Final Thoughts

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When members of the criminal justice system complained about how much they hated the paperwork that was involved when writing a report, I was positive that it wasn't as bad as they made it seem. Writing has always been something that I am very good at and that writing reports was not going to be an issue. I am able to analyze and summarize information pretty well. However, in this course, I learned that there's more than that. The many activities that we did in class, I truly enjoyed. Even though it was a lot of writing and picking out important details, it really boosted up my rhetorical skills.

Documentary
I've mentioned this multiple times, but I really enjoyed this project. In a way, it prepared us in being able to take notes of what we thought was important and then being able to summarize them. What I liked about the documentary that I watched was that it wasn't something that was easy to take in and then write about it. However, when joining law enforcement and becoming a police officer, most situations deal with hard situations. The documentary project was definitely something hard to work with, mentally and emotionally, but it definitely prepared us for what's to come.

Making a Murderer and The Interviews
Watching some episodes and having to pay attention to the rights and wrongs of the police officers and having to reflect on peoples gestures also helped me when it came down to writing. With this activity, it gave me the opportunity to not only reflect and give my opinion about the people involved in the case, but it also helped in having to pay attention to someones body movements, such as fidgeting and moving around in the chair. All these little things are things that criminal justice students don't take into consideration when interviewing someone, and I say this because I know I didn't. When interviewing someone, details like this can help you find more information about a crime.

Blogs
When writing, one needs to also have the opportunity to express ideas freely. In the class, we definitely had this opportunity with the blogs. Having us read or view videos and then reflect really helped me in having to express my ideas. It gave me the opportunity to practice summarizing and being able to explain many things.

Throughout the semester, I gained knowledge in how reports are done, and now I believe those who say that writing reports suck. This class thought me that what everything comes out in television is rubbish and that there's more to just writing out someone's name and writing little details of the situation. I truly enjoyed the time in class and everything that I learned.

FIRST DRAFT

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During the semester, everything we did in class helped us learn the necessities in how to write police reports. Of what I understood, it was more of being able to pick out the important things and being able to explain them in great detail. When writing reports, it also required us to be able to pay close attention to details and others. Something that I didn't like was having to take quizzes. The reason for it is because I felt like I was more worried about memorizing every detail of the chapter and not really grasping the importance of what it was explaining. I think it is more efficient when it came to discussing the chapter. because it cleared up any questions one might have and it brought different input from others. Something I enjoyed a lot doing was the blogs. It gave us the opportunity to be creative. As the same, I also enjoyed doing the documentaries. In a way, it prepared us of what a police report might need by picking out the important details and summarizing it.

Criminal Minds

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I've never really been a big fan of Criminal Minds. When telling people that I am a major in Criminal Justice and Psychology, I always get the comment of "You want to do that Criminal Minds profiling kind of stuff, right?". I always take offense to this because for one, Criminal Minds is not real life and that's not how things work. When watching the clip, it reminded me that convicting a criminal or getting evidence is more than just looking at a person and making a profile. One really needs to go through steps in order to get to the bottom of things. I have nothing against Criminal Minds or any shows like it, but I really hoped that they depicted more of how things truly are. I know in some episodes they actually show how they need to go through steps in order to maintain evidence and such, but it's not the same.

Dress to Impress

 

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   When reading the article about a black man doing an experiment in how dressing a specific way affected others reactions towards you, it was sad that it did not surprise me when he got negative feedback when he dressed down. In today's society, if we don't follow the social norm rules, then we are not accepted. Based in how you look, it will take a person 3 seconds to decide if you are good or not. 

I'm actually glad Pedro did this experiment because it does make others realize that it is super important in how you dress and look. It was actually really sad when he began to feel uncomfortable when he dressed down and upset when people treated him rudely.

As someone who grew up in Chicago and always rode in public transportation, I have also been guilt of treating someone when dressed in a certain way. However, I would think about and it bothered me that I treated someone like that. It wasn't nice and it wasn't right for me to judge someone I did not know. I think that people need to realize that dressing a certain way does not define a person. Dressing a certain way is just a way of style and nothing more.

