Policing Matters

In mid-February someone called 911 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina claiming to be Robert McCord, a reserve officer with the department. The caller told dispatchers he’d just shot his wife and was going to kill the rest of the people in the house. Police responded as one might imagine they would respond to such a call—they sent in SWAT to ensure the safety of innocents. McCord exited his home with...

In 2004, Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (also known as LEOSA), which allows qualified active and retired officers to carry a concealed firearm in any jurisdiction in the United States—with certain exceptions and restrictions. Recently introduced legislation—the LEOSA Reform Act—would expand where current and retired officers can carry a concealed firearm, as well as reform...

Some members of the public have put themselves in harm's way to help an officer survive a deadly situation. We've seen incidents in which an officer is struggling with a resistive subject—and potentially on their way to losing that fight—when a Good Samaritan appears seemingly out of nowhere to help bring the suspect under control. We've seen citizens race to help an officer wounded in a gunfight....

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis fired Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel—who served as the 16th sheriff of that county—on January 11, 2019. Many would argue that his firing was long overdue. His agency was derided for failing to take control over a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in 2017. Then, in 2018, deputies with the agency failed miserably in their response to the mass murder taking pl...

Henry Ford once said, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” This famous quote can easily be applied to law enforcement in 2019, with so many factors seemingly going against the profession. Winston Churchill once said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”...

In early January, Blue H.E.L.P. — an organization that tracks officer suicides while simultaneously seeking to prevent such tragedies from occurring — issued an announcement stating that in 2018, at least 158 officers died by suicide. This is nine percent more than the total number of line-of-duty deaths resulting from 15 other causes such as felonious assault, patrol vehicle accident, heart attac...

According to FBI data released in 2018, hate crimes rose by 17 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year. It was the third straight year showing an increase in hate crimes. The offenses were most commonly motivated by hatred over race, ethnicity or ancestry. Nearly a fifth of the offenses were motivated by hatred over religion. Sexual orientation and gender identity hatred were also listed a...

Walking the beat is a fundamental element to community policing. Other forms of patrol aimed principally at community engagement have officers mounted atop equine partners, and rolling around town on tricked-out mountain bikes. In all these cases, officers on foot create opportunities for the public to connect with their police (and vice versa). Conversely, when officers are wrapped in two tons of...

Proponents of the First Step Act — a bipartisan law aimed at reforming the criminal justice system — say it would significantly improve the prison system. Opponents say there are loopholes that would allow dangerous criminals with a high probability to reoffend to be released from prison. The text of the law says that the BOP would adopt a risk assessment tool, assess all federal prisoners for the...

Last year, rights groups and even Amazon employees and stockholders sought to stop that company from providing its Rekognition software to law enforcement agencies. By all accounts, that effort has failed, as police are using the software—as well as solutions from other vendors—more and more to identify wanted criminals, missing people and suspected terrorists spotted on video. In this podcast seg...

Traffic stops are one of the most common activities for law enforcement officers on patrol. They are the epitome of proactive, self-initiated policing. They are also, however, sometimes deadly. Officers can be struck by passing vehicles, dragged by a vehicle fleeing the stop, assaulted physically either with personal weapons (fists and feet) or by weapons up to and including firearms. In this podc...

In New York, some 20,000 DUI arrests are in jeopardy because of false verifications due to aging and inaccurate equipment. Agencies are required to conduct regular maintenance of a variety of types of equipment, and yet it would appear that in some cases, that regular maintenance is not being conducted, putting not only convictions at risk, but possibly even lives. In this podcast segment, Jim and...

The end of the year is upon us, and looking back it is clear that 2018 zipped by like lightning. During the year, Jim and Doug covered many topics in the weekly Policing Matters podcast. In this special segment, the pair takes a look back at some of the trends and events that mattered in law enforcement in the past 12 months—from lip sync battles to policing the homeless to immigration enforcement...

Too often, when we get off work and out of whatever uniform we wear during the day (or night, depending on your assigned shift), one of the first things we do is to plop ourselves in front of a screen of some kind. We open up the laptop, the tablet, or even our phone, and voluntarily allow ourselves to be assaulted by millions of relentless pixels. In this podcast segment, Jim and Doug discuss the...

The Camp Fire in Northern California is the deadliest, most destructive wildfire in the state's history. The entire town of Paradise was destroyed, displacing as many as 50,000 people who now find themselves homeless, possessing only the clothes they wore in the hasty exodus from the disaster area. Among those who lost all their material possessions are some of those first responders fighting the...

Young people are on social media for many hours a day — posting on sites and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Social media posts — even those that have been deleted — live forever, and inappropriate posts can have an adverse effect on a kid's future many years down the line. Furthermore, many online interactions can turn ugly. Too often, a social media post can influence yo...

Police officers have a unique opportunity to positively influence the lives of countless children — many of whom do not really have very many positive role models in their lives — to become productive members of society when they grow up. Significant opportunities exist for those officers to not just help kids see what "doing good" looks like, but to influence them to have the desire to "do good"...

Officer Mitch Brouillette of the Brentwood, California Police Department was the subject of a heartwarming "practical joke" executed by the students of Heritage High School, resulting in a video posted to the Internet that quickly went viral. The students concocted an elaborate ruse, coupled with a live song and dance performance, as well as some incredibly thoughtful gifts in thanks to "Officer M...

The Ninth Circuit Court of appeals unanimously ruled in favor of a lawsuit by people experiencing homelessness that challenges laws making it illegal to sleep on public property overnight. The constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment prohibits "criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obta...

The California Legislature recently passed (and Gov. Jerry Brown then vetoed) a controversial piece of legislation — Assembly Bill 186 — that would have allowed entities to open so-called "safe injection sites" — facilities where drug users would be able to shoot up in an enclosed environment supervised by medical professionals on the lookout for signs of overdose. The trouble is, doing so is in d...

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is defined as a multi-disciplinary approach to deterring criminal behavior through environmental design. CPTED strategies rely upon the ability to influence offender decisions that precede criminal acts by affecting the built, social and administrative environment. In this podcast segment, Jim and Doug discuss how architecture and landscaping,...

There is no argument that police pursuits can sometimes end in fatal collisions — crashes that kill fleeing suspects, police officers, and innocent bystanders. Police pursuits are an inherently dangerous endeavor. As some police agencies examine "no pursuit" policies, others are looking at new GPS tracking technologies that allow police to drop back and watch a monitor for where the suspect vehicl...

DUI doesn't mean just alcohol — it means driving under the influence, and driving under the influence of marijuana is a crime in every state in America. The trick is detecting the impairment, which is now only really done with field sobriety tests — there is no breathalyzer for marijuana, although some companies are getting close to solving that riddle. In this podcast segment Jim and Doug discuss...

At the time of this recording session, 92 police officers in America have died by suicide. In Chicago, three officers died by suicide in the span of one month. In 2017 that number was 154, and in 2016 there were 138 verified instances in which an officer died by suicide. And these are just the officers we know about. In this podcast segment, Jim and Doug discuss the warning signs for officers to w...

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development there are more than 553,000 homeless people nationwide. California alone has an estimated 134,000 homeless individuals. Homelessness in and of itself is not a crime, but a lot of things that go along with it are crimes, and citizens rightly want the crimes taking place on the sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses to stop....