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.
The only way to save officer lives is to examine how they are dying and then doing something about it.
Pretty obvious statement, huh?
But mere lip service is what many of us in law enforcement give to the phrase, theory, philosophy of officer safety. I don’t mean to criticize supervisors, administrators and trainers. Rather, I say this to make a point: Officer safety is not a belief or a position; it is a decision. A decision to make a change, to act.
Everyone in this profession, at least almost everyone, says they believe officer safety is a priority. Everyone from politicians, sheriffs and chiefs to line-level officers, trainers and union reps talk about it. I myself dove in head-first in the late 1980s after complaining that we had no intermediate weapons or ongoing training in force, outside of static shooting on the range.
Then in 1991, I made sergeant and I was allowed to start the first defensive tactics program. In addition, the responsibility of rewriting and updating our Use of Force Policy fell in my very unqualified and incapable hands. Consequently, I read and studied and trained, on and off duty.
But I was still so very clueless in so many ways. I was spinning my wheels. Why? Because I was looking at officer safety on a micro level and not a macro level. And while the officers came to understand rules, regs and laws, as well as tactical techniques, I never taught—or even thought about—the importance and impact of culture.
In 2002, I joined Calibre Press and became a Street Survival Seminar instructor, which to me was the pinnacle of training for officer safety. But I was still clueless. Still wheel-spinning. Why? Because I just got stuck in another culture that didn’t address the totality of officer safety. Most individuals in the training world were sincere about officer safety, but even there, culture was the main inhibitor.
Like most endeavors, breaking the mold of what was accepted as “cutting-edge” training was tough. There was a groupthink mentality. We were trapped in flawed beliefs and faulty processes. Some of the national instructors that I worked with, met, listened to, etc., were very capable trainers but incapable of looking outside the established proverbial box. Hell, one of them hadn’t been a cop since the 1980s! He never saw a computer in a squad car! But he was an expert—as long as you agreed with him. So change was impossible. We were still way too myopic, too single-