When an officer arrives on the scene of an emergency, the officer is responsible for ensuring
that there are no emergencies still occurring. After it is determined that the scene is secure it
will then be ok for any other emergency service personnel to respond to handle any patients. In
the event of an overdose, I believe that saving a life would be more beneficial than securing any
evidence that an obvious overdose has occurred. If I am being called to this overdose most of
the time there is still going to be evidence on scene still anyway.
When a call for service comes out and it is determined that it is a “hot” call, the officer needs to
make a plan for where they are going to stage their vehicle, which route they are going to take
to get to the residence on foot. During a domestic dispute, the responding officers will most
likely be on the defense every time while the offender is on the offense. According to the FBI’s
Law enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted database, there have been 503 officers killed
between the years 2011 and 2020 and during that time 43 were killed while responding to a
domestic violence call and 14 killed after arriving on the scene of a domestic.
Both have played a large role in my decision-making equally. Regardless of why type of call an
officer is responding to, it is always a good idea to have another officer either close by or
already responding to the scene as well. Working as a County Deputy, I don’t always have the
luxury of having another Deputy close by, mainly because of the size of my county, but there
have been those rare times where another Deputy responds. Domestics, on the other hand, I
will always request for another Deputy to respond with me. Having good supervisors to make
those decisions before you have to is always good as well.
Resources:
Tucker, E. (2022, January 22). Domestic incidents are highly dangerous for police officers,
experts say. CNN. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/22/us/domestic-incidents-police-officers-danger/index.html
