Football is back, and so is Giants Kicker Josh Brown. The NFL has decided to let Brown play despite his history of domestic violence.

Brown was arrested in May 2015 for domestic violence, but there were earlier signs of problems in his marriage. In October 2014 Brown called police to report that his wife, Molly, was kicking him in the ribs. No charges were filed. Brown and his wife subsequently divorced.

That October police report was recently made public at this link. It’s a hastily written report that could have benefited from a second reading and some corrections:

caller wants wife removed from apartment the  had a verbal dispute with his wife then when he bent over she proceeded to kick him in the ribs…

Everything was settled Husband and Wife were advised.

Academy instructors and agency administrators sometimes despair when they see reports like this one. What is to be done with an officer who writes so poorly?

In my experience, the solution is often surprisingly simple: Hold the officer accountable. Insist on a rewrite.

Anyone who graduates from an academy program knows that sentences start with capital letters and end with periods. The officer who wrote this particular report was probably tired. The report was written quickly. The officer didn’t go back to reread it.

The most important determinant in writing quality is…the boss.

If you fix cadets’  or officers’ mistakes for them, and you let careless writing slip by, you’ll get more and more of it.

But if you insist on quality writing, that’s what you’ll get.

            Josh Brown