A MOST MEMORABLE PURSUIT
PROLOGUE Recently Lt. Chuck Smith and I were sitting on my front deck watching Oregon’s Umpqua River flow by, shooting suppressed weapons, killing some brain cells and generally swapping lies when one of us said, in best ‘Harry Callahan’ fashion: “So...tell us about your best felony arrest.” Since neither of us could remember ever having made a felony arrest (I said we were lying!), the subject changed to “Tell us about the most interesting [...]
Why Basic Training Matters
In 2012 I had what could only be termed the travel schedule from hell. I was on the road every month, at least for one trip, sometimes several. November was no exception; I went to Gunsite for an industry ladies class. We were covering the basics on handguns and carbines. [...]
Knowledge: A Two-Way Street
Fortunately over the past several decades, great advances have been made in our profession — in tactics and technology. Today’s street cop has the potential to do more things quicker and more efficiently than any of us from prior generations in public service. Tactics have gone way beyond the old [...]
Bein’ Prepared
The hysterics of the hurricane on the East coast has subsided a bit, but the work will still need to be done. At the least, tens of millions of people got a first-person lesson on what it was like to not be prepared for even a minor inconvenience, much less [...]
New Year’s Resolutions
I can’t remember the last time I made a New Year’s resolution. Like so many others, I used to make grand, sweeping promises — only to completely forget my lofty resolutions by March. My intentions were always good, but my follow through was lacking. It’s so easy to say something [...]
Duty Or Dishonor
I’m sure like many readers of American COP, I recently awoke to disturbing news carried by all of the mainstream media: An independent investigation into the 2009 Fort Hood massacre revealed that the FBI seriously dropped the ball. Specifically, the Bureau ignored Army Major Nidal Hasan’s connections with known and [...]
What Tech?
At the recent International Association Of Chief’s Of Police (IACP) convention in San Diego, American COP staffers were exposed to a broad range of cop gear, training, online education opportunities and lots more. But the thing striking home the hardest was the fact around 75 percent of the show was [...]
Press Release Hype
We get hundreds of press releases here, from a wide cross-section of companies in the LE industry. If you’re the person in charge of writing those press releases for your company, kindly lend an ear. I know some of those releases not only go to magazines, blogs, online forums and [...]
Keeping It Real
Much of our world has an insatiable appetite for immediate information on everything going on around them. Television stations often feed into this need by lobbing large amounts of misinformation onto the airwaves under the guise of “breaking news.” One recent example of this disservice is the Aug. 24, 2012 [...]
Be Safe Out There
There’s not a chief or sheriff I know whom ever wants to experience the death of a department member … ever. That’s especially true if the loss is line of duty related. We all know a line of duty death (LODD) can happen anywhere, any time. Much of the content [...]
Bad Case Law?
Or Bad Police Work... In a recent issue we learned about the Supreme Court decision, US v. Jones (“Who’s To Blame, Fallout From US V. Jones,” July 2012), in which the court unanimously ruled against warrantless GPS tracking. Originally armed with a warrant for the use of a GPS tracking [...]