Also by Joseph Petrocelli

A department can prepare for a large student gathering by reviewing what has occurred in the past and considering the resources it has available. Such precautions are critical because any student gathering can digress into a riot.

Just because money is not available from your department doesn't mean that training becomes any less important. As a proactive officer, you know that you must remain current on your training if you are going to be effective on the street. This article is designed to help you locate free training resources and remain on the cutting edge of the law enforcement profession.

Child abuse is a wide reaching problem entailing physical and emotional abuse. This article will address one segment of child abuse, specifically burn injuries sustained by children.

The ongoing recession has forced police departments to look for areas where they can save money. One source of savings may be found in your agency's response to 911 calls.

The major contributing factor to pedestrian injuries and fatalities has nothing to do with the motor vehicle. Unsafe pedestrian actions are the major cause. Yet jaywalking enforcement remains an extremely low priority in most police departments.

This article is constructed to give patrol officers options in dealing with citizen complaints about speeding cars.

The fourth month of the year is generally pleasant. But as the month progresses, the dates mark the anniversaries of illicit and sinister events and the fools of April are no longer funny.

Runaways were once categorized as either adventurous juveniles or rebellious teens. Today's more evolved view holds that runaways are victims of dysfunctional family situations. This change in beliefs has forced a change in the police response to runaways.

It has often been said that police work is the second oldest profession. The distinction of "oldest profession" goes, of course, to prostitution.

About 20 percent of all meth labs are discovered due to an explosion. Besides the obvious immediate concerns associated with any structure explosion, meth labs create a special set of problems for law enforcement. Police must be aware of these concerns and have a plan in place to mitigate them.

In light of the recent economic downturn, retailers operating on a tight profit margin are going to be much less forgiving of shoplifters and have much higher expectations that you will deal with the shoplifting problem.

November brings what is arguably the biggest drinking night of the year. The night before Thanksgiving has achieved that dubious status in drinking establishments throughout the country. And it usually leads to violence around bars.

Fortunately, research and progressive thinking have yielded some promising practices for bridging the gap to the Arab American community. Many of these ideas are rooted in pre-existing community policing concepts.

September means back to school time. And you, as police officers, are charged with the task of protecting society's most vulnerable citizens—its youth—from the very ominous threat posed by high volume traffic.

Daily, some 135,000 convenience stores in the U.S. serve 100 million Americans who find their easy in-and-out access appealing. Unfortunately, such convenience isn't lost on criminals who have historically found convenience stores equally attractive.

Arresting a day laborer can be frustrating, time-consuming, and fruitless for a patrol officer.

The majority of burglar alarm activations are not by bad guys. False alarms account for 10 to 25 percent of all calls to the police. Each call usually requires the response of two officers for 20 minutes. In 2002, American police responded to 36 million alarm calls, costing $1.8 billion.

There is a long recognized relationship between tourism and crime. Much of this can be attributed to "vacation behavior," a general carefree attitude that translates into carelessness and leaves the tourist vulnerable.

In a Broken Windows crime model, graffiti is one of those foothold crimes that leads to a neighborhood's decay.