Chapter 1
The Crime Beat: Story Ideas
By Dave Krajicek

A few general tips:

• Write down ideas on the last page of your notebook as they occur to you. Good ideas can be forgotten if you fail to write them down.
• Ask around your beat for suggestions on undiscovered stories.
• Localize. Keep abreast of what other journalists are doing in the realm of crime reporting enterprise. Can a successful project in Omaha or Seattle be adapted to your town?
• Think ahead. Be ready with three alternatives when an editor gives you an ill-conceived story idea.
• Crime reporters spend much of their time on reactive stories, covering breaking news. Just as police agencies have converted to proactive strategies, news operations can be proactive about crime coverage by analyzing rather than merely reacting. Enterprise stories can evaluate how effectively your agency has responded to a particular problem – gang violence, for example.

Story ideas and enterprise tips:

1. An Armament, Ordnance and Cop-Toy Primer
   Does your police agency own a tank? Rocket-launchers? A cache of grenades? Robots? How are they to be used, and under what circumstances? Some agencies might not want to give up these details, but you won't know unless you ask.
2. Visit the Police Firing Range
   Fire police weapons and ask to go through training exercises. This evergreen story idea serves many purposes, including acquainting you with police equipment, usage protocols and your agency's gun training gurus.
3. Analyze Petty Crimes
   You probably know where your city ranks in murders per capita. But what about other crimes, especially the much more prevalent property crimes of theft, burglary and auto theft?
4. White Collar Crime
   Does you agency have a specialized unit to investigate corporate crime? Should it?
5. Take a Comprehensive Tour
   Ask to visit all police facilities, including both public and private areas. Does your agency have a special operations or command center? That should be part of the visit, as well as remote offices, holding pens and lock-ups, booking areas, training facilities, even parking garages. This may or may not lead to a story, but you might meet new sources on the tour, and you'll understand your agency better.
6. Review Training Procedures
   Request a briefing on police training, both for recruits and experienced officers. Ask to sit in on training sessions. Also get a copy of the agency's Standard Operating Procedures, which is a public record in many jurisdictions.
7. Profile Your Agency's Top Cops
   Everyone knows the police chief or sheriff. But what of the next tier of decision-makers?
8. Shadow a Cop
   Another evergreen idea, this exercise can offer insight into procedures, attitudes and the peer culture of your agency. Most agencies offer a ride-along (or walk-along) program, although a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling limited access to private property for tag-along journalists.
9. Walk Through the Arrest-to-Arraignment Process
   Again, this may or may not lead to a story, but it will acquaint you with conditions, bottlenecks and other potential issues in the system, and those insights will come in handy.
10. Perp Walks
    Does you agency have a history of perp walks? Colorful characters and interesting anecdotes could help you dress up a procedural story about local policy on an issue that many journalists, cops, prosecutors and defense lawyers are talking about across the country.
11. Develop a Board of Directors
    Look outside your agency for expert sources – advocates, academics, even gadflies – in specialized areas. Tap them for fresh research and story ideas. The subjects might include police training, ethics and personnel issues, law enforcement budgets, police use of force and weapons technology, police communications, crime statistics, civil rights and legal process, forensics, crime victims, organized crime and gangs, and fraud and white-collar crime.
12. Evaluate Your Agency
    Consult with outside experts about the reputation of your agency. Is it known for doing something particularly well or poorly? What is the agency's patrol strategy? Is it reactive, depending almost entirely on 911 emergency calls, or has it incorporated proactive policing? How does its response time stack up with other places? Has it embraced community policing, problem-solving policing, the "Broken Windows" paradigm or some other initiative? Is it working there? What could be improved?
13. Corruption and Rogues
    Police corruption experts say police agencies and the media both do a lousy job of spotting trends in corruption because police bosses convince journalists to view corruption cases as bad-seed aberrations. Yet financial corruption frequently involves a conspiracy among a number of cops. Does anecdotal or statistical evidence indicate increases in law enforcement rogues in your jurisdiction? Has your agency instituted an early-warning system for identifying rogues?
14. Follow the Buck
    Scrutinize the public safety budget in your jurisdiction for leads on new initiatives or patrol strategies – an increase in computerization costs for a new crime-mapping program, for example, or a balloon in equipment costs for a new line of patrol vehicles or a special-use armored truck. Personnel costs and even buildings-and-grounds budget lines can lead to stories.