Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Well, Pilgrims… they’ve issued their “verdict”. The Supreme Court has ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that the 2nd Amendment does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” While that one line seems like the Supreme Court wanted to strike down the DC law in question without stepping so far as to say the 2nd Amendment guaranteed an individual right, the 157 page opinion is quite explicit. Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
I remember, in the late ’90s, having a heated discussion with my father about Red Light Cameras. Speeding cameras hadn’t come along yet. Why did such a conversation matter? I was a cop. My dad was a District Court Judge. As a cop you’d think I’d have been all in favor of Red Light cameras because they would help enforce the law. My loss in understanding was how someone could be fined without there ever being ANY proof that they committed the crime. Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
So, as I sat doing my morning work it occurred to me that things are a bit… ah… off in our nation’s capital city: Washington DC.
It would seem to me that our capital should be the ONE place that EVERY law is not only just consistent with the Constitution, but is ground breaking; trend setting; progressive. In other words, it shouldn’t just be another city but should be the MODEL city for all other U.S. cities to try to follow. However… Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Recently, in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., the police department put an operation into effect empowering their officers to check the occupants of every vehicle coming into a given PUBLIC area to find out whether or not they had valid business there. On the one hand, as a police officer, I can see the obvious deterrent value of this action. On the other hand, as a free American citizen, I’m offended by the audacity of a police department that feels it can demand me to justify why I’m traveling on a public road. As I considered both sides of this argument I felt that this might be a topic of interest and decided to outline it before “fleshing it out”. Here’s what I came up with. Read the rest of this entry »
Ronnie Garrett
Editorial Director
Law Enforcement Technology magazine
You know you’re growing “older” – let’s make that more mature – when you find yourself uttering the things you promised you’d never say. For instance, my husband continually rants about the “hooligans” next door, while I echo my grandfather’s complaints about government policing and having it in for “the man.”
Now this blog is not intended to get into a political discussion – after all my parents visit this Web site too – and we are definitely not on the same political page. But here’s my problem: The Bush Administration has not been kind to law enforcement and it’s got me seeing red. I see that our government has billions available for the War on Terror, but for the war within our borders, funding falls short. Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
“Rumor control isn’t” is one of the first things I was told when I became a police officer. What I couldn’t understand was, WHY NOT? In a business where we arrest people - we take their freedom from them - based on a collection of facts that compiled comprise the commission of a crime. How come we can’t have that same fact-gathering and decision-making outlook toward the parts of our lives that aren’t law enforcement? Read the rest of this entry »
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
I remember, oh so well, in the early ’90s when “Community Oriented Policing” became the new buzzwords in law enforcement how so many agencies all of a sudden started teaching classes for the subject. As a person who had been a municipal police officer for my entire police career to that point, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why agencies who dealt with HUGE jurisdictions felt they should be teaching classes on something COMMUNITY oriented. Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »