The irony of my newsfeed displaying information on a site called Move Over Laws followed by an article published by Firehouse.com was thought-provoking enough for me. Having served my entire law enforcement career working the streets, it remains unshakable that the dangers of "playing in traffic" is, for cops, far from the rhetorical joke we…
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In my neck of the woods is the University of South Florida Police Department (USFPD), located on a sprawling campus in Tampa. Its jurisdiction bordered mine when I was patrolling the streets on midnight shift. Meeting car-to-car with USF campus cops on the daily helped swap information and intelligence pertaining to what is brewing in…
Since childhood I witnessed and envied the camaraderie among police officers, firefighters and soldiers. I especially gravitated toward NYPD cops working the Brooklyn beat. Something always stirred. I knew it immediately: I'd be a policeman. I wanted to be a part of such a group which, despite the floor dropping out on a daily basis,…
The feature photo you see above depicts a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter squeezed into a too tight tract of asphalt at a dangerous intersection marked as such. The location is right outside Fort Walton Beach Medical Center (FWBMC) where the border patrol pilots used precision, aviation skills, and a determined duty to transport injured victims…
Compartmentalizing, as we understood and defined it, was a tool my wife and I used as part of a coping strategy in our stressful jobs. Something we employed to prevent being overwhelmed by excessive emotional attachment that could harm our helping the people we served.
Now, I certainly don’t have all the answers, and I’m not…
The death toll climbs and the images are slowly posting to social media, uploaded by folks able to get close enough to record the aftermath deposited by Hurricane Florence's fury. I wrote a piece on the rescuers salvaging abandoned animals, and that is an ongoing feat performed by first responders and civilians alike. This segment…
National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week 2018 is celebrated April 8-14, honoring behind-the-scenes folks who answer the 9-1-1 calls and serve as lifelines for those in dire need. Iconically, the various factions under the public safety umbrella are universally denoted by a particular color representing a specific brand of service provision. Law enforcement is blue, red…
Much of San Francisco's police fleet is so aged—about 10 years for some cruisers—that the city spends roughly $4 million per year in maintenance alone. Like attrition in staffing, police vehicles must be chronicled and switched-out accordingly but the city has not kept an attuned ear to command staff and police union requests to replace…
February 16, 2018 rang-in the 50th Anniversary marking our nation’s very first 9-1-1 call. As the Sarasota, Florida sheriff’s office wrote on their social media page heralding 9-1-1’s birth: “Technology may have changed but callers are our constant. Thank you to all those who serve so selflessly by picking up the phone on the worst…
Today is five years since the inexplicable toll on many lives was waged at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. For any cop whose duty pulled him/her to bizarre, graphically-surreal scenes of utter destruction…indelible factors persist. It is a chronic dynamic among first responders such as police officers, military members, firefighters and paramedics. Adding…
Post-Hurricane Maria havoc is stirred with the imminent breach of Puero Rico's Guajataca Lake breaching dam barriers, compelling approximately 70,000 to flee the already storm-saturated, flattened island state. Synonymously, any dam breach prevents military assets, public safety, and search and rescue personnel from providing aid and salvation to Puerto Rico's government and its citizens.
The area…
As Hurricane Maria and her Category-4 strength made landfall in Puerto Rico --a US territory in the Caribbean-- the entire island is powerless and mostly flattened. As has been the case with recent hurricanes Harvey (Texas and Louisiana) and Irma (Florida, Georgia and S. Carolina), public safety assets are gearing-up for deployment to help pick up…
Next! As we wave bye-bye to the tail end of Hurricane Irma, her successor, Hurricane Jose, isn't far behind. Described by Tampa Bay's Fox News meteorologist Paul Dellegatto as "drunk on seawater," animatedly colorizing the loopy turns it has made in the Atlantic Ocean, Hurricane Jose is gaining attention after-all.
Hurricane Jose's trajectory on September 15…
"...lowering standards in any profession is almost always an act of desperation which does not bode well for positive results."
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” Those are the words you expect to hear when calling in an emergency, but what if you didn’t? We expect a reassuring voice upon dialing 9-1-1, especially when our psyche…
“individuals who drive under the influence of alcohol and drugs have long been considered by ICE to be a public safety threat and enforcement priority...”
By Jorge Rivas, Fusion:
Immigration officials announced last week they detained at least 367 individuals in a series of raid operations—nearly one a day—across the country.
The arrests were announced throughout the…
By T.B. Lefever, OpsLens:
If you look at the archived Obama administration outline and vision for the country on the whitehouse.gov site, you’ll see that there were five main areas of focus. They are listed as follows: Healthcare, Climate and Energy, American Leadership, Economic Progress, and Equality and Social Progress. If you look at the whitehouse.gov…
By Chris Wagoner:
I am one of tens of millions of Americans who would not hesitate to help out our officers on the streets if I see them in need. This includes most veterans, most retired police officers, other law enforcement, and just plain old good people of this country. I will not stop to grab…
By Stephen Owsinski:
According to the US Census Bureau, America is teetering on approximately 324,000,000 citizens, roughly 900,000 of whom are law enforcement officers. Visitors and tourists fatten the head count in our country. Given the overall ratio, it is no wonder that the profession of law enforcement has all kinds of police spread across the…
By Stephen Owsinski:
Historically, being a police officer has never been a leisurely stroll in the park. A job in which you swear to lay down your life for another implicitly spells d-a-n-g-e-r. So it really comes as no surprise that cops feel their job is more difficult nowadays, with the national climate on the fritz.…
By Stephen Owsinski:
Yes, you read that correctly. And if you had unpleasant thoughts or called me names for being blunt and disrespectful, it’s not what you think. My explanation will clear it all up.
In the shadow of recent vicious attacks on cities in other nations like France and Germany, in which many were killed or…