The desire to create the reality of police work in the entertainment industry has been ongoing. Dragnet taught us “just the facts”; Adam12 showed the work of patrol cops; Police Story attempted to inject reality into cops; Hill Street Blues showed the divergent personalities of cops; and Law and Order showed the process of crime […]
Qualified Immunity
Since the incident in Minneapolis involving George Floyd, there has been a growing hue and cry for the abolishment of qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. This article will address the question and its ramification. Qualified immunity provides public employees with protection against personal liability for actions taken in the performance of their duties. The […]
Trial in the Court of Public Opinion
If one follows the news reports. Police officers do not have the rights and protections afforded to all people who are in the United States. Media outlets put people on air that want the police officer to be publicly flogged and then hanged in the public square. The officer, on the other hand, cannot try […]
Politics
Republicans have been screaming that the justice system has been corrupted under the Biden Administration. Democrats counter that the convictions of Hunter Biden and Sen. Menendez disprove that. The reality is that constitutional experts, who neither support or have voted for Mr. Trump, have publicly stated that the criminal cases against him are baseless. Alan […]
Just another day
It was just another mundane event that law enforcement performs on a daily basis until shots rang out at a Trump rally. The response of law enforcement was immediate and professional as each portion knew exactly what their role was and executed it with precision. Secret Service smothered the former President while tactical officers jumped […]
The DOJ needs to take a look.
Ashleigh Banfield, a host on NewsNation, ran a piece on the Canton, Massachusetts Police Department that the DOJ Public Integrity Unit needs to take a look at. The piece began with the case of a woman charged with Murder in the death of her Boston Police officer boyfriend. In her defense, she claimed that the […]
New York v Trump
The criminal justice system is comprised of three independent sections working together. The police investigate criminal activity and collect evidence for use at trial/ The Prosecutor (District Attorney, State’s Attorney, Commonwealth Attorney) evaluate the evidence and present it in a court. The Court protects the interests of both sides and explains the law to a […]
The hue and cry
Ever since the high-profile arrest of a professional golfer in Louisville, Kentucky, there has been a hue and cry from both sides of the story. Louisville Metropolitan Police announced disciplinary action against the officer who was allegedly dragged a short distance by the vehicle driving by golfer Scottie Scheffler for failing to activate his body […]
Police Memorial Week
One day each year, the names of all of the police officers who died in the line of duty in the United States are memorialized on a wall in Washington, D.C. It is part of a week long celebration of the service of police officers But what about the other fifty-one weeks of the year? […]
A knee-jerk reaction
The State of Ohio has announced that it is designing two portable “shoot houses” that will be available to school districts that authorize their employees to be armed on school grounds. Law enforcement agencies utilize two methods of training working officers. They are Scenario Based Training (SBT) and Reality Based Training (RBT). SBT involves a […]
The scorecard for the law enforcement response
Law enforcement agencies, especially in the larger cities, have contingency plans in place to address civil unrest. The implementation of those plans, sadly, come from the orders of elected officials who hide in their offices. The situation on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles is a perfect example. The law enforcement response […]
The Red Line
There are people who call the protests on college campuses across the nation “peaceful,” which bodes the question of their definition of the word. A peaceful demonstration is one where the protestors get to have their view on an issue heard without disrupting the ability of others to move about freely. The United States Supreme […]
The Uvalde report
The U.S. Department of Justice issued its final report on the school shooting at Robb elementary in Uvalde, Texas. The scathing report correctly identifies multiple failures from the initial response and throughout the duration but ignores the reality of smaller police agency response. In many smaller police agencies, the Police Chief is one of the […]
Responding to the active shooter threat
With the most recent school shooting in Iowa, the cries for a police officer in every school has risen again. The fact is that there are numerous reasons that a uniformed police officer is not an answer to the problem. The first issue is the cost of salary and benefits that the school district has […]
The other side of the story of George Floyd
A new movie about to be released tells a completely different story than the original tale of George Floyd. It was made by a former news anchor in Minneapolis, who was fired from her job because she refused to follow the narrative that Floyd was killed by then police officer Derek Chauvin. Liz Collins was […]
Bordering on bufoonery
As soon as an major incident comes to the attention of the media, they go into ‘wall to wall’ coverage. Anchors relay ‘factual’ information from studios hundreds to thousands of miles away and EXPERTS are put on air from studios or their home nowhere near the actual event. In fairness to these experts, their credentials […]
The threat is very real
There has been a move afoot which is threatening the ability of law enforcement to function by claiming that it offers transparency in the public. Commonly called ‘Cop Watchers’, self-anointed constitutional scholars are listing the names and pictures of undercover police officers using public record requests claiming to be journalists. The City of Los Angeles, […]
Dealing with violence
There has been a serious uptick of violent crime in urban cities throughout the country and people are clambering tor police to take immediate action to curb it. The reality is that policing, by its very nature, is reactive. It responds to calls where the event is already complete or crimes in progress which are […]
The answers to the violence
A nine year old girl in a small suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio was killed in her home when thirty shots were fired into it from an AK-7 rifle from a drive-by shooting. Within one day, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department had two suspects in custody. A third turned himself in the following day. There is […]
How do I do it better?
Every day when I wake up, the first thing I do is make a pot of coffee. I take my morning meds and then ask ONE simple question. How do I do it better? Whether yesterday was a success or a failure, it does not change the fact that I need to deal with today. […]
What to do?
A thirty-four year old father lined his three young boys in his front yard and executed them with a rifle in a rural area just east of Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the three ran into a wooded area near the home and was captured by the father, who returned him to the house and executed […]
Dealing with suicide
Suicide among healthcare and public safety workers is nothing new. What is relatively new is the options offered to develop coping skills. It is clearly a result of mental illness which, in the case of people who deal with death on a professional level, comes from the stress of their employment. An active shooter exhibits […]
Paying a final tribute
In a world where anger, rage and political strife are the norm rather than the exception, it is uplifting to see the response to the death of a public safety professional in the line of duty. It is a fitting tribute to a person who has made the ultimate sacrifice to their community but the […]
Keeping schools safe
This article needs to open with the reality that there is no way to totally prevent active shooters in schools without turning them into maximum security prisons. That said, there are ways to minimize the damage that an active shooter can accomplish. I. Install electromagnetic locks on all classroom doors which are controlled from the […]