Also by Dean Scoville

The two detectives hurriedly exited Schmidt's truck and made a stealthy approach to the apartment complex. If spotted by the suspects, there would be little mistaking the significance of the word POLICE on the back in white letters.

There’s not enough underpaid mental health professionals to go around, and family members eventually reach their own breaking points. This leaves society’s de facto field shrinks—that’s you, my brothers and sisters—to deal with those who spend more time listening to the voices inside their head than they do voices of reason.

As the handling officer, you are often the first line of defense for identifying the true victim. It's a heady responsibility.

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."

—Mark Twain

Right now, there are any number of bad cops flying under the radar. People with badges who are exploiting their positions and the people they come in contact with. What to do?

The sight that greeted Bergantino momentarily took him aback. Beyond the threshold stood a man as naked to the world as when he'd first entered it some 50 years before. It was not a pretty sight.

Many cops find themselves dealing with beatings, shootings, and stabbings on a fairly routine basis. And with each call or observation-based incident, one can find himself becoming more and more comfortable. It gets harder to get the adrenaline pumping. And therein lies the danger.

There are those who, whether or not they've been given a break, are hell-bent on trying to extract their pound of flesh for some perceived slight. Often, it has to do with the fact that we had the temerity to detain them in the first place. No matter how justified the detention, no matter how strong the probable cause, no matter how polite we may have been, they just aren't satisfied.

If it wasn't valuable, there wouldn't be so many motions to suppress it. If it wasn't important, nobody would care about its chain of custody. Yet if one watched the haphazard manner with which some cops handle evidence, they might get the impression it was little more than garbage.

Perhaps the saddest of ill-fated partner pairings goes to those orchestrated by the officers themselves.

Who becomes a cop? Who are the men and women that comprise the ranks of a profession where they can be killed for no reason other than the fact that they are cops?

Within seconds of their arrival, the breach man hit the door and the teams streamed inside. Daniels and Johnson targeted the room furthest inside the house.

Besides having to deal with larger numbers of intoxicated drivers, officers working graveyard have to worry about some of the less obvious dangers of disregarding the body's natural schedule.

In looking back, I have the advantage of hindsight, some maturity, and greater objectivity. I recognize now that the more I wanted something, the more disappointed I tended to be when I got it.

Fortunately, some of these hustlers on Huffys give telltale clues to their criminal activities.

Gilbert keyed his mic to advise responding units that the suspects were now on foot. As one ran by his passenger door, Gilbert noticed the man's dark lavender jacket matched that ascribed to the armed member of the two suspects.

If you’re ever away from your patrol car and find yourself inordinately concerned about the articles therein, then that hunch is telling you to take some corrective or preventative measures. Often, it comes down to simply not leaving anything in your car that you don’t have to, especially overnight. 

Cops can resent other cops giving them orders. But while it's inevitable that we will occasionally step on some toes, people generally take lesser exception if it doesn't hurt them—certain alpha types included. So tread lightly on the radio while still communicating what needs to be said—before they get more than their feelings hurt.

The call came in a little past 8 p.m. A suicidal man was parked inside a closed garage with the engine running. The Charles City, Iowa, officer assigned to the call was on his first night out and fell prey to many a rookie's bane: he got lost rolling to the call. That meant that the lieutenant who rolled to assist, Brandon Franke, was effectively on his own.

It's a recipe for disaster—two patrol cars approaching an intersection on convergent paths. Both have their lights and sirens activated; each expects the other driver to yield; neither can discriminate between their own siren and that of another car.