March 2008 - Police Chief Magazine

President’s Message: Speaking Out on Law Enforcement Resource Needs

In the United States, there are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies and well over 700,000 officers who patrol our state highways and the streets of our communities each and every day. During the...

Special Focus: Policing Software

The ever-increasing presence of computers in the law enforcement community has resulted in a proliferation in computer applications to assist with numerous agency functions. Software has been develope...

The Challenge of Communicating in an Urban University Environment

Penn Quick Facts Student Enrollment: As of fall 2007, Penn has a total enrollment of 23,980, of whom 19,816 are full-time and 4,164 are part-time students. Of the full-time students, 10,16...

Where do the good ideas come from? In this column, we offer our readers the opportunity to learn about ? and benefit from ? some of the cutting-edge technologies being implemented by law enforcement c...

The Ten Deadly Errors of Leadership

any officers, looking back several years to their basic academy days, can still remember officer survival classes that highlighted the “10 deadly errors” an officer can make. Any of these errors c...

Traffic Safety Initiatives

Traffic Safety: Changing the Culture

Over the past several months in this space, we have applied the judging criteria of the IACP National Law Enforcement Challenge to the basics of a sound and effective police traffic safety program. Th...

Chief's Counsel

Chief’s Counsel: When Does an Employment Disciplinary Action Violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Protection of the Liberty Interest?

In 1985 the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case that set standards for government agencies contemplating the termination of an employee. The case, Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, examined th...

A Look at the 12-Hour Shift: The Lincoln Police Department Study

ork schedules based on a 12-hour shift are not yet commonplace in the law enforcement profession, but it is not hard to find agencies that have implemented them. The pros and cons of this scheduling a...