Many officers, looking back several years to their basic academy days, can still remember officer survival classes that highlighted the “10 deadly errors” an officer can make. Any of these errors can lead to the death, or serious injury, of law enforcement officers or their partners. Regardless of how they were presented, these errors are clearly based on the model established originally by Pierce Brooks.
Brooks, a retired captain from the Los Angeles Police Department, was ahead of his time. He conceived of the 10 deadly errors while still a homicide detective. Detective Brooks held a firm belief that most police killings could be avoided, which motivated him to write “. . . Officer Down, Code Three.”1 In this book, he discussed the 10 deadly errors that he felt contributed to the death of many law enforcement officers.
Many young police officers took his writings to heart. Brooks’s list better prepared them to perform their jobs as street beat cops. As a result of the influence of this list, over the years, various agencies and academies have presented these errors in many ways to reemphasize their importance. By adapting Brooks’s 10 deadly errors to a leadership model, police leaders can benefit from the list as well.
