?
Speaker 1:	The Missouri State Journal, a weekly program keeping you in touch with Missouri State University.

Nicki :	After the sirens are turned off and the emergencies are defused, the police officer's work is not done. Reporting the event in detail is next, but what should it include?
	I'm Nicki Donnelson. Today my guest is Doctor Leslie Seawright, assistant professor of English at Missouri State University. She is interested in the creation of police reports.

Dr Seawright:	I'm looking for, are the police officers aware of their audience? Are they writing for that audience? Basically, is the police reporting doing all the things that it needs to do in the justice system? It's a really important document, and it needs to do a lot of work, so I review the police reports to see are they doing the work that they're supposed to do?

Nicki :	Seawright has been with a police officer while she was pursuing her degree and she found the report writing process fascinating. She elaborates.

Dr Seawright:	I was getting my PHD in rhetoric in composition, and noticing how important the writing that my husband was doing as it related to the justice system. How important that document was for the prosecutor, for the defense attorney, for the judge, and ultimately for the victim and suspect. Everything that the police officer was writhing had to be correct, but it also had to meaningful, and it had to be meaningful in very specific ways.
	Once I encountered him writing these very important document, then I wanted to know, how are you trained to write this document? What's going on?

Nicki :	Seawright comes to Missouri State from the University of Texas A and M at Qatar, and she shares a few of the interesting findings from her analysis of police reports.

Dr Seawright:	Officer know exactly who they're writing to. They can name you the defense attorney that they're worried about. They know exactly who they're going to go up against on DUI cases, it's especially in small communities, they know exactly who the prosecutor is, they know exactly who the defense attorney is. However, that does not translate into knowing how or what to write for those individuals. A lot of times I saw officers falling into trying to cover themselves, trying to cover all their bases, and what happens is that they start writing a very rhetorical document. By that I mean, they're thinking about the defense. They're thinking about how this document is going to be taken down versus just trying to include everything that they can, whether it hurts their case of helps their case, including all of the facts, all of the witness statements, whether it hurts them or not. 
	They start to build their own case in the report and that's really troubling for the prosecutor. I would interview prosecutors, I would interview defense attorneys, and that was very troubling for them because then they don't have the information that they need in order to carry that report, and in order to serve justice for the victims and for the suspects.

Nicki :	So are these carefully crafted documents a true representation of the facts or is there something hidden? She explains.

Dr Seawright:	I don't think that officers are doing it maliciously, that's what I'll say. I met so many wonderful officers, and the people that I interviewed truly cared about the community and the job that they were doing. However, they live in a world in which every action they take is already critiqued. We do it as the public, as soon as there's a police involved shooting or an incident, we're saying what the police officer should have done. That is the world in which they're living and working. I think it would be something that you or I would naturally do, we would begin to build a case rhetorically, knowing that people were going to be trying to punch holes in that.

Nicki :	Looking at the research, Seawright notes the need for a change. She says the system has demanded more from police officers, getting these reports done quickly and sometimes in a car while on patrol. As long as officers continue to fear every word and action will be scrutinized, reports will continue to be flawed. She tells us more.

Dr Seawright:	A lot of people have called on the body cameras and the police dash cams in order to fix this. That is not a fix in my opinion. There are some structural things that need to addressed, structural racism, implicit bias, the ways in which police officers are trained to write reports and the interactions that they make with the community that need to be addressed. Body cameras are not going to solve this issue. Dash cams have been around for 20 years, they have not solved this issue, and so we really need to look structurally at our police departments and at our justice system and say, "How can we do a better job in reporting the facts and in getting people the justice they deserve?"

Nicki :	That was Doctor Leslie Seawright, assistant professor of English at Missouri State University. 
	I'm Nicki Donnelson for the Missouri State Journal.

Speaker 1:	For more information, contact the office of University communications at 417-836-6397. The Missouri State Journal is available online at ksmu.org