Joshua is a staff writer for Coffee or Die Magazine. He has previously covered the 75th anniversary of D-Day in France, multinational military exercises in Germany, and civil unrest during the 2020 riots that followed the death of George Floyd. Born and raised in small town South Dakota, Josh grew up playing football and soccer before going on to serve as a forward observer in the U.S. Army. After leaving the service, he earned his Crossfit Level 1 certificate and worked as a personal trainer while earning his paramedic license. Josh went on to work in paramedicine for over five years, much of that time in the North Minneapolis area, before transitioning to his career in multimedia journalism. Josh is married and has two children, and is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism. His creative outlets include Skovlund Photography and Concentrated Emotion, which is where he publishes poetry focused on his life experiences.
Authorities have announced funeral arrangements for a deputy constable killed last week while moonlighting at a Texas tavern. Harrison County Constable Precinct 4 Deputy Constable Kareem Anthony Atkins died in Houston during an ambush on the night ...
Riverside County Sheriff’s Department deputy Alicia Lopez was awake. It was 4 a.m. in California, and the 47-year-old mom of three needed to breathe. She took a puff on her inhaler and tried to go back to sleep. But two hours later, the alarm went ...
A stay-at-home mother for three years, Terri Larson chose to take care of her three daughters rather than keep watching entire paychecks earned as a waitress go to daycare. One night in 2003, the TV was on as she fed her daughter a bottle. The show ...
Prodded by nationwide calls for police reform, all members of the US Marshals Service will now wear body cameras when capturing federal fugitives. The first phase of the camera mandate began with interim policy guidance signed Oct. 6 by the ...
Angelina Liu will never meet her father. A gang member assassinated the New York Police Department detective and his partner in 2014, about two and a half years before his daughter was born. The miracle birth to Angelina's widowed mother, Pei ...
Hours after FBI agents armed with search warrants raided his home and office, Edward D. Mullins resigned as the powerful president of New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association. A statement emailed Tuesday, Oct. 5, to the police union’s ...
Authorities continue to probe the death of a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was shot and killed Monday, Oct. 4, in a Tucson, Arizona, train station. In a prepared statement emailed to Coffee or Die Magazine on Tuesday afternoon, DEA ...
Inmates at New York City’s infamous Rikers Island jail routinely batter paramedics and emergency medical technicians with poop, spit, piss, and punches, forcing first responders to fend for themselves inside violent cell blocks, officials say. At ...
The US Drug Enforcement Administration issued a rare public health warning Monday, Sept. 27, designed to help curb the skyrocketing number of drug overdose deaths nationwide. The DEA wants Americans to be aware of a record and rising flood of cheap ...
A crowd of first responders gathered in front of the Brooklyn headquarters of the New York City Employees' Retirement System on Tuesday, Sept. 28, to protest what they say is a failed effort to compensate them for toxic exposures at the World Trade ...
Slain Houston Police Department Senior Officer William "Bill" Jeffrey will be buried Monday in Texas. Jeffrey, who spent more than three decades on the force, died Monday, Sept. 20, after being shot while trying to serve a warrant in the city. He was ...
US Customs and Border Protection spied on American citizens, blocked their international travel, and compromised their personal information to foreign agents, according to a scathing report that Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General ...
Municipal lawmakers in New York’s capital refused this month to ban tear gas and other less-lethal munitions, the latest setback in a national movement to curb police responses against protesters. On Sept. 9, the Albany Common Council tabled a bid ...
For at least 109 seconds, the night turned orange as a towering blaze closed over the firefighters. Captured in a video shot Sept. 10 from inside the cab of a truck, at least two men can be heard screaming obscenities, shouting directions, and ...
Denise Olsen cares so much about New York City’s firefighters that she took more than 500,000 steps to tell them. Olsen, 52, is a widow. Her husband, Jeffrey Olsen, died on Sept. 11, 2001. He was a Ladder 10 firefighter. The World Trade Center ...
If today is like pretty much any other day, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers will seize more than a ton of illegal drugs nationwide. And they'll probably seize a few really weird things, too — sea turtle shells, a box of parasitic ...
New York City's finest and bravest are battling for Big Apple bragging rights in the Hockey Heroes match on the night of Thursday, Sept. 9. For the 47th year, hockey teams representing New York City’s fire and police departments take to the ...
Sure, cops catch loonies all day long. But it’s not every day that federal agents haul in 25,000 of them at once. On Tuesday, Sept. 7, US Customs and Border Protection in Memphis, Tennessee, seized 25,000 Canadian loonies — worth about $19,700 in ...
When a massive storm triggered flash floods across New York Sept. 1, only 20 of the city’s 193 engine companies put more than four firefighters on a truck. The “fifth fireman” was standard through the 1970s, but penny-pinching administrations ...
Lt. Shamus Fitzgerald and his Engine 271 crew were chest-deep in floodwater on Thursday, Sept. 2, and the sewer water was rising. The Brooklyn-based firefighters needed to reach a motorist screaming for help and waving a flashlight in a minivan. ...
More than two years after Elijah McClain died in custody, a Colorado grand jury returned a 32-count indictment against two firefighter medics and three police officers, one of whom is no longer an officer. McClain, 23, died Aug. 30, 2019, six days ...
Cpl. Hunter Lopez hoped to keep living a life of service when his Marine Corps career ended. Both his mother and father serve in California’s Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — Herman Lopez is a captain, and Alicia is a deputy. Hunter ...
One of the six missing crew members of an MH-60S Seahawk that crashed in the Pacific Ocean Tuesday, Aug. 31, near San Diego has been found. The Seahawk crashed during “routine flight operations” approximately 60 nautical miles off the coast of ...
After eight months of silence, US Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd’s decision to out himself on TV on Thursday, Aug. 26, as the officer who killed Ashli Babbitt surprised many Americans, perhaps including his own law enforcement agency. When Coffee ...
If today is like most days in 2021, COVID-19 will kill a police officer. Since the beginning of the year, America has averaged more than one death daily among its law enforcement officers, according to data compiled by the National Fraternal ...
In an ongoing push to aid junior service members, military charities recently surged support to Joint Base Andrews. Held Aug. 11 at the sprawling Maryland base, the Military Market and Enlisted Service Celebration distributed 5,000 diapers and ...
The Dixie Fire burning across five counties in Northern California exceeded 700,000 acres Friday, Aug. 20, with high winds and arid conditions fanning the flames. The Dixie Fire is the largest single fire in California’s history, but if its ...
US Air Force Special Tactics airmen and the Coast Guard are on the ground providing assistance to Haitians following a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday, Aug. 14, and a tropical depression Monday that brought widespread flooding to Haiti. The ...
Federal and local law enforcement are responding to a bomb threat near the US Capitol and evacuating multiple buildings. A man drove his black pickup truck onto the sidewalk directly in front of the Library of Congress midday Thursday, Aug. 19, US ...
Born in Kabul, Fardeen Wafa became a translator for the US military when he was 17. By the time he was 24, he was an American citizen and an American soldier. This week, as his home country fell, he’s been awake day and night in breathless text ...
