Patron, C.C. Jameson from ccjameson.com, and all of my Coffee Club patrons for their support month after month. Check out their author websites and read their books. You can find links to all of their websites by visiting the show notes at writersdetective.com/43. If you have your own author business, consider joining Patreon. It's free for you and it allows your readers to support you financially through monthly micro payments. Give your fans a chance to show their support by creating your own Patreon account right now. To learn more visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

Cops really are professional writers. Nearly everything we do during the course of an investigation results in us writing a report. If you want to create a truly spectacular detective protagonist, don't make them a seal or a jujitsu expert. Make them an English major with touch typing skills. Okay seriously, that's just real life. I guarantee you, you could write a more captivating scene about paint drying than you can about a cop typing up a police report. Stick with me here, because I have a little hack for your storytelling.

To get to that though, I need to explain a few things. Patrol officers and detectives are often expected to dictate their reports. When I was a rookie detective, I used a cassette recorder, both the full size cassettes like you made mixed tapes out of, and the mini cassettes. Eventually, we went to digital records, and I still have a few Olympus USB digital recorders to this day. I keep it in my briefcase, and every two years it was one of those things where the recording space increased for that $40.00 version of digital recorder, and so every few years I'd upgrade, right up until I got an iPhone, but anyway, the way it works is a department or secretary or administrative assistant will type the report that you create using what used to be a dictophone machine, but it's now, obviously, computer software. They still use that style of setup, where there are foot pedals under the secretary's desk to control the speed of the audio, allowing them to slow down or pause, or rewind without having to remove their hands from the home touch typing position.

Then within a day or so, the reports are then returned to the officer or the detective to review and then ultimately sign off on, and submit to their supervisor for approval. Dictating a report is definitely an acquired skill, and one that I admittedly was reluctant to learn for a variety of reasons. First of all, I could type almost as fast as the secretaries that I worked with in the detective bureau because that typing class that I took in high school, that I didn't want to, turned out to be one of the most important classes I ever took. Second, you have to learn to speak your report in a linear fashion, which means you have to think in the linear fashion as you're doing this.

Now, police reports often have a very specific format to them, and that format varies by department. For instance, the department's report writing manual may require you to start with a section that explains the relationships between all of the parties listed in the report. This is the husband, this is the wife, this is the CSI Tech that handled the evidence pick up. Following that section, there might be one that talks about the evidence, an evidence section that explains what was seized and the disposition of each item, such as where it was booked. Did it go to a specific evidence locker, and if so, you need to have that number in your report. At which station, if you have more than one station, or were they taken directly to the lab? If so, was it the department lab or the state crime lab? Were photos taken? How did they get from the camera to the evidence storage? It used to be film, now it's SD cards, and so how did it get into that database and stored in the cloud, or in the hard drive? Basically you have to account for the chain of custody in this section.

Then you may be required to have a short summary of the report as its own small section, before getting to the narrative. Then you have to document if this is a follow up report, what is it in reference to? What's the initial report? What's the original report number so there are a lot of things that you have to have, a lot of ducks in a row, you have to have before you start dictating these reports.

Then of course, the narrative is the main body of the report, and it's always written in chronological order of events, starting with when the police became involved, or if it's a follow up report, the start time that is relevant to this portion of the follow up investigation. Now it certainly isn't rocket surgery, but you need to have these facts and times on a notepad in front of you, or at least at the very top of your mind when you hit the record button.

Despite my own typing prowess, I still had to learn how to dictate reports. The reason is because we write so many of them. Now, I maybe able to go toe to toe on words per minute with probably the newest secretary in the bureau, but I can't type faster than the entire typing pool, and I got to the point where I would dictate my reports on my way to work in the morning, on my commute, in the times when my caseload started snowballing beyond what I could accomplish just in a regular work day, just by typing.

The reason why this might be useful to you, the writer, is because .. Well, here's the hack, if you need a quick way to cheat with a little bit of exposition, like rather than devoting what turns out to be a boring scene to getting one little important detail from a witness interview, you need to get it into that story plausibly. You might be able to start with a scene with your detective protagonist dictating that detail into a recorder, like while he or she is driving, and just when that detail is revealed in the dialogue, or I guess it's technically a monologue, the scene can then seamlessly transition from dictating that detail, so the reader or the viewer if it's a screenplay, you can then transition seamlessly from that scene inside the car, into arriving at the location of the next scene in your story, and picking up some action from there.

