Editor's note: Through the end of the year, we will be posting a series of articles that focus on common-sense officer safety. Use them for briefing and squad meetings, and send them to everyone you know who wears a badge.
Gordon Graham here with a quick thought for you, followed up with a request that will save the lives of officers around the country. My guess is that I have never asked you to do something for me—and now I am doing so. What is the nature of my request?
I was giving a talk to a group of law enforcement personnel last week and as always I asked, “How many of you have heard of Below 100?” I have posed this query now for two full years and over that period of time the number (percentage in any given group of people) has gone up noticeably. That is the good news.
The bad news is that very recently I posed this question and less than 10 hands went up in a group of 120+ people. Now I know that some people don’t want to raise their hands in a program for fear that I’m going to ask them a tough question—but having less than 10% of the attendees raise their hands is very concerning. Below 100 is saving lives and the greater the awareness and engagement, the more officers that will make it home to their families.
So, here’s my request: I am asking you to use the power of your email, Twitter, Facebook, telephone or your personal presence to contact five people in law enforcement—just FIVE—and remind them of what YOU are trying to do to reduce the LODD total to a number “Below 100” for the first time in 70 years. And please ask each of the five people that you contact to repeat your efforts and get to five of their friends in law enforcement and have them visit the Below 100 website. I know that everyone associated with the Below 100 effort is supportive of this and I am serious about the request. Consider it a personal challenge.
I am a big fan of the “multiple hands make light work” concept. So let’s assume that there are 10,000 of you who read this piece—1% of the cops in America. If you each reach out to five people, that will be 50,000 people who hopefully will each tell another five and, all of a sudden, we have 250,000 law enforcement personnel who are talking about Below 100 and common-sense officer safety.
The message that you need to convey is that there are only 10 more days in 2013, and we must—we must—do everything possible to prevent another LODD this year. I know that it is difficult to prevent “external intentional misconduct” but we can address the LODDs that are preventable—those caused because a good person does not think an action through prior to acting. YOU can do this—and please do this for me—and our profession.
Thanks in advance for your work on this. I will be keeping an hourly track on how we are doing. 2013 could be a historic year in American Law Enforcement—and you have a key role in making this work.
Below 100: The time is now!