If the men and women of patrol have to be exposed to a cross-section of varied subjects, then law enforcement administrators are expected to have doctorates in each of those and be able to answer for and explain the seemingly inexplicable actions of each of their subordinates.
September 26, 2013
By understanding three basic steps—Breathe, STOT, Move—officers are able to maintain control over their physiological responses and employ more effective psychological responses to stressful incidents.
September 17, 2013
The wife says that there is usually justification to my umbrage—it's my bail schedule that sucks. And so mine has been a history of strained associations, parted companies, and dissolved friendships.
September 11, 2013
The cop is the decision maker. Not Jesse Jackson. Not Al Sharpton. Not even the Supreme Court. All that stuff can be argued about later, and might well be.
August 28, 2013
Being in Condition Yellow has allowed me to identify a thief before he acted on his intentions, a would-be assailant before he launched his attack. It has given me pause to re-evaluate the decision to pet a dog, or patronize certain establishments.
August 9, 2013
We have seen this type of tragedy before and will doubtlessly see it again. It gave rise to the whole Tawana Brawley outrage; it led to the outrageous persecutions and prosecutions of Duke Lacrosse players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans.
July 26, 2013
The romantic in me would like to believe that America would want to take care of those who take care of it. But I am increasingly of the opinion that it doesn't; moreover, it doesn't want to.
July 1, 2013
"I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that's all the ammunition they had," Sheriff Grady Judd responded. "We were not going to take any chance of him shooting back."
June 19, 2013
Of the components of the will to survive, none is more important than mindset. How often have we seen a man of lesser skillsets come out the survivor of some confrontation simply because he refused to go down?
June 5, 2013
I'd sleep better knowing that those tasked with the power of making life or death decisions were those most capable of doing so.
May 16, 2013
If he worked in one of those small towns that prohibits the exhibition of elephants in a city park on the Sabbath, you could bet that he'd somehow find a way to be booking a pachyderm into evidence Sunday night.
May 2, 2013
There is something discomforting in hearing a convicted cop killer say, "He got careless, so I wasted him." But how often can a mere six words leave such an indelible imprint on our mind and help get us through our shifts?
April 19, 2013
It's been said that a truly good cop could have worked any era in law enforcement and done quite well. When my mind revisits those cops that I used to work with, around, and to varying degrees tolerated, there are two groups that stand out predominantly for their diametrically opposite approaches to patrol.
March 28, 2013
It's been said that the street cop wears many hats: psychologist, sociologist, counselor, arbitrator; electrician, firefighter, judge, jury, and even executioner. But how much formal training has he or she been exposed to in these various capacities?
March 12, 2013
If I could somehow shoehorn Det. Jeremiah MacKay's name a million times over his shooter's, I would.
February 26, 2013