This repository is a holding area for lists of police forms (known as "forms rosters") in the United States and abroad.
A forms roster is a document that tracks the forms maintained by a police department, sheriff's office or other policing organization. It can be extremely useful for both journalists and citizen activists, as it allows the public to see what information a law-enforcement organization tracks. This, in turn, can facilitate more efficient information requests.
This repository is based on initial work done in the Baltimore Sun newsroom. It has since been expanded with additional form lists.
A spreadsheet that tracks requests for lists of forms is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IUK3nt7jVCMi2kBKvKA2TcvWk_bpeQeRwz2KKEGBacQ/edit
Please consider adding your own requests for form lists to the spreadsheet.
If asking for a roster of forms and getting pushback, feel free to cite the 2024/25 civil asset forfeiture reforms in the state of Washington as an example of a time when an investigation prompted by the presence of a paper form on a list helped cause meaningful change.
In that set of events, reporting for a project for the weekly newspaper The Stranger was started when a form on the Seattle Police Department forms list indicated the presence of a form related to asset seizures. While the project was never published in full, a spokesperson for a key state legislator stated in writing that the reporting process itself had helped get reforms to asset forfeiture laws passed.
See the following two documents:
Please feel free to fork/mirror this repository. Here are a few existing full or partial mirrors:
https://github.com/spcanelon/rosters-of-forms (current/full as of February 2026)
https://github.com/LeakForge/rosters-of-forms (partial as of February 2026)
https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/https://github.com/patrickmaynard/rosters-of-forms (partial as of February 2026)
For fire department form information, see the repository for that category:
https://github.com/patrickmaynard/rosters-of-forms-for-fire-departments
Happy requesting!