Читать книгу Force Decisions. A Citizen's Guide to Understanding How Police Determine Appropriate Use of Force онлайн

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There has been a sea change since I started in this profession. Years ago, there was a presumption that the officers were the good guys and the criminal was the bad guy. It seems to a lot of officers that this has changed.

One of the ways it has affected the job is in how reports were written. When I started this job, I was specifically told that when we used force, the reports were to be as minimal as possible. I was told, “What you don’t put in, they can’t use against you.” “They,” of course, were civil litigation attorneys, internal affairs…anyone who might have a reason to scrutinize what you did. We also were often told to write reports only on incidents that were likely to result in scrutiny—“No blood, no foul.”

It was wrong and must have made it much easier to cover abuses when they did happen…but thinking had already begun to change. Attorneys are smart and they fully understand that there are lies of omission as well as commission. Now, the reports are expected to be excruciatingly thorough, to cover everything you did and everything you saw. It was a big change, but it resulted in an important lesson.