Interview Questions to Ask a Police Officer
Twenty questions for interviewing a serving or former police officer, whether for a school assignment, a careers piece, or your own understanding of the job. The set covers what a shift actually contains, how discretion works, the effect of shift patterns on home life, and what happens when a complaint is made.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How long have you been an officer, and what were you doing before this?
Why ask it
Establishes the era their answers come from, which matters because equipment, policy, and public attitudes shift within a single career. Their previous job also usually explains why they joined.
What does a normal shift look like from start to finish?
Why ask it
Most people picture the job from television. A walk through briefing, patrol, calls, and the end-of-shift paperwork is often the single most corrective answer in the conversation.
What kinds of calls do you actually go to most often?
Why ask it
The honest list tends to be welfare checks, disputes, missing people, and mental health incidents rather than serious crime, and it reframes what the role really is before you ask anything harder.
What did your training prepare you well for, and what did it not?
Why ask it
The gap they name tells you where the job is learned on the street rather than in a classroom. It is also a question officers rarely get asked, so the answers are usually unrehearsed.
How much of the week goes on paperwork and court files?
Why ask it
Officers routinely put this far higher than outsiders guess. If you are asking on behalf of someone considering the career, this single figure changes how the job looks to them.
When you have discretion about whether to act formally, how do you decide?
Why ask it
This is where the job is most personal and least visible. Listen for the factors they weigh, repeat contact, risk to others, whether an arrest would make things worse, rather than for a policy quotation.
What does de-escalation look like in practice, as opposed to in training?
Why ask it
Ask for the actual moves: where they stand, what they say first, how long they are prepared to wait. Answers that stay at the level of the term itself usually mean they are giving you the course, not their experience.
When a call involves someone in mental health crisis, what happens, and who else attends?
Why ask it
The answer maps the local arrangement between police, ambulance, and mental health services, which varies enormously by area and is often where officers feel least equipped and most frustrated.
How do you approach someone who is frightened of you?
Why ask it
This gets past the general question about difficult members of the public to the specific dynamic of a uniform. Experienced officers usually have concrete habits here, such as sitting down or removing a hat.
What do you do differently now compared with your first year?
Why ask it
Changes in practice are more informative than opinions about policing. Most answers are about talking more and rushing less, and the specifics reveal what the job actually teaches.
How do the shift patterns affect your sleep and your life at home?
Why ask it
Rotating nights are one of the most concrete costs of the job and one of the least discussed. Expect practical detail about missed events and broken sleep rather than anything dramatic.
After a serious or distressing incident, what support exists, and do people use it?
Why ask it
Nearly every force offers something. The second half is the real question, because take-up is often low, and the reasons officers give for not using it say a lot about the culture of the shift.
How do you keep what you have seen at work from following you home?
Why ask it
Ask once, accept whatever level of detail they offer, and do not press. Some answers are practical routines like changing out of uniform before going in, which is more useful than a general reflection.
What is it like being known as a police officer when you are off duty?
Why ask it
This covers something outsiders rarely consider: how they answer the question at parties, whether they tell new acquaintances, how family members are treated. It is often where the social cost of the job sits.
How has the way the public treats you changed since you started?
Why ask it
You get their direct experience rather than their views on the debate, which is both more reliable and less likely to turn the interview into an argument about policy.
What is the hardest part of the job that people outside it never hear about?
Why ask it
An open invitation, which usually surfaces something procedural: waiting hours at a hospital, delivering death messages, court dates on rest days. These are the details that make an account credible.
What happens when a complaint is made against an officer?
Why ask it
You are asking about the process, not about any individual case, and most officers can describe it plainly. The answer explains an accountability system that is widely discussed and rarely understood.
Looking back, is there a decision you would make differently now?
Why ask it
Framed around their own judgement rather than around any incident, so it does not ask them to discuss anything confidential. If they decline, move on without a follow-up.
What would you tell someone who is thinking about joining?
Why ask it
This is where officers get specific and practical: fitness, the vetting process, the reality of probation, what to expect financially. Note whether they would recommend it, and what conditions they attach.
What do you wish people asked you about the job, instead of what they usually ask?
Why ask it
Closing here hands them the direction. It also tells you which questions they are tired of, which is worth knowing if you plan to interview other officers afterwards.
Setting up and running the interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you ask
Go through the right channel
Serving officers usually need approval to speak on the record. For anything that will be published, contact the force press office and say who you are, what the piece is, and how long you need. For a school project, a local station or community team can often arrange an informal conversation more quickly than a formal request.
Know what they cannot discuss
Ongoing investigations, named individuals, and internal disciplinary matters are off limits, and asking anyway wastes the slot and puts them in an awkward position. Frame questions around process and their own practice, which is almost always answerable.
Agree recording and attribution first
Ask before you record and confirm whether they are speaking as themselves, as a representative of the force, or off the record. Officers who know the ground rules give fuller answers than those who are guessing at them.
During the conversation
- Ask for concrete practice rather than opinions. "What do you say first when you arrive?" produces more than "What is your philosophy of policing?"
- Follow any general answer with a request for the specific: how long, how often, what happened next.
- Take one topic at a time. Bundled questions about stress, health, and trauma tend to get one thin answer covering all three.
- If they decline a question, accept it without rephrasing and come back to safer ground. Pushing usually ends the useful part of the interview.
- Leave the difficult questions about complaints and public attitudes until you have built some rapport with easier ones.
Things worth arranging separately
A ride-along or station visit
Many forces run observation schemes or open days, and half a shift alongside someone answers questions you would not have thought to ask. These require a formal request and often a background check, so ask early.
More than one officer
A response officer, a detective, a custody sergeant, and a former officer will give four different accounts of the same organisation. If your subject is the job rather than a person, two or three short interviews beat one long one.
Published material for the numbers
Do not ask an officer for statistics they will have to guess at. Force annual reports, inspectorate reviews, and national crime figures are public, so use the interview for judgement and experience instead.