Wednesday, February 4, 2015

By Claire Dowell


Police records in Texas or any police records in the United States are generally available for public access. Police reports are official documents that contain information such as the defendant, the plaintiff, the officer report and the case between the parties. Three types of police reports are available that can be requested from the police department - crime, administrative and traffic report. A crime report is usually a record of criminal offense by nature. Records of this nature are available to the public once the case reaches conviction or a decision is made. However, the record is restricted from public access if the case is on-going or involves a juvenile or a minor and only the public part of the information is available to the public.

Those who have altercations with government officials especially with police enforcers or want to obtain records pertaining to those similar in nature can do so by checking out administrative record cases. These cases deal with local enforcers who have cases filed against them or have committed violations of police policy. Traffic or incident reports on the other hand contain reports of incidents or accidents that happened in traffic. These also include infractions and police citation reports. Traffic cases include the name of the driver as well as the license plate of the vehicle(s) involved and the driver's license number.

Requesting for information or report copies is easy. One needs to only know the case number to request for a copy. Other information might also come in handy to make the searching faster. Defendants or the accused have the right to access the file and the police give a copy to them. Those who are interested but do not have any interest in the case can obtain copies of the record by requesting for the public information copy. Full details of the case can only be obtained once the case reaches conviction. One can request the records via e-mail, online or by in person.

For those who are in Austin and want to obtain a copy of the public portion of the police record, they can check the APD incident report database. Searches can be done based on the police area, zip code, as well as districts. Reports cost about 10 cents a copy and can be requested from Austin report sales office. It is best to check the business hours of the unit, as it is not open daily.

If you, on the other hand, want to get a copy of the police record in Houston, Texas, you can email, fax or visit the records division of the Houston police department. For open cases requests, one can request a report from the Attorney General's Office. Depending on the volume that the office receives, processing time can take more than 2 months. On the other hand, records that are made public are available from the local police department. To make a request through mail, send in the request form, self-stamped envelope as well as US$6. Payments are made through money order, cashier checks and cash.

For a more convenient approach of extracting police records and other public records, one can check out online commercial public search sites that offer free public searches. This is the fastest and most convenient way to retrieve information without having to wait for longer periods.




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