LEO Near Miss

The National 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 any incident that could have resulted in a law enforcement officer being seriously injured or killed if not for a fortunate break in the chain of events. Near misses can occur at any time during the performance of law enforcement duties and 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. Officers often share their near misses with their close friends, but rarely are these stories, and the lessons learned from them, shared with officers across the country. LEO Near Miss provides the platform for officers to do so.

LEO Near Miss is strictly for promoting learning and enhancing officer safety and wellness. Officers can access the site or the app, read the lessons learned from near misses experienced by other officers, and anonymously share their own near-miss experiences. Near-miss stories submitted to LEO Near Miss go directly to the National Police Foundation (www.PoliceFoundation.org), an independent, non-profit research and training organization that manages the system in partnership with other organizations like Below 100, IACP, and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Each story received undergoes 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 about 5-10 minutes to submit a story, and you can do it right from your smart phone or in-car computer. The National 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.). 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.

If you would like more information about LEO Near Miss, please visit our About page at https://www.leonearmiss.org/about/.