Morgan Steele and Tamara J. Lynn

Erin Spandorf

Surviving Encounters with Emotionally Disturbed Persons

Emotionally disturbed persons, or EDPs, present a major challenge to the law enforcement officer sent to deal with their sometimes bizarre and frequently unpredictable behavior.

Michael B. Lynch and J.C. De Ladurantey

FOP Reports 229 Officers Shot in 2025, 31 Killed in the Line of Duty

The National Fraternal Order of Police reports a decline in officers shot compared to recent years, but ambush-style attacks remain a major threat.

Editorial: Final Thoughts

My career at POLICE has come to an end, and I leave you with two comments on tragic incidents in the news and my eternal thanks for reading the magazine.

Let's Talk About Racism

The pro forma accusations of racism that I endured on patrol involved detainees who routinely accused me of stopping them because they were black/Hispanic/Asian/albino—despite the fact that their features had been completely obscured by the tinted windows for which I was pulling them over in the first place.

Baltimore Mayor Fears Officers May Hesitate to Use Necessary Force After Brown, Garner Cases

During a weekly news briefing Wednesday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said intense public scrutiny and four months of protests against police brutality in Baltimore may be affecting officers' ability to act at critical moments.

Watch Your 6

In any given year when we are willing to celebrate the fact that only 50 or so of our brothers and sisters were murdered in the line of duty, it is readily apparent that too many of us are still messing up — fatally — on far too many occasions. Nevertheless, we are doing a much better job of recognizing the fatal errors. And in many cases we are counteracting them.