I would be most surprised if I discovered the police in 1985 received little or no training on how to prepare WS's. It seems obvious to me firearms would receive additional training given the nature of their operations. I'm sure training manuals exist with model specimens. I find it difficult to believe that a pair of blood stained socks found by a body (if visible) would be deemed irrelevant and not worthy of inclusion in a WS but I might be wrong. Maybe they just thought they were NB's discarded socks from when he got into bed and someone dripped blood on them and it wasn't relevant.
Sorry but there is no instructions for writing statements. Police only need to write up statements when requested to do so. Their pocket books were for their own records. A statement is only written when requested and the person requesting it sets the parameters. Someone can be vague and say write down what you did or can be more specific and say tell me what you moved and touched. As a result of allegations the police caused damage in the kitchen and opened windows and left them unlocked the police were asked to detail just that. Most of the time someone will speak to them and get answers from them and then say write that down I want a statement to that effect. It's not as common to not speak with them and just make them write something.
Instead of a situation where Jones would have to tell his superiors that someone told him XYZ you have statements with such written up so that the superiors can just look and see for themselves or you can attach the statements and say here this is what the person said about such issue. There are 2 reasons for this:
1) When there are many people working on a case you want key things available to all as opposed to everyone having to go to each other and ask did you speak to so and so and if so what did he say.
2) It avoids the situation of the person saying they don't remember telling you such you must be mistaken or worse saying you are lying and made it up.
DCI Jones among others didn't want to talk to every raid team member and interview them to ask what each one did. He asked a few key raid team guys to give statements of what they did. In September everyone was asked to write down what they did and about their Jeremy interactions because at that point Jeremy was a suspect. They also were shown the photos and asked if the photos reflected how they recall the scene. This was because of concerns that maybe they moved things. When there were concerns then at that point they would be asked about them. The purpose of these statements is to help the investigators as well as the people handling the prosecution including lawyers. When the people handling such have questions they feel need to be answered and should be documented then a statement is obtained sometimes from a cop often from civilians.
I have never seen police allow someone to ramble on like they did with Ann except for suspects. They give suspects room to hang themselves. The freedom they gave Ann is astonishing. It makes reading her statements a nightmare but there are a few things in there that otherwise we would not know about- most of them things that are totally worthless but still some that people take interest in.
The babble about the dirty children's clothes and crotch stained panties that were soaking is quite worthless but some took interest in it and it caused plenty of posts over the years. The only part i even find at all interesting is her father telling her to throw them away because they would not need them anymore when he was asked what she should do with them. I can almost see his snarkiness as he remarked to her and probably thought inside what the hell is wrong with her that she even needed to ask no one will want these stained used clothes donated to them. While others try making a mountain out of this I just find it humorous.
I have found plenty of funny things in statements totally irrelevant to the issue at hand including someone writing about failed stings carried out in a company lunchroom to find out who was eating other people's lunches from the break room fridge. In one they planted an ink pack in a brown bag. No one fell for the trap other lunches were eaten while it was left untouched.
