This is long, but has a lot of good (IMHO) information. Found it on this website: http://www.firearmstactical.com/tactical.htm
Communicating Effectively with Police
Disclaimer: Use this information at your own risk. The information presented in this article is not intended as legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. We accept no responsibility for the use or misuse of the information contained herein. Readers are encouraged to contact a private attorney to obtain specific legal advice.
One of the least discussed topics of personal defense is how to communicate effectively with police when you’ve encountered criminal activity directed at you or others. The advice given in books and magazine articles almost always focuses exclusively on what you should say to police after you’ve shot an attacker. While the guidance and information given are usually sensible, there are many other situations in which you might become involved where your ability to successfully interact with police will have a substantial bearing on the outcome of a criminal incident, in which you, a member of your family or a neighbor is the victim or intended victim.
Dialing for Emergency Services during a Life or Death Crisis
If you haven’t already done so, it’s vitally important that you post the telephone number(s) to dial for police, fire and medical emergencies directly on, or near, your telephone. During times of crisis you might not be able to retrieve the telephone number from memory. "9-1-1" seems like such a simple telephone number to remember, but when you’re stressed during an emergency the part of your brain responsible for memory doesn’t function well. This is because the area of your brain responsible for large motor movements, needed for fighting or fleeing, takes over. Without having the telephone number posted nearby to refer to, your brain could go blank while you desperately try to bring to mind the correct telephone number, or your brain might stubbornly keep telling you that the number to dial is "5-1-1."
It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking "this won’t happen to me." Even if you’ve already experienced the extreme duress of a life or death situation, don’t underestimate your reaction to stress. The effects of stress are unpredictable. Rather than leaving things to chance and risk possible failure, you should plan ahead and do everything possible that will contribute to mission success.
Peel and stick "9-1-1" –type labels to apply to your telephone are usually available for free from your police or fire department.
Location and Direction of Travel
If you call 9-1-1 to report an attempted crime, a crime in progress, or a crime that has just occurred on your property or in your immediate neighborhood, can you supply police with more information than just the street address of your home? If the suspect flees down the road in front of your home, can you inform dispatchers of his direction of travel? Could you perform this task right now if you had to?
Police refer to locations and direction of travel in terms of north, south, east and west. For example, depending on where you live, if your street address ends in an even number police officers will know to look for your home on the north or east side of the street because that might be how your city or county assigns street addresses. Whereas addresses that end in an odd number might always be located on the south or west side of a street. If your street address ends in an odd number, chances are pretty good that all the houses and lots on your side of the street have addresses that end with an odd number too. This is very basic information indeed, but it’s news to many people.
How do you report a suspect who fled down your street? In what direction did he flee? It’s a good idea to sketch a map of your immediate neighborhood. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Your map should include the street you reside on, the names of intersecting streets, the cardinal points of the compass, and the street addresses of the houses/businesses in your immediate vicinity. Your map can also list the telephone numbers of nearby neighbors so you don’t have to waste time thumbing through the white pages. Laminate this map and keep it by your telephone. It’s best to have at least one map near every telephone in your home.
During times of stress, your homemade map will provide you with essential reference information that might be hard for you to recall at the moment. The best way to make use of the map, while you’re on the phone with police, is to position the map in front of you and physically align yourself and the map so that you’re both facing toward the street directly in front of your home. You want the line that you’ve drawn on your map which represents your street to be parallel with the street in front of your home, so as you look down the street to your left and right, your map is oriented to depict the same directions. In doing this, the map will be lined-up with the street and surrounding landscape making it easier to refer to.
An uncomplicated sketch-map allows you to efficiently provide information to police using their language. For example, if you saw the suspect run down the street to your right and then he turned left at the second intersection, you have all the information at your immediate disposal to report to police that the suspect: "fled south on Elm Street and turned west onto Walnut Avenue." This provides dispatchers and police with more useful information over the phone than: "the suspect ran down the street to the second intersection and turned left."
