CJK0019 – Interviewing and Report Writing is a 56-hour course within Florida's 770-hour Law Enforcement Basic Recruit Training Program, carrying zero credit hours as a clock-hour academy component. It is among the largest components of the academy, and it teaches the two activities that consume most of an officer's working day.
The interviewing half covers the structured gathering of information: preparing for and conducting interviews of victims, witnesses, and suspects; establishing rapport; the difference between an interview and a custodial interrogation and the Miranda line between them; recognizing deception without over-relying on unreliable cues; and interviewing vulnerable people — children, older adults, victims of sexual assault or domestic violence, and people in crisis. Trauma-informed technique has become standard content, reflecting evidence that conventional interrogation-style questioning produces poor information from traumatized victims.
The report writing half is where many recruits struggle. A police report is a legal document. It establishes the elements of an offense, supports probable cause, is provided to the defense in discovery, and will be used to cross-examine the officer in court — sometimes years later, when the report is all that remains of the officer's memory. It must be accurate, complete, objective, chronological, and clear, and it must distinguish what the officer observed from what the officer was told.
The course is heavily practical: recruits conduct interviews and write reports from scenarios, and are assessed on the written product.
The course is offered at approximately 20 Florida institutions, all of them state colleges operating criminal justice training centers or regional public safety academies: Chipola, College of Central Florida, College of the Florida Keys, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Florida Gateway, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Gulf Coast State, Hillsborough, Indian River State, Miami Dade, North Florida, Northwest Florida State, Palm Beach State, Pasco-Hernando, Pensacola State, Santa Fe, South Florida State, St. Johns River, and Seminole State.
The Law Enforcement Basic Recruit Training Program (LEBRTP) is a 770-hour academy required for certification as a sworn law enforcement officer under Chapter 943, Florida Statutes. The curriculum is written and maintained by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, so content is consistent statewide. The full sequence:
Every component is a clock-hour course carrying zero credit hours, and none counts toward an associate degree.
Completing this course does not certify anyone. Recruits must finish the full 770-hour academy, pass the State Officer Certification Examination (SOCE), and satisfy the employment and background requirements of Chapter 943, F.S. Certification is granted by CJSTC, not by the college, and an officer must also be employed by an agency to be certified.
Requirements attach to the academy rather than to this individual course: minimum age 19, U.S. citizenship, high school diploma or equivalent, no felony convictions or disqualifying misdemeanors, a background investigation, a physical examination and drug screening, and a passing score on the Florida Basic Abilities Test (CJBAT). Requirements are set in statute and by the training center.
Academy training is PSAV clock-hour instruction, not college credit, and does not transfer as general education. Many Florida colleges award block credit toward an A.S. in Criminal Justice Technology for full academy completion plus certification, under local articulation agreements rather than statewide SCNS equivalency. Confirm terms with the receiving institution.
Officers already certified in another discipline — corrections to law enforcement, for instance — complete abbreviated crossover programs drawing on a subset of these courses rather than the full academy. Candidates should work from the crossover curriculum published by their training center.
CJK0016, Communication (24 hours) establishes listening and questioning as general skills; this course applies them to the structured interview and adds the written product. Recruits who did not build solid habits in the earlier course tend to struggle here.
This is worth saying plainly. Many recruits arrive without recent experience writing extended prose, and the standard is exacting because the document is legal. A report that omits an element of the offense can sink a prosecution; one that states a conclusion the officer cannot support becomes cross-examination material. Academies commonly identify writing as the most frequent area of remediation, and recruits who know their writing is weak should address it before the academy rather than during it.
The trauma-informed content reflects a genuine shift in practice. Evidence indicates that traumatic memory is encoded and recalled differently — fragmented, non-chronological, sometimes inconsistent on retelling — and that treating those features as signs of deception produces both bad information and further harm to the victim. The curriculum teaches officers to interview in a way that gathers better evidence and does less damage. Instructors generally frame this as investigative competence rather than sensitivity training, because that is what it is.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026