Police Written Discourse: Analysing Notable Glitches in Police Reports

Abstract There has recently been a significant amount of interest in the study of police written discourse, particularly in the areas of monolingualism, warnings, and identifying deception. This article draws attention to the serious—yet unresolved—issue of unintelligibility in police reports. It gives insight into the grammatical and lexical complexities seen in these narrative reports, as well as how they affect meaning. A qualitative research technique was used to investigate the phenomenon. A collection of police reports from multiple criminal incidents—assault, intimidation, and crimen injuria—was examined using the theoretical lens of error analysis. The analysis involved error identification, classification, and description. The results show that the reports contained several inaccuracies that placed a heavy interpretive load on readers. These results are expected to increase police awareness of the role of language in presenting meaning and evidence. It is envisioned that this will enable police to write with accuracy, thereby solving cases more reliably and effectively.


Introduction
The current study spans two fields.It is carried out within the broader discipline of applied linguistics but with a particular focus on forensic linguistics.Forensic linguistics is a subfield of applied linguistics that focuses on language-related problems in the legal community (Gibbons and Turrell 2008).In the words of Correa (2013, 5), this includes any written or spoken record that can be used in court, such as emails containing threats, police reports, suicide notes, and fictitious wills.
The field of forensic linguistics began in 1968 when Swedish linguist Jan Svartvik studied grammatical inconsistencies in a series of police statements (Olsson 2004).In the early 1990s, Coulthard invigorated this effort by studying additional police narrative reports.One of these was the text attributed to Derek Bentley, who was hanged in the 1950s but later pardoned (Olsson 2004, 1).Since then, this field has grown in prominence around the world, including the southern African region, where writers such as Kaschula and Ralarala (2004) have made substantial contributions in relation to linguistic barriers that ordinary people face when dealing with matters of law.Forensic linguistics remains a novel and intriguing approach which is the motivation for the current article.
The present article examined police reports as they fall within the scholarship of both forensic linguistics and applied linguistics.These reports ("statements" from here on) have a great deal of responsibility for the community and the legal system.For context, they start off the entire judicial process and go on to decide an individual's fate.In actuality, they are written by the police on behalf of the complainants.If these statements are not adequately constructed, the police risk losing the public's trust, harming their reputation, and perhaps giving communities a reason to turn vigilante.
The issues addressed here relate to police constables.These officers complete a yearlong integrated training curriculum termed the "basic police development learning programme" (SAPS Annual Report 2008, 22).The programme comprises academic training in the following areas: introduction to the South African Police Service, legal background, community service centre, investigation, crime prevention, and street survival (SAPS Annual Report 2008, 22).Upon graduation, these officers participate in field training, working closely with a field training officer to obtain practical knowledge of every aspect of the job.Kekana (2015) takes issue with the current programme, claiming that it fails to address the basic issue of language training.Sezer (2004, vi) similarly states that it is erroneous to believe that constables' writing skills may be addressed by police training alone.Sezer maintains that police have writing issueseven when they have obtained a higher education.Sezer (2004, i) attributes this challenge to the fact that the English they learned in high school was "focused on the principles of general English, as such, it cannot always equip them with the language needs of the job-police."Some research has been done in this field of study, although only scantily.For instance, Mvabaza (2018) provided a critique of a sworn statement translation in the SAPS but does not examine the linguistic features of the police reports.Hall (2008, 67) conducted research on the spoken language of police communication, which he dubbed "policespeak."He investigated a variety of easily identifiable complexities that characterised this language.A comparable study into police functional literacy was conducted by Arend (2002), though not in the field of text analysis, with reference to statements produced by English non-native speakers.Arend found that the gap between historical and present literacy practices in the SAPS is inherent in the "disorder" between current institutional and professional discourses.
The present study is part of a larger body of work that investigates police written discourse using linguistics and forensic linguistics approaches.It is focused on grammar and lexical problems that police create when writing statements.Miller and Pomerenke (1989, 66) describe these problems as the incorrect use of pronouns, inaccurate tenses, incorrect verbs, poor grammar structure, and spelling problems.Djiwandono (2017, 183) controversially argued that grammatically incorrect structures are detrimental but do not always affect meaning.This stance is supported by Hoffmann's (2013, 99) claim that a "sentence that by grammar rules is not grammatical may be acceptable if the receivers can somehow understand it easily."Within this context, this article explored police statements to detect inconsistencies and how they influenced the interpretation of the texts.