Home Intruder
It’s 3:30 A.M. and you’re awakened by unusual noises coming from another part of your home. You’re not sure if it’s one of the kids, an animal or an intruder. You arm yourself with a shotgun and take a cover position while your spouse silently checks the kid’s bedrooms, and finds them all in bed sleeping. The noise continues. Your spouse awakens the children and quietly escorts them to the family’s safe room. You take a defensive position of advantage, and using a command voice you call out into the darkness: "Who’s there!" You hear sounds that make you believe an intruder is scrambling noisily to get out of your house. You hear someone or something run across the back porch, climb over the fence and into the night, and then it’s quiet.
In the meantime your spouse has called 9-1-1 on the cellular telephone and police are on the way. He/she has told the dispatcher that you’re armed, that the family has taken refuge in a bedroom on the second floor, and it sounds like the intruder fled out the back door. The dispatcher directs your spouse to keep all family members in the same room together until officers arrive.
Several squad cars respond and the dispatcher keeps your spouse informed of the police activity outside. The officers check the exterior of your house and find evidence that an intruder entered a downstairs window by removing the screen. Your spouse is told that the K9 unit is on the way and that the police dog will be used to clear the house while your family remains hunkered down in the secure room. The dispatcher asks if there’s a key available to give to the officers so they can enter the house through one of the locked doors. You’ve thought of this situation ahead of time and you’ve prepared for it by attaching a house key to a Cyalume chemical light stick. Also attached to the chem-light is a small laminated map of your home’s interior layout, downstairs depicted on one side and the upstairs on the other side. While you maintain security, your spouse removes these items from their storage place (first aid kit or tackle box) in the safe room, and uses a grease pencil to mark the map with an "X" to indicate the room that your family presently occupies. Your spouse tells the dispatcher that he/she will throw the key out the second story window on the northeast corner. He/she activates the chem-light, opens the window, cuts the corner of the screen with a knife from the tackle box and tosses the key, map and chem-light assembly out the window.
Shortly thereafter the K9 unit arrives. The dispatcher coordinates communications between your spouse and the officers. The K9 unit enters your home and begins searching while the dispatcher keeps your spouse informed of the team’s location as they make their way through the house. Finally, the dispatcher tells your spouse that officers are right outside the door and that they want you to put your shotgun away. The dispatcher further explains that the officers will holler verbal commands for members of your family to exit the room one at a time while they maintain control of the situation. You and your family follow the instructions and you’re safely evacuated from the room.
A spare house key that’s kept in a first aid kit, tackle box or your gun’s lock box is a handy item to have if police want to enter and clear your home. Attaching the key to a chem-light (or a glow-in-the-dark key ring) keeps it from being lost when you toss it out the window.
A small laminated map of your home’s interior can be used to show police your exact location, plus it provides the layout of your home to officers. Like the map of your neighborhood, it doesn’t have to be the work of a gifted artist. It might help you to sketch it out on a full size sheet of paper and then reduce its size using a photocopier until it’s approximately the size of a credit card. Laminate it, punch a hole in it and attach it to the key ring using a small dog tag-type ball chain or nylon cable tie.
(While this isn’t really a relevant part of the article, in this hypothetical situation the husband and wife worked together as a team using a concept called "contact/cover." It doesn’t matter if one spouse is armed or both are armed. One spouse provides dedicated armed cover while the other performs "administrative" tasks, such as checking on the children, waking and guiding them to the safe room, and coordinating all communications with police over the telephone.)
Obtaining and Reporting Suspect Description
Some situations require you to obtain a hasty description of a criminal suspect. If there’s multiple suspects involved, or you only have time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the suspect(s), start first with taking note of general details. This information gives responding officers very basic, but vital information they need to do their job. As they approach the location or scout the area in which the suspect was last seen, officers have the minimum information they need to identify a potential suspect and make contact with him.
