How We View Competition: Part 2

July 11, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

In an article I posted last week about why we don’t spend much of our time or energy here at The CP Journal thinking the competitors to our business, I explained how we use the “3 Buckets of Control” to focus only on those things that we can do to support our students. The reason why I discussed this view is not because we aren’t competitive. By defining the people and organizations who are not our enemies, we can focus on those who truly are. The adversaries that we compete with are not other businesses in our field. They are the predators who are attempting to hide within our communities and interrupt our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our clients might call this adversary a terrorist, an active shooter, a deranged fan, a bully or a gang member, and as we seek to support our clients in their fight against these predators, there are a few key considerations that make up our perspective on our true competitors.

1. This is a competition with clear winners and losers.

As we move through 2016 and consider the violence we have experienced in the past few years, the world certainly feels like a more dangerous place than it did even just five or six years ago. We have seen high profile terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels and Orlando. We have seen race-related violence that led to the recent murder of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, and the murder of nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. We have seen and experienced how often we turn on breaking news to listen to the reporting of an active shooter in our schools, workplaces and city sidewalks. While the “experts” appearing on 24-hour news channels debate whether this is an actual rise in violence or just a rise in the reporting of violence, the distinction is irrelevant. It simply feels more violent out there and, because of the fact that success stories where the good guys stop an attack by being left of bang aren’t reported as frequently as when attackers succeed, it feels like the predators are winning this fight.

Fighting a perception of pervasive violence is a big enough challenge in its own right and there is no room for people who think that we are doing things “good enough,” because clearly we aren’t. In their Continue reading »

How We Consider Competition In Our Business

June 30, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast interview in which Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals), was talking about how he has built his company and influenced his company’s culture. I first became a fan of Jason’s work and his ideas after he sent a box of his book, Rework, to my unit when I was still an instructor in the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program. What immediately impressed me was how deliberate and intentional he seemingly was about every decision he made for his business. Many of his ideas have gone against the grain of “business as usual” as he provides all of his employees with a paid vacation anywhere they want to go in the world for themselves and their families, letting his employees work from anywhere in the world, and paying for personal education like guitar lessons or culinary school for his employees as a few examples. It was clear in his writing that the common sense (yet unconventional) decisions he was making were not something to do just because other businesses were doing it, but because it was the right thing to do for his company. That level of thoughtfulness has stuck with me over the last five years as Jonathan and I have built The CP Journal and we have tried to apply the high degree of intentionality to the decisions we have made. As there have been a growing number of people offering “Combat Hunter training” for civilians, we have had a number of conversations with people in the past few weeks about how we view competition in our business. As we have always strived to build a company that we would want to do business with, how we view these competitors has helped us to become even more customer-focused than before.

When people ask us how we view competition to our business, the short answer is that we don’t. We have made the choice to Continue reading »

How To Tell Better Stories and Improve Case Study Presentations

June 25, 2016 in Books and Resources, Veterans, Business, and Security

This past week I had the privilege of presenting around the Los Angeles area with the Joint Regional Intelligence Center. Over the course of the three days of events, I got to hear an impactful, engaging and moving presentation about the ambush of two Las Vegas Metro Police officers from a detective in that department. As case studies and “lessons learned” presentations are so important to furthering the profession of warriors, protectors and guardians, I found myself thinking about what made this particular presentation so strong. Alternatively, as I’ve seen many of these presentations, what has made others so boring and hard to sit through? While it is easy to focus on obvious things that might detract from a presentation, like a speaker who visibly isn’t passionate about their topic or a presenter who reads their text and bullet point filled PowerPoint slides to their sleeping audience, I’ve found that the most engaging case studies and lessons learned presentations are the ones that tell the best story.

For presenters looking to improve their speaking performances, I recommend you pick up Steven Pressfield’s most recent book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That is and What You Can Do About It. The aptly titled book isn’t only for writers but also provides a number of takeaways for speakers looking to improve their presentation delivery. When it comes to improving the case study presentations, we can start with his chapter on “How To Write A Boring Memoir.” Pressfield writes: Continue reading »

The Difference Between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and Five Ways to Honor Those Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice

May 29, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

In the last week there have been a number of people who have thanked me for my service in the Marines as we’ve gotten closer and closer to Memorial Day. While I’m always appreciative when people acknowledge service members, Memorial Day truthfully isn’t meant for me or any other living veteran. Memorial Day is the day we set aside every year to honor those who have died while serving in the military, while Veterans Day is the day when our country honors all of those who have served. While those men and women who are currently on active duty, in the reserves, or are veterans absolutely made sacrifices while serving, Memorial Day is meant to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice and were killed while fighting for our country.