Problem Statement
During judicial proceedings and investigations, the accuracy of statements is important (Ahmed 2021, 26).The link between what occurred during a criminal incident and the actual words expressed in the statement must be consistent.Still, these statements have some language problems.Labov (1997, 395) makes an insightful argument about the statement-taking process.Labov observed that when taking statements, officers at times "select incidents out of several others that they believe are significant while ignoring others, and then rearrange what happened to suit their understanding of causality." An equally important submission is made by Ralarala (2014), that statement-taking (often) involves translating across two languages, which could be the complainant's and the officer's second (additional) language.In this textual travel, important information may be lost or relayed incorrectly owing to a lack of linguistic abilities, paralinguistic elements, or inaccurate translation from one language to the other.
According to Ahmed (2021), statements should be carefully worded since inaccurate linguistic features in the statement, together with chronological inconsistencies, may raise suspicions about police records.Furthermore, a poorly written statement has the potential to "change what transpired during the actual criminal occurrence" (Chafe 1986, 262), thereby causing contradictions during cross-examination.This, to some extent, might serve as a reason for justices to summon police (regularly) to clarify what they have written, which may result in unnecessary delays.

Context and Research Objectives
This study focused mostly on Sepedi-speaking police officers who speak English as a second language.This decision was influenced by the researchers' ability to analyse Sepedi as well as the availability of these language speakers at the research site.These officers utilise Sepedi as the language of engagement with their families and coworkers, and in other social contexts except when they must write English statements at work.This may mean that these officers were exposed to a similar level of Sepedi and English throughout their careers, including elementary and secondary schooling and police training.The following research objectives were determined: 1.To identify common English grammar and lexical errors in police statements.2. To trace the number of times these errors occurred in the statements.3. To categorise these features.

Theoretical Lens
This study is viewed through the lens of Lado (1957) on contrastive analysis, Corder (1967) on error analysis, and Selinker (1972) on interlanguage.These fields are discussed in tandem, along with their trends and effects on second language use, because they complement each other at different levels.
People who use a second or foreign language encounter many kinds of linguistic challenges, including dealing with its sound system, grammar, vocabulary, and other language mechanics.Scholars of foreign and second language writing (Corder 1967;Lado 1957;Selinker 1972) attempted to identify the roots of the problem, which resulted in the development of the three fields of study mentioned above.
The field of contrastive analysis gained popularity in the 1960s because of authors like Lado.According to Lado (1957), the fundamental principle of the contrastive analysis theory is that any linguistic errors made by second-language speakers in their written work are brought about by interference from their mother tongue.In their simple exposition of the contrastive analysis theory, Richards and Schmidt (2002, 184) refer to it as a "technique for identifying similarities and differences between one's mother tongue and the target language."In this case, the similarities would indicate accurate language use, while the differences would indicate incorrect language use.It is thought, as Erdogan (2005, 261) puts it, "that by using contrastive analysis, language issues might be predicted, and teaching strategies could be suggested to prevent errors in the future." The theory of contrastive analysis, however, is not without criticism.James (1998) opined that errors are caused not only by language transfer but also by the underlying structures of each language.Errors can also occur because of the incorrect use of the rules of language, over-generalisation, or ignorance of the rules.This criticism led to the development of an alternate theory in the late 1960s-error theory.In Corder's (1967, 53) words, the theory of error analysis augmented contrastive analysis by looking not only at the effect of native transference but also at elements related to the internal structure of the language, i.e., grammar, and lexical principles of the text.
In the 1970s, theorists such as Selinker (1971) embraced a larger perspective on language use known as interlanguage.Ellis (1994, 351) believes that interlanguage influences notions of language change, language learning, and, more broadly, language contact.Interlanguage presupposes that written works produced by a language speaker who does not identify as a native speaker may be deemed ungrammatical.That is, they have multiple shortcomings in lexis, spelling, and grammar in general (Khansir 2012(Khansir , 1027)).
The theory of error analysis is thus critical in this quest.Despite some of its shortfalls, its primary objective has been to help in identifying potential language difficulties in a second language, and it has an extra layer of providing analysis and classification of errors (Schachter and Celce-Murcia 1977).This is significant in the context of this study as it lays the groundwork for the analysis of linguistic abilities demonstrated in police reports, as well as the measures that may be recommended to address this issue.This adds to the works of Babili (2022) on error analysis, particularly in the case of nonnative English-speaking police officers and the potential implications this may have on the larger society, and Flusk (2023) on how language translation impairs the intelligibility of police reports.