Unprofessional and Injustice

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When watching Making a Murderer, I still find myself feeling surprised that the sheriff and his department got away with a lie for so long. It surprised me how there's a "system" in law enforcement that officers must take when handling a crime, but they chose not to follow otherwise. Fortunately enough, the truth came up and they were put in a very uncomfortable situation. There's one scene that I find interesting every time and one scene that makes me angry. The scene that I found funny is when they are interviewing Sergeant Andrew Colborn (18:38) about him receiving a telephone call regarding Anderson and the crime he did not commit. The reason as to why I found this specific scene funny was because Sergeant Colborn seemed very uncomfortable. He had the posture a child usually has when they are being scolded: shoulders are dropped, hands in between their legs, moving around in his chair, and most importantly, trying not to make eye contact. This to me, I think, should be important postures someone who is interrogating another person should take into consideration. Sergeant Colborn knows him and his department messed up and that he was in big deep trouble. As for the other scene that made me upset was when they interviewed Mark Rohrer, the Manitowoc County District Attorney (27:42) when asked if he turned in a report. Now, this one made me upset because I had a little hope in Mr. Rohrer for the fact that he was a lawyer. I felt that out of everyone in the department, he would of been the one to do the right thing. When put in the spot about there not being any record about these documentations he supposedly turned in, it made me angry. He started off with being confident and then when put on the spot, he was out of words. All that confidence left.  As a lawyer, you spend years in school learning what is constitutional and unconstitutional. I'm anxious for the next couple episodes to come.

My Writing Fears

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A fear that I constantly seem to have, one that I have now, when it comes to writing, is clarity. I have many ideas running through my head and can never seem to figure out how to put them down in paper. I absolutely hate writing papers because it takes me a day or two to get my thoughts together. And whenever I get my papers back, I am always afraid to look at the comments professors make because I expect things like "This doesn't make sense" or "It needs more details or explanations". I hate writing formal papers because they need to make sense and they need to be detailed and they require so much more explanations than I can actually explain! Makes sense? I've written a bunch of papers back in grade school and high school and my teachers seemed to like it or they really didn't care. My AP writing course, however, I barely made it out alive. My senior year in high school, my English teacher slaughtered our papers. Once I got to college, I hated writing. And when I say hate, I mean to say, I hate formality and structure. Writing I can do, when it comes to free writing and creativity. However, I won't be writing pretty poems or anything of that kind in the criminal justice field.

Another fear that I have is my grammar. English is not my first language. When speaking, I twist my words and mispronounce a lot of them and get constantly teased about it. So when I write, I am always afraid that I might be using the word wrong or that there is a better word for that particular word. With Spanish being my first language, I always have to make sure that the word I'm trying to use means what it actually means and that I'm not mixing it up with anything in Spanish. For example, the Spanish word soportar does not mean support in English, even though they sound and look similar. So trying to use the word soportar wouldn't make sense in English.

Writing is just scary for me because I never know how to word things and don't know how to explain things good enough for someone to understand. I always thought I made sense and was so confident on my writing until everything that I thought was right was noted as wrong.

New and Improved Report

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On July 25, 2015 at 1230 hours, I spoke with Katherine Tunney. Miss Tunney said that she saw a white Toyota van wagon, with the license plate number 836L92F on it, parked in front of her home, located at 1647 Rancho, El Fuego. Tunney said that the driver had a camera up to his face, taking pictures of her home. Tunney wanted to talk to the suspicious subject, and upon exiting her residency, Tunney noticed the wagon the driver rolled up the window and sped away. A request to check the registration of a license plate was made. The license plate came back to a 2004 Toyota Wagon that belonged to a Stephen D. Bond who was located on 3381 El Balazo, El Fuego. Tunney told me that the driver was a white male with graying hair. When talking with Mrs. Tunney, she told me that on April of 2015, a similar incident had taken place. Mrs. Tunney stated that she was planting flowers in the yard when a suspicious man approached her and asked for her name. Mrs. Tunney did not give him her name. Mrs. Tunney stated that the man left in a cehicle with a personalized plate of ISPYONU. A check of the registration plates was ran and came back to a 2008 SAAB, registered to a man named Richard Toomey, located on 36 Paseo De Bonito, El Rancho. I informed Miss and Mrs. Tunney and Katherine that a crime has not been committed, but that I would file the report.

My Writing Challenge- The Biggest

Jessenia Garcia

Writing is never easy, especially when you want to start. In grade school, I was thought that there's always this writing ritual that begins with creating a spider web. However, I found that to be too much work and it sucked the inspiration out of me. I've always had a hard time starting on an essay or even when I wrote poetry. But I came to learn that I need to let it come to me and just let it flow.

When it came down to the documentary, I felt it was structured, and I don't do well on structured papers. However, I found it easy to write when I began to think about the big parts of the documentary. The way I ended accomplishing this paper is by picking out the main parts from the beginning, middle, and end. And like always, I found it much more helpful when I began to revise my paper. Every time I always found something to change, which made my paper a little better!

My Writing Journey

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Keeping myself on track is really hard, especially when I enjoy sleeping in. However, I managed to wake myself early in the morning and work on the documentary project. Usually after class, I tend to go back to sleep. But, when watching this documentary, I couldn't go back to sleep. This documentary made me think about a lot of things and it put me through an unexplained emotional stage. Blogging and talking about the documentary was really hard because it had such hard material, so when it came to writing the paper, it took time and I was writing bits and pieces of it.

