How to Get Better at Incident Report Writing

Incident Report Writing questions are questions that appear across various US police exams and deal with filling out or reading police report forms. (For this reason, they are sometimes called “Police form questions”. In these questions, candidates are required to read and complete standard forms similar to those used by the police agency for which they are being interviewed.

While police report forms differ by department, usually the candidate will be presented with a form that looks something like the incident report form below:

There are several different types of questions the candidate may face during the police form section of their examination:

• Empty Form
  On empty form questions, candidates are asked to fill out an empty report form based on a short description of the incident.
  
  
• Incident Description
  Candidates may be given a description of a criminal incident (depending on the exam and the agency in question, the description may range in length from one paragraph to as long as a page) and asked questions about this description. Sometimes, candidates are asked to compare the text to the report or to determine whether the information in the text is sufficient for the report.
  
  
• Inference / Incomplete Report Questions
  Another, more challenging, form of a question about the police report form is the inference question. Here, candidates are given a partially completed report form and are asked to draw conclusions based on the information available within it. These questions are visibly similar to regular reading comprehension questions that you may have encountered in other examinations, or even in other sections of the law enforcement examination. Though the questions are certainly themed around police and crime subject matters, they don’t really require any advanced knowledge of the law or of police work. That being said, they’re not quite the same, and some candidates may find them more challenging.

There is a range of strategies that you can take to make to confront police report form questions with more confidence. Here are a few:

• Familiarize yourself in advance with the report format used by the specific agency you are applying to, or the specific test for which you are studying. This will help you both to read the forms and to fill them out in a more time-efficient manner.
• Learn to rapidly scan the incident description for details such as police officers’ badge numbers, vehicle numbers, addresses, and so on.
• Pay attention when reading the incident description and the form. If possible, re-read the incident description at least once. This will help you avoid being ‘tripped up’ by missing a small but crucial detail.
• Manage your time correctly. If you don’t know the answer to a question and can’t figure it out, sometimes it’s better to just move ahead to the next question. Time management is itself a police job skill that you are being tested for.
• Practice makes perfect! Try taking a few sample questions to assess what part of your performance can use improvement.

The best way to study incident report writing questions is to work with sample questions and mock tests. A key element of the police incident writing report test is to be able to answer the questions under a time crunch, so the best way to prepare is to complete mock tests that contain a time element.