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When I first started as a police officer, over 40 years ago, paperwork was one of the most tedious things we did.

If I made a simple DUI arrest: I wrote a citation, then a DUI test report, a booking slip, a property/evidence form, the arrest report, completed a criminal history form, an arresting officer's statement, a probable cause form, and finally, an offender index card which is what the department had for our "records check" file.

The actual arrest might take a few minutes. The paperwork often took three hours.

Today, with the aid of computers, all the above can be done in about an hour.

When I was a Captain in my old department, we were discussing computers and finally got some with a "police program" installed. Just before we started using them I took a survey of 200 arrests. I required the arresting officers to note the time it took them to process an arrest. From the time they made the arrest to the time they filled out the last form. The average processing time was a little over four hours. Six months after we got the computers I repeated the survey. The time dropped to a little over an hour. Biggest reason was that the computer did several jobs at once and once data was entered, a simple push of a button would fill in that data on another form. Second reason, "Spell Check"!! Since the officer didn't have to spend time finding his spelling errors and correcting them, much less time was spent on the report.

Reports and forms still are a large part of what a cop does. However, the computer sure has made that less of a tedious task.

Ive been a cop for 9 years, and yes.. there is more and more paperwork all the time, but most of it now is on computers, so if you can type you should be fine.

I have a degree in Criminal Justice and I had many teachers that are retired cops and they said a large majority of the job is paperwork. SO...your uncle is right.

Yep, it's a big part of the job. Especially depending on what type of department, big city, small town, county or state, or your position, supervisor, patrolman, k-9 handler, they all have their own paperwork requirements. But it is only part of the job, and if you are in law enforcement because you find it rewarding, the paperwork doesn't bother you so much.

The amount of paperwork you have to do depends on the number of incidents you handled, and the number of arrests you made during the day.

Yes its 70% paper work, each call you take has a paper trail, the more serious the call the more that has to be written and forms filed. Dont get me wrong, the job is rewarding, and computers have helped get us back on the street faster then when everything had to be typed.

Yeah, and as I merely discovered final weekend, it valuable can take a hell of a protracted time. i replaced into think to spend it slow with this one officer I went out on a date with. yet whilst i ultimately have been given far off from my activity for an hour to hold close with him, he replaced into writing a police checklist that took him an hour to end. And he replaced into fairly focusing on it too. They curiously could be blunders data.

There's a lot of report writing involved. For every citation, arrest, etc. that you do, you need to write a report for it. It becomes very tedious after a while writing the same kinds of reports day in and day out.

Yes Butt loads, However with computer systems such as form flow and COPS 2.5 we have a little less hand writing to be doing but yes thers is tons of paper work. ...........Shadow Stalker

yes...and it has to be correct and in detail....I had a case,nothing major,recovered a stripped stolen car....3 years later it would up in federal court because my report was the initiating factor that led to a number of convictions I had to testify to every detail...if I had skipped some stuff the case could have been lost...its hard sometimes but you have to do it right every time