FIR Cards

 

Like the military, police departments have an alphabet soup of acronyms. Some of them are official, and some are not. Acronyms and police jargon are not used in Incident Reports. Incident Reports (IR) are written for prosecutors, judges, juries, and may be presented in a trial. If an arrest is made for Attempt to Elude an officer does not use the phrase; “Frequent Flier” in the IR. One of the most popular unofficial acronyms was “JFB”; Just [redacted] Beautiful. This was used to describe crime scenes, TAs (traffic accidents), internal department requests, as well as roll call visits from city council members, to include their requests for whatever their cause of the month was.

FIR (Field Intelligence Report) were 3×5 cards that were used to provide information about individuals that were not arrested. I did not write a lot of tickets but I did conduct traffic stops. I looked for vehicles that looked like they had been purchased at an Al Qaeda salvage auction and were cruising around aimlessly in residential neighborhoods.

Whether it was broken taillight or running a stop sign, I would pull them over. There was a good chance the driver had no insurance. There was also a good chance the driver might be a burglar or had a warrant out for their arrest. It should come as no surprise that someone who breaks the big laws ignores the small violations. Some burglars break into a home and start moving what they want to sneak into the garage. They park their car a couple of blocks away from their target, and then come back to the house with the car, open the garage door and fill their car with your possessions. In some cases, they could be on parole for burglary and a condition of their parole was they were not allowed to drive because of their prior use of a vehicle in multiple crimes; it’s called profiling.

One night I wrote a ticket to someone driving a used car bomb. I also wrote a contact report, a FIR Card, and I forwarded it to detectives. Two years later I received a phone call from a detective to discuss that contact report. That particular contact report helped to solve approximately 20 residential burglaries. The detective read through two years of contact reports and the one I wrote allowed him to make a great arrest. The detective did the grunt work and deserves all the credit.

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  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    I wasn’t aware of the FIR. That’s an excellent tool, and clearly paid off in the case you described, Doug. These days, law enforcement needs all the tools it can use. Thanks.

    • #1
  2. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    An al Qaeda salvage auction? Before or after the IED?

    • #2
  3. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Man, if we just locked people up and did not let them out, that would work too. 

    I mean really, if someone is willing to do this sort of thing, why ever let them out? 

    • #3
  4. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Hang On (View Comment):

    An al Qaeda salvage auction? Before or after the IED?

    It was hard to tell at times.

     

    • #4
  5. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    Man, if we just locked people up and did not let them out, that would work too.

    I mean really, if someone is willing to do this sort of thing, why ever let them out?

    That’s a question police officers ask themselves on a regular basis. 

     

    • #5
  6. Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito
    @HankRhody

    Doug Watt: I looked for vehicles that looked like they had been purchased at an Al Qaeda salvage auction and were cruising around aimlessly in residential neighborhoods.

    I both completely understand the validity of this approach, and am continually thankful that I wasn’t pulled over more often in the old junker I used to drive. To quote @MattBalzer “We had a car down at Camp Douglas which they’d use to train on IEDs. You car looks more like a car bomb than it did!”

    And I would wander suburbs aimlessly; exploring. I like knowing what’s down the side streets.

    Given all that I’ve done surprisingly little burglary.

    • #6
  7. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito (View Comment):

    Doug Watt: I looked for vehicles that looked like they had been purchased at an Al Qaeda salvage auction and were cruising around aimlessly in residential neighborhoods.

    I both completely understand the validity of this approach, and am continually thankful that I wasn’t pulled over more often in the old junker I used to drive. To quote @MattBalzer “We had a car down at Camp Douglas which they’d use to train on IEDs. You car looks more like a car bomb than it did!”

    And I would wander suburbs aimlessly; exploring. I like knowing what’s down the side streets.

    Given all that I’ve done surprisingly little burglary.

    A police officer has to use some discretion, and there’s nothing wrong with exploring your neighborhood. In some ways your desire to know what was down the side streets would make you a good police officer.