General details include:
Sex
Complexion/racial appearance (white, black, brown/Asian, Hispanic, Samoan, etc.)
General age by appearance (adult, juvenile, child)
Shirt or jacket color and general type
Any obvious distinctive feature
Location or direction of travel
A general description permits you to report basic information to police, for example: male, white, juvenile, wearing a green T-shirt with yellow logo, last seen running north on Sycamore Street.
Once you obtain a basic description you can follow-up by observing more distinctive details of the suspect’s attire and appearance:
Hair or Hat (color, length, style)
Color/Type of Pants or Skirt (blue jeans, khaki skirt, black shorts, red sweat pants)
General height (tall, average, short)
General build (slender, medium, heavy)
Any other unique features (beard/moustache, designs shaved into hair, prominent tattoo, missing teeth, etc.)
You can report follow-up information to police, if needed, to provide a more discriminating description of the suspect. For example, the juvenile suspect reported above may be further described as: has long blonde hair styled in a ponytail, wearing a tan ballcap, khaki shorts, his build is tall and slender, with a goatee.
Obtaining and Reporting Suspect Vehicle Description
The same guidelines for obtaining and reporting a suspect’s description apply to vehicle descriptions. Start with general details first, then progress to more specific details as time permits.
A general vehicle description includes:
Basic size and body type (large, mid-size, compact, 2-door, 4-door, automobile, station wagon, SUV, Jeep, sports car, etc.)
Color
Any obvious distinctive feature (custom rims, racing stripes, raised or lowered suspension, oversize tires, roll bar, etc.)
Nationality of make (American, Japanese, European)
Location or direction of travel
Example: 2-door mid-size American made automobile, black low-rider with chrome rims last seen going north on Elm Street from the intersection at Firetree Court.
Specific details:
License Plate Number (if possible)
Number of Occupants
Make/Model/Period of Manufacture (if possible)
Example: Partial Washington tag WEV3, driver and one passenger, possibly an older Monte Carlo or Cutlass.
Communicating Effectively with Police
Disclaimer: Use this information at your own risk. The information presented in this article is not intended as legal advice, nor should it be considered as such. We accept no responsibility for the use or misuse of the information contained herein. Readers are encouraged to contact a private attorney to obtain specific legal advice.
One of the least discussed topics of personal defense is how to communicate effectively with police when you’ve encountered criminal activity directed at you or others. The advice given in books and magazine articles almost always focuses exclusively on what you should say to police after you’ve shot an attacker. While the guidance and information given are usually sensible, there are many other situations in which you might become involved where your ability to successfully interact with police will have a substantial bearing on the outcome of a criminal incident, in which you, a member of your family or a neighbor is the victim or intended victim.
Dialing for Emergency Services during a Life or Death Crisis
If you haven’t already done so, it’s vitally important that you post the telephone number(s) to dial for police, fire and medical emergencies directly on, or near, your telephone. During times of crisis you might not be able to retrieve the telephone number from memory. "9-1-1" seems like such a simple telephone number to remember, but when you’re stressed during an emergency the part of your brain responsible for memory doesn’t function well. This is because the area of your brain responsible for large motor movements, needed for fighting or fleeing, takes over. Without having the telephone number posted nearby to refer to, your brain could go blank while you desperately try to bring to mind the correct telephone number, or your brain might stubbornly keep telling you that the number to dial is "5-1-1."
It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking "this won’t happen to me." Even if you’ve already experienced the extreme duress of a life or death situation, don’t underestimate your reaction to stress. The effects of stress are unpredictable. Rather than leaving things to chance and risk possible failure, you should plan ahead and do everything possible that will contribute to mission success.
Peel and stick "9-1-1" –type labels to apply to your telephone are usually available for free from your police or fire department.