Memorial Day is meant to remember heroes like Marine Corporal Jacob Leicht, who was killed by an IED on May 27, 2010.  He died in Afghanistan two years and nearly 20 surgeries after his leg was shattered by an IED during his first deployment to Iraq. He is a hero because he had to fight the Marine Corps leadership to send him to a deploying battalion because he didn’t feel he was done serving our country.

Memorial Day is a day to remember warriors like Marine Sergeant John Rankel, who was killed in action on June 7, 2010.  He was a warrior because he was killed on his third deployment, a deployment he volunteered for because a unit that was heading to Afghanistan was short on non-commissioned officers.

Memorial Day is a day to remember leaders like Marine Captain Matt Manoukian, who was killed on his third deployment in a green-on-blue (insider) attack by a member of the Afghan security forces his MARSOC Team was partnered with.

So, while thanking a veteran is certainly always appreciated, here are a few other ways you can honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice this Memorial Day:

1. Take your son, daughter, niece or nephew outside and talk to them about the flags you see flying around you. Teach them that America has had to fight for the freedoms we have and that nothing was given to us. Teach them that people had to die to earn what the flags represent and what we take for granted every day.

2. Have a non-emotional and practical conversation with someone who has a different political view than you do. As we get closer to our presidential election this year, where you will continue to hear politicians talk about their opponents as enemies, remember that America has actual enemies and, while those holding office will make the decision to go to war, there are a lot of young men and women who will leave home to fight it, and not all of them will come back from it.

3. If you do want to thank a veteran, go to a parade or a Memorial Day event, remember that the veterans and the active duty service-members present are a proxy for those who can’t be at the event.

4. Think about how you can tangibly support our military. After WWII, we built an entire defense industry so that American citizens wouldn’t have to bear the burden of supporting a war effort and, while there are pros and cons to that, it doesn’t mean that Americans can be ignorant of our wars either.

5. Remember that Memorial Day is a holiday to honor those who died while serving in our military during any period in our history. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq might be the most recent, which is why those three Marines I talked about earlier are the ones on my mind this weekend, but I write this after also recently talking to a WWII veteran who saw many more die during his two beach landings in the Pacific. As Memorial Day is for all of those who died, don’t let recent experiences dominate your thinking at the detriment of those who came before us.

This Monday, remember why we celebrate the freedoms that those who have died have provided for us.

Never forget and never quit.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

A Practice Video – A Robbery In A Mall Food Court

May 12, 2016 in Applying The Observations

This week, Chris Pendas from Staying Safe Self Defense, posted a great lessons-learned video (embedded below) for his readers about situational awareness by analyzing security footage from a mall food court. Chris was gracious enough to let us share the video so that we could expand on his debrief for our readers using the behaviors and terminology taught in Left of Bang and in our training programs.  

So first, watch the video (it is about 5 minutes long and requires sound) to take in the scene, to observe the theft of a purse and hear the teaching points that Chris highlights for ways to ensure your personal safety in public spaces.

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Here is how we would work our way through the Baseline + Anomaly = Decision observation process. For an explanation about all of the assessments used below, we recommend that you download our “Cluster Cards” for more information.

The Baseline: Continue reading »

Three Ways Virtual Reality Can Be Used In The Military

May 3, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about why I believe that virtual reality (VR) will change the way that our military prepares for war, which you can read here. The main takeaway is that, because the military has already determined that pre-deployment immersion training is beneficial to deploying Marines and Soldiers and continues to invest in updates to immersion training, VR is a natural extension of that desired capability. While my previous article was focused on the larger view of the existing technology and why I believe that the current engineering obstacles that are preventing its use will be overcome in time, it was intentionally broad in scope. To take the role of VR from big picture benefits to something more focused on small units and individual Marines and Soldiers, here are three ways that I see VR being used in the future.

