Badge Verbal Comprehension (Reading Comprehension) on the NCJOSI-2
Reading comprehension is the ability to read a passage and understand exactly what it says. Officers read incident reports, policies, court orders and warrants every week, and small details in them matter.
This page explains what these questions ask of you, gives you a passage to try, and walks through a method for answering straight from the text.
What the questions ask you to do
A reading comprehension question gives you a short passage, often written like a police report or a policy, followed by one or more questions about it. Some questions ask for a detail stated in the passage. Others ask what the passage implies or which statement it best supports.
The answer is always in the passage. Wrong answers are often things that sound reasonable, or that could be true in real life, but that the passage never actually says.
Try a practice question
This question is original practice content written by Badge & Hose. Every name, place and rule in it is fictional.
At 2:10 a.m., Officer Reyes responded to a report of a break-in at Hollis Hardware on Grant Street. The caller, a baker working the night shift across the street, said she heard glass break and saw a man in a gray hooded jacket run north toward the rail yard. When Reyes arrived at 2:18 a.m., the glass in the front door was shattered, but the cash register had not been opened. The owner, reached by phone, said the only missing item was a cordless drill from a display near the door. The security camera above the register was not recording because its power cord had been unplugged earlier that week during a remodel.
According to the passage, why is there no camera footage of the break-in?
Show the answer and explanation
Answer: The camera's power cord had been unplugged during a remodel.
The last sentence of the passage says the camera was not recording because its power cord was unplugged earlier that week during a remodel.
The other choices borrow details from the passage and twist them. The gray hooded jacket is how the caller described the suspect's clothing, not something used on the camera. The passage mentions the unopened register but never links it to recording. And nothing says the owner turned anything off.
A method for reading questions
Read the question before the passage
Knowing what you are looking for, such as a time, a reason or a name, tells you which details to slow down on.
Read the whole passage once, carefully
Don't skim. Pay attention to who did what, in what order, and why. Times, directions and descriptions are common targets.
Find the sentence that answers the question
Before looking at the choices, go back and locate the exact line that answers it. If you can't point to the line, you are guessing.
Match that line to a choice
Pick the choice that says the same thing as the passage, even if it uses different words. Rule out any choice that adds something the passage doesn't say.
Common mistakes
Answering from experience. If a choice is something you know happens in real burglaries but the passage doesn't say it, it's wrong.
Falling for recycled details. Wrong answers often reuse real words from the passage, like "gray hooded jacket," attached to the wrong fact.
Mixing up similar people or times. When a passage has a caller, a suspect and an owner, or a report time and an arrival time, check that you've matched the right detail to the right person.
Stopping too early. Read every choice. The first one that sounds right is not always the one the passage supports best.
Practice more reading comprehension questions
In Badge & Hose study mode you can focus on one ability at a time and see an explanation after every answer. Verbal Comprehension (Reading Comprehension) is included free.