Read this report excerpt. Officer Reyes was dispatched to 410 Alder Street at 9:40 p.m. after a neighbor called about breaking glass. The neighbor, Mr. Okafor, said he heard the glass break at about 9:35 p.m. and saw one person run north. Officer Reyes arrived at 9:52 p.m., found a broken side window and photographed it. According to Mr. Okafor, how many minutes passed between the sound of breaking glass and the officer's arrival?
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About this test
This is a free 15-question practice test for the written part of a police entrance exam, written by the StudyPDF team. There is no single national test, so it practices the skills most of them share: reading an incident report, writing a clear and factual one, picking out details from a scene, situational judgment and the basic math of a patrol shift. It mixes multiple choice, select all that apply and fill in the blank. Answer all 15, then check your score and read why each answer is right.
All 15 questions at a glance
Prefer to read before you play? Every question in the sampler is listed below. Answers and explanations stay collapsed until you open them.
1.Read this report excerpt. Officer Reyes was dispatched to 410 Alder Street at 9:40 p.m. after a neighbor called about breaking glass. The neighbor, Mr. Okafor, said he heard the glass break at about 9:35 p.m. and saw one person run north. Officer Reyes arrived at 9:52 p.m., found a broken side window and photographed it. According to Mr. Okafor, how many minutes passed between the sound of breaking glass and the officer's arrival?
- A. 5 minutes
- B. 12 minutes
- C. 17 minutes
- D. 22 minutes
Answer: C. 17 minutes
The question asks about the time Mr. Okafor gave for the sound (9:35 p.m.), not the time of the dispatch (9:40 p.m.). From 9:35 to 9:52 is 17 minutes. The 12 minutes is the gap from dispatch to arrival, which you can work out from the passage but which answers a different question. On report questions, underline what is being measured before you subtract.
2.Which sentence is best suited to an incident report?
- A. The man was clearly furious and wanted to hurt me.
- B. The man shouted, clenched both fists and stood about three feet from me.
- C. The man looked like a typical troublemaker.
- D. The man had probably been drinking and was out of control.
Answer: B. The man shouted, clenched both fists and stood about three feet from me.
A report records what you saw, heard and did, in words another person can picture. Shouting, clenched fists and a distance are observable facts. Furious, wanted to hurt, troublemaker and probably drinking are conclusions or guesses about what is going on in someone's head, and they can be challenged later. If you do think a motive or condition matters, state the fact it rests on, such as the smell of alcohol or slurred speech.
3.Which sentence is the clearest and least open to misreading?
- A. Officer Hart told Officer Cole that he had left the report on the desk.
- B. Hart told Cole it was on the desk.
- C. The report was told to Cole by Hart on the desk.
- D. Officer Hart told Officer Cole, "I left the report on your desk."
Answer: D. Officer Hart told Officer Cole, "I left the report on your desk."
In the first sentence, "he" could mean Hart or Cole, so the reader cannot tell who left the report. The second leaves out what "it" is and where the desk is, and the third is garbled. Using the exact words as a quotation removes the doubt completely. When a pronoun could point to two people, repeat the name or quote the speaker.
4.These four sentences come from an officer's report. Which order is best? (1) I handcuffed the suspect and placed him in the patrol car. (2) I saw the suspect run out of the store carrying a bag. (3) I received a dispatch about a robbery at Kelly's Market. (4) I caught up with the suspect in the alley.
- A. 3, 2, 4, 1
- B. 2, 3, 4, 1
- C. 3, 4, 2, 1
- D. 2, 4, 3, 1
Answer: A. 3, 2, 4, 1
A report is told in the order things happened. The dispatch comes first (3), then the officer sees the suspect leave the store (2), catches up in the alley (4) and finally makes the arrest (1). Any order that has the officer catching up before seeing the suspect, or seeing the suspect before the dispatch, breaks the timeline and makes the report hard to rely on.
5.Study this description. A dark blue four-door sedan left the scene heading east. It had a cracked left taillight, a roof rack and a bumper sticker on the right side. The plate began with 4K. Two people were inside, and the driver wore a gray hooded sweatshirt. Which statement about the vehicle is correct?
- A. It had a cracked right taillight.
- B. It left the scene heading west.
- C. It had a cracked left taillight and a roof rack.
- D. Three people were inside.
Answer: C. It had a cracked left taillight and a roof rack.
The description gives a cracked left taillight and a roof rack, so the third choice is the only one that matches. The other choices each swap a single detail (right for left, west for east, three for two), which is exactly how memory questions are built. Reading a scene in an order, for example vehicle, plate, people, direction, makes it easier to hold on to the details that can be checked.
6.A patrol car travels at a steady 45 miles per hour for 40 minutes. How far does it go?
- A. 25 miles
- B. 30 miles
- C. 33 miles
- D. 45 miles
Answer: B. 30 miles
40 minutes is 2/3 of an hour, and 2/3 of 45 is 30. Distance is speed times time, as long as both use the same unit. The 45 comes from forgetting to convert minutes to hours, and 25 or 33 come from rounding mistakes. Converting the time first keeps these problems simple.
