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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.
Officer Darren Bristow of the Tulsa (Okla.) Police Department came close to avoiding the entire episode. But isn’t that usually the case? It’s the cop who stays an hour longer than he’d planned…It’s the patrolman who swaps shifts to get a day off…It’s the trooper who decides to make just one more t-stop before calling it a day who ends up having a really bad shift.
Read More →One of the most stressful episodes an officer can face during his or her career is making the decision to shoot and dealing with the aftermath. Officer-involved shootings spawn a variety of questions, and many of them may be unanswerable.
Read More →New York State Troopers Shawn Dean and John Spero had been parked at the side of the highway, driver’s window-to-driver’s window, comparing notes and spooking speeders into slowing down. Dean was content with the notion that everyone was pretty much adhering to the speed limit, if only for the moment. At six o’clock p.m., it was the mid-point of his shift, and Spero’s stint was almost over.
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Officer Spencer O'Bryan had been with the Rapid City Police Department for more than four years when he got off work at 3 a.m. on April 18, 2003.
Read More →There is probably no more misunderstood law enforcement duty than traffic enforcement. Cops who perform this duty often think of it as tedious and futile. And the motorists who are pulled over for traffic violations feel like they are being picked on and tapped for fines that fill local government coffers.
Read More →During the last hour of his shift, soon-to-be-retired Lt. Roger Sanders of the Des Moines Police Department was headed back to the station when the call of a fight at Walnut and 8th went out.
Read More →Sims pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex. As he keyed the microphone to advise dispatch of his arrival the environment around him suddenly changed. A cacophony of screams and gunfire erupted around him.
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How much is a cop’s safety worth? Despite safety concerns, due to shrinking budgets it’s becoming increasingly common for police departments to require officers to purchase their own body armor. Even when agencies pony up some money for ballistic vests, it’s usually not enough to buy the best of the best—which is what most officers want protecting them from bodily harm.
Read More →It had been a busy shift for Officer Philip Bozarth and Officer Juan Sanchez of the San Diego Police Department. They had spent the chilly early morning hours of Jan. 17, 1998, answering an unusually high number of domestic violence incidents, complaints of narcotics trafficking, reports of gunfire of ill-defined origins, and traffic violations.
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Orange County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Deputy Jennifer Fulford had a lot on her mind on May 5, 2004. Having just paid for her wedding dress, the logistics of her nuptials were weighing on the 31-year-old deputy as she began her patrol. There was still so much to do, and time was a precious commodity.
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