In 1977 a small Cincinnati radio station put a fireworks show on the Ohio River and fifty thousand people turned up. What the police learned in the first three years shaped how the city has handled large crowds ever since.
The Flock Effect
Communities across the country are taking a hard look at license plate readers. Police have had access to restricted national databases for more than five decades, and officers who abuse them lose their jobs and face charges. The technology is newer. The argument is not.
Not Guilty in Uvalde
A Texas jury acquitted one of the two officers charged over the response to the Uvalde school shooting. The failures that day were failures of command, not crimes, and the District Attorney should have known the difference.
What the Family Sees
Jurisdictions are releasing unedited shooting video to the families of the deceased. In Cincinnati, a father watched his son die on video and then killed a deputy who had nothing to do with it. Transparency has a cost.
What constitutes a weapon?
A weapon is best described as anything that is not used for its intended purpose. Police academies teach the use of deadly force to neutralize a threat. But when the threat is a moving vehicle, shooting the driver does not stop it. That is a training issue.
A Badge in a Crowd
Larry Henderson gave thirty-seven years to the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, retired, and went back to work three days later. He was killed directing traffic at a graduation by a man who had never met him. A friend writes on the deputy he was, and on the bill that carries his name.
The “GOOD” effect
We have devolved into a world where divergent opinions are vilified and the people who hold them are personally attacked. One side calls a shooting murder. The other calls the same force reasonable. Two questions still need to be addressed: what constitutes a weapon, and what is a peaceful protest?
School Violence
There is a serious shortage of School Resource Officers according to a segment of people seeking solutions to school violence. There is no dispute that SRO’s in high schools and large middle schools, although their value in preventing active shooters is minimal at best. Almost every high school where a mass shooting occurred had a […]
The legacy of Blue Bloods
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
Four agencies responded to the encampment at UCLA. One answered to a chancellor, the others to elected officials, and each had an agenda. It is difficult to complete any task when only one side has rules — and nobody is discussing what the lawlessness costs the taxpayers.
The Red Line
The “all bark, no bite” approach did not work in the 1960s and does not work now. Speech is protected. Conduct is not. Blocking a street or a building entrance is conduct. And a law enforcement presence that only watches produces no fear of consequences.
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 […]
