Editor’s note: Out of respect and sympathy for the officers involved in this tragic incident and in admiration for the agency’s courage in pursuing learning points that will help keep other officers safe, we have chosen to remove the actual names of the agents and the department associated with this event. In Part 1 of...Read More
Part 2 of a 2-part series In the Force Science survey we reported on in our last transmission, officers were asked to describe any blue-on-blue encounters they had personally experienced. In all accounts submitted, tragedy was successfully avoided, although in some cases just barely. Officers in plainclothes who potentially could have been fatally mistaken for...Read More
Editor’s note: Out of respect and sympathy for the officers involved in this tragic incident and in admiration for the agency’s courage in pursuing learning points that will help keep other officers safe, we have chosen to remove the actual names of the agents and the department associated with this event. When Agt. DB arrived...Read More
When officers who’ve just finished a shooting exercise gather around and an instructor holds up a “no-shoot” target that looks like it’s been riddled by machine gun fire, that’s a sobering moment. Especially when the officers now see that the target sports a badge. Some flat out deny they fired any mistaken rounds. But after...Read More
Part 2 of a 2-part series A Governor’s Task Force in New York recently issued a 147-page report on police-on-police shootings in which it emphasizes that “unconscious race bias” may be a compelling factor when out-of-uniform officers, working plainclothes or taking some law enforcement action off-duty, are mistaken for life-threatening criminals and are shot dead...Read More
Part 1 of a 2-part series The first comprehensive nationwide survey of mistaken-identity, “friendly fire” fatalities in law enforcement has been completed by a governor’s task force in New York, unearthing a wealth of informative and useful data but raising a controversial specter that “unconscious racial biases” against minority officers may influence some of these...Read More
A Governor’s Task Force in New York, formed to examine police-on-police shootings nationwide, recently issued an extensive report that claims “intrinsic” racial bias may be involved when out-of-uniform black officers are mistaken for criminals and shot dead by their colleagues. But a Force Science Position Paper on the subject, which is attached as an appendix...Read More
Have you ever been confronted by another officer who mistook you for a suspect when you were out of uniform? Have you ever been the challenging officer in such a situation? Do you have ideas for tactics or training that might prevent tragic consequences in these dicey, life-threatening circumstances? If so, a governor’s task force...Read More
A comment by a plaintiff’s expert witness during the trial of a civil suit against a Rhode Island police department has led a private law enforcement training organization to conduct an informative survey regarding off-duty policies and practices. The witness was testifying in a case in which an armed off-duty officer intervened in an altercation,...Read More