About the Authors

Dr. George Kirkham is nationally known as “the professor who became a cop” for taking a leave of absence from his university post to study the police in a way that no criminology professor ever had. After attending and graduating from a police academy, he spent six months as a patrol officer on a high crime beat in a major American city. After returning to Florida State University, he continued working as both a fully-sworn police officer and a professor of criminology throughout his entire academic career. He ultimately served with four different law enforcement agencies in assignments as diverse as uniformed patrol, crisis intervention, vice & narcotics, criminal investigation and undercover work as part of an organized crime strike force.

His observations on the police have appeared in research and law enforcement journals in many other countries, including England, Canada, Germany, India, Australia and Russia.
Under grants from the U.S. Department of Justice, Dr. Kirkham’s award winning series, “Police: The Human Dimension” was distributed to the law enforcement training directors of every state and the F.B.I. Academy.

Dr. Kirkham has served as a consultant and trainer to over 50 American law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels. He has been called upon more often than any criminologist in the nation to provide expert witness testimony in civil and criminal actions involving police, jail and private security issues. He has been a consultant in over 1,500 cases in all 50 states.

Dr. Kirkham described the ice-water shock of his transformation from a Berkeley educated scholar to an urban cop in his best-selling autobiography, Signal Zero, which was a Book- of- the- Month Club Alternate characterized by police author Joseph Wambaugh as “….fascinating, vividly and honestly told.” Acclaimed as “an honor to his profession” by the late William F. Buckley Jr., Dr. Kirkham has been the subject of a 60 Minutes segment with Dan Rather, as well as feature articles in Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and People. He is Professor Emeritus at Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

*****

Dr. Leonard Territo is presently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Saint Leo University and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Criminology, University of South Florida. He has served first as Major and Chief Deputy (Undersheriff) with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office in Tallahassee, Florida. While with the Sheriff’s Office he was the primary advisor during the Ted Bundy murder investigation. Prior to working with the Sheriff’s Office he served for almost nine years with the Tampa Florida Police Department, as a patrol and motorcycle officer, homicide and rape detective, internal affairs detective, and member of the police academy training staff, where he taught homicide investigation. He also taught homicide investigation for 25 years in four other Florida police academies. Dr. Territo is the former chairman of the Department of Police Administration and Director of the Florida Institute for Law Enforcement at St. Petersburg College.

He has co-authored many of the leading books in the field of law enforcement, including: International Sex Trafficking of Women and Children: Understanding the Global Epidemic, with Dr. George Kirkham; Criminal Investigation – 10th edition, which is presently used in over 500 colleges and universities in the United States and has been translated into Chinese for use by their police and criminal justice students; Police Administration, 7th edition; Crime and Justice in America, 6th edition; Stress Management in Law Enforcement, 2nd edition; Stress and Police Personnel; The Police Personnel Selection Process; Police Civil Liability; Hospital and College Security Liability; and College Crime Prevention and Personal Safety Awareness. His books have been used in over 1000 colleges and universities in all 50 states and he has had numerous articles published in nationally recognized law enforcement and legal journals. His books have been used and referenced by both academic and police departments in sixteen countries: Australia; Barbados; Belarus; Canada; Chile; China; Czechoslovakia; England; France; Germany; Israel; The Netherlands; Poland; Saudi Arabia; South Korea; and Spain.
He has also been qualified as a police policies and procedures expert in both federal and state courts in: Alaska; Arizona; District of Columbia; Florida; Georgia; Illinois; Iowa; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Michigan; New Jersey; Ohio; Oregon; Pennsylvania; Tennessee; Virginia; Washington; Wisconsin.