Journal

Ideas, experience, and the craft of training

The ILEETA Journal Archive

Travel through two decades of writing by and for law-enforcement educators and trainers. Choose a year or simply scroll to follow the profession’s continuing conversation about teaching, judgment, safety, leadership, wellness, and better performance.

Current ILEETA Journal cover

Current public issue

Download the Latest ILEETA Journal

The current issue of The ILEETA Journal is available to the public until the next issue is released. This edition features practical articles, professional insight, and training-focused content for law enforcement educators, trainers, and leaders.

Full access to the ILEETA Journal Archive is an ILEETA member benefit.

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Each year below offers a brief orientation rather than a complete index. Follow the year link to browse the surviving editions, read fuller descriptions, and open complete Journal PDFs.

A note for today’s reader: These publications reflect the law, policy, technology, terminology, medical knowledge, and training practices of their time. Read older material in its complete historical context and compare it with current authority before applying its recommendations.

2026

A record still being written

No verifiable 2026 Journal edition is currently available here. Because the year remains in progress, this is an invitation to help preserve the record—not a conclusion that no issue was published. Members and contributors with an original PDF or distribution details can help complete this year.

Preservation · Current record · Member contributions

Visit the 2026 archive

2025

Legacy, evolution, and connection

The surviving Fall edition presents an association consciously linking its history with its future. Its pages introduce the language of Legacy, Evolution, and Connection while exploring professional networks, competency-based training, human factors, leadership, wellness, and lessons drawn from international practice.

Professional community · Competency · Human factors · Leadership

Explore 2025

2024

Continuity through leadership transition

The available editions follow ILEETA through a planned change in executive leadership without losing sight of the conference, the Journal, or service to trainers. They also record international exchange in Germany and increasingly mature discussions of artificial intelligence, research, adaptive leadership, feedback, and instructional integrity.

Leadership succession · International reach · AI · Research

Explore 2024

2023

Full conference life and the next generation

Four editions show a training community gathering in strength again while thinking deliberately about succession. Contributors address learning research, scenario stress, firearms instruction, wellness, artificial intelligence, and professional community. Harvey Hedden’s announcement of the planned transition to Ray Merlin gives the year particular institutional importance.

Succession · Scenario training · Learning research · AI

Explore 2023

2022

Recovery, renewal, and better learning

The Journal returns repeatedly to how people actually learn and perform: retrieval, practice, feedback, stress, culture, leadership, field training, defensive tactics, PTSD, and investigative interviewing. A recurring question runs beneath the year—are trainers evaluating decisions carefully, or merely judging outcomes after the fact?

Learning science · Performance · Culture · Decision-making

Explore 2022

2021

Rebuilding face-to-face connection

Still living with the effects of 2020, trainers begin reconnecting in person and taking stock of what had been lost, learned, or allowed to decay. Four editions examine the return to St. Louis, problem-based learning, force-skill retention, communication, leadership, mental-health response, and the difficult work of gathering reliable officer-suicide data.

Reconnection · Skill decay · Mental health · Problem-based learning

Explore 2021

2020

Training through disruption

A complete conference edition was prepared, but the pandemic canceled the gathering and disrupted in-service instruction across the profession. Later editions capture instructors adapting in real time—moving learning online, reconsidering wellness and moral injury, and trying to preserve readiness, standards, and community through an extraordinary interruption.

COVID-19 · Online learning · Moral injury · Adaptation

Explore 2020

2019

Training craft, community, and remembrance

A large St. Louis conference edition anchors a year of writing on adaptive decisions, field training, sleep, suicide, and human performance. The winter tribute to founder Ed Nowicki brings the association’s personal history into view and shows how strongly its training mission was bound to relationships, generosity, and service.

Ed Nowicki · Field training · Wellness · Human performance

Explore 2019

2018

A new gathering place in St. Louis

The conference’s move to St. Louis gives the year a visible sense of arrival and renewal. Across four editions, authors press for stronger evidence, meaningful learner participation, better scenarios, honest evaluation, empathy, leadership, wellness, and training habits that support excellent performance rather than merely comfortable repetition.

