Law And Order, Criminal Minds (NCIS)

Most of the nation receives their information on law enforcement from television. That’s why I knew the Maranda rights by heart before I was even 12. Law and Order, Criminal Minds, NCIS, and shows similar to this are why some even enter into the law enforcement field they want to be like the famous profilers that solve cases in one hour plus commercials.

There are many forms of intercommunication that law enforcement officers’ use. One is the radio system that’s placed in their car, the writing on the car is even a type of communication, the dispatcher, and police reports, and these are just a few. Officers used their radio system to connect with each from car to car, so they can call for backup and described the crime scene to each other. The writing on a police car is almost a giant warning or a giant sign that law enforcement is near and ready to protect. The dispatcher as the name already says is the person who tells which officers to go to which citizen distress call or which crime scene. Police reports may be one of the most important though this can make or break a criminal case. They include evidence found, witnesses statements, assumed time of death

(if a homicide), etc.
Writing is actually a huge part of being an officer that’s not really publicized.

Well of course there is leg work and interviews, but without a police report there is case the criminal cannot be put away with pounds of evidence without the police report being filled out correctly. My criminal investigation professor has said many times that if you cannot write a police report you will not make it as an investigator. Reports are read by other officers, media, judges, etc. If an attorney finds mistakes in a report the same way they are found in college students papers then it would be easy to make the police officer seem stupid. There might be unclear sentence, wordiness, overuse of jargon or abbreviations. There many rules to writing reports because they are so necessary to the job

correctly.
As I have recently learned, discourse communities have a certain lexis (certain words that are only “experts” or those in the field might understand. Some of those the general public may be aware of because as previously said there are many law enforcement television shows where the focus could be on the whole department or on a small section of a department. This gives the public some simplistic knowledge of the lexis. Also, it is almost natural that the public would be aware of most of these “advance terms” because law enforcements only is intact because the citizen what protection, so citizen should understand every law and detail of law enforcement. Some of specific lexis law enforcement uses are: felony, warrant, raid, overhear, misdemeanor, narcotics. A felony is a serious crime, it is generally punishable by death or imprisonment of one or more years in an institution. A warrant is where an officer has found probable cause to search so the officer takes this information to a judge and receives permission so it is now legal and constitutional to search an area.
Law enforcement has so many things that must be known in order to be an expert, but I am nothing but a student that is learning from my professors. Like rookie cops have to learn from the cops that have been there longer. But, it’s an amazing field to be in to protect the nation. Yes, I was one of the people that first want to become an officer because of television, but that is how society learns.