Location and Direction of Travel
If you call 9-1-1 to report an attempted crime, a crime in progress, or a crime that has just occurred on your property or in your immediate neighborhood, can you supply police with more information than just the street address of your home? If the suspect flees down the road in front of your home, can you inform dispatchers of his direction of travel? Could you perform this task right now if you had to?
Police refer to locations and direction of travel in terms of north, south, east and west. For example, depending on where you live, if your street address ends in an even number police officers will know to look for your home on the north or east side of the street because that might be how your city or county assigns street addresses. Whereas addresses that end in an odd number might always be located on the south or west side of a street. If your street address ends in an odd number, chances are pretty good that all the houses and lots on your side of the street have addresses that end with an odd number too. This is very basic information indeed, but it’s news to many people.
How do you report a suspect who fled down your street? In what direction did he flee? It’s a good idea to sketch a map of your immediate neighborhood. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Your map should include the street you reside on, the names of intersecting streets, the cardinal points of the compass, and the street addresses of the houses/businesses in your immediate vicinity. Your map can also list the telephone numbers of nearby neighbors so you don’t have to waste time thumbing through the white pages. Laminate this map and keep it by your telephone. It’s best to have at least one map near every telephone in your home.
During times of stress, your homemade map will provide you with essential reference information that might be hard for you to recall at the moment. The best way to make use of the map, while you’re on the phone with police, is to position the map in front of you and physically align yourself and the map so that you’re both facing toward the street directly in front of your home. You want the line that you’ve drawn on your map which represents your street to be parallel with the street in front of your home, so as you look down the street to your left and right, your map is oriented to depict the same directions. In doing this, the map will be lined-up with the street and surrounding landscape making it easier to refer to.
An uncomplicated sketch-map allows you to efficiently provide information to police using their language. For example, if you saw the suspect run down the street to your right and then he turned left at the second intersection, you have all the information at your immediate disposal to report to police that the suspect: "fled south on Elm Street and turned west onto Walnut Avenue." This provides dispatchers and police with more useful information over the phone than: "the suspect ran down the street to the second intersection and turned left."
Home Intruder
It’s 3:30 A.M. and you’re awakened by unusual noises coming from another part of your home. You’re not sure if it’s one of the kids, an animal or an intruder. You arm yourself with a shotgun and take a cover position while your spouse silently checks the kid’s bedrooms, and finds them all in bed sleeping. The noise continues. Your spouse awakens the children and quietly escorts them to the family’s safe room. You take a defensive position of advantage, and using a command voice you call out into the darkness: "Who’s there!" You hear sounds that make you believe an intruder is scrambling noisily to get out of your house. You hear someone or something run across the back porch, climb over the fence and into the night, and then it’s quiet.
In the meantime your spouse has called 9-1-1 on the cellular telephone and police are on the way. He/she has told the dispatcher that you’re armed, that the family has taken refuge in a bedroom on the second floor, and it sounds like the intruder fled out the back door. The dispatcher directs your spouse to keep all family members in the same room together until officers arrive.
Several squad cars respond and the dispatcher keeps your spouse informed of the police activity outside. The officers check the exterior of your house and find evidence that an intruder entered a downstairs window by removing the screen. Your spouse is told that the K9 unit is on the way and that the police dog will be used to clear the house while your family remains hunkered down in the secure room. The dispatcher asks if there’s a key available to give to the officers so they can enter the house through one of the locked doors. You’ve thought of this situation ahead of time and you’ve prepared for it by attaching a house key to a Cyalume chemical light stick. Also attached to the chem-light is a small laminated map of your home’s interior layout, downstairs depicted on one side and the upstairs on the other side. While you maintain security, your spouse removes these items from their storage place (first aid kit or tackle box) in the safe room, and uses a grease pencil to mark the map with an "X" to indicate the room that your family presently occupies. Your spouse tells the dispatcher that he/she will throw the key out the second story window on the northeast corner. He/she activates the chem-light, opens the window, cuts the corner of the screen with a knife from the tackle box and tosses the key, map and chem-light assembly out the window.
