By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D We know that hundreds of police officers are killed or injured in the line of duty every year. We know that stress and trauma lead to the loss of careers, years of life, and the disruption of police families. Some of these challenges can be mitigated and some are Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D In the category of never knowing what is behind the door, getting a call to check on someone’s well-being is among the most unpredictable and potentially dangerous calls an officer can get. According to a study published this year by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, “Calls to Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D There was an old theory called Spontaneous Generation in which life springs from inanimate substances. For example, when grain is left on the barn floor, rats mysteriously show up. The ancients concluded, therefore, that rats arise from old grain. It is laughable now, but the vestiges of this erroneous Read more »
By Stephen Owsinski Although police canines handle tons of rigors when on duty and train continuously for just about every aspect of law enforcement, none expect to be idled in a police cruiser and slammed into by a semi-tractor-trailer traveling at significant velocity on a closed stretch of Interstate. On January 12, 2024, a Traffic Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D Moral injury is a relatively newly recognized distress that can affect first responders and combat veterans. It is short of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but can have long-term effects on emotional well-being. PTSD has entered the common vernacular so much that it is often self-diagnosed or labeled by Read more »
By Stephen Owsinski Back in March 2023, news broke that more than 9,300 Los Angeles police officers’ detailed identities and respective photo images were “accidentally” released by the city, winding up in possession of an anti-cop site operating with the moniker KillerCop.com, the operator of which put bounties out on law enforcement officers. Remember that Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D On July 21st of this year Eastland County, Texas, Sheriff’s Office Deputy Sheriff David Bosecker, a 21-year law enforcement veteran, was shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call. As he arrived on the scene a male subject opened fire on him, fatally wounding him. Other responding Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D The chant of “Hands up, don’t shoot” echoed in the streets of protests across the country after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. In the immediate aftermath of the false narrative that caught fire on social media faster than the torched convenience store in town. Read more »
By Stephen Owsinski Thanks to the abysmal idea of defunding the police, exacerbated by soft-on-crime initiatives instigated by people who have zero business leading, police work is increasingly perilous, causing cops to exercise even more hypervigilance at every turn. Politicos trumpet reforms. Cities are in ruin. Hatred abounds. Dwindled police forces do their darndest to Read more »
By Chief Joel F. Shults, Ed.D I’m always skeptical of the description of a law enforcement officer’s injury in a duty-related incident as “non-life threatening”. In addition to the lingering physical and mental injuries that may result, these injuries are often life-shortening. There are also those injuries that are reported immediately after a crash, shooting, Read more »