     

    • #7
  8. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    When I did background investigations at a nearby national park, I would often have to go through their stacks of F.I. cards myself, by hand.  It was actually fun, if time – consuming.  You got a feeling for how many people got in trouble for feeding the bears, camping on rock slides, taunting rattlesnakes, etc.   

    More frequently, I would have to do court record checks in a nearby, mountainous county.  When I started covering the county, the courts still kept their indexes in huge, very heavy ledger books, making entries by hand.  I could never resist turning back a few pages and read entries for horse thieves, claim jumping, bar fights, etc.  Not long after, they automated their records.  It was much faster, of course, so I was able to get more work done.  But not nearly as much fun.

    The old court clerks’ handwriting was impeccable, too.  Made me embarrassed by the scribbling in my field notebook.

    • #8
  9. JustmeinAZ Member
    JustmeinAZ
    @JustmeinAZ

    I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about FIR cards from Harry Bosch.

    • #9
  10. Cow Girl Thatcher
    Cow Girl
    @CowGirl

    Wow, I’ve driven some amazing vehicles in my time. This is because Mr. CowGirl is a genius mechanic and so we’d buy some $200 beater, and he’d rebuild the engine, and make sure the interior light came on (my two main requirements: engine must work and lights come on.) I didn’t care what it looked like. Then, I could drive it all over town with the kids doing our errands, and I didn’t have to work for the car payment!! This was in the 1970-1980s. We lived in SoCal, so heating and air conditioning were unnecessary.

    Maybe because I was a young, blonde girl with three kids in car seats, I didn’t get pulled over and checked up on? The cars were a sight to behold…

    • #10
  11. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito (View Comment):
    Given all that I’ve done surprisingly little burglary.

    Uh? Surprisingly little?

    • #11
  12. danok1 Member
    danok1
    @danok1

    In the USAF we called them “Field Interview Reports.” Not many of us filled them out, but…

    There was a spate of vandalism in the NCO and Officer housing areas of the base. At Guardmount for the overnight watch, my flight chief told us the base commander wanted this stopped. We were to stop anyone out after curfew and interview them.

    About 0200 I came across two teenagers walking down a road connecting the two housing areas. I pulled over and stopped them, got their IDs, and did the field interview reports. They were officer’s kids (a Major, IIRC), so I got on the radio and asked for the flight commander to meet me at the kid’s home so he could bring the kids to the door. I met him, he delivered the kids and informed the major why they had been stopped.

    I dropped off the FIR cards at the LE desk. The watch ended and I went back to the barracks to get some sleep. That didn’t last long; at 0930 there was a knock at the door. The LE desk had turned over the FIRs to the base Office of Special Investigations (essentially the “detective squad”), and OSI wanted to talk to me. I got to the OSI office and the SSGTs had already interviewed the kids I stopped. They just asked me to clarify where and why I stopped them. I told them, and they shook my hand. The kids had admitted to ~$5,000 worth of vandalism (about $12,500 in today’s money), for which the major was now on the hook. I got a commendation out of the deal.

    • #12
  13. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    JustmeinAZ (View Comment):

    I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about FIR cards from Harry Bosch.

    You have, FIR cards, sometimes are called FCR-Field Contact Report, and as danok1 stated Field Interview Report.

     

    • #13
  14. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    My husband used to work in a buy here pay here car dealership. He was sitting at a late night diner one night (probably out trying to collect or find a car), and a cop was sitting close by; they struck up a conversation and knew a lot of the same customers.  This does not mean all bad credit people are also in trouble with the law, but my husband had a theory that it wasn’t surprising if they didn’t take care of their credit, many times they didn’t take care of other aspects of their lives;  jobs/marriages/relationships.

    • #14
  15. MichaelKennedy Inactive
    MichaelKennedy
    @MichaelKennedy

    One time, back in the 1970s, my wife arrived home with our kids in the car and noticed the next door neighbors’ possessions in the back of their home, stacked outside the back door.  About that time, the burglar realized he had been seen and took off without the goods.  She actually chased him in her car full of kids and started to block the street and then realized she was not a cowgirl and this was not a western movie.  She quietly drove back home and I never knew if he got caught but he did not get the goods.

    • #15
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