1. Preparing for a Specific Location

One of the reasons why the Infantry Immersion Trainer (IIT) continues to be so impactful is because it lets Marines who might have never been deployed better understand the environment that they would soon be seeing, smelling and hearing upon deployment. It would help reduce the uncertainty a Marine would experience upon landing in country because it would at least look, smell and sound a little more familiar than it would have without that experience. The limitation of the IIT is that, as a physical facility, making modifications to it can be difficult, so it reflected a more generic looking Afghan, Iraqi, or, now third world village.

In this example, while a generic village is better than no village at all, how much better of a capability could be attained if Continue reading »

“Left of Boom” – A Review

April 13, 2016 in Books and Resources

There are two things that I will always support: people who serve and support our nation’s service-members through their actions, and efforts to deny our enemies the ability to launch attacks against our country. Former CIA case officer Doug Laux is, without a doubt, one of those people, and his book, Left of Boom, is absolutely one of those efforts. I’ll be honest and admit that I only first looked into the book out of curiosity after receiving four or five emails last week from people letting me know about a new book that was published with a title very similar to mine. But after reading the book’s subtitle, How a Young CIA Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and Amazon’s book description, I not only picked it up, but became so engrossed in the story that I read it from cover to cover in a single sitting.

Left of Boom is the personal story written by Douglas Laux, one of the book’s authors and the CIA case officer who was able to infiltrate the Taliban, and his co-author Ralph Pezzullo. To provide a point of reference for our readers, while Left of Bang talks about how we can use enhanced situational awareness and behavioral analysis to identify people with violent intent as they move through the attack cycle, in Left of Boom, the authors tell the story about how Laux worked to understand the networks reaching back into Pakistan that supplied Taliban fighters in Afghanistan with IEDs, and in turn was able to help our service-members move to a point even earlier on the bang/boom timeline.

As with many books written by former CIA officers, there is the inherent excitement in reading about Continue reading »

Why Virtual Reality Will Change the Way Our Military Prepares For War

April 9, 2016 in Veterans, Business, and Security

It was towards the end of 2014 when I first heard about Oculus Rift and the advancements they are making in the world of virtual reality (VR). Since then, I’ve made it a point to follow news about VR and understand the players in the industry. However, over the past few months since the releases of the Samsung Gear VR headset last November, Oculus Rift headset in March and the HTC Vive last week, the amount of press, blog articles and commentary about the future of virtual reality has increased to a staggering level. This trend initially had me worried because, while there are some truly incredible advancements happening in VR technology right now, the true opportunity that VR represents won’t be fully realized for a number of years (here is why Gary Vaynerchuk thinks maybe 10 more years).

As current press about this technology has led to increased awareness about what the technology will provide, the additional commentary has also resulted in increased expectations. This worries me as it might also lead people to become disillusioned about the true opportunity that VR has to offer as current technology will likely fail to deliver on those high expectations. Yesterday I was reading a blog post written by venture capitalist Fred Wilson where he posed the question to his readers of how they see the future of VR, and as I read the comments, I started to notice that exact trend of negative perceptions that has likely resulted from unfulfilled expectations. Because Wilson’s audience is made up of people who understand and follow the technology sector, I was a bit shocked at their overwhelmingly negative views about the prospects and opportunities that VR offers. As many of the comments were technical in nature and simply engineering challenges that will have to be overcome, as those improvements are made, virtual reality will offer the military a training capability that they have long sought, creating for an incredible opportunity for not only businesses, but also for deploying service members.

Why I Believe Virtual Reality Will Succeed

My perspective on the opportunity that VR represents comes from my belief that the military has already determined that immersive experiences are a capability that they want for Marines and Soldiers before they deploy. A facility called the Infantry Immersion Trainer (IIT), Continue reading »

Re-engineering the Toolbox: Beyond The Cliché

March 15, 2016 in Applying The Observations

In an article that I wrote this past week for LawOfficer.com, here is the article, I open the post with a discussion about why I cringe when I hear an instructor say they are going to provide me with “another tool for my toolbox.” While often said with the best intentions, because that phrase implies that the instructor is giving their student some random fact or process that they expect the student to store away in their brain, those “tools” are rarely valuable since they could often only be applied in a very small set of circumstances. While the LawOfficer.com article provides a three-question process that helps students assess the value of a training program they are attending, our situational awareness and observation training program, the Tactical Analysis program, was built because having a higher quantity of narrowly applicable “tools” doesn’t necessarily ensure that you will be able to make better decisions in stressful situations. To make better decisions in the face of uncertainty and when solving challenging problems, it is time that we get beyond the cliché and reconsider the way we are building a protector’s toolbox.

