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Every chief, sheriff and departmental purchasing agent will start off 2014 with their eyes on some old issues and new trends to follow this year. New trends to follow next year will vary from the smaller department to the larger and add urban and rural filters to it. What are some of the trends or issues to follow, here are a few.

This past year was marked by innovative-sometimes controversial-technologies that promise to have significant impact on law enforcement agents, firefighters and EMTs. As first responder agencies begin to explore how they can integrate these new technologies into their operations, we revisit some of the most popular technology trends in 2014

In recent decades, the nation's prisons have become packed with inmates who suffer from a diagnosed mental illness. As policymakers try to reverse that trend, they're looking at an array of different options, and here in Massachusetts, that's led to increased training on how police officers should interact with mentally ill individuals.

Less than a year after reaching its long-sought goal of 10,000 officers, the Los Angeles Police Department is now seeing a steady decline in its ranks as the city struggles to find enough qualified candidates. Fewer people are applying to join the LAPD and, of those who do, a significantly higher number of them are being disqualified from consideration. Officials say budget cuts have slashed the advertising used to draw recruits while other departments are luring top talent with higher salaries than the LAPD offers. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lapd-recruits-20131204,0,603481.story#ixzz2n0bgBkEt

Record levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities occurred worldwide in 2012, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism says. START released data for 2012 in its Global Terrorism Database, which now contains data on more than 113,000 attacks since 1970. 2012 saw 8,441 terrorist incidents, up from 5,009 the year before, which at the time was the most on record.

The new year will bring new challenges and new approaches to solving old ones, everything from advancements in unmanned aircraft to a fleetwide program to reduce red tape. Here are a few things you need to know as 2014 begins.