Methodology
Research methodology and design are the plans that researchers employ to perform research (Burns and Grove 1998, 745).A qualitative approach with an emphasis on social issues that revolve around people's lives was adopted in this study.This approach entails "studying things in their natural setting, attempting to make sense of, or interpret the phenomena in terms of the meaning individuals assign to them" (Denzin and Lincoln 2013, 7).Leininger (1985, 5) explains the qualitative approach as "an approach for investigating, evaluating, and interpreting the meaning of individual elements of the phenomena." A qualitative descriptive design was employed in this study.Calderon (2006) defines descriptive research as a "deliberate process of collecting, analysing, and tabulating data on a specific situation or practice, which offers an appropriate interpretation of the data, often with little or no support from statistical analysis."The reason for applying a qualitative descriptive design is that it usually makes use of in-depth and verbal explanations, along with quantitative data.Although frequency counts were employed in this study to rate errors detected in police statements, much of the analysis was based on detailed descriptions of linguistic elements observed in the reports.
The researchers served as the primary data collectors and analytic instrument interpreters.Merriam (1998, 23) observes that in qualitative studies, the researcher "collects data in a non-interfering manner, seeking to study real-life events as they evolve naturally without the research, or its results being influenced by preconceived conditions."The data used in this work were pre-existing statements.The reason for this choice of data source is that existing texts are stable and non-reactive documents (Denzin 1978, 256).In other words, the researchers would not be able to modify what is being studied in order to deform the results.

Data Collection
The data were collected by means of a documentary review.Documentary analysis is usually coupled with other qualitative methods (Denzin 1970, 291).Marshall and Rossman (1989, 79) note that mixing data sources boosts validity.Because no single source of information can be relied upon to offer an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon, Patton (2002, 306) concurs that using a variety of methodologies is crucial.Although it has typically been used in conjunction with other research techniques, documentary analysis has also been utilised on its own (Glaser and Strauss 1967, 179).In this study, documentary review was used as a stand-alone method.Hammersley and Atkinson (1995, 173) observe that when used as a single method, documentary review provides a wealth of information for data analysis.Pandit (1996) and Turner (1983) performed documentary analyses using documents like newspapers, brokers' statements, and annual corporate statements, thereby using the theoretical framework as the analytical approach for addressing the aspects that were deemed relevant in the texts.
A corpus of 45 "real-life" sources-statements written by non-native English police constables-was collected.The justifiable quantity for secondary data sources should range between 10 and 100, according to Clarke and Braun (2013).The data were gathered from five pseudonymised local police stations in Tshwane in Gauteng province, namely Suntan, Silvermont, Scottdale, Edenvale, and Panorama.The district of Tshwane, where these police stations are located, was chosen because the 2011 census revealed that non-native English speakers accounted for nearly 93.4%, making non-English speakers the largest group in this district (Statistics South Africa 2011, 4).
The data comprised 45 statements that were written between 2016 and 2018 with word counts ranging from 150 to 300.In each police station, nine copies of statements were purposefully sampled from texts representing investigative genres such as common assault, intimidation, and crimen injuria.Purposeful sampling was used to find appropriate cases with relevant information for in-depth analysis (Patton 1990, 169).Halliday and James (1993) surmise that such texts can provide knowledge about grammatical elements such as articles, punctuation, style, and a comparison of frequencies in both past and present tenses.
The researchers gathered the data from reputable sources such as real-life statements.Scott (1990, 28) noted that the authenticity of the document ensures that the researcher is not misled.In other words, the pre-existing documents cannot be twisted to prove a one-direction assumption.To align with this notion, the researchers chose statements from cases that were acquitted by the court, statements from cases that were closed as false cases, and statements from cases that were withdrawn because there was no prospect of a conviction.The researchers' pre-design selection suggested that they could easily obtain statements written from 2016 going forward, as such material is more likely to have been archived.The intention behind this decision was to keep the study from interfering with ongoing legal proceedings.

