Police Services Editing and Proofreading Services

Policing generates written records that are examined more adversarially than almost any other public sector documents. An occurrence report is read by a prosecutor deciding whether a charge proceeds, by defence counsel looking for the inconsistency, by a disclosure clerk, by a coroner, by a civilian oversight body, and increasingly by the public through access requests. It is written at the end of a shift by someone who has been awake for fourteen hours, and it will be measured years later against body-worn camera footage that does not forget.

We edit what police services produce — occurrence and supplementary reports, notes and articulation of grounds, use of force reports and reviews, arrest, detention and rights documentation, disclosure packages and Crown briefs, search warrant information to obtain, victim and witness communications, missing person and public assistance releases, media releases and public information on serious incidents, policy and procedure manuals, training material and scenario documentation, community engagement and consultation material, complaint responses and oversight body submissions, and annual reports and crime statistics publications. Our editors check that reports separate observation from conclusion, and that public communications say what the service knows without asserting what it does not.

The public release about a serious incident — a death in custody, a police shooting, a serious injury — is the document that determines whether a community's response is grief or fury, and services routinely make it worse in the same way. The release uses the passive voice for the service's own actions and the active for everyone else's; it describes an officer-involved death as an interaction; it includes the deceased's criminal record; and it commits to nothing but a referral to an oversight body. We rewrite these so what the service knows is stated plainly in ordinary voice, so what is not yet known is listed rather than left as silence, so nothing is included about the person that is not necessary to the account, and so the release says when the next update will come and what the oversight process will and will not make public. Communities do not expect a service to comment on an active investigation. They expect it not to appear to be managing them, and passive constructions are read as exactly that.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including case material, records about identifiable people and matters before the courts — please redact as your obligations require. We are editors rather than police, legal or oversight professionals, and we offer no view on any investigation, charge or use of force. What we can do is make reports precise and public communications clear and unevasive.