LEO Near Miss

The Police Foundation, with support from the U.S. Department
of Justice and other law enforcement organizations, has developed a voluntary,
non-disciplinary reporting system that allows law enforcement personnel to read
about and anonymously share “close
calls” or “near misses”, which provide lessons learned that can protect others
from similar incidents.

A near miss is defined as a close call and/or unsafe
occurrence that could have resulted in a serious injury or fatality if not for
a fortunate break in the chain of events. Near misses oftentimes include
contributing factors like hazardous conditions, subjects with concealed
weapons, failed equipment, or lapses in situational awareness. Regardless of
the situation, they provide lessons learned, and reporting a near miss allows
fellow officers to learn from these incidents so they can go home to their
loved ones after every shift. 

Simply put, there are significantly more near misses than
serious injuries or fatalities. It is evident in industries that collect
near-miss data (aviation, fire/EMS services, health care/medicine, mining,
nuclear power operations, and the military) that for every major incident, injury,
or fatality, there are hundreds of near misses that could be analyzed and used
in training and risk management to prevent a tragedy.

LEO Near Miss is strictly for promoting learning and enhancing
officer safety and wellness. Users can visit the site, read the lessons learned
from near misses experienced by other officers, and anonymously share their own near-miss experiences. Near-miss
reports submitted to the site undergo a two-stage review process by law
enforcement experts to remove all identifying information (ensuring anonymity
when published) and to highlight important takeaways for improving officer
safety. It takes less than 10 minutes to submit a basic report, and you can do
it right from your smart phone or in-car computer. The Police Foundation does
not require, keep, or share any personally identifiable information about who
reported an incident (including e-mail addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses,
etc.) and does not require an officer to obtain any prior authorization to
submit a report. Any personally identifiable information in the report is deleted
before publishing so that the report is never tied to a specific agency,
officer, location or incident in any identifiable way.

In addition to providing lessons learned, the LEO Near Miss
system will identify and report on the underlying risk factors and
characteristics that are contributing to near-miss incidents. This anonymized
information will be made available to the law enforcement community to improve
training, equipment, policies, procedures, and tactics in order to reduce risk,
improve officer safety, and save lives.

Please consider sharing your near-miss
experiences. The short time you take to submit a report could save the life of
a fellow officer.