Small Claims Court

The Police Report

Learning how to read a police report is critical if you want to win your case. Police reports are evidence; they do not make the case on its own. The police officer might give a ticket to someone, but this might not mean anything when it comes to fault. It is only evidence.

Getting and reading the police report is very important. Judges do put weight on these reports, but sometimes they do not know how to read the report! To learn how to read a police report, click here. The police report has a “witness statement section” and cops write what they are told.

They usually capture what every driver says and if there is a witness, then they write that. It is important to note that officers do not change anything. They write things as they are told. They do not put their input or assessment. Some police officers will make a special note, but 99% they do not.

This makes a police report with a bunch of codes, a diagram, information about the cars, and statements. No indications of who is at fault. You might read the report and see that the other party has misrepresented the facts and the officer has done nothing to correct that statement.

That is because they are not supposed to. So where does the officer input comes? In the codes! You have to learn to read the codes. Some police reports have the codes written on them, some others do not. So you have to get an overlay sheet to be able to interpret it.

There you will be able to see if the police officer is tagging anyone with in attention, or speed (even without ticket) or alcohol, etc. Most judges do not have the overlay sheet with them, so brining one and showing that the police officer put “contributory circumstances” on the other driver will be critical.

Remember, this will not necessarily make or break your case on its own, but it will make your case stronger. If you realize that the police report codes tag you with something, then you can determine if you want to show this evidence to the judge or simply prove your case with some other evidence.  

I have seen cases where the police reports are substantially wrong. By that I mean, the police officer located the parties on the wrong cars (driver with passengers of the other car), and located the vehicle that was rear ended as the last vehicle that caused the collisions, all sort of easily shown in accuracies (material inaccuracies).

You can talk to the police department and then move to have the police report thrown out. This is a major pain on the rear, however if the report is against you can try to show this to the judge. You can show that the report is being dispute for its material in accuracies and it should no be taken into account (if this is and on going dispute).

If the report was thrown out, then express that. “Your honor, I went to court and the entire report was voided for being so inaccurate, here is a copy of my case #.” This can change the view of the entire case.  

You do not have to dispute the entire report. You can dispute your citation first. If you were speeding, you want to try to get that ticket dismiss. If you cannot or do not even try, you are pretty much loosing your fault case.

There are simple ways to get your ticket dismissed. Many Americans beat their speeding tickets every day, and this should be step 1 before going to court to dispute fault. To learn how to dispute your speeding ticket, read this eBook, I recommend it to anyone was cited for speeding.

This also applies to DUIs. You should not be disputing fault without trying to get the DUI clear. You might be able to do this yourself, but for this one, you are going to need a DUI lawyer (this is the type of thing you do not want to take a chance on, if you lose, the consequences are very severe).

Disputing a report because of something minor (i.e. misspelled your name, left box blank, wrong date, wrong time) does not have a very good chance of success. If you are disputing the report (note, not the speeding ticket, which can be beat with little things like the ones mentioned above), make sure there are material in accuracies.

If you show up to court and the other person got the police report thrown out (and the report helps you), then ask why?

Make sure the judge knows exactly why. If the report was thrown out because the police officer did not show to the hearing, this does not make the report statements and assessment void. If the other person argues that their ticket was dismiss, make sure they did not plead guilty and have it change to a non moving violation.

Traffict Ticket eBook
Speeding Ticket eBook

1. Small Claims Court (Overview)
2. When to go Small Claims Court
3. Important Small Claims Considerations
4. How to argue your Small Claims Case
5. Small Claims Court Legal Argument Part I
6. Small Claims Court Legal Argument Part II
7. Arguing in Small Claims (the Police Report)
8. Small Claims Court and the Auto Damages
9. Small Claims and the Injury Claim
10. Collecting the Small Claims Award
11. Appealing the Small Claims Court decision

Total Loss eBook
Personal Injury eBook