The ACEP Tactical Emergency Medicine Section, with over 400 members, has served as an enthusiastic resource for emergency physicians working to improve medical care during law enforcement training and operations. Policing, like medicine itself, is a noble profession where men and women in uniform put themselves at risk to help others. Our section members have long recognized that the medical opportunities towards optimizing law enforcement officer medical aid abilities go far beyond the support of SWAT and other police special operations units.

Based on our input, the ACEP Board of Directors approved a change in the section name to Tactical and Law Enforcement Medicine, better reflecting this breadth to include self- and buddy-care development and training, patrol officer medical needs, officer health and wellness, recognizing and managing psychiatric and other emergencies to include hyperactive delirium with severe agitation, and the medical role of law enforcement in mass killing events.

While we do not know how it will ultimately manifest (fellowship, focused practice designation, etc.), we have already initiated the journey towards Tactical and Law Enforcement Medicine becoming formally recognized as a unique subspecialty of emergency medicine. It is our belief that law enforcement agencies should integrate physician medical directors in the manner of EMS, to the benefit of the agency, the individual officers, and ultimately the citizens they serve.

Emergency physicians assess many determinants of health daily, including poverty, racism, addiction, gun violence, and other conditions, exploring how we can best address these issues towards ensuring a safer, healthier, and more just society. Police officers deal first-hand with these same social determinants of health every day in their duties. What better place for ACEP to start making a difference than at this shared ground level? We owe it to police, to the citizens they serve, and to our patients to assume the needed leadership role in Law Enforcement Medicine and put a stop to any preventable in-custody deaths.

Dr. Springer is Chair of the ACEP Tactical and Law Enforcement Medicine Section, and Director of the Wright State University Division of Tactical Emergency Medicine in Dayton, Ohio.