Ethical Issues
Most researchers who explore qualitative designs emphasise the significance of ethical considerations (Punch 2014;Sieber 1998).The researcher must respect informants' rights, values, needs, and preferences.This is especially important in this study because the informants' status and institution are prominently shown.The following measures were used to preserve the informants' rights.
First, approval to collect the data was obtained from the Senate Higher Degrees Committee at the University of Johannesburg and the SAPS Legal and Policy Services.The study's aim and research methodologies were explained.Following approval, 45 copies of statements were selected from the specified police stations.
The researchers then made certain that all the data sets had been coded using different coders.This was done to guarantee that all personal data on statements had been erased completely.Consequently, all identifiers, both direct and indirect, such as names, stations, dates, institutions, locations, organisations, objects, and other critical facts that may expose an individual's identity, were tagged throughout the study.This was done to prevent any individual from being recognised using the information included in the texts.This was accomplished by pseudonymising all recognisable features in the statement.
Lastly, a numerical value ranging from 1 to 45 was used for the assignment of case numbers in each statement.Following that, all data sets were kept in a locked cabinet far away from the public and easily accessible areas.The researchers employed additional safeguards such as passwords and anti-virus software to prevent unauthorised individuals from accessing the data.

Trustworthiness
The method used to ensure the trustworthiness of the results in qualitative research differs from that used in quantitative research.The concept of trustworthiness is employed more frequently in qualitative studies than reliability and validity.The purpose of trustworthiness in qualitative studies is to ensure that the results are important enough to pay attention to (Lincoln and Guba 1985, 112).
The availability of suitable, rich, and well-gathered data is key to accurate results.In ensuring the credibility of the results, Patton (1990) emphasises the significance of the researcher's credibility in qualitative research because they are an instrument of the study that is being utilised to gather and analyse data.In this study, the researchers ensured that all the data were collected through purposeful sampling.Secondly, the data were collected from "real-life" statements made by non-native English-speaking police constables.The researchers' roles as data collectors, analysts, and interpreters thus ensured the credibility of the results.
To address transferability, the researchers ensured that all the study boundaries were communicated to the gatekeepers.This included any limits on the type of data that was gathered, the method of data collection used, the length and number of textual data collected, and the period in which data was collected.Bertram and Christiansen (2014, 191) agree that "the boundaries in the study ensure that the results of the study are easily transferable to other settings."Eventually, this allows other researchers who do similar studies to reach the same or nearly the same conclusion in their studies.
To address the issue of dependability, the researchers made certain that all techniques in the study were adequately set out, allowing future researchers to reproduce the work (Babili 2022, 111).A study's dependability is defined as a way of providing a complete explanation of how data were acquired and processed throughout the investigation (Guba and Lincoln 1985, 316).This guarantees that the results are consistent and repeatable.Based on this reasoning, the study's findings may be easily transferable to different situations or settings.
To establish confirmability, an audit trail was used in this study.This was achieved by illustrating all the steps followed by the researchers to complete the project.An audit trail ensures that the results are accurate and a true reflection of the data obtained (Maree 2016, 125).To determine confirmability, the researchers requested an independent source with extensive knowledge of the native language for a peer review.This was meant to review all aspects of the study and to determine whether the results were consistent, to be arrived at by other researchers.Coffey and Atkinson (1996, 3) define data analysis as a technique aimed at "transforming and interpreting qualitative data in a rigorous and scholarly manner."May (2001, 191) and Atkinson and Coffey (1997, 55) call attention to the significance of theory in studies that involve documentation.They contend that documents do not stand alone and must be situated in a theoretical framework for their content to be fully studied.