Step One: Define the Tool’s Utility

As we look to select what type of tool to fill the metaphorical toolbox with, we first need a way to define the goal of a training program and how the program supports decision-making. While John Boyd’s OODA Loop is often taught in an overly simplified way when discussing decision-making, personally I like to use the OODA Loop as a way to consider the value a training program offers. The loop provides an explicit representation of what often occurs intuitively. The act of taking in facts and information from your surroundings (observing), making sense of those facts and Continue reading »

Left of Bang Webinar

February 29, 2016 in Training

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Last week, I had the privilege of conducting a webinar with the Boston Chapter of the FBI’s Citizen’s Academy Alumni Association, where I could talk about how security professionals and concerned citizens could enhance their situational awareness to proactively recognize threats and get left of bang. In case you missed it or would like to learn more about our behavioral approach to recognizing violent people before an attack begins, you can watch the video here.

We ran out of time at the end of the presentation preventing a live Q and A with the attendees, so we have answered all of the questions that we received during the webinar here as well. We received some incredible questions, which allowed us to talk about how behavioral analysis supports acceleration through the OODA loop, learning where and how to begin your search for violent people, and the decisions that are available to people once they have recognized a criminal trying to hide amongst the crowd.

With nearly 20 questions that we answered and a transcript of an hour long presentation, this post became quite long, so we have put together a table of contents here so that you can find the section you are searching for. If our responses to the questions below creates follow on questions, please feel free to let us know by contacting us.

If you prefer to read a transcript of the talk instead of watching the video, scroll to the section below the last question labeled “Transcript” to be at the beginning of the speaking notes.

A Note On Questions

As we consolidated the questions that were asked, we realized that a number of them were about related topics, so if you don’t see the exact question that you asked in the following list, look for a related topic as it was likely rolled into that question.

  • Question #1: Of the four pillars of behavior, what is the 4th one?
  • Question #2: As a concerned citizen one of the main things I am interested in is identifying a threat that might be selecting me for a violent attack. How would you use these concepts to do this?
  • Question #3: How would the concept of Left of Bang blend with the OODA Loop?
  • Question #4: What is the first or series of steps to take should you feel that something is moving toward bang? More specifically, what exactly can I do if I assess a threat?
  • Question #5: Would you shoot to kill an active shooter in a mall or office if you had a good chance to do so?
  • Question #6: Is there a way to use the Six Domains after a baseline is established to narrow down what we are looking at to just aggressive clusters?
  • Question #7: How can organizations get more information, schedule a presentation or receive additional training?
  • Question #8: There is always a concern about the cost for prevention and how to quantify the need for budgeting/spending on prevention measures, how do you address this concern?
  • Question #9: Can you comment on how law enforcement feels about having citizens with a CCW trying to assist?
  • Question 10: Can you apply the “Four Pillars of Observable Behavior” to the Colorado movie theater shooting?
    • Question #11: Would the person leaving the theater have been the “alarm” or the noteworthy behavior? If so, what could have been done?
    • Question #12: If you can address the Colorado shooting would that person have been paying attention to the screen or be having a different attitude or clear visual that we would look for.
  • Question #13: Are there specific things we can use in event/large public venue situations?
  • Question #14: Where can we obtain a copy of the book?
  • Question #15: Which of the courses offered by The CP Journal are most appropriate for concerned citizens?
  • Question #16: What if the threat is the one nearest to you, e.g., a best friend of 30 years?
  • Question #17: How long will it take for a person to become proficient at behavioral analysis?
  • Question #18: How fast can anomalies be recognized in a crowd?
  • Question #19: If I have a question after I read the answers to the questions that were provided, how can I ask that question in the future?

Continue reading »

The Weekly Profile w/ Articles About Rocky, Training, Perfection, Stories and Competitiveness. 2/28/16

February 28, 2016 in Books and Resources

Every Sunday morning, Jonathan and I send out our Weekly Profile email to our subscribers with articles to support our nation’s protectors.  By selecting articles that come from business, decision-making, training and threat recognition, our goal is to help professionals in dangerous jobs find solutions to problems by considering perspectives to specific situations from outside of their particular field. Here is this week’s email.

To receive these articles in your inbox every Sunday morning, you can subscribe here.

