Therapy Now the Norm for Cops in Traumatic Situations
from Newsday
After a drunken driver plowed into a limousine on the Meadowbrook Parkway in 2005, killing the limo driver and decapitating a 7-year-old girl, emergency workers at the scene were gathered together. The purpose: to talk about what they had just seen. Once anathema to tough street cops, therapy sessions - many of them mandatory - are now the norm for officers involved in shootings, in-custody deaths and fatal crashes as departments recognize the high suicide risk faced by cops. More

Officers Practice Response to Terror Incident
from the Rome Daily Sentinel
Sixteen first-response officers from across the northeast participated in a week-long training session for dealing with weapons of mass destruction. It was held in conjunction with the state Office of Homeland Security at the Preparedness Training Center in Whitestown, N.Y., the former county airport. A group of instructors from the National Sheriffs' Association staged a fake terrorist encounter. More

Drug-bust RV is Now a Sheriff's Command Post
from the Des Moines Register
Dallas, Iowa, County sheriff's authorities have converted a recreational vehicle that once held the largest cache of cocaine ever seized in Iowa into a mobile command center to use during natural disasters and public emergencies. A decal on the Winnebago lets taxpayers know the vehicle was "Donated by the Drug Dealers of America." More

Officer Fatalities Caused by Drunken Drivers on the Increase
from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund
JD's Tavern, about 20 miles from Springfield, Illinois, has had more than its fair share of trouble. "Way too much manpower has been dedicated to that one location," said Sangamon County Sheriff's Captain Jack Campbell. During the early morning hours of Oct. 28, 2007, trouble had broken out once again. Two sheriff's deputies who had been called to JD's on another matter found themselves in a middle of a parking lot melee involving about 10 other people. When one of the deputies was struck in the head, they called for backup. More

Tactical Decision Making: An Equation for Critical Thinking in Moments of Crisis
from PoliceOne
Every day, officers face myriad situations on the street where they have to make decisions on how to proceed. Subjective terms like "use good judgment" or "common sense" are often used to describe the process of arriving at a successful decision. But what we need is an objective tool to measure success instead of basing actions on subjective standards. More

New Hampshire Looks at Alternative Sentencing
from The Associated Press via the Nashua Telegraph
New Hampshire is involved in multiple efforts to evaluate the benefits of alternative sentencing programs for nonviolent offenders. A commission that includes government officials, legal experts and county, prison and mental health care administrators met twice last month to discuss how the state could save money through programs that keep nonviolent offenders out of jail. More

Judge: California Must Pay for Prison Health Care
from The Associated Press via the San Francisco Chronicle
A federal judge has scolded California officials for failing to provide the billions of dollars a court-appointed receiver says is needed to upgrade the state's prison health care system. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson made it clear Monday he expects California to pay $8 billion for seven new inmate medical facilities. But he stopped short of immediately holding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang in contempt for failing to turn over the money. More

Prison-kitchen Plan Cooked Up
from the Deseret News
In these tough economic times, corrections officials are pitching the state on a new plan to feed thousands of inmates and ultimately save money.The Utah Department of Corrections is asking for nearly $22 million to build a "cook/chill" kitchen facility that will serve TV dinner-type food to inmates in Draper, Utah, at the prison in Gunnison, Utah, and halfway houses. More

Fairfax Elections Staff Visited Jail to Sign Up Inmates
from WTOP
Inmates at the Fairfax, Va., County jail were encouraged to register and vote last week by elections officials making what the county's sheriff called the first visit of its kind in his 30 years with the county. More