Command & cover tactics, properly executed, could mean the difference in whether your officers make it home at the end of a rough shift.
Officer Guy Smith found himself in the fight of his life during an off-duty assignment at a grocery store, but because he took his job seriously and came prepared, he lived to fight another day.
Several new shotgun munitions deliver safe, predictable results.
The role of supervisors: field interview reports can make all the difference in documenting criminal gang activity.
Computer hard drive forensics has for a long time been more about the process and less about what is extracted from the device. The same may soon hold true for mobile phones.
It seems that we’ve learned to be careful about making sexual or racial references, and we’re even learning to be appropriately sensitive, or at least better informed, about issues of sexual orientation, physical handicaps and religious freedom, to name just a few areas.
These videos provide late-night entertainment for millions of television viewers. They also offer compelling evidence for criminal investigations.
In eight years with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Officer Dave Callister has developed a reputation for finding the bad guys, especially those driving stolen cars.
In the past 10 years, thanks in large part to the military surplus program, more law enforcement agencies are starting their own aviation units to take advantage of this strong and powerful asset.
Is it conceivable that one may attempt to merely activate the light and unintentionally fire the gun? In the perfect storm of stress and confusion, the answer, unfortunately, is yes.
Up to this point, he'd been fighting a commendable, though primarily defensive battle. But now, infused with the realization that Palmer had to be stopped and that only he could do it, he went on the offensive.
Even if you work steady day tours or are handcuffed to a desk, there's simply no excuse for not having a light. Lights give us the ability to make informed decisions.
Far too many agencies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a piece of equipment that sits idle.
How do you render the firearm safe and still manage to preserve firearms, latent fingerprint and DNA evidence?
Psychic detective use by police agencies has been well documented for some time. The results, however, are open to endless debate.
Six questions to ask before you buy. This is an expanded version of the article that appeared in the print version of the magazine, with more photos and a glossary.
The first thing Sergeant Marcus Young noticed about the man coming toward him was the intensity of his features...
“It was the BUI from hell,” says Lieutenant George Pottorf of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), recalling an arrest he made for boating under the influence (BUI).
Researchers have long debated how to best help officers with job stress and the after effects of life and death experiences sometimes encountered on the job.
All SWAT members should know the birth of SWAT began Aug. 1, 1966, in Austin, Texas, when Charles Whitman climbed the tower at the University of Texas.
If you've never attended an IACP confrence, do yourself a favor and put it on your calendar for next Nov. 8-12, in San Diego. It's truly the world's largest law enforcement technology marketplace.
Virtually all dragging incidents occur at a driver-side window encounter.
Why would anyone wear Italian loafers to a gun fight?
Take a couple slow, deep breaths. Calmly get on the radio and get the calvary coming.
How should you approach a situation in which you suspect fingerprint evidence is also present?
In 2006, Officer Armando Plascencia of the Orange Police Department made 325 DUI arrests, setting a record for the number of DUI arrests made in one year.
The statistics show the average shooting distance will occur from between the width of a police cruiser and the length of a police cruiser.
The number and variety of calls air support can assist go way beyond pursuits and missing-person searches.
By recognizing critical cues officers can more quickly and appropriately apply tactics to manage situations.
As I looked up, I saw a crazed man standing at my patrol car’s taillights firing rounds at me from an AR-15.
We had it all—with the exception of the knowledge, skills and training needed to be a SWAT team in more than name only.
In fact, the first guy looked over his shoulder at me in the middle of the ride and said, “So…?”
Could we attach a GPS-enabled Nextel phone to the vehicle and track it with Accutracking software via the Internet?
In 1990, Officer Wendy Keelty-Reyes, a firearms instructor developed a lead taste in her mouth while shooting on her department’s indoor gun range.
Today, a relatively new and very different challenge faces your agency—the computer criminal.
Jimeno said when he told Stone he was surprised an Oscar-winning director would pay attention to him, Stone explained Jimeno was the truth, the real deal, and that was important to the movie.
Although officers usually recognize the danger of the pipe bomb, they sometimes improperly dismiss chemical-reaction bombs as harmless pranks.
If your community faces a major event, a lack of standardized command and control systems can cause loss of life, additional property damage and a delay in returning to normal.
I said there was only one less-lethal tool a bad guy can never take away from officers and use against them: a trained police dog.
Nova Stun Gun, Tasertron, TASER and the recently released Stinger fall into a category of less-lethal devices I'll call electro-muscular disruption devices, or EMDs for short.
Far too many tragedies have resulted from a lack of knowledge or understanding of either equipment or procedures.
What can you do—especially off-duty, when you may be most vulnerable—to protect yourself and your family from angry criminals determined to retaliate? And how do you keep legitimate concern for your safety from dominating your life?
One moment the officer stood in the classic field-interview stance asking for some...
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