Patrol Log Magazine
© by Hal Brown, LICSW, 1997
2003 Update: Jeff Perry, one of the founders of Patrol Log, retired from the Wareham Police Department a number of years ago. This year he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. You can view his website here.
Some of the articles here were adapted from my contributions about police stress to Patrol Log, especially from my column "Ask the Shrink". This was a great magazine which officers were unhappy to see close down. For a local magazine it had a healthy circulation of 6000 and it was read by virtually every police officer in eastern Massachusetts. But it simply couldn't sustain itself with advertising and the small cost of subscriptions.
When the final addition went to press in June, 1994, there was no way for me to exercise my writing bug. Then the Internet came along and here I am with a new and hopefully improved version of "Ask the Shrink," which is starting with my republishing adapted versions of many of the articles from Patrol Log.
The History of Patrol Log
Sergeant Jeff Perry (right), and Patrolmen Peter Murphy and Stephen Kearney of the Wareham, Mass. Police Department started Patrol Log in 1992. Since they owned a small printing service they originally printed it themselves, but as the circulation grew they had to contract the printing out. The magazine began at 16 pages and grew to thirty-two or more pages. Wareham Police Captain Paul Cardalino was a frequent contributor to the magazine with a popular column called "Captain's Corner" on recent court cases.
One of the things we all learned from our experience with the magazine and from the positive response it generated was that there was a real need for a police magazine that had a home-town feel to it, with readers getting the sense that it was published for them by people who had walked the walk and who weren't all that interested in making big bucks for their writing.
There's certainly a place for the slicker law enforcement magazines and their professional writers, but Patrol Log could never compete nor did we intend it to. When the magazine went under nobody could have anticipated that a couple of years later ezines would exist. No one even knew what the word meant. Now anyone with the time and a little hardware (I began this web site on WebTV which I would have purchased regardless, and Geocities, and free help from some on-line techies) and something to say can start a website which essentially can be an ezine.