Shortly thereafter the K9 unit arrives. The dispatcher coordinates communications between your spouse and the officers. The K9 unit enters your home and begins searching while the dispatcher keeps your spouse informed of the team’s location as they make their way through the house. Finally, the dispatcher tells your spouse that officers are right outside the door and that they want you to put your shotgun away. The dispatcher further explains that the officers will holler verbal commands for members of your family to exit the room one at a time while they maintain control of the situation. You and your family follow the instructions and you’re safely evacuated from the room.
A spare house key that’s kept in a first aid kit, tackle box or your gun’s lock box is a handy item to have if police want to enter and clear your home. Attaching the key to a chem-light (or a glow-in-the-dark key ring) keeps it from being lost when you toss it out the window.
A small laminated map of your home’s interior can be used to show police your exact location, plus it provides the layout of your home to officers. Like the map of your neighborhood, it doesn’t have to be the work of a gifted artist. It might help you to sketch it out on a full size sheet of paper and then reduce its size using a photocopier until it’s approximately the size of a credit card. Laminate it, punch a hole in it and attach it to the key ring using a small dog tag-type ball chain or nylon cable tie.
(While this isn’t really a relevant part of the article, in this hypothetical situation the husband and wife worked together as a team using a concept called "contact/cover." It doesn’t matter if one spouse is armed or both are armed. One spouse provides dedicated armed cover while the other performs "administrative" tasks, such as checking on the children, waking and guiding them to the safe room, and coordinating all communications with police over the telephone.)
Obtaining and Reporting Suspect Description
Some situations require you to obtain a hasty description of a criminal suspect. If there’s multiple suspects involved, or you only have time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the suspect(s), start first with taking note of general details. This information gives responding officers very basic, but vital information they need to do their job. As they approach the location or scout the area in which the suspect was last seen, officers have the minimum information they need to identify a potential suspect and make contact with him.
General details include:
Sex
Complexion/racial appearance (white, black, brown/Asian, Hispanic, Samoan, etc.)
General age by appearance (adult, juvenile, child)
Shirt or jacket color and general type
Any obvious distinctive feature
Location or direction of travel
A general description permits you to report basic information to police, for example: male, white, juvenile, wearing a green T-shirt with yellow logo, last seen running north on Sycamore Street.
Once you obtain a basic description you can follow-up by observing more distinctive details of the suspect’s attire and appearance:
Hair or Hat (color, length, style)
Color/Type of Pants or Skirt (blue jeans, khaki skirt, black shorts, red sweat pants)
General height (tall, average, short)
General build (slender, medium, heavy)
Any other unique features (beard/moustache, designs shaved into hair, prominent tattoo, missing teeth, etc.)
You can report follow-up information to police, if needed, to provide a more discriminating description of the suspect. For example, the juvenile suspect reported above may be further described as: has long blonde hair styled in a ponytail, wearing a tan ballcap, khaki shorts, his build is tall and slender, with a goatee.
Obtaining and Reporting Suspect Vehicle Description
The same guidelines for obtaining and reporting a suspect’s description apply to vehicle descriptions. Start with general details first, then progress to more specific details as time permits.
A general vehicle description includes:
Basic size and body type (large, mid-size, compact, 2-door, 4-door, automobile, station wagon, SUV, Jeep, sports car, etc.)
Color
Any obvious distinctive feature (custom rims, racing stripes, raised or lowered suspension, oversize tires, roll bar, etc.)
Nationality of make (American, Japanese, European)
Location or direction of travel
Example: 2-door mid-size American made automobile, black low-rider with chrome rims last seen going north on Elm Street from the intersection at Firetree Court.
Specific details:
License Plate Number (if possible)
Number of Occupants
Make/Model/Period of Manufacture (if possible)
Example: Partial Washington tag WEV3, driver and one passenger, possibly an older Monte Carlo or Cutlass.