Policing Crisis Situations

This brief examines proactive steps police can take to lessen the potential for disaster, improve preparedness for disasters that do occur and enhance our ability to respond to and recover from them. Featuring several countries across the globe as case studies, it illustrates the predictability of various natural and manmade disasters and the need of the local police organizations to develop contingency plans to save lives and structures. With disaster losses and the human toll reaching staggering rates, and even more destructive events projected for the future as the climate shifts, there is a need for action by police and the local communities together. This volume offers a proactive plan that needs to be put in place for future crises, based on the projected predictability of reoccurring events. The brief can serve as a template for other countries and police task forces that have and will face similar crises situations in the future.

"This book explores the knowledge base and procedures necessary for a law enforcement leader to plan, mitigate, and respond to a crisis and the subsequent consequences. A feature of the textbook is that actual events are explored in a Lessons Learned section. This not only provides the law enforcement leader with lessons in what he or she should do, but also addresses those actions he or she should not take. The problems inherent in evacuations, emergency sheltering, sheltering in place, and access issues are discussed and problems such as interagency interfaces, Law Enforcement Incident Management System, and NIMS are addressed. Decision making is explored with legal concepts involving "who is in charge," forcible evacuations, scene access, and interagency operations. This textbook provides an overview and essential information for the law enforcement leader to identify the areas in which additional information, study, planning, and education are required"--

In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic surged, millions gathered across Canada and the United States to protest violence and racism in policing sparked by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. In the days and weeks following, the deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto and Chantel Moore in New Brunswick showed that police violence is also a Canadian reality. Although BIPOC communities and activists had been calling for action for years, these events sparked unprecedented public outrage and drew crowds in the thousands across Canada calling for the defunding of Canada’s police. Many authoritative reports have identified big problems in Canada’s law enforcement system and have concluded that police are more likely to create or escalate violent situations than promote safety and security. Why? How has an institution tasked with keeping citizens safe become so dangerous to so many Canadians? John Sewell has been studying the problems facing Canadian policing since the 1980s. In Crisis in Canada's Policing, he shines light on the origins of police culture, synthesizes dozens of reports that reveal the failures of the police system in Canada and offers solutions that put power back into the hands of community leaders while reining in and reforming police organizations.

Leading authorities on negotiations present the result of years of research, application, testing and experimentation, and practical experience. Principles and applications from numerous disciplines are combined to create a conceptual framework for the hostage negotiator. Ideas and concepts are explained so that the practicing negotiator can apply the principles outlined.

The contemporary world is characterized by the massive use of digital communication platforms and services that allow people to stay in touch with each other and their organizations. On the other hand, it is also a world with great challenges in terms of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations of various kinds. Thus, it is crucial to understand the role of digital platforms/services in the context of crisis, disaster, and emergency situations. Digital Services in Crisis, Disaster, and Emergency Situations presents recent studies on crisis, disaster, and emergency situations in which digital technologies are considered as a key mediator. Featuring multi- and interdisciplinary research findings, this comprehensive reference work highlights the relevance of society’s digitization and its usefulness and contribution to the different phases and types of risk scenarios. Thus, the book investigates the design of digital services that are specifically developed for use in crisis situations and examines services such as online social networks that can be used for communication purposes in emergency events. Highlighting themes that include crisis management communication, risk monitoring, digital crisis intervention, and smartphone applications, this book is of particular use to governments, institutions, corporations, and professionals who deal with crisis, disaster, and emergency scenarios, as well as researchers, academicians, and students working in fields such as communications, multimedia, sociology, political science, and engineering.

Run a safe and successful crisis negotiation—from start to finish! The Elements of Police Hostage and Crisis Negotiations: Critical Incidents and How to Respond to Them reduces the negotiation procedures for hostage, barricaded, and suicide incidents to their basic elements, providing quick and easy access to the information you need-from the initial call-out to the final debriefing. Based on field-tested principles proven to work, the book also includes newly developed and highly specialized techniques for more experienced negotiators. Author James L. Greenstone provides a user-friendly, step-by-step guide to the intervention and negotiation process that will help you get the job done—right. Designed for day-to-day, on-the-scene use, The Elements of Police Hostage and Crisis Negotiations is a practical handbook for experienced professionals and novices that can also be used as a supplementary textbook for criminal justice, crisis intervention, and psychology coursework. Each chapter contains useful checklists, procedural notes, tables, strategy worksheets, and forms, and the book includes special indices for quick reference in addition to a traditional index. Dr. Greenstone, a police mental health consultant and psychologist who served as Director of the Psychological Services Unit of the Fort Worth Police Department in Texas, uses a simple and direct format that emphasizes procedures, action and results, leaving theoretical discussions for another time and place. The book examines the negotiation process from start to finish, including preincident preparations, first response responsibilities, responding to the call-out, arriving at the scene, preparing to negotiate, making contact, preparing for the surrender, post-incident tasks, preparing equipment, and more. Topics covered in The Elements of Police Hostage and Crisis Negotiations include: legal considerations telephone surveillance guidelines the Stockholm Syndrome working with S.W.A.T. and Tactical Emergency Medical Support dealing with the media recognizing “red flags” the issues of suicide debriefing the hostage team the 150 laws of hostage and crisis negotiation and the 10 most serious errors a negotiator can make The Elements of Police Hostage and Crisis Negotiations: Critical Incidents and How to Respond to Them is a practical guide that’s equally effective in the field, in training, and in the office.

The purpose of this book is to provide theoretical, analytical, and practical knowledge for first responders. Face-to-face interaction with the client/victim is part of the comprehensive approach advocated by this book, which requires interveners to assess the nature of a crisis and the condition of the victim in order to determine the appropriate course of action. Effective communication skills, along with adequate training and preparation for intervention, are the keys to quality interaction between the intervener and the client/victim. Each chapter in this book offers a substantially updated theoretical overview of a particular facet of intervention, as well as models and methods for applying crisis theory to crisis situations faced by interveners. The comprehensive balance of theory and practice presented should enable the intervener in coupling the general knowledge of human psychology and emotional crisis with the specific and novel characteristics of various crisis situations. This new third edition retains important information in a revised format while adding important and timely cognition. Written for pre-service and in-service criminal justice and social service crisis interveners, it will also be of interest to emergency medical personnel, clergy, proba-tion/parole officers, victim advocates, psychological personnel, and professionals from other criminal justice, and social service areas.