IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center
For more than 30 years, the IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center has been identifying leading practices and providing sound guidance to the law enforcement profession to assist in developing policies for individual departments.
Policy Center Resources
The Policy Center offers four types of resources:
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Model Policy: Provides officers with concrete guidance and directives by describing, the manner in which actions, tasks, and operations are to be performed.
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Considerations: Intended to present items for agencies to take into account when developing their own policies on a topic. This format recognizes that expectations and capabilities vary by agency, and it aims to present recommendations to the law enforcement field without dictating exact approaches.
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Concepts and Issues: Designed to provide background information on the topic to support the Model Policy or Considerations document.
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Need to Know...: Synthesizes the key points of the topic into a brief, one-page overview.
Click here to visit the full list of Policy Center topics.
Featured Policy Center Resources
Welfare Checks
Welfare checks are requests for the police to check on an individual due to concern for their safety or well-being. Reasons for such requests vary...
Electronic Control Weapons
Law enforcement officers should use only the force that is objectively reasonable to effectively bring an incident under control, while protecting the safety of the...
Search Warrants
The search warrant is one of the more powerful and valuable tools in the law enforcement arsenal. While the process of applying for and obtaining...
Crime Scene Response
Protection of the crime scene, appropriate documentation, and preservation of evidence are crucial steps in criminal investigations and often provide the basis for effective identification...
Firearm Recovery
With violence involving firearms dominating the news headlines, it is crucial that all law enforcement agencies have timely and sustainable protocols for the recovery and forensic...
Alternatives to Arrest
Programs offering alternatives to arrest have the potential to positively alter the outcomes for individuals who come into contact with the criminal justice system. By...
Facial Recognition
Facial recognition technology can be helpful in identifying possible suspects or persons of interest by performing a comparative analysis of facial attributes observed in digital...
Discretionary Response to Calls for Service
Responding to calls for service efficiently is one of a police officer's primary duties, but public safety remains a priority. Inappropriate responses to calls for...
Standards of Conduct
Law enforcement officers must accept and abide by a high ethical and moral standard that is consistent with the rule of law they are sworn...
Employee Mental Health and Wellness
Personnel are the most valuable assets in a law enforcement agency. The documents provided are intended to assist agency personnel in developing policies, procedures, and guidelines...
Recruiting & Hiring
Hiring decisions are among the most impactful decisions a police agency can make. Agencies that want to build positive relationships with their communities, improve their public...
All Policy Center Resources
Secondary Employment
Police agencies should provide guidelines to employees to inform them of the types of secondary employment that are appropriate and to establish procedures to maintain accountability for the welfare...
Sex Offenders*
Law enforcement agencies should use all reasonable means to assist in the investigation of noncompliant sex offenders, to educate the public about personal safety precautions...
Sexual Assaults
Sexual Harassment & Misconduct
Police executives have a vested interest in prohibiting sexual harassment at work, both from a moral and an economic viewpoint. Further, members of law enforcement...
Social Media*
Social media has many potential uses for law enforcement agencies. The characteristics of collaboration and interactive communication that are at the core of social media...
Special Event Preparedness
Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT)
This is a stand-alone document, unaccompanied by a model policy, designed to explore the primary issues surrounding special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams. Following extensive...
Stalking
Responding to and investigating reports of stalking should involve gathering information that permits the victim’s circumstances to be considered in context with the behavior of the suspect...
Standards of Conduct
Law enforcement officers must accept and abide by a high ethical and moral standard that is consistent with the rule of law they are sworn...
Strikes and Labor Disputes
The parties involved in a labor dispute have rights as well as responsibilities. Strikers may assemble and demonstrate peacefully to bring attention to their cause...
Strip and Body Cavity Searches
Agencies should ensure that all officers are aware of the requirements, limitations, and procedures for strip and body cavity searches. Due to the potentially invasive...
Suicide Bombings
Police officers must be prepared for the potential of suicide bomber attacks. No policy can prescribe the precise actions that an officer must take in...
Surveillance
Surveillance operations are essential for criminal investigations and information collection required to develop intelligence. However, covert and clandestine methods may be neither appropriate nor necessary...
Suspicious Mail
The threat of attacks on individuals involving Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), especially chemical or biological agents, continues to be of significant concern. Law enforcement...
Technology
Technology advances rapidly in today's environment, and these technological advancements can help make policing more effective and more efficient. At the same time, new technology can also...
Temporary Light Duty
Temporary light-duty assignments, when available, should be for officers and other eligible personnel in an agency who, because of injury, illness or disability, are temporarily...
Traffic Incident Management
Effective management of traffic incidents is crucial to the safe and efficient use of roadways. Coordinated multiagency response to detect, respond to, and remove traffic incidents...
Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Individuals
Transportation of Prisoners
All prisoners should be treated in a humane manner and with due regard for their physical safety and protection consistent with sound principles of prisoner...
Unmanned Aircraft
Technological advances have allowed public safety agencies to consider the acquisition of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) to support their operations. The rapid integration of...
Every effort has been made by the IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center staff and advisory board to ensure that these documents incorporate the most current information and contemporary judgment on these issues. However, law enforcement administrators should be cautioned that no model policy can meet all the needs of any given law enforcement agency. In addition, the formulation of specific agency policies must take into account local political and community perspectives and customs, prerogatives, and demands; often divergent law enforcement strategies and philosophies; and the impact of varied agency resource capabilities, among other factors. Readers outside of the United States should note that, while these documents promote procedures reflective of a democratic society, their legal basis follows United States Supreme Court rulings and other federal laws and statutes. Law enforcement administrators should be cautioned that each law enforcement agency operates in a unique environment of court rulings, state laws, local ordinances, regulations, judicial and administrative decisions, and collective bargaining agreements that must be considered and should, therefore, consult their agency's legal advisor before implementing any policy.
The IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center documents are periodically updated, and the most current versions are published to this website. To minimize confusion and to help ensure reference to the most recent documents available, the IACP Policy Center does not distribute prior versions of any documents that have since been updated.