Now just like a detective dictating a report on the go, you might seriously consider using dictation for getting some of your own writing done during your commute, if you have one. Having tried a few different automated transcription services, both as a detective using dedicated transcription software, and then also AI powered services online for the podcast transcripts that I do now, I found that you cannot beat having a real human being doing the transcription. I think it's a combination of the sound of my voice and my tendency to do the ahs and the ums, where it's not a pause into the next word, I just kind of um into the next word, so it really confuses any kind of AI transcription service. They end up taking more time to go through line by line to correct, than it would have been for me to just sit down and type it in the first place. I only use real people for my transcriptions.

Now since I can't use department secretaries to type up my podcast transcripts, every single week I use rev.com to transcribe these podcast episodes, which I then post to my show notes pages, but I cannot stress how much time I've saved from physically typing literally thousands of report pages over the last 20+ years by learning how to dictate. I still type a ton, but sometimes, especially when inspiration strikes and you want to get the story out faster than you can type, or in my case, most often it strikes when you aren't at your keyboard, which seems to be most of the time. I audio record those note right into my phone, and then I send them off to Rev for transcription by a real person. The turn around is fast and you cannot beat Rev for its accuracy, because they use real human beings.

Since I use Rev every single week for my show notes, I decided to become an affiliate, which means anyone signing up through my link, not only supports the show at no additional cost to you, but here's the best part, is that if you just want to try out transcriptions, my link will get you $10.00 off your first order. Just go to writersdetectivebureau.com/rev, R-E-V, to give it a try and give your carpal tunnels a rest.

A. Marie Silver of amariesilver.com asked a great question in the Writer's Detective Q&A Facebook Group, and if you haven't joined, I urge you to do so. Her question is, if a uniformed police officer witnesses domestic violence, and catches the perpetrator's actions with his body cam, do they still need the victim to file a report in order for charges to be pressed? Regardless of whether the crime was captured on a body cam, anyone can arrest the subject for the crime that they witnessed. A citizen can make a citizen's arrest for a misdemeanor or any felony that they witness, even if that citizen is not the victim, so too can the police officer, and he should.

What if the officer didn't witness the domestic violence incident? Does the victim still need to file a report? Before I answer that, let's back up and talk about the difference between a citizen's arrest and a police officer's powers of arrest. We've talked a lot on this podcast about probably cause. Those articulable facts that an officer can relay to a judge in a search warrant or an arrest warrant application to get the court ordered authority to serve that warrant.

Probably cause also plays a role in making warrantless arrests for felonies. You see a civilian can make a citizen's arrest for a misdemeanor or a felony that they witness first hand, period. A police officer's power of arrest means the officer can not only make an arrest for misdemeanors or felonies that they witness, but they can also make an arrest for any felony when they have probably cause to believe the suspect committed the felony. There are also a handful of misdemeanors that a police officer can make probably cause arrests for, but that's a whole other discussion.
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On a quick side note before we start thinking about these different scenarios, in California on-duty police officers cannot have their peace disturbed, and disturbing the peace is a misdemeanor that requires someone other than the police to allege that their peace was disturbed, so if you call the cops because your neighbor's making a racket, and it's a misdemeanor even though the peace officer is observing it, you're still going to be the one that is making the citizen's arrest.

Anyway, back to the scenario at hand. When a misdemeanor has been committed outside of a police officer's presence, like a shoplifting, a citizen will be the one to make this citizen's arrest. You may also hear it referred to as signing a complaint or pressing charges. Let's say a guy steals a hammer from Home Depot, and a cashier sees it happen and calls the police. Let's say the police arrive actually in time to catch the guy in the parking lot. Even though the police made the physical detention of the suspect, the arrest from a legal standpoint is made by the cashier, who witnessed the crime. It is the witness that will be willing to testify in court as to what happened, not the cop, because the cop isn't the one witnessing anything, or technically making the arrest. Also the cashier, technically, isn't the victim, Home Depot is, but if the cashier decides he does not want to press charges or make a citizen's arrest, or file a compliant, then the police end up letting the suspect go.

However, if the cashier insists on making a citizen's arrest, even if the police believe it to be a false arrest, the police are legally obligated to receive the citizen's arrest from that citizen. Now, if I know this is a BS arrest, there's nothing stopping me as the police officer on the scene that is receiving this false arrest, citizen's arrest, there's nothing preventing me from issuing a promise to appear, which is essentially a ticket, a citation to the suspect and turning them loose right there on the spot.

