Fool me once, shame on you!… A woman drove her vehicle through an activated railroad crossing guard outside Garner, North Carolina. To avoid the oncoming train, she sped across the tracks and hit a tree. Two weeks later, the same woman in the same car – with a still damaged front end – was seen driving through the same crossing arm with the same warning lights and bells activated. But, this time, the car got stuck and an Amtrak train…
Why Don’t We Talk Anymore? You can chalk up this entire installment of “…and nothing but the truth” to me being old and outdated, I suppose. It’s definitely going to sound like an old guy railing against modern technology, but I need to vent and there’s no town square with a soapbox for me to climb. The closest I can come is this column and I thank you for reading it. By the way, this column is 30 years old…
Michael Carpenter “Boss…You Got a Minute?” It starts out innocently. “Boss, you got a minute?” says one of your officers as he walks by your office. And, then, after a little bit of stammering and foot shuffling, your subordinate proceeds to tell you about the mistake he made, thereby dropping the whole thing right into your lap. Now, what do you do? Mistakes are a fact of life. Since they cannot always be avoided, the success of your career may…
In recent years, we’ve seen a dramatic change in how law enforcement officers are trained, with some firearms training evolving to more closely reflect the reality of actual street encounters. In the not so distant past, firearms training was mostly conducted “on the line” under strict control and command of the range master and his “range safety rules.” Unfortunately, in some places, this is how training still occurs. The addition of these highly controlling “range safety rules” to the Firearms…
Why have a great many officers grown indifferent to firearms training? Many law enforcement officers regard firearms training as one of life’s many inconveniences, much like a dental checkup or filing a tax return. They know it’s not the end of the world, but there are many other ways they would rather be spending their time. Unfortunately, many officers fail to make the connection between the range and the street. Trainers not only have an obligation to provide the “how…
Michael Carpenter The Will to Lead There is no substitution for the will to lead others. The young police officer thought his journey was over. He had received very good reviews on his performance evaluations. He had worked hard to get his college education while on the job. He had prepped diligently for six months for the written promotional exam and certainly impressed the oral board with his responses. He got the promotion to sergeant and a nice pay raise…
The answer to this question is, “Of course.” That is unless you have such stellar, world-class training from your agency that you don’t need to consider anything else. We are in the golden age of training – there are more firearms trainers, with more knowledge and more experience and more data to draw on than ever before in history. This would be the case now even if we didn’t have droves of highly trained and experienced military personnel returning from…
This is what happens when family pets find out they’re about to be neutered… A family in Greenfield, Wisconsin, was taken hostage in their own home by another family member. Fearing for their safety, the wife managed to sneak a quick call to 911 and police officers were dispatched to the scene. When the officers arrived, they discovered that the situation was not what they had expected. As it turns out, the family was being held hostage by the family…
Duterte’s “War on Drugs” Imagine this: You’ve decided to take a vacation to take in the sights and culture of the Pacific Islands: Bora Bora, Fiji, the Phillipines. You know, places where you can relax on some Pacific shore while sipping coconut juice and, well, kill a few drug dealers. What was that? If you haven’t heard already, Phillipine President Rodrigo Duterte, elected by a landslide vote this past June, is rather strong on crime. That’s always a good thing,…
Who’s a good boy? Who?? Who is that good boy?… Officials say a family dog in Mississippi recently came home with more than a toy to play fetch – the pup had a big bag of marijuana in his mouth. The Jones County Sheriff’s Office reported that narcotics deputies were sent to the home to investigate the unusual incident. Police statements say the homeowner told deputies that, when his dog came home with the bag, he initially thought it was…