Also by Dean Scoville

It has been largely left to the individual officer to somehow come to terms with his career decisions and its eventualities. To recognize its impact on him or her and find some manner to come to terms with it—or not.

Without further ado, here are some of my major reservations about modern law enforcement policies.

Pruitt had to go on the offensive. His mind went to his backup gun, which he kept in his uniform pants. He reached for it.

The sooner that cops embrace the notion that the person they may find themselves in a firefight in may look more like a grandfather than a gangster, the better able they will be to not only respond to the threat at the time, but deal with its aftermath.

For all the cultural sensitivity training we're required to sit through, for all the tolerance we may espouse, we may just not be able to relate to some of our contacts as well as others might. That's why you should consider using a fellow officer of a similar persuasion, if possible.

Some cops say marijuana is not benign; it's a gateway drug that leads users to harder narcotics. Others say policing its use and sale wastes precious law enforcement resources.

Elasky rose and aimed his Gun at the robber using a Weaver stance, his feet centered and his body positioned for as much cover as the counter could afford. Then he opened fire.

Where are the media’s priorities? Did the officer’s actions really eclipse the actions allegedly perpetrated by the suspect? Why aren’t we seeing the truly offensive footage, that of motorists taking last second evasive actions to avoid being maimed and killed during the pursuit Rodriguez allegedly triggered?

Four officers murdered. A fifth wounded. One suspect dead. A police department in shock. Not since the 1970 Newhall shooting has an officer-involved shooting reverberated so strongly throughout the law enforcement community.

If an officer or his vehicle is immobilized because of haphazard parking on a hot call, other officers can effectively become trapped inside the kill zone because of an inability to back up or accelerate forward due to the incapacitated patrol unit.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as though the very air about him suddenly became ionized with some ill-defined threat. The officer couldn't suppress the sensation that something was terribly wrong.

Annoying, "routine" calls can sometimes have significant consequences for the officers that respond to them.

At first blush, one would be hard pressed to connect the dots between that Michael Keaton clunker of a film "Multiplicity" and TREXPO. Nonetheless, I found myself thinking of the cloning comedy throughout the three-day training conference and expo because if there's one frustrating thing about TREXPO WEST, it's one's inability to be at multiple places at once.

Responsible for 18,650 deaths nationwide a year—150 percent as many deaths as caused by AIDS—the monster is microscopic, extremely aggressive, and damned difficult to kill. The monster is a microbe called Staphylococcus.