Okay, so let's get back to the domestic violence incident. In the 1980s, there was a big push across the country to make domestic violence batteries a felony. Now battery is the unlawful use of force against another, and it's usually a misdemeanor unless there's great bodily injury, but domestic violence battery is when the battery occurs upon someone that meets one of several possible conditions. This will vary from state to state and certainly from country to country, but to use California as my convenient example, it's domestic violence, the technical name for this crime in California is actually corporal injury of a spouse.

What the law says is if the victim suffers a "traumatic condition", and the victim is the suspect's spouse, former spouse, cohabitant, former cohabitant, fiance, has or had an engagement or a dating relationship, or is the parent of the suspect's child, you can't hit your baby mama, then you're guilty of a wobbler. Oh, and they define traumatic condition to mean a wound, external or internal injury, including strangulation or suffocation, whether minor or serious in nature, when caused by physical force.

Okay, so what is a wobbler? A wobbler is any crime that can be charged as either a felony or a misdemeanor in court. Now the basic difference between felonies and misdemeanors is the punishment. Felonies are punishable by one year or more in the state prison. Misdemeanors are punishable by up to 365 days in county jail, and there may be fines involved as well. Of course, California recently messed up this simple felony versus misdemeanor concept by their prison realignment laws, so you can now be a felon sentenced to 20 years in a county jail, but that's a whole other cluster for another podcast episode.

If domestic violence is a wobbler, it is treated by the police as a felony, but then whether the DA charges it as a misdemeanor rather than a felony later, it's not the cop's decision and it doesn't really effect the way that we're handling it out in the field. The police will always treat wobblers as felonies. The reason is because it affords the police the ability to make probably cause arrests. They don't have to worry about being a witness to a misdemeanor. A wobbler, for all intents and purposes of the police is a felony.

That push in the 1980s to make domestic violence a felony was intentional, because it removed the option to press charges or not out of the hands of the victim. Pressing charges is not the victim's decision now because it's a felony. It's very common for victims of domestic violence to recant their stories by the time the case goes to court. By then the victim and the suspect may have reunited, or the suspect is pressuring the victim to refuse to testify, or urges the victim to tell the DA that they lied, or they wouldn't cooperate, or testify, or whatever. This is part of the domestic violence cycle, and while it can be very tough to prosecute a case with a reluctant victim, it's actually done all the time. Body cameras, photographs, good recorded interviews with everybody involved, including witnesses, make it really hard to refute what happened when it comes time to go to court.

Savvy prosecutors will also bring on expert witnesses that will testify to how a recanting victim is often evidence of ongoing domestic abuse. I hope that answers your question, that victims do not need to file a report or press charges for the police and prosecutors to charge the suspect in domestic violence cases, especially if the officer witnessed the violence and recorded it on body cam. Thank you for the question, A. Marie. You can find her at amariesilver.com.

Coffee Club patron, Rick Siem, and that's R-I-C-K, S-I-E-M.com conveniently asked why is a suspect interview that involves threats and intimidation, coercion, and even physical violence called giving someone the third degree? Are there first and second degree interview techniques? Interesting question, Rick. Well, Google and Wikipedia have a variety of answers on the etymology of the phrase that all seem to be somewhere between conjecture and a best guess. Is it a reference to the rigorous and interrogatory ceremony of becoming a third degree Freemason? Was it coined in the 19th Century by NYPD Detective Thomas F. Byrnes as a pun on his last name? Is it just the general concept of the third degree, generally meaning the greatest degree of intensity like a burn? Is that also why it's referred to as being grilled?

Well I will leave it up to you to research or decide. The important thing to know is that we as cops don't refer to it as the third degree, at least not anymore. We call it interrogation or questioning. Significant case law has shaped what is and is not permissible in an interrogation, and that third degree pressure is largely psychological. I really urge you to watch a few episodes of The First 48 to see how real murder interrogations occur. More importantly, see if you can spot when the conversation in the room switches from an interview into an interrogation. I'll give you a hint, the detective starts talking a lot more, and applying that psychological pressure. Watch for the change in the body language of the suspect. Does he cross his arms? Does he put his head down on the table? Does he cry? It's fascinating stuff to watch and dissect. Just don't be guilty of making your protagonists refer to it as the third degree if you're writing a modern story.

I'm innocent, see, innocent I tell you. You ain't going to pin this wrap on me.

All right, thanks for the question, Rick. You can find Rick at ricksiem.com.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Writer's Detective Bureau Podcast. Send me your questions by going to writersdetective.com/podcast and don't forget to give dictation a try. Get $10.00 off your first order at Rev by going to writersdetectivebureau.com/rev, R-E-V, to give it a shot.

Thanks again for listening. Have a great week and write well.