Good Questions to Ask a Police Officer in an Interview
Questions for interviewing a police officer, whether for a school assignment, a story, or your own research into the career: what a shift actually contains, how much of it is paperwork and court, what the academy did and did not prepare them for, what happens after a bad call, and what accountability looks like inside a department.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How long have you been an officer, and what were you doing before?
Why ask it
Prior work outside policing, whether military, retail, or teaching, shapes how someone handles people on a call. It also tells you whether you are talking to someone still in their first years or someone with a long view.
What made you apply?
Why ask it
Answers usually fall into a few patterns: family in the job, a stable pension and salary, or a specific event. The plain answer is more useful than asking what they find rewarding, which invites a stock reply.
Walk me through your last shift from start to finish.
Why ask it
The last shift is harder to generalise than a typical one. Expect briefings, driving, waiting, and reports, and note how much of the shift involved no enforcement at all, which is the part the public never pictures.
What kinds of calls take up most of your time?
Why ask it
Most patrol time goes on things that are not crimes: welfare checks, mental health calls, disputes between neighbours, traffic. The ratio is the single most correcting fact you can get into a piece about policing.
How much of the job is paperwork, and when do you actually do it?
Why ask it
Report writing consumes a large share of a shift and is often done at the end of it, sometimes unpaid. It explains a lot about fatigue and about why officers are cautious with their time.
How much time do you spend in court, and how does that fit around your shifts?
Why ask it
Court appearances often land on days off or after a night shift. It is a concrete and rarely reported part of the job, and it affects how officers think about which incidents are worth pursuing.
What did the academy prepare you for, and what did it not?
Why ask it
The gap is where the interesting material is, and most officers will name it readily: usually the volume of paperwork, dealing with mental health crises, or the sheer amount of talking. Useful for anyone considering applying.
What surprised you in your first year on the street?
Why ask it
First-year surprises are still vivid and not yet smoothed into a professional narrative. Younger officers give the most candid version of this answer.
How do you decide what to do on a call that is not clear cut?
Why ask it
You want the reasoning rather than the policy: what they weigh, who they consult, what discretion they actually have. If the answer is only that they follow procedure, ask about a call where the procedure did not fit.
What does de-escalation actually look like for you on a call?
Why ask it
The revealing answers describe specifics: standing further back, dropping their voice, taking off the sunglasses, letting silence run, calling for a second unit and waiting. An answer that only repeats the training term suggests it has not been internalised.
How has the body camera changed how you work?
Why ask it
Officers report both effects: it protects them against false complaints and it changes how they speak to people. Ask who can review the footage and when, since that is where the accountability question actually sits.
What does community policing mean on your beat, in practice?
Why ask it
Ask for an example from the last month. Naming a specific school, business, or resident is different from describing an initiative, and the difference tells you whether the programme exists outside a press release.
What do people get wrong about the job from television?
Why ask it
Reliably a good question because officers have strong, specific views: how rarely a weapon is drawn, how long investigations take, how little forensic work resembles the version on screen.
What is the hardest part for you, and what do you do with it?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and accept a short answer. Do not press for the incident behind it, and note that the coping mechanism named, whether peers, exercise, or a therapist, tells you something about the department's culture.
What support does the department offer after a bad call, and do officers actually use it?
Why ask it
The second half is the real question. Many departments have a programme that officers avoid because using it is believed to affect assignments, and asking about uptake rather than availability gets at that.
How does shift work affect your sleep and your family?
Why ask it
Rotating nights, overtime, and court dates do measurable damage, and this is an area most officers will discuss frankly. It is also the most useful answer for anyone weighing the career.
What happens inside the department when an officer does something wrong?
Why ask it
Ask about process: who investigates, how long it takes, what the outcomes have been. A specific description of internal affairs and its limits is worth far more than either a defence or a denial, and hesitation here is itself informative.
How has the way the public treats you changed over your career?
Why ask it
This gets at something the officer has directly experienced rather than a position on national politics. Expect it to vary by neighbourhood, which is itself a finding worth reporting.
What routes are there out of patrol, and which would you take?
Why ask it
Investigations, traffic, training, K9, and school liaison all exist, and each has a different life attached. The one they would pick, and why, says more about the job than a general question about advancement.
Would you do it again, and what would you tell someone applying now?
Why ask it
The closing question, and the pause before the answer is part of it. Officers who say yes with a caveat usually name the caveat precisely, which is exactly what a prospective applicant needs to hear.
Interviewing a Police Officer
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting the interview
Go through the right door
If the interview is for publication, most departments require you to go through a public information officer, and an officer who talks to you without that clearance can be disciplined. For a school project, the community liaison or a school resource officer is usually the fastest route, and both may need lead time and a form.
Establish the limits in the first minute
Ask what they cannot discuss: open investigations, anything before a court, personnel matters, and often anything involving a named individual. Knowing the boundaries early stops you burning the interview on questions they were never able to answer.
Agree the terms
Say whether you are recording, whether the conversation is on the record, and whether their name and unit will be used. Officers are frequently interviewed badly and this single step changes how much they are willing to say.
Getting past the press-release answer
- Ask about the last shift rather than a typical shift. Specific days are harder to summarise into talking points.
- Ask what happened next, twice. The second follow-up is usually where the real detail arrives.
- Ask about paperwork, court time, sleep, and overtime. These come with no official position attached, so the answers tend to be plain.
- Ask for a number: calls per shift, hours on reports, years on the job, size of the beat.
- Save the harder questions about accountability and use of force for the second half, once the conversation is running.
Common pitfalls
- Opening with a national controversy usually ends the useful part of the interview in the first two minutes.
- Treating one officer's account as the department's position. It is one person's experience, and should be reported as that.
- Asking for detail about a case involving a named person. They cannot answer and it makes everything afterwards guarded.
- Asking them to comment on how another agency handled an incident. Most will decline, correctly.
- Arriving with either a heroic or a hostile frame. Both produce a scripted conversation.
Writing it up accurately
- 1Get the rank, the unit, and the length of service right. These are precise things inside a department and errors undermine the rest of your work.
- 2Read back any description of procedure or law before you publish it, since a garbled account of a tactic is what colleagues will notice first.
- 3Distinguish clearly between what the officer witnessed, what they were told, and what they believe.
- 4If you quote a criticism of the department, decide with them whether their name is attached, and honour it.
- 5Send them the published piece. It costs nothing and it is why the next interview gets granted.