March 2009 Issue

You wouldn't know it if you saw Richard "Mack" Machowicz hosting his Discovery Channel show "FutureWeapons" or leading one of his martial arts classes at the Los Angeles-based Bukido Institute, but this former Navy SEAL studied to be a Zen Buddhist priest.

There were law enforcement exhibits in the lobby, in the hallways, in the meeting rooms from one end of the rambling convention center to the other. And they had a lot of great products on display. Here's a look at our favorites from this year's SHOT.

Advances in thermal imaging and night vision equipment are making these great law enforcement tools less expensive and easier to use.

The Rodney King incident still colors how the public views the use of batons. For that reason and others, some officers are reluctant to use the tool.

Read about the newest BDUs, tacpants, and jumpsuits for law enforcement.

Drug money is so corrupting that the drug lords have bribed both police and soldiers at the highest levels of the Mexican government.

One of the strangest things we do in our crime fighting career is play a strange game I like to call, "You Bet Your Badge." Just graduating from the academy and having the thrill of that badge being pinned to your chest instantly enters you in the game where things you do and say can cause that wonderfully important piece of metal to be removed.

The question that I want to answer with this article is: What makes the Springfield Armory XD(M) a more suitable pistol for law enforcement work than the standard Springfield XD?

I have found the lights from Streamlight to be easy to operate, durable, and innovative, as well as affordably priced. The company's TLR-1 is no exception.

An "ambush" alarm brought West St. Paul officers to a credit union where they discovered a robbery in progress.

Imagine one item that can be deployed as a bomb blanket, a ballistic shield, and a litter for moving the wounded, just for starters. Protective Products International's Multi-Functional Armor Blanket (MFAB) does all this and more.

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.

I suspect a lot of agencies are probably not doing enough "no sight" or limited vision training and should consider its application in the training of defensive tactics, electronic control devices, OC spray, and addressing simple job specific tasks such as handling the equipment on our duty belts.

What the exclusionary rule has actually meant in practice is that thousands (maybe millions) of criminals have been able to stop the prosecution from using critical evidence of their guilt to hold them accountable for their crimes.