Ambush attacks against law enforcement officers remain a threat to officer safety, with the number of attacks per year holding steady since a decline in the early 1990s and the proportion of fatal attacks on officers attributable to ambushes increasing. Concerns about targeted violence against police are on the rise, while officers must not only be guardians of the public but also be prepared to respond to violence targeting them. This report details findings from four inquiries on the topic: 1. A series of focus groups with police leaders to discuss ambushes, including definitional issues, preparation and protection strategies, and recovery after ambush incidents. 2. A quantitative analysis of environmental (agency and jurisdictional) characteristics associated with increases in the number of ambushes experienced by agencies over a five-year period. 3. A quantitative analysis of ambush incident survivability rates associated with officer, suspect, and incident characteristics. 4. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of organizational learning in the wake of ambush incidents based on survey data collected as part of this study.

Violent crime has been rising sharply in many American cities after two decades of decline. Homicides jumped nearly 17 percent in 2015 in the largest 50 cities, the biggest one-year increase since 1993. The reason is what Heather Mac Donald first identified nationally as the “Ferguson effect”: Since the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, officers have been backing off of proactive policing, and criminals are becoming emboldened. This book expands on Mac Donald’s groundbreaking and controversial reporting on the Ferguson effect and the criminal-justice system. It deconstructs the central narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males. On the contrary, it is criminals and gangbangers who are responsible for the high black homicide death rate. The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of “mass incarceration.” A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s data-driven, accountable police department. Mac Donald gives voice to the many residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that race-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. This book is a call for a more honest and informed debate about policing, crime, and race.

Only Detective Michael Bennett stands in the way of two lethal cartels fighting for New York City's multi-million-dollar opioid trade. And they know where he and his family live. An anonymous tip about a crime in Upper Manhattan proves to be a setup. An officer is taken down -- and, despite the attackers' efforts, it's not Michael Bennett. New York's top cop is not the only one at risk. One of Bennett's children sustains a mysterious injury. And a series of murders follows, each with a distinct signature, alerting Bennett to the presence of a professional killer with a flair for disguise. Bennett taps his best investigators and sources, and they fan out across the five boroughs. But the leads they're chasing turn out to be phantoms. The assassin takes advantage of the chaos, enticing an officer into compromising Bennett, then luring another member of Bennett's family into even graver danger. Michael Bennett can't tell what's driving the assassin. But he can tell it's personal, and that it's part of something huge. Through twist after twist, he fights to understand exactly how he fits into the killer's plan, before he becomes the ultimate victim.

On 1 June 1921, at the height of Ireland’s War of Independence, a cycling patrol of members of the RIC was ambushed by members of the IRA at Ballymacandy, between Milltown and Castlemaine in County Kerry. After an hour of fighting, four police officers lay dead and another died a day later, among them a father of nine children. The group of IRA assailants included some of the most high-profile figures in Ireland’s ‘Tan War’, men like Dan Keating, Jack Flynn, Dan Mulvihill, Billy Myles and Johnny Connor, but also lesser-known figures, including members of the local Cumann na mBan. Their actions were condemned from the pulpit and an official enquiry tried to discredit the local doctor who tended to the dying men. This book comes on the centenary of an ambush that continues to resonate in its community and in a county in which the battle with Crown forces was more virulent and violent than most. Drawing on newly published witness statements and previously unpublished official records, Ballymacandy details what happened the five men who died and those who led the attack against them and sets the incident against the backdrop of the wider revolutionary struggle in the county.

From New York Times bestselling author Jeff Abbott’s, an uneasy alliance forms as two widows delve into their husbands’ deadly and dangerous secrets... Henry North is a down-on-his-luck cybersecurity expert from New Orleans. Adam Zhang is the cofounder of one of Austin’s most successful venture capitalist firms. These two men didn’t know each other. They had never met. Yet they died together, violently, in a place neither had any business being. When Henry doesn’t return from a business trip, his wife, Kirsten, panics – and then gets an anonymous phone call: 'Your husband is dead in Austin.' Flora knew Adam was keeping secrets from her. She suspected an affair, but had decided she could forgive him for his weakness – until her husband ended up dead. And with no explanation for her husband’s murder, the police begin to suspect her. Together, these two widows will face a powerful foe determined to write a false narrative about the murders. In doing so, neither Flora nor Kirsten will remain the women the world thought they were. An exceptional thriller from the million copy bestseller, showing the ends people will go to protect their own, perfect for fans of Linwood Barclay, Harlan Coben and Lisa Gardner.

