Report taken

“Report taken” is a local disposition indicating that a written report was prepared, accepted, or initiated in connection with a request. The exact stage depends on agency practice. It tells a reader that a reporting action was recorded, but does not by itself establish a crime, an arrest, a completed investigation, or the report's public availability.

An outcome in the dispatch record

The phrase commonly appears after a call has been handled. It can connect the communications record with a fuller document maintained elsewhere. The dispatch event and written report can have different identifiers, and the public log may not display the report itself.

San Francisco lists a report disposition and explains that the incident resulted in a police report. Its documentation also warns against using that disposition to calculate official report totals. San Francisco disposition explanation

That limitation is important: a dispatch code is an operational summary, not necessarily the authoritative record of every accepted report. Some reports arrive online or through other channels, and the relationship between calls and reports need not be one-to-one.

Example

Hypothetical example: A resident reports damage to a fence. An officer attends, takes the resident's account, and prepares an incident report. The dispatch event closes with “report taken,” while a separate report number identifies the written document.

The disposition supports saying that the response included a reporting action. It does not establish who caused the damage, whether the act was intentional, or whether anyone was charged. Those questions require the report and any later evidence. The example also does not promise that every agency uses this exact wording.

Common confusion

A call record documents the request and response history. A written incident report is another record. “Report taken” connects them under local practice; it does not make the brief public call entry the full report.

A report submitted can still await review. Seattle's online workflow separately identifies submission, temporary confirmation, and approval with an official number. The applicable stage should be checked instead of treating every reporting notation as final acceptance. Seattle reporting process

Following the record

Look for the associated case number and report type. Confirm whether the disposition refers to a police incident report, collision report, informational report, or another document. When counting, identify whether the measure is calls with that disposition or reports maintained in the records system. Label the first measure accordingly; it should not be silently substituted for the second.

Related terms

• No report taken
• Incident report
• Disposition
• Case number

Sources

• San Francisco Digital Services — Law Enforcement Dispatched Calls for Service, disposition table: report action and explicit limits on report-count statistics.
• Seattle Police — Online Crime Reporting: submission and approval are separate stages.