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Associate Editor
Former associate editor of Police Magazine and a retired patrol supervisor and investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Sgt. Dean Scoville has received multiple awards for government service. He was the author of Shots Fired, Police Magazine's monthly column examining officer-involved shootings as experienced by the officers themselves.
After witnessing what he saw as an unconstitutional outrage in the wake of Katrina, a constitutional law scholar founded the Oath Keepers, an organization for peace officers and soldiers who adhere strictly to the letter of the Constitution and swear not to obey any orders that they believe to be unconstitutional.
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If I could somehow shoehorn Det. Jeremiah MacKay's name a million times over his shooter's, I would.
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Foremost among my thoughts on informants is that I wouldn't want to find myself at the mercy of anyone whose inclination to sell out others has been well established.
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I often wondered if the school would begrudge my occasionally sitting in some unoccupied office as I wrote for POLICE. And I had every reason to suspect that other officers would be willing to stop by the school and lend an unsubsidized vigil.
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There are things that I have wondered about such as those occasions when I found myself second-guessing a last second decision not to stop a car near the end of my shift: What might I have missed out on? Invariably, there is no answer to this question.
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If given the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives, are you more apt to toss a lifeline or an anchor?
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It's small wonder that the news media reported the shooting outside the Empire State Building last week as a mass shooting—it certainly appeared to be. Only it wasn't a mass shooting by a suspect, but by cops.
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I can point to those instances where off-duty officers have mitigated the loss of life and stopped such threats. It was a Texas Department of Public Safety officer who chased the Luby's shooter into a restroom where the man killed himself.
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There is nothing either wrong or weak in treating people with kindness and respect. There is always recourse for those who misinterpret the overture as weakness.
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Hard-earned insight into the vagaries of the human mind can only take the average officer so far. As the psychological impairments of those he or she comes into contact with become more acute, it's less likely that an officer will be successful dealing with them.
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