Data Analysis
Error analysis was used as a data analysis technique in this study.Corder (1967, 160) stresses that error analysis deals with the written output of second-language speakers, and not with their reading and listening skills.Error analysis was deemed appropriate for this study because it examines texts for grammatical flaws that were produced by non-English-speaking police constables.However, the researchers modified Corder's (1967) error analysis steps somewhat to employ them for data analysis (Ellis 1997, 15;Gass and Selinker 2001, 67).The following three steps were followed: (1) Identifying the errors, (2) Describing the errors, and (3) Evaluating the errors.
For a proper perspective, the researchers began by collecting a sample of statements for the study.According to Corder (1967, cited in Ellis andBarkhuizen 2005), this step is already addressed at the data collection stage.Following the collection of the language sample, the researchers read each written statement word by word and sentence by sentence, looking for grammar and spelling errors.The grammatical errors that we found in the statements were identified by underlining them.
Following that, the identified errors were described.The description of errors entailed classifying the errors into various grammatical features.Following the description of the errors, the researchers evaluated the errors.This entailed quantifying how frequently each type of error occurred.Finally, the researchers created a table to show how the correct version should have been written.

Analytical Procedure
Prior to analysing the data, the researchers developed an abbreviated key to highlight different types of errors (see Table 1), following which the most common errors that appeared in the statements were identified.This was based on the presumption that they appeared most frequently and complicated the meaning of the report.Following that, the errors were classified according to the various categories to which they belonged.After that, the frequency at which the errors occurred was determined.Table 1 shows an abbreviated key that was employed to illustrate different types of errors in the text.This key was crucial, as it helped the researchers to detect errors in the statements.Each error was recorded only once in each statement irrespective of how many times it appeared.While there were many sorts of errors in the texts, the researchers only focussed on those that were highlighted.Table 2 below shows the most common errors that were found in the statements, as well as their rankings.

Results
Table 2 presents all the errors noted in the statements.Most of the errors committed by police officers were related to capitalisation, which accounted for around 1238 errors.Spelling errors were the second most common type of error, accounting for 362 errors.
Poor sentence construction and verb errors had the lowest error rate.Sentence structure accounted for 144 errors, while verb error accounted for 141 errors.Then my father arrived, looking for his cell phone.He realised that my mother did not want to give him the cell phone.He returned to the house.Table 3 below shows the capitalisation errors as well as their correct version.Example 1 provides several instances of an officer using capital letters incorrectly, including in the middle of a sentence and even at the end of a word.One of the main causes of such errors appears to be lack of awareness of English grammar rules.An analysis of Example 1 above shows that the proper noun "Father" should be written as "father."Secondly, the verb "Came" should be spelled "came" rather than being capitalised in the middle of the sentence.Lastly, the noun "Cell Phone" in the last sentence should have been written in lowercase as "cellphone" because "cellphone" is a common noun.

Spelling Errors
There are several instances of incorrect spelling in the constables' statements, which are listed in Table 4 below.These errors were so severe that they hampered comprehension of the message.Examples 1 and 2 demonstrate some of the officers' misspellings.An analysis of the preceding instances indicates that the term "Corinaler" in Example 1 should have been "consider," while "Consincees" in Example 2 should have been "conscience."Furthermore, in Example 3, the word "feared" should have been "fearful."Furthermore, the word "lifes" should have been "lives," and the word "known" should have been "know."

