​While the proximate cause of any accident is usually someone’s immediate action— or omission (failure to act)—there is often a trail of underlying latent conditions that facilitated their error: the person has, in effect, been unwittingly “set up” for failure by the organization. This Brief explores an accident in policing, as a framework for examining existing police practices. Learning from Error in Policing describes a case of wrongful arrest from the perspective of organizational accident theory, which suggests a single unsafe act—in this case a wrongful arrest—is facilitated by several underlying latent conditions that triggered the event and failed to stop the harm once in motion. The analysis demonstrates that the risk of errors committed by omission (failing to act) were significantly more likely to occur than errors committed by acts of commission. By examining this case, policy implications and directions for future research are discussed. The analysis of this case, and the underlying lessons learned from it will have important implications for researchers and practitioners in the policing field.​

25 Biggest Mistakes Law Enforcement Officers Make and How to Avoid Them is an astounding presentation of how to bolster public perception of law enforcement while capitalizing on correcting traditional law enforcement mistakes that have long-been slave to the centralized negative perception of law enforcement.

This comprehensive study guide is intended to be a companion for the seventh edition of Common Sense Police Supervision. It was developed to help readers and students test their knowledge of the contents of the twenty-chapter text. It also was fashioned to help the promotional student ready him or herself for an examination based on the book. At the beginning of each chapter, a summary of the contents is provided for each of this guide’s twenty chapters. The summary is followed by a series of questions designed to test and reinforce the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the chapter. Each of the guide’s questions is in multiple-choice format where the reader chooses the single best answer for each question. The answers for each section follow at the end of each chapter along with the corresponding page numbers from the text where the subject is discussed. This is exceptionally useful as an additional learning tool. If used along with the book, the guide should increase the reader’s comprehension and retention of the material found in the text. In addition, this study guide can also be an invaluable teaching instrument for instructors. Readers will find a new chapter, “Working for Someone,” that provides valuable information for the law enforcement supervisor to assure that the working relationship with his or her own boss is a consistently positive one.

While confidential informants (CI’s) can play a crucial role in police investigations, they also have the potential to cause great harm if they are dishonest. The process by which police agencies qualify a CI to work and the strength of agency policy may be the source of the problem. This Brief examines the integrity problem involving CIs in police operations within the United States, provides an overview of pitfalls and problems related to veracity and informant integrity including the difficulties in detecting when a CI is lying, and compares the provisions of actual published police policy to the model CI policy published by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). The analysis shows a wide divergence between actual police policy and the national standard promulgated by the IACP. The Brief provides policy recommendations for improving use of CIs that can potentially reduce or eliminate integrity problems that can lead to organizational accidents such as wrongful arrests and convictions, injuries or deaths. Some Courts have issued measures to ensure that information received from CIs is reliable by examining sworn testimony and documents related to their work. However, as this Brief explores, this judicial effort arises only after a police operation has taken place, and the use of force – even deadly force—has already been employed. The author proposes integrity testing beforehand, which would allow police to have a greater understanding of a CI’s motivation, ability and veracity when conducting law enforcement operations. In addition, there are aspects of police policy that can enhance CI management such as training, supervision and entrapment that can further guard against integrity problems. Although integrity testing is not flawless, it does interpose an additional step in the CI management process that can help guard against wrongful conviction and perjury that harms the judicial process.

In this revised edition of their concise, readable, yet wide-ranging book, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tackle a question students and scholars of law, criminology, and political science constantly face: what mistakes have led to the problems that pervade the criminal justice system in the United States? The reluctance of criminal justice policymakers to talk openly about failure, the authors argue, has stunted the public conversation about crime in this country and stifled new ideas. It has also contributed to our inability to address such problems as chronic offending in low-income neighborhoods, an overreliance on incarceration, the misuse of pretrial detention, and the high rates of recidivism among parolees. Berman and Fox offer students and policymakers an escape from this fate by writing about failure in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to encourage a more forthright dialogue about criminal justice, one that acknowledges that many new initiatives fail and that no one knows for certain how to reduce crime. For the authors, this is not a source of pessimism, but a call to action. This revised edition is updated with a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and afterword by Greg Berman.

This how-to guide covers every aspect of law enforcement training, from training academy administration, to designing curricula, to identifying and utilizing qualified instructors. Using the latest methodologies, technologies, and best practices, Training Law Enforcement Officers gives law enforcement administrators, training specialists, instructors, instructional systems designers, and academy directors a proven way to conduct training for all levels of practitioners, from basic law enforcement to high-risk law enforcement. At a time when scrutiny of law enforcement officers is on the rise, Training Law Enforcement Officers is an essential guide for those criminal justice practitioners seeking to minimize police error and make today’s police force the best that it can be.

Good police officers are often promoted to supervisory positions with little or none of the training it takes to be a good manager. An understanding of group behaviors and organizational dynamics is necessary to grasp the fundamentals of managing police officers. The Effective Police Supervision Study Guide coordinates with the core text used in many college-level classes and police departments to teach supervisory practices in criminal justice. This study guide prepares both students and professionals for academic or promotional exams, offering them an opportunity to fully review the material so that they are well-prepared for testing. This new edition, like the new edition of the textbook it accompanies, includes information on the following topics: police accountability, police involvement with news media, the challenges of dealing with social media, updates on legal considerations, and ways to avoid another controversy like Ferguson, Dallas, or Baltimore.