7.A department received 250 calls in one week, and 20 percent of them were about traffic. How many calls were not about traffic?
- A. 50
- B. 180
- C. 200
- D. 230
Answer: C. 200
20 percent of 250 is 50, so 250 - 50 = 200 calls were not about traffic. The 50 is the traffic share, which answers the opposite question. You can also take 80 percent of 250 directly: 0.8 x 250 = 200. Reading whether the question asks for the part or the rest is where most percent mistakes happen.
8.The day after you file a report, you realize that you wrote the wrong street number for the scene. What is the best response?
- A. Tell your supervisor promptly and correct the report the way your department requires
- B. Leave it, because nobody has noticed and the street name is right
- C. Change the report yourself without telling anyone so that no record shows the mistake
- D. Wait to see whether anyone raises it before saying anything
Answer: A. Tell your supervisor promptly and correct the report the way your department requires
Reports can end up in court, so accuracy and honesty matter more than looking perfect. An honest error that is reported and corrected through the proper process is a small problem. Hiding it, quietly changing a record or hoping nobody notices can look like falsification and damages your credibility, even though the original mistake was minor. On judgment questions, pick the answer that is open, prompt and follows procedure.
9.Two witnesses describe the same car differently: one says it was red, the other says it was maroon. How should your report handle this?
- A. Record each witness's statement as given, with the witness's name
- B. Include only the statement you find more believable
- C. Write "reddish" so that both statements are covered
- D. Leave the color out until the witnesses agree
Answer: A. Record each witness's statement as given, with the witness's name
The report is a record of what each person said, not a ruling on who is right. Writing both statements with names keeps the facts intact and lets investigators weigh them. Dropping one account is a judgment you are not there to make, blending them creates a statement nobody gave, and leaving the color out throws away useful information.
10.Which items belong in the narrative of an incident report?
Select all that apply.
- A. The time you arrived and where the scene was
- B. What a witness told you, with the witness's name
- C. Your guess about why the suspect did it
- D. What you saw and heard, in specific terms
- E. Your opinion on whether the person is guilty
Answer: A. The time you arrived and where the scene was, B. What a witness told you, with the witness's name, D. What you saw and heard, in specific terms
A narrative answers who, what, when, where and how with facts: times, places, statements and what the officer observed. A guessed motive and an opinion about guilt are conclusions that belong to investigators and courts, and putting them in the report makes the facts around them look less reliable.
11.Read this report. At 7:15 a.m. a delivery driver left his white box truck parked outside 22 Pine Street and went inside to make a delivery. When he returned at 7:30 a.m., the rear door was open and about twelve cartons were missing. A camera on the building across the street faces the rear of the truck. The building manager said the camera records over its footage every 48 hours. Which statements does the report support?
Select all that apply.
- A. Exactly twelve cartons were stolen.
- B. The driver was away from the truck for 15 minutes.
- C. A camera across the street faces the rear of the truck.
- D. The truck was parked outside 22 Pine Street.
- E. The footage is certain to be available next week.
Answer: B. The driver was away from the truck for 15 minutes., C. A camera across the street faces the rear of the truck., D. The truck was parked outside 22 Pine Street.
Three statements can be found in the text: 7:15 to 7:30 is 15 minutes, the camera faces the rear of the truck and the truck was at 22 Pine Street. The report says about twelve cartons were missing, not exactly twelve, and it does not say they were stolen. The footage is overwritten every 48 hours, so it is not certain to exist next week, which is the whole point of the manager's remark. Supported means the text says it, not that it seems likely.
12.Which sentences keep the verb tense consistent, as an incident report should?
Select all that apply.
- A. I arrive at the scene, spoke with the caller and take her statement.
- B. I arrived at the scene, spoke with the caller and took her statement.
- C. The suspect ran north, then turned and entered the alley.
- D. The suspect runs north, then turned and enters the alley.
- E. He told me that he had not seen the vehicle before that night.
Answer: B. I arrived at the scene, spoke with the caller and took her statement., C. The suspect ran north, then turned and entered the alley., E. He told me that he had not seen the vehicle before that night.
Everything in a report has already happened, so the verbs stay in the past. The first and fourth sentences jump between present and past in the middle. The fifth uses past perfect ("had not seen") correctly for something that happened before the moment he spoke. Switching tense is easy to miss when you reread your own work, so check the verbs one at a time.
13.Complete the sentence.
A squad of 6 officers each writes 2 reports a day. Over 5 days they write _____ reports, and if three quarters of them are filed on time, _____ are filed on time.
Options for blank 1: 30, 60, 90
Options for blank 2: 45, 40, 50
Answer: 60, 45
6 officers times 2 reports is 12 a day, and 12 times 5 days is 60. Three quarters of 60 is 60 / 4 = 15 per quarter, times 3 = 45. Breaking a word problem into one multiplication at a time is faster and safer than trying to do it in a single step.