Spelling errors
Correct forms Example 1: I do Corinaler the prescribed to be binding on My Consincees.
1.I do consider the prescribed oath to be binding on my conscience.
Example 2: So are Feared of our lifes because We do not known What Will they do to ours.because we are old people.
2. So, we are extremely fearful of our lives as we do not know what they will do to us because we are old.
Example 3: I have no objutan taking the oath I Codth the oath binding ownmy cocen.
3. I have no objection to taking the oath.I consider the oath to be binding on my conscience.
The findings reveal that the officers mixed up words with similar spelling but different meanings.It may thus be deduced that these officers struggled with English grammar, which could be linked to inadequate language learning in high school and the police training programme.These results corroborate what Al-Karaki (2005, 115) says concerning spelling problems.Al-Karaki ascribed spelling problems to a lack of English ability which is attributable to a lack of reading.He goes on to explain that "spelling errors do not necessarily prevent the reader from understanding what the writer is trying to say, but they can make interpretation difficult to achieve."

Incorrect Use of Punctuation Marks
A comprehensive examination of the data indicated that the texts also had punctuation issues.This included the incorrect use of question marks, exclamation points, full stops, commas, and other punctuation in sentences, which had an impact on the readability of the statements.Such errors are shown in bold and underlined in Table 5 below.Table 5: Incorrect use of punctuation marks and their correct forms

Incorrect use of punctuation marks
Correct form Example 1: whiLE he is outSide my Father told me that he is looking for his Cell Phone Then I heve went to my mother to gave my Father his cell phone 1.My father informed me that he is looking for his cell phone while he is outside.Then I went to my mother and handed over my father's cell phone.
Example 2: Its When I told her that those are Children why She is not talking with the children nicely not to shout at them. 2. It is when I told her that those were children and that she was not talking to them nicely and was shouting at them.
The analysis shows that although the sentence was a bit long, punctuation would have improved the readability of the text.A comma, for example, should have been placed after the word "outside" in Example 1 as in "while he is outside."Example 1 also highlights some of the punctuation errors associated with the incorrect use of the full stop.The lack of a full stop lengthens a sentence and makes it difficult to understand the officer's intended meaning.Example 2 also lacks an apostrophe that should indicate that "it is" has been shortened to "it's."The omitted apostrophe changes the contraction of the word "it's" to "its" which is a possessive determiner, making the text even more difficult to interpret.
Based on this analysis, it is reasonable to infer that these distinctive features are significant enough for the court to return the case to the individual statement taker for a statement retake, which may result in unnecessary delays and cast doubt on the reputation of the statement taker and his commander, leading to the complainant being sceptical of the system.

Broad Categories of Errors
After analysing all the errors in the statements, the researchers divided them into four broad categories, namely errors of omission, addition, mis-selection, and disordering.An omission error occurs when one or more items in a sentence are omitted.Addition is an error represented by a structural form that was added to the sentence unnecessarily.Mis-selection refers to the use of the wrong item that required making a more complex conceptual decision such as selecting the wrong aspect or tense.Finally, disordering is an error that is represented by items in a sentence that are not well organised (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982, 150).Figure 1 shows the distribution of errors in the four broad types.

Figure 1: Distribution of errors in broad categories
Mis-selection errors were the most common type of error made by constables (1299/2545, 67%).Omission errors were the second-most common type (390/2545, 20%) These errors were mostly about the omission of correct linguistic words, morphemes, and phrases.The officers made 183 disordering errors (9%), that is, they did not employ the correct word order.
These results corroborate those of Mungungu (2010, 46), who examined errors committed by non-native English speakers (NNESs) in three regions of Namibia, in the same set of categories.This demonstrates the commonalities that exist among NNESs in their quest for English proficiency, regardless of geographic location or field of specialisation.While the excerpts above contains a number of errors, the errors in punctuation marks, capitalisation, and spelling may not be attributed to the officers' first language interference, because the two languages (English and Sepedi) operate differently.Academic proficiency is at the root of the errors in this category.Constables appear to be unaware of the basic rules of English writing.