The articles that we chose this week weren’t intentionally selected because they are storylines from a Rocky movie, but after watching the movie Creed this past week, I can’t help but notice the similarities.  From overcoming initial obstacles, having setbacks along the way, training in an environment of constraints, having a compelling story and knowing when to be competitive and when not to be are themes in nearly every Rocky movie and likewise are in this week’s articles.

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So cue “Eye of the Tiger” and start your training montage with the five articles we read this week and wanted to pass along.
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1. “Transaction Cost.” This article from the Making Sense blog is a must read for professional trainers. While many of the trainers that I talk to are striving to improve the performance of their students, the fact that life goes on for a seminar attendee once the class is over is a major obstacle to be dealt with.  By applying an economics perspective to this challenge, Dr. Leon Standler’s article might be the help you need to find a way to keep your students engaged following time spent in the classroom.  You can find the article here.
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2. “Failing Forward: What We Miss In a Search For Perfection.” This article from Thom Dworak of the Virtus Group (the hosts of the WINx Conference) looks at the role that failure plays in the development of new police officers in non-critical situations.  This article caught our attention because as we seek to develop protectors who can adapt to changing situations and can rely on their judgment while operating in uncertainty, the limitations that come with a zero-defect mentality can do more harm then good.  You can read the article here.
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3. “The Case Against Startups Raising As Much Money As Humanely Possible.” This Fast Companyarticle shows how some of history’s most innovative companies were built not only in an environment of constraints, but also designed to solve massive problems that the world faced.  There is a line in the article that says, “there is nothing that brings people together like stress and necessity,” and as our country certainly has some pressing problems that need to be solved, there is a lot of room for people to build profitable companies who see the way forward in these areas.  Often times, our nation’s protectors operating on the ground might see ways to fix the system that they are tasked with protecting, and if that is you, you can find the article here.
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4. “The Importance of Storytelling Ability.” Winning isn’t always about facts or rational thought, more often it is about motivating people to act through emotion.  As the article’s author, Ben Carlson from the Wealth of Common Sense blog, highlights, transparency and honesty are often the sources for the most compelling narratives, Whether you are looking to drive social change, be a stronger presenter, grow your business, or counter the narratives being told by our adversaries, the ability to tell stories s a key skill worth developing.  You can find the article here.
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5. “Situationally Competitive vs. Always Competitive.” This article from Ben Casnocha highlights two key components to emotional intelligence (EQ): self-awareness and self-regulation.  While he never actually uses these words, as he tells the story of a team building exercise dominated by overly aggressive “leaders”, simply ask yourself, are you more likely to follow someone who is situationally competitive or always competitive?  You can find the article here.
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Until next week – get left of bang and stay there.​
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Patrick and Jonathan
Co-Founders
The CP Journal​

The Evolution of the Warrior: Preparing For War

February 5, 2016 in Background Information

 

“Remember that these our allies have not trained their whole lives for war, as we have. They are farmers and merchants, citizen-soldiers of their cities’ militia.”

The Spartan King, Leonidas, in a speech to his officers before the Battle at Thermopylae[1]

This scene from Gates of Fire, a book written by Steven Pressfield about the 300 Spartan warriors who stood up to over two million Persians, came in the final days leading up the seven-day battle at Thermopylae in 480 BC. As I prepared to join the Marines following the September 11th terrorist attack, reading that quote and imagining Leonidas addressing his officers led to the early formation of what became my quintessential definition of what it means to be a professional warrior. Like many others who have served and are serving in the military today, it led to intense study and the pursuit of mastering the science of tactics, the art of strategy and the history of armed conflict. That quote drove me to develop the mental and physical ability to be able to win battles. There was nothing more important than upholding that single standard.

Today, I read the words spoken by Leonidas and realize how simple being a warrior was 2,500 years ago. Back then, it was a matter of deciding if you were going to be a warrior or a merchant or a farmer. Today, not only do warriors have to commit themselves to being a student of combat, but they also have to be the farmers and merchants that Leonidas contrasts the Spartans against. In the days of the Spartans, defeating your adversaries was a fairly simple task of killing them in combat. Today, defeating our adversaries requires that warriors negotiate contracts with local vendors to complete civil affairs projects and advise local farmers on agricultural processes in addition to fighting battles. As we look to create stability, take away enemy safe havens and make terrorist ideologies irrelevant, the service members who make up our military are used as social workers, advisors, and humanitarian aid workers in addition to fighting our country’s battles. Warriors today have been forced to evolve from the warriors of Leonidas’ time because to win today’s wars requires more than simply killing our enemies in combat.