14.Complete the sentence.
An incident report is written in the _____ tense and sticks to _____ rather than opinion.
Options for blank 1: present, past, future
Options for blank 2: rumors, assumptions, facts
Answer: past, facts
A report describes events that already took place, so the past tense is the natural fit, and it should record facts that you observed or that someone told you, with the source named. Rumors and assumptions can be wrong, and a reader who sees them mixed in with facts may stop trusting the rest of the report.
15.Complete the sentence.
Many agencies write times on a 24-hour clock. A report lists one event at 2140 hours, which is _____, and another at 0605 hours, which is _____.
Options for blank 1: 9:40 a.m., 8:40 p.m., 9:40 p.m.
Options for blank 2: 6:05 a.m., 6:05 p.m., 5:06 a.m.
Answer: 9:40 p.m., 6:05 a.m.
On a 24-hour clock the hours after noon continue past 12, so subtract 12 from 21 to get 9, which makes 2140 equal to 9:40 p.m. Times from 0000 to 1159 are morning, so 0605 is 6:05 a.m. A common slip is subtracting 13 instead of 12, which gives 8:40 p.m.
Which police exam are you taking? There is no single national test
There is no national police entrance exam. Each department decides which written test it uses, and in many states a state board, often called POST for Peace Officer Standards and Training, sets or approves the test. Some agencies buy a test from a vendor, some write their own and some states require one specific test. As two examples, Stanard & Associates describes its National Police Officer Selection Test as measuring arithmetic, reading comprehension, grammar and incident report writing, and California POST sets reading and writing standards for peace officer candidates. Other tests lean on situational judgment and work-style questions instead.
That is why the first step is to read the job posting. It usually names the test, or at least the skills it measures, and the testing company or state board often publishes its own candidate guide for free. This page does not assume any one format, and it asserts no question counts, time limits or passing scores, because those differ from test to test and change over time.
The written exam is also only one stage. Most agencies add a physical ability test, a background investigation, an interview and medical and psychological screening, but the steps and their order vary. Confirm the full process with the agency you are applying to.
How to use this practice test
The 15 questions are spread over the skills that show up again and again: reading an incident report and pulling out times and facts, choosing the sentence that belongs in a report (objective, specific, in the right order), noticing details in a written scene description, deciding what to do when a situation tests your honesty or judgment, and the arithmetic of time, distance, averages and percentages.
In a real test the scene may be shown for a short time and then taken away before the questions appear. Here the description stays in the question, so you can practice the habit that matters: reading for the detail that can be checked, such as a color, a number, a position or a time. Once that feels easy, cover the description with your hand after reading it once and try again.
Take the test in one sitting, then read every explanation, including the ones you got right. A miss on the report-writing questions usually has one cause: an opinion, a guess or a vague word where a fact should be. The questions for clerical checking, number series and vocabulary sit on the civil service practice test on this site, so they are not repeated here.
Every question was written by the StudyPDF team. None of them comes from a department, a POST board or a test vendor, and StudyPDF is not affiliated with any of them.
How to build more practice tests from your own materials
Fifteen questions show you which skills need work, but your own test is the one that counts, and a generic bank does not know which format your agency uses or where you keep losing points.
StudyPDF works from your material instead. Upload your agency's candidate guide, the study guide from the testing company or state board, your academy handouts or your own notes. Then press New material, pick a practice exam or a quiz, choose those files as the sources and set the length and the difficulty. Every question is written from those exact pages and every explanation cites where the answer comes from, so you can open the source the moment something looks off. You can narrow a test to one skill such as report writing, and your answers build a per-concept picture of what keeps costing you points.
Bo is the tutor for the rest. Ask him why an answer is right and he explains it from your own pages, with a hint first if you want one.
You do not have to upload anything to start. Name a topic instead, for example incident report writing, reading comprehension or word problems with time and distance, and Bo sets it up with its key concepts so you can build a practice test on it. Starting is free.
Written by the StudyPDF team. Last updated August 19, 2026.
Good to know
Is this police exam practice test free?
Yes. All 15 questions, the score screen and every explanation are free to play, and the test runs fully in your browser. You need a free StudyPDF account to download the PDF or to build more practice tests from your own study materials.
Is this the same test my department uses?
Probably not exactly. There is no national police exam: each department, and often each state board, picks its own written test. This page practices skills that many of them share, such as report reading and writing, observation, judgment and basic math. Check your job posting for the test you will sit.
Who wrote these questions?
The StudyPDF team wrote every question and explanation. They are not real exam questions, and StudyPDF is not affiliated with any police department, POST board or test company.
Can I get more questions like these from my own materials?
Yes. Upload your agency's candidate guide, academy handouts or notes to StudyPDF and build full practice tests from your exact material, with explanations tied to your pages. If you have nothing to upload, you can just name a topic instead.