What kinds of calls for service present the greatest risk of fatal attacks for US law enforcement officers? Here’s the latest grim ranking, according to a newly released updated report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund and the federal DOJ that covers a seven-year span from 2010-2016: Domestic dispute calls were the most...Read More
When are you most likely to experience the shock and potentially deadly consequences of an unintentional discharge: a) While clearing an area in response to a call? b) While performing routine firearms tasks, including cleaning your weapon? c) While already engaged with a suspect in high-risk circumstances? And where is this unwanted firing most likely...Read More
In a close up gunfight, who stands a better chance of delivering an immediately fatal shot to the head: an officer who has completed typical police firearms training or a subject who has little or no experience with a handgun? Alarmingly, according to a newly published study by the Force Science Institute, the odds lie...Read More
There’s no shortage of media reports about the police these days, but two recently published pieces have advanced figures and opinions that warrant response by law enforcement professionals. One calls for abandoning traffic stops as a public relations and safety move, an idea that could find fertile ground in today’s anti-cop atmosphere. The other looks...Read More
A growing number of agencies are specifying in policy that moving motor vehicles per se should no longer be considered deadly threats and that officers should not use deadly force to protect themselves or others from vehicular attack. Firing is permitted only when someone inside a vehicle is posing an immediate lethal threat with some...Read More
Working with data from the nation’s second largest municipal police department, researchers have constructed a “risk terrain model” that links an officer’s relative danger of felonious injury to the presence of certain environmental factors. “All places may pose risk of battery to officers” on service calls, writes the lead author of the new study, Dr....Read More
New time-and-motion research by the Force Science Institute has important implications for officers in defending themselves against close-quarters attacks, according to FSI’s executive director Dr. Bill Lewinski. And a companion study, now nearing the reporting stage, will shortly reveal for the first time the extent to which duty gear and protective equipment on an officer’s...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. 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