While there will undoubtedly be some who disagree with the way our military is being employed today and add a Continue reading »

Processes Are For Winners: Stop Trying To “CYA”

February 2, 2016 in Applying The Observations

In an article I posted last week, I highlighted a recent presentation I attended where I found myself actually getting angry with the presenter, but what I didn’t explain was why I became so aggravated. While last week’s article was about the need for presenters to establish and exceed expectations in their audience, there was one point in the presenter’s message that has continued to grind on me. The presenter’s message was essentially that following processes and procedures was a way for people to “Cover Your Ass” (CYA) in the pursuit of career self-preservation. After the presentation was over, I found myself wondering how many other people in law enforcement or the security industry think the same way he does. While there were a number of people in the audience who were clearly turned off by the message, I did notice a few people who were nodding their heads, seemingly in agreement, as he was connecting procedural adherence with job protection. This is a problem. Processes aren’t in place so that defensively minded people can pass blame onto others; they exist so that people seeking to make the world better can succeed. Processes are for winners.

Processes exist because, every single time you go through and execute the Continue reading »

The Consequences of Failing to Deliver on Audience Expectations

January 29, 2016 in Learning About Learning

I was sitting through a presentation recently and almost walked out of the room, which is something that I never do. With the understanding that comes with choosing to speak, present and teach for a living, I know how challenging it can be to design a presentation and how nerve-wracking it can be to face an audience. With that understanding comes empathy for speakers, so the threshold to push me over that edge to want to walk out of the room during a presentation is pretty high.

One of the reasons for my hesitation about staying or going during this particular presentation was because I get asked from time to time if, since I am an instructor, I find myself judging every presentation that I sit through. The answer to that question is, no, absolutely not. If I am sitting in the audience during a presentation, I am there to learn from the speaker, not to be a critic of their work. While I do often think that there are things that speakers could do to drastically improve the quality of their presentation and their delivery, those observations don’t play a role in my decision about whether my time spent in the audience was worthwhile or not. One of the most significant factors that I consider when assessing my “return on investment” for sitting through a presentation is whether or not the speaker met my expectations for the content they delivered. Did I walk out of the room having learned what I believed I would learn walking into the room? While great presentations exceed your expectations, the ones that fail to meet the minimum of expectations are the ones that leave you disillusioned.

What I will cover in this article is, firstly, the reason why I almost walked out of this recent talk so that I can provide a concrete example that leads into the second part of the article. The second half of the article will look at some things that instructors and presenters can do to shape, deliver upon and exceed the expectations that their audience has.

The Talk

The particular presentation noted above was about the lessons that were learned in the aftermath of a well-known mass shooting, and was presented by a person who was on the ground in an organization involved in the incident, so it had the makings for what should have been a great talk. The invitation to the talk was Continue reading »

“Left of Bang” Presentation at 2015 WINx Conference

January 27, 2016 in Background Information

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Last November I had the opportunity to join eight other presenters on stage at the inaugural WINx Conference outside of Chicago.  Here is the newly released video of my 16-minute long talk about what it takes for our nation’s protectors to get and stay left of bang.

In case you want to read a transcript of the talk instead, here it is.

Transcript
Despite improvements in technology and equipment, the number of police officers getting killed every year continues to rise. And with every officer ambushed and every memorial service we go to, we’re reminded not only about the complexity that this type of threat presents, but also how unique of a problem it really is. Policing is a naturally, inherently dangerous job. If officers safety was truly the most important or highest priority thing that we did, police officers would never leave the station. There’s naturally a lot more risks faced on the streets than there ever would be inside of the safety of a secured building. But if we are going to prevent the next 9/11, if we are going to prevent the next Paris, the next Aurora, Colorado, the next Virginia Tech, the next Newtown, we have to accept the fact that officer safety is a priority, but it comes second to actually protecting and serving the American citizens that we are tasked with overseeing.

 

And when we take a look at what that really means, and as we accept that statement as just the reality, it doesn’t mean that we go about and we look at officer safety in a negligent or naive way. It doesn’t mean that we don’t do everything possible to reduce the risks that a police officer faces while interacting with the population, while serving warrants, or even while off duty. The simple question is, “How do we do that? How do we protect our nation’s protectors?”

Continue reading »