St. Louis · Evidence · Evaluation · Learner participation

Explore 2018

2017

The responsibility to keep learning

From conference preparation through winter reflection, the Journal follows force decision-making, field training, scenario design, report writing, mental health, resilience, and instructor growth. The year repeatedly challenges experienced trainers to remain students of their craft even after expertise and reputation have been earned.

Instructor growth · Force decisions · Resilience · Reporting

Explore 2017

2016

A year-round companion to the training community

Four available editions show the Journal functioning well beyond conference week. The conference issue helps members navigate a broad curriculum, while later writing extends conversations about scenario fidelity, instructional design, supervision, wellness, evidence, public trust, and the hard work of transferring classroom ideas into field performance.

Scenario fidelity · Instructional design · Supervision · Public trust

Explore 2016

2015

Help fill a gap in the record

No 2015 Journal edition is currently available in the digital collection. The year page explains what would help restore it and invites original PDFs, publication details, and member copies. Institutional memory often survives because someone recognized that a once-routine file would matter later.

Archival recovery · Member copies · Institutional memory

Visit the 2015 archive

2014

Visible renewal in format and focus

A redesigned conference edition introduced a more flexible digital presentation, brought officer safety and use of force into closer conversation, and broadened reviews into a resource section. The available issues pair operational subjects with sustained attention to how instructors design, measure, and adapt training.

Digital redesign · Officer safety · Course design · Measurement

Explore 2014

2013

Ten years of ILEETA and a widening Journal

The surviving Spring and Fall issues document ILEETA’s tenth-anniversary period, editorial succession, evidence-based aspirations, and a growing range of instructor-development material. They show the Journal becoming a broader home for the varied disciplines and professional questions gathered under ILEETA.

Tenth anniversary · Editorial succession · Evidence · Instructor development

Explore 2013

2012

The broader ILEETA Journal takes shape

Three surviving editions document the first preserved full year after ILEETA’s specialized publications were brought together in a broader Journal. The result is a more expansive forum where force, officer safety, instructor development, leadership, health, and professional resources can share the same pages.

Publication consolidation · Broader scope · Instructor resources

Explore 2012

2011

The end of one Journal and the beginning of another

The available issues preserve a major publication transition. Volume 11, Number 3 identifies itself as the final issue of The ILEETA Use of Force Journal and announces that it will join other association publications in a broader ILEETA Journal—expanding the editorial frame beyond a single training specialty.

Publication transition · Use of force · Broader association voice

Explore 2011

2010

Judgment, force, and instructor responsibility

The surviving first-quarter issue preserves practical writing for trainers working at the intersection of tactics, judgment, law, and organizational responsibility. Its value lies not only in individual recommendations but in showing how the profession framed recurring training problems at the opening of a new decade.

Use of force · Judgment · Liability · Instructor responsibility

Explore 2010

2009

Practical training in a demanding profession

Two surviving issues carry forward the specialized Use of Force Journal’s combination of legal awareness, tactical instruction, equipment discussion, and trainer development. Read together, they preserve the questions instructors were asking about preparation, performance, safety, and defensible decision-making.

Tactical instruction · Legal awareness · Safety · Performance

Explore 2009

2008

A focused window into use-of-force training

The surviving April–June issue offers a concentrated look at the professional conversation among force instructors. The featured reading connects tactics with articulation, policy, instructor preparation, technology, and the continuing obligation to evaluate whether inherited training practices remain sound.

Force instruction · Articulation · Policy · Training practice

Explore 2008

2007

“Rekindle the spirit of training”

The earliest surviving issue in this collection examines instructor selection, training liability, force documentation, realistic scenarios, non-lethal-force policy debates, emerging simulator technology, and TASER exposure. It captures trainers working to connect tactics and judgment with legal articulation, professional development, safety, and organizational responsibility.

Instructor selection · Liability · Scenarios · Use-of-force articulation

Explore 2007Back to top

The ILEETA Journal Archive

Preserving the ideas, experience, questions, and professional conversations of law-enforcement educators and trainers.