Discussion
Our findings reveal that the police transcripts contained multiple inaccuracies.Given the importance of these reports over any other regular record, police have regularly utilised capital letters instead of lowercase in their writing.Even if the meaning appeared unaffected, this has called into question their linguistic competency and ability to provide watertight reports.This set of inaccuracies contributed to 1238 errors in the reports.For example, the common noun father was capitalised in the middle of the sentence, which may be misinterpreted as a proper noun, thereby causing confusion as to whom the complainant was referring.
The increased incidence of capitalisation errors corresponds to the broad use of spelling errors.This demonstrated that officers were unfamiliar with the linguistic rules.There were 362 inaccuracies in the statements that resulted from misspelled words.These sorts of errors created such a muddle that the text could only be understood by readers who were acquainted with the officer's intended message.The following examples provide a reference: (1) I do Corinaler: I do consider.
(2) I have no objutan: I have no objection.
(3) I Codth the oath: I consider the oath.
Many legal experts, according to Ćetković (2017, 173), believe that "long sentences, passives, and normalisations in legal documents are the most effective ways of establishing a high level of clarity and explicitness."However, in this study, the lack of punctuation lengthened the sentences and made understanding the intended meaning even harder for readers.While the example below has several issues, its readability may have been improved if the length had been shortened by punctuation marks.whiLE he is outSide my Father told me that he is looking for his Cell Phone Then I heve went to my mother to gave my Father his cell phone The following breakdown may have assisted in providing clarity regarding what was meant by the text: My father informed me that he was looking for his cell phone while he was outside.Then I went to my mother and handed over my father's cell phone.This is problematic since the absence of these critical language aspects not only muddles meaning but also "cannot be corrected later in a report without being contested" (Ahmad 2021).Since there are multiple inaccuracies in these reports, raising awareness of these problems may be a significant step toward enhancing the quality of the statements:

Recommendations and Implications
Based on the results of the study, some suggestions for enhancing police use of language are provided: 1.The police department should consider incorporating a language programme into the curriculum.This (module) should include a brief introduction to the report writing course that appendages the statement-taking module.This added responsibility might fall under the purview of the SAPS Language Management Division, given that this section is a custodian of the Use of Official Language Act 12 of 2012, which seeks to promote language-based services necessary for a successful public service.This module can be tailored to put more emphasis on how to write coherently using the correct spelling, sentence construction, sentence length, tense, punctuation, and other language mechanics.In general, this might help individual police officers be able to produce clear statements and communicate effectively in court.2. The police department should consider requesting retired or unemployed educators and lawyers to co-teach statement-taking and report-writing alongside police trainers.This might make it easier to relate complex legal terminology, changes in legislative provisions, critical parts of the language that may impact meaning, and, importantly, the potential implications these may have for the department or society.This may also include putting in place a structure to ensure that this cohort of trainers receives ongoing training to keep up with changing teaching pedagogies and practices.3. The study's findings show that police officers had significant punctuation problems, dense spelling errors, and incorrect capitalisation.This indicates a lack of understanding of the basic rules of the English language.We suggest that police adopt the culture of reading consistently.Officers may use libraries at the training divisions, which contain a significant collection of literature in a range of genres.Reading a range of literary works may be beneficial in that it may give insight into how certain words are spelled or even utilised in different contexts.4. The complainant should be given the chance to review the statement for errors before signing it to guarantee that the events were accurately documented.This may not always be the case, though, for those who are adversely affected by factors like stress, anger, fear, and resentment (Carney 2021, 17).The practice may help minimise unnecessary future disagreements and lay the basis for effective prosecution since the deponents will be signing off on what they have read to ensure that it accurately reflects their position.

Table 1 :
Abbreviated key for error identification

Table 2 :
Common errors and their rankings

Table 3 :
Correct and incorrect use of capital letters