The Dallas police chief who inspired a nation with his compassionate, community-focused response to the killing of five of his officers shares his story and a blueprint for the future of policing.

The Columbine tragedy on April 20, 1999 began a new era in law enforcement as it became apparent that the police response to such mass shootings must be drastically altered. By the time the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, outdated police response strategies had been replaced with new, aggressive tactics used by the first officers on the scene. The frequency with which these events occur remind us time and again about the importance of training and preparing for these critical situations before they occur in our own backyards. Active Shooter Events and Response is one of the first attempts to not only discuss historic active shooter events, but also to actually dissect some of them—empowering law enforcement professionals by leveraging the essential knowledge and experience of those who have gone before us. The book also offers insight into the training methodologies and strategies used to prepare our nation’s first responders to address the active shooter threat. In addition, the authors discuss the clear and present threat of terrorist organizations using these mass shooter tactics on American soil—similar to the attacks in Beslan, Russia and Mumbai, India. Written by members of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University, this book is the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of training and research into active shooter events and represents state-of-the-art, evidence-based best practices.

“A remarkable book.”—Malcolm Gladwell, San Francisco Chronicle Deaths of civilians at the hands of on-duty police are in the national spotlight as never before. How many killings by police occur annually? What circumstances provoke police to shoot to kill? Who dies? The lack of answers to these basic questions points to a crisis in American government that urgently requires the attention of policy experts. When Police Kill is a groundbreaking analysis of the use of lethal force by police in the United States and how its death toll can be reduced. Franklin Zimring compiles data from federal records, crowdsourced research, and investigative journalism to provide a comprehensive, fact-based picture of how, when, where, and why police resort to deadly force. Of the 1,100 killings by police in the United States in 2015, he shows, 85 percent were fatal shootings and 95 percent of victims were male. The death rates for African Americans and Native Americans are twice their share of the population. Civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations, but American police also confront an unusually high risk of fatal assault. Zimring offers policy prescriptions for how federal, state, and local governments can reduce killings by police without risking the lives of officers. Criminal prosecution of police officers involved in killings is rare and only necessary in extreme cases. But clear administrative rules could save hundreds of lives without endangering police officers. “Roughly 1,000 Americans die each year at the hands of the police...The civilian body count does not seem to be declining, even though violent crime generally and the on-duty deaths of police officers are down sharply...Zimring’s most explosive assertion—which leaps out...—is that police leaders don’t care...To paraphrase the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre, every country gets the police it deserves.” —Bill Keller, New York Times “If you think for one second that the issue of cop killings doesn’t go to the heart of the debate about gun violence, think again. Because what Zimring shows is that not only are most fatalities which occur at the hands of police the result of cops using guns, but the number of such deaths each year is undercounted by more than half!...[A] valuable and important book...It needs to be read.” —Mike Weisser, Huffington Post

The story of Bonnie and Clyde--their love, their desperate killings, and their destruction in an explosion of gun fire--has fueled an American legend more than seventy years. But it is only with this book by the last surviving officer of the six who shot Bonnie and Clyde that the full story of their capture has been told. Ted Hinton's description of a secret, illegal police trap--hidden at the time from the press and public--is one of many revelations he draws from his intimate knowledge of the greatest manhunt of the 1930s. As a Dallas lawman he spent seventeen months, night and day, on the trail of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He knew the notorious criminals personally from the seamy, hoodlum-ridden Dallas neighborhoods where they all grew up. He shared their code of toughness and genu­inely admired the extraordinary courage, skill, and loyalty that made Bonnie and Clyde stand out almost as heroes in the public imagination. Hinton admired them, but he never doubted that they had to be stopped. The long trail could only end in a shootout and their deaths-or his. Hinton's experiences as a green young sheriff's deputy and his compassion for outlaw lovers give Ambush an unusual dimension of humanity. Twenty-seven photographs underscore the book's vivid au­thenticity. And the author's meticulous research, using sources avail­able to no one else, makes this the definitive work of fact. The result is a powerful human drama of crime and the law: the real story of Bonnie and Clyde.