How Police Reports Turn Facts Into Criminal Cases
Stephen King says it in On Writing: "The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Elmore Leonard made a career out of sentences that don’t reach for effect; they just land. Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is a sustained argument against overdoing it. The best writers writing about writing all agree: adjectives and adverbs are the mark of someone who doesn’t trust their verbs.
The police have a different book.
The Case of the Exploding Footlong
By now, you may have heard about Sean Dunn, the DOJ paralegal who became a minor legend last fall for throwing his Subway sandwich at a CBP agent during the early D.C. occupation. The grand jury — presented with the terrifying specter of a man hurling bread at a federal officer — issued a no bill. Every lawyer in America immediately deployed the “indict a ham sandwich” line. The nation groaned.
The Trump DOJ, undeterred by the indignity of losing a sandwich case to a grand jury, pushed forward with a misdemeanor charge. It went to trial.
To review:hundreds of cameras captured Dunn, a 37-year-old Air Force veteran and Justice Department employee, yelling at federal officers. He then tossed a Subway footlong at a Customs and Border Protection agent, striking him in the chest.
That was it. Dunn ran, was identified, and offered to turn himself in several times over the coming days, but was turned down. A pre-dawn SWAT raid on his home perp-walked him into the news, illustrating how defendants are often treated as guilty long before a trial begins.
A turkey sub, not salami, as was widely reported. Worth noting.
What the Police Report Did With That
The prosecution’s strategy at trial was, per the reporter covering the proceedings, to “litter the proceedings with deadly-sounding jargon.” That’s how a thrown Subway footlong becomes something scary.
It starts with the police report. The verb “threw” doesn’t carry any weight. “Hurled” is threatening. The sub “contacted” the vest sounds clinical and dull. “Kind of exploded on my vest” is visual, physical, violent.
The reports don’t lie — police can lie in interrogations, but not in sworn reports — they enhance. They find the words that are technically defensible and emotionally nuclear. They are written by people who know that juries will read them, that prosecutors will read them, that judges will hear them read aloud. The language is chosen accordingly.
The Pattern Runs Through Every Case
“Moved toward me” becomes “advanced aggressively.” “Spoke loudly” becomes “shouted in a threatening manner.” “Looked at me” becomes “fixed me with a hard stare.” “Smelled of alcohol” becomes “reeked of intoxicants.”
A car doesn’t change lanes. It swerves. A hand doesn’t move. It lunges. A glance is aggressive. Eyes are glassy, bloodshot, and unfocused. Behavior is erratic, combative, and threatening.
The adjectives are doing legal work. They are not describing what the officer observed — they are pre-loading the jury’s interpretation of what the officer observed. By the time the report reaches a courtroom, the event has already been translated from plain occurrence into prosecutorial narrative.
This is not limited to sandwich cases. It runs through ordinary police reports constantly, invisibly, and by design. A DUI arrest, an assault charge, a domestic disturbance call — all of it arrives in court pre-processed through language that was selected to support one conclusion.
When the Language Collapsed
The Subway case is the perfect illustration of this because the gap between the language and the reality was visible to everyone in the room — including, apparently, the jury.
The CBP officer testified that the sandwich “kind of exploded” on his bulletproof vest. He added, apparently on his own initiative, that he could “smell the onions and mustard.”
The defense shared a photograph of the sandwich on the sidewalk in front of the police line. Completely intact. Wrapper still on. Subway, it turned out, has excellent structural engineering.
Confronted by photographic evidence of an intact footlong, the officer said he could not positively identify that particular sandwich as the one that had exploded on his vest. The jury acquitted.
The sandwich case is funny because the rebuttal was sitting right there on the pavement. In most cases, there’s no photograph of the intact footlong. The language just sits there, authoritative and dressed up, and the jury takes it at face value because police officers sound credible.
They’re practiced at sounding credible. The coaching is invisible, as we've discussed how police reports use language to shape a jury's perception.
What a Defense Attorney Does With Police Reports
The defense attorney’s job, our job, is to be a very aggressive editor.
What does “hurled” establish that “threw” does not? What is the legal difference between “advanced toward” and “lunged”? What did you write in your field notes at the scene, before the prep sessions? When, exactly, did this event become an explosion?
An experienced defense attorney knows what plain language looks like. And they know, when the language stops being plain, exactly what to ask next. The distance between the report and the reality is where cases turn.
The officer in the Subway case found that distance the hard way. So did the prosecution.
If You’re Facing Charges in Washington State
Police reports are the foundation of most criminal cases. They are also documents written by one side, using language chosen by one side, to support one conclusion. An attorney who knows how to read them — and challenge them — changes what happens next.
Matthew Knauss is a criminal defense attorney in Washington State. He represents clients facing criminal charges throughout the Greater Seattle area. If you’ve been charged, we’ve read reports like yours. Call us.
425-300-5566 