This week, I am going to have you make a bulletin using Publisher. Publisher is a Microsoft software used to make nicer typeset documents, mainly pamphlets and books. If you do not have access to publisher, I suggest you use Powerpoint instead of Word. This is because it is easier to arrange images and text in powerpoint than it is in Word. (I have provided a similar base document in powerpoint to follow along if needed.) Publisher is alittle nicer though, as inserting text is simpler.
For this tutorial, I am going to have you make a fake bulletin, but based on a real case I worked on, a series of catalytic converter thefts from a rental truck company in Troy, NY. Bigger trucks have larger and more expensive catalytic converters than personal vehicles. I have posted the data to follow along here, or you can download the data from ELearning.
First, open up the BulletinBase.pub file. This is just a simple one I made for class. At your job you will want to make a base file with your own agencies information and format.
First, your base bulletin will have some standard information you need to edit in. In the bottom, I have a #, so you can keep track of how many you have done. Lets go ahead and select that element and change the text to 01.1-2013. This will signal this is the first bulletin for the year 2013, and the “.1” signifies the current iteration.
You may think that is excessive – who cares about all that information! You do for several reasons, one it helps you refer to specific bulletins (so if someone calls you up on the phone and says I have info. related to that bulletin, you can have a point of reference which one). Also you will often update bulletins with additional information, if organize them like this it is easy to keep track of different iterations of the same bulletin. Finally, you want to keep track of if a case is solved (and send out the info that it was solved).
Next we are going to edit the contact information in the bulletin. This is should be pretty straightforward why you want this in there. Insert your own name and email address (go ahead and leave the fake phone number).
When I insert my full UTD email address, the box then subsequently looks like this:
This is one of the examples where Publisher is nicer than Powerpoint (or Word). It keeps the text box set, but tries to kern or hyphenate words. Since I have room to expand the box, I am going to drag the left center handle to the left (as annotated in the picture with the red arrow) to be big enough to fit my email address.
Finally we are going to change our title. Lets keep it simple, and title it THEFT OF CATALYTIC CONVERTERS. You can see that it automatically hyphenates to fit in the box.
We are going to change the size of the text to be slightly smaller to fit. Highlight the text, and then in the Home tab on the top Ribbon, change the text size to 20 and hit enter.
Once you do that, the text should now fit on one line.
In your data folder, I have provided an image of a catalytic converter to insert into the bulletin. In the top ribbon, go to the Insert tab, and then select Pictures:
Navigate to wherever you saved this tutorials data, and then select and Insert the CatConvImage.jpg image.
You will see it is very big and covers much of the page. Make it smaller and drag it too the side. It is easier to get everything you want on the page first, and then figure out how exactly you want it to fit together in the end.
Next we are going to place some text of the incidents into our document. Go again to the Insert tab on the ribbon, and select Draw Text Box.
Just draw a big box in the middle of the document. Here I am going to write in what details of the events we know. Here is what I ended up putting in my text box:
Over the past month, there have been 4 incidents in which an individual cut the catalytic converter from a Budget Rental truck using a reciprocating saw on 1st St. (south of Hoosick). One incident a witness reported a suspicious white male near the vicinity of the crime.
#1—Sometime between Friday 9/13 and Saturday 9/14
#2—Sometime between Saturday 9/21 and Monday 9/23
#3—Sometime between Monday 9/30 and Tuesday 10/1
#4—Sometime between 10:00 and 15:00 on Thursday 10/3Then also change the font size of the text to 18. Here is what mine looks like in the end:
You want to be concise in your descriptions. Most people will only spend a few seconds viewing the bulletin.
I want to add in two additional images: a screenshot of the exact location where the trucks have been victimized, as well as a google map screenshot showing the location. The location of the business is listed at 500 River St., Troy, NY 12180. So go to that link.
To get the pin removed from the map click the X button to the right of the address (circled in red above). We are going to add in our own circle to highlight the location (the thefts occurred from trucks parked on the 1st st side, not River St. Now we are going to take a screenshot. In windows hit the Print Screen button (on Mac, it is Command+Shift+3). Then go back to the publisher document and hit Ctrl+V to paste in that screenshot. (There are other screenshot tools you might use as well, Windows has one built in called the Snipping Tool.)
Select the image, and then in the Format tab in the Ribbon, select the Crop Option. You will then get dark black handles on the image, in which you can use to crop the image (you can see in the shadow of mine I already cropped my second screen).
Crop all of the superflous stuff in the image, so you can only see the map and the nearby streets. Now we are going to add in a circle to highlight the area of the incident. In the main ribbon, go to the Insert tab, and then select Shapes -> Oval.
Holding shift when you draw the oval will make it a circle (and if you did a rectangle it would keep it a square). Draw it over the building that is the Budget rental truck place. Then in the format bar, change the outline to red, and the fill to No Fill.
After this, you should be able to see behind the circle. Now we are group the images together. Select both the circle and the google map screenshot by holding down the Ctrl button (or holding left click and drawing a square around both objects). Then right click and select Group.
What this does is make it so that even if you move the google map screenshot, the circle you made moves with it, or if you rescale the map the circle also rescales. They are treated as the same object now.
For the last part, I want you to also get a screenshot of the google streetview of the location. Go back to google maps, and click the little yellow person icon.
Then you will see a bunch of blue lines where there is streetview imagery available. Click on N 1st St, and then navigate to where you can see where the trucks are stored. You can see it is actually a back alley that is not really a thru street for traffic.
Take another screenshot and enter this into your bulletin. Again crop it to the area of interest. Now we just need to rearrange all of the elements to fit on one page. (Try to keep BOLO’s to one page if possible, again people will spend very little time on them). In the end, here is what mine looks like.
Now make sure to not send the publisher file. (I will take points off for your homework if you send me a publisher file.) Go to File -> Export -> Create PDF. (If you do not have this option, you can often go to Print and then save as a PDF.) It is easier for people to open and view PDF files.
Save the file with its number and a simple description. If you end up having more than 100 bulletins in a year, you will want to have two leading zeroes in the file name. This will help when viewing the files, it will be very easy to keep track of, as they will be ordered like you want.
It is also good to maintain a spreadsheet of the bulletins, in particular having a column with associated individuals (some folks will crop up multiple times), as well as whether the investigation has ended/was successful. It is good to keep track of successes!
For your homework, I have provided a spreadsheet of Banksy incidents in New York City in the Banksy_Data.xlsx spreadsheet. See this article for where I got the data, and this article for some detailing of the geographic offender profiling of Banksy graffitti in the UK.
Create a bulletin of whatever information you think is relevant, including images, graphs, text, tables, etc. Make sure to turn in a PDF file for the homework.