Something I learned about myself was that I can get things done if something interests me. However, I have a really hard time explaining things, in this case, the documentary summary. I always have the tendency to write every single detail, either it be a small or a big detail. Another thing that I learned about myself is that I am not that confident when it comes to citing sources. I always question websites that try to help.

Knowing this about myself, something I can do to better my writing is to just keep writing and revise a lot of my work. I would also have to try something different when it comes to writing. What I mean by this is, if I see that I'm having a hard time writing, I need to get up and walk away for a bit and then get back to it. In my profession, I am hoping to work with kids in abusive homes, and I'm going to need to be able to take breaks. I'm going to need to learn how to deal with some stuff that might take an emotional toll on me.

The Effects of Music

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In Making a Murderer, music played a great role when it came to the audience and them creating an opinion on Steven Avery.

At the beginning of the show, it plays music where to me, it makes it sound like they are portraying Avery as the victim. It shows him hugging family members and friends. Capturing the celebration of his freedom and playing a soft dramatic classical song, it made me feel bad for Avery and feel anger towards the criminal justice system. However, the documentary also plays dramatic music when they begin to talk about Avery's childhood and past crimes. By doing this, it made me think that, yes, Avery was innocent for the crime he was accused of doing, but that doesn't mean he's a good human being! 

The different types of music this documentary used really had me debating Avery's innocence. I kept thinking that he was innocent and that he wasn't capable of hurting anyone! I mean, he was proven to be innocent the first time! To me, Avery was a good person who was disliked by his community because his family and himself did not blend with the other neighbors. But when his past crimes and the dramatic music would play, he had me re-thinking at how maybe, just maybe, he wasn't as innocent as he made himself look or sound. No one truly knows someone's color until they show them.

Born Into Brothels: The Sad Reality

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Born Into Brothels is a definitely must watch documentary! It exposes you to the reality of children who were born into a community where there is no hope for them to succeed. It truly made me realize that I am lucky for what I have, even if it is just a little bit.

Born Into Brothels is a documentary that captures the lives of children who are born into poverty, where the only way they are able to survive is to work. If you were a girl, you grew up to be "put in the line" of prostitution. The saddest part was that these girls knew what they would become once they got older, and in a way, had already accepted their destiny. As for the boys, they were given more liberty to do what they wanted, but it did not mean it was easier than the girls.

A part that struck me was when one of the little girls mentioned that there was this room where it had a curtain that covered the inside, so her siblings and herself wouldn't be able to see what was going on. She stated that when her mother went in there and pulled the curtain down, her and her siblings were to go upstairs on the roof and play until her mother was done. That to me made me feel disgusted. A child is being exposed to such perversion and she sees it as a normal thing because that is what she was born into. It made me so angry and so heartbroken because even though the circumstances are extreme, these children have the purest hearts ever and such innocence, that is slowly being taken away.

This documentary had very strong content and it took a lot in me not to cry. It was sad to know that some of the kids that were given the opportunity to go to school were withdrawn from the school because of their parents and taken back into the community that they have tried to run away from.

Born Into Brothels is a documentary that made me see that people who have nothing are much more thankful than those who have it everything. These kids felt like the pictures they took gave their life meaning and it gave them hope that maybe, somehow, their life would get better. For some of them, it did, but for others, they were dragged back into a community that is no place for a child. Watch full documentary at the bottom!

Making a Murderer: The Exposure of Our System

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As a criminal justice major, all I kept thinking was: What the hell am I getting myself into! What kind of system am I trying to work for? Watching Making A Murderer, my mind was racing. I was angered at how all the facts were there, every single detail, and the criminal justice system chose to look the other way and justify the sheriff departments actions. In Making a Murderer, it shows how much power the justice system has and how police officers abuse their authority. It makes me upset to know, to believe, that this is probably not the first nor' the last case where a person gets accused for a crime they did not commit and authorities did everything they could to put them behind bars, just because they did not like that person.

To fix this issue, I think, that as a community, we need to start speaking up, start talking about what is going on. With writing, we can voice our opinions more clearly and explain why it is wrong. We can bring up different sources and use those to back up our argument. We can point out the issue more clearly. Writing gives us the opportunity to map out our plan before we go out and voice our opinions. Once we speak, we can no longer take our words back. As for writing, we can edit and re-edit before we go out in public. We can also capture one's attention more easily, keep one interested, as long as our argument is relevant, of course.

I think we can all agree that the best part of this episode was when Steven Avery was found innocent and released. I was relieved to finally see that something was done right. I was also relieved to find that the man who committed the crime was already behind bars, except for the fact that he had already sexually assaulted someone and that is why he was locked up. It is saddening to know that it could of all been prevented if the sheriff and others could have put their hate away and done something from the beginning.