I need to get an overview of what the police reports say before I dig deeper into the discovery.

A discovery packet rarely comes with just one police report. There's the arresting officer's account, maybe a supporting officer's, sometimes a witness statement.

Officer A writes that the subject "initiated physical contact" at 21:15. Officer B, arriving minutes later, writes that "the situation had already escalated." Now you have to determine whether they're describing the same event, different moments, or reaching different conclusions.

To build your case theory, you need to know where the reports agree, where they diverge, and what you need to check against the recording. Traditionally, that means reading every report cold and hoping you remember the detail you noticed on page two by the time you get to another report.

Here's how Reduct helps you work police reports without losing the thread.

Summarize each report to get oriented fast

Before comparing reports, generate a summary of each one. Reduct creates a clickable summary in seconds, organized chronologically, by theme, or using your own template.

Every point in the summary links back to the source. You're using the summary to get your bearings before reading closely, then clicking through to confirm anything that matters.

Label contradictions as you spot them

Once you're oriented, read each report closely and flag where the accounts don't line up.

Highlight and label a "contradiction" when two reports describe the same moment differently. Label it "needs verification" when a report states a conclusion instead of an observation, like "the situation had escalated."

The same passage can carry more than one label. A time that's approximate in one report but exact in another might get tagged both "timeline gap" and "contradiction."

These labels stay attached to the text, so deep in a third report, you can pull up everything flagged across all of them instead of trying to remember what you noticed pages ago.

Ask the reports direct questions

The next step is getting answers without rereading every report to find the same detail again.

You can ask each document, in plain language:

• What time did each Officer A arrive on scene?

• Does the report mentions any female witness?

• Was medical treatment offered or documented for either party?

The answers pull straight from the text and point you toward where the reports agree, where they don't, and what's worth checking against the footage.

What comes after the overview

Your highlights and labels are already attached to the reports, so you can jump straight to the labeled moments instead of re-reading to remember why you flagged it.

Cross-reference each timestamp against the video, and run the same questions against the footage to see where they hold up and where they don't.

By the time you open the footage, you already know what you're looking for. Instead of starting from scratch, you're verifying conflicting accounts and filling in the gaps.