Vallejo Police Outsource Report Writing | NBC Bay Area: “The police department in cash-strapped Vallejo, Calif., may have found a way to save a little money.

The Police Department is now using a transcription service based in Tennessee -- Nashville-McLintock Transcription and Consulting Services -- to write up its police reports.

The reports are dictated into a digital audio file then sent via a secure connection to Nashville-McClintock, where retired law-enforcement officials write them up.

The practice is less expensive than hiring new personnel and could possibly elicit more details from officers who might otherwise keep it brief if they had to do the typing themselves.”

Any practicing criminal lawyer, whether prosecutor or defense attorney knows that this is a seriously bad idea. Police reports are used in litigation to refresh police officers' recollections of events that often happened several years back.

Outsourcing the transcription will present a type of chain of custody issue in court. The question will be, is the transcription actually a true representation of that the officer said, and then is what the officer said a true account of what actually happened?

Criminal defense lawyers will want to hear the original audio, and the state will have to produce it, adding an additional expense that wouldn't be there if the officers simply wrote the reports themselves.

It is really scary to watch government agencies fall all over themselves and think that they are responsible for enforcing the laws in this country.