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This book provides time- and experience-proven advice for responding safely and effectively to threats to a law enforcement officer's safety. It relies on law enforcement's bloody history to reveal what has gone wrong for a very long time—and how to fix it so that no more cops die needlessly. This book identifies the cop killers and the fatal errors that cops make, and it explores how these incidents happen and why. Most important of all, the book goes into detail about how to prevent these terminal errors and furnishes to-the-point advice for avoiding them. These tactics and techniques work. It offers the same, common sense advice that solid patrol sergeants have been sharing with their briefing room charges for a long while. It has been assembled by a police chief who spent 15 years as a sergeant. WHY COPS DIE can be used in a lot of ways, all of them useful for drastically reducing the number of officers who die on the job every year. It should be issued to every law enforcement academy recruit. It is aimed across the spectrum of the law enforcement organization from the rookie to the first-line supervisor to the command staff. Chiefs and sheriffs will find it of value, as will those directly responsible for the training of law enforcement officers. By applying practical, potentially lifesaving advice to their daily duties law enforcement's first-line practitioners can sharply reduce the number of peacekeepers who die or are maimed in the future. That effort begins here.

The purpose of this book is to provide the first-line leader with practical, time-proven guidance for making decisions that range from the seemingly mundane to the life-critical. The text emphasizes the importance of common sense applied to sound decision-making, and provides the first-line leader with the insight, experience, talents, and skills to meet specific challenges. The following topics are featured: why decision-making is important; assessing your people; employee grievances and fair decisions; setting a good example; making decisions concerning employee performance; disciplinary decision-making; troubled employees and compassionate decision-making; identifying high-risk behavior; keeping your officers alive; tactical decision-making; decision-making in critical incidents; handling media encounters; how to fix communication breakdowns; surviving the difficult boss and what your supervisor expects; surviving an organization's politics; making decisions when unsure of yourself; and making career plans. The embodiment of the text lies in its ability to involve the reader in tasks that must be accomplished following the use of lethal force by an officer, the leader's key duties and responsibilities to citizenry and his organization, responding effectively to high-risk, on the street scenarios, while simultaneously maintaining true professional calm and even-handedness. This book will be useful as a learning tool for those interested in preparing themselves for law enforcement supervisory or management positions, policymakers, and police academies.

In this exceptional new third edition, the author has retained much of the practical “everyone goes home” approach as in previous editions, but adds depth and potentially lifesaving information to keep the police officer safe and secure. The book provides a general orientation for survival, and details the specifics the intelligent police professional must master in order to survive the many types of risky situations he will be exposed to over a career. The book is painstakingly thorough in its approach to officer survival in an era where peacekeepers are required to be highly transparent and accountable in all of their actions. Every use of force by a law enforcement officer will be closely scrutinized. This is one reason why it is important that today's officer has access to every viable tactic and technique that may prevent the need for force in the first place. The book details everything from searching an arrested individual to searching a building; arresting a 300-pound outlaw biker to a surly teenager. Techniques and strategies discussed in the book include personal preparation for risk reduction, vehicle stops and contacts, defusing disturbances, domestic violence, burglaries and structure searches, barricades and hostage-takers, vehicle pursuits, ambush attacks, emotionally disturbed and mentally ill persons, prisoner control and transport, terrorist threats, off-duty confrontations, and reducing the emotional risks involved. At the end of each vital chapter, a quick and concise “Risk Reduction Checklist” is presented. These chapter summaries are excellent for review and merit rereading by the police professional intent on surviving to a healthy retirement. An Appendix has been included containing informative accounts of police deaths, culled from the “Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted Report” put together by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Other accounts are also found at the end of each chapter. Each one makes a point by way of grim example, yet every tragedy described can help save the life of an alert police officer who might otherwise become one more statistic. This unique and comprehensive text will be invaluable to all law enforcement professionals, investigators, policymakers, and police academics.

The purpose of this fifth edition is to stimulate the veteran, novice, or would-be police supervisor to utilize his or her most powerful tool, common sense, in carrying out the duties of an effective leader. Made up of life experience, good judgment, prudence, and a well-developed ability for solid reasoning and logical decision making, common sense will guide the intelligent supervisor in finding effective solutions to most of the problems he or she will encounter while leading police personnel. Emphasizing these good leadership practices, the first two chapter examine what leadership means and how to make the leap from officer to first-line supervisor. Chapter 3 discusses supervisory ethics and professional responsibilities, while Chapter 4 explores the key qualities of true leadership. Chapter 5 looks at the police leader's tasks as educator and trainer, and Chapter 6 examines the supervisor's vital job as evaluator of employee performance. Chapter 7 scrutinizes the leader's role as disciplinarian, while Chapter 8 covers his or her work as planner. Chapter 9 targets communication functions and Chapter 10 aids the supervisor in being an effective counselor to subordinates. Chapter 11 explores the supervisor as manager of human and material resources, while Chapter 12 delves into the difficult job of complaint or grievance processor. Chapter 13 discusses organizational survival for the ethical police officer. Chapter 14 analyzes the leader's role in today's community-oriented policing style, while Chapter 15 views the police leader as role model for officer safety. The next two chapters review the skills the first-line leader will need as the agency's on-scene spokesperson and customer service manager. The intent of the final chapter is to help the police leader in planning his or her career path and future. Each chapter concludes with a brief “Points to Remember” that provides a quickly-read and easily remembered checklist of the chapter's salient points. This fifth edition furnishes many more practical, helpful, and real-life examples pertaining to leadership issues. While the text emphasizes the importance of the police sergeant, it will be of equal value to anyone in a position of leadership in a law enforcement agency.

This handbook provides reliable guidance on what to do next and offers practical, no-frills advice about what to do to counter the day-to-day challenges and outright calamities that make up the first-line leader's work life. Perhaps even more important, it offers time-proven recommendations on how to prevent a bothersome situation from escalating into crisis proportions in the first place. It will prove equally useful to the veteran, novice or future law enforcement supervisor. Its sound advice will help him retain his emotional as well as physical and moral health in a real-world environment that seems to become more challenging every day. It will help him to lead and bring his people to share his practices and beliefs in doing a very critical job the right way. Just as it should be, the handbook is short on theory and long on “how to” advice. It is literally a resource that the supervisor can tuck into an equipment bag or otherwise keep close at hand. It likewise will aid him in carrying out the very practical tasks of communicating effectively; evaluating employee performance, correcting inappropriate behavior and helping his officers survive both on the street and in the police organization. Meanwhile, the handbook will assist the law enforcement leader in working well with his own boss and planning his own career. There is no job description in the world quite like that of first-line law enforcement boss. The job is as unique as it is difficult and vital to the success of any successful police organization. This book will help them become even better at their very important job.