Letter From the Editor – August 2022

Welcome to the (unofficial) last month of summer. Schools across the country return to session in the latter half of the month at some point. This month is full of vacations taken at the last chance, days at the beach crammed in before returning to the grind of the school year and more. With Independence Day behind us and Labor Day ahead of us, we can all feel the summer winding down. Unfortunately, as this is written, the summer so far has included some high-profile mass shootings, big decisions from the Supreme Court that have some folks up in arms and elections across the country. Hopefully none of this has been too bad where you are, but equally hopefully you’re ready if it presents challenges or gets out of hand.

The big news for us here at Officer Media Group earlier in the summer was the launch of our podcast: Officer Roll Call. As of this writing we have four episodes up and we anticipate adding a new episode every other week (at a minimum). Our topics of discussion so far have included: 1) summer tactics for patrol and the potential heat related injuries/concerns; 2) the Supreme Court decision regarding a New York case that effectively makes the entire country a shall issue country for concealed carry permits; 3) the value and versatility of the patrol shotgun (and there’s an article in this issue about that topic as well); and 4) a discussion about body cams, videos and video management. We hope you find the podcasts interesting and informative. You can find them here: officer-rollcall.podbean.com or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. If you have any ideas for topics you’d like us to discuss or cover in our Roll Call podcast, email them to [email protected].

We also continue to add courses to our Officer Virtual Academy (virtualacademy.officer.com) and hope you find them of value as well. The courses are no cost to take and we’re working toward getting them certified for in-service credit. That is quite the process so please be a little patient with us. Upon completion of any given course you can download a completion certificate and we encourage you to do so. Provide it to your agency’s training officer so, if nothing else for now, you get the good information and the positive impact in your file (we all need more positive impact in our file).

Now… plan and prepare for the opening of schools. It’s the perfect time to re-examine your active shooter response plans (there are courses for that in our Virtual Academy) and make any updates necessary. Don’t fall behind the times on this. Change is the only constant.

Stay safe.