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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.
Few artists have done more to change the way that cops are portrayed in popular culture than best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh. While Jack Webb's Joe Friday was all about the facts, ma'am, Wambaugh's cop characters were and are all about the heart and soul. They are human and their profession takes a toll on them as individuals.
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When two men in a passing Bonneville paid scant attention to him—indeed, made a conspicuous effort to ignore him—Officer Freddy Williams of the Marion (Ark.) Police Department decided to direct his attention to them.
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Interviewing a child is in some ways very similar to interviewing any crime victim but, in some ways, it's very different. The first hurdle is to get the child to open up.
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I NEED HELP, RIGHT AWAY!!! I’M IN A FIGHT!! GET ME ASSISTANCE, RIGHT NOW!! HELP!!” How would you react to hearing this impassioned plea over the radio? One deputy who'd been off training for only a few months felt that the tone of the broadcast was so emergent that it obligated him to respond code 3 to assist. As he did, he drove 80 mph through a red light and broadsided another vehicle.
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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 →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 →When it comes to capturing, subduing, and arresting bad guys, law enforcement currently has four types of less-lethal and less-than-lethal tools: physical restraint such as handcuffs and Ripp Hobble restraints, chemical weapons such as oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray, electrical shock devices such as Tasers, and impact tools such as batons and Asps.
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"The threat of suicide bombers in the U.S. is not an 'if' but a 'when,'" read a recent alert to law enforcement that was sent by the California Department of Justice.
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Conducting a thorough head-to-toe search requires as intrusive a probing as garments will allow.
Read More →Despite the officer's repeated pleas for him to drop the weapon, Pergament continues to advance. Faced with the prospect his own impending death, the officer fires three times, killing Pergament. Only later does the officer learn the brutal truth: the weapon wielded by the suspect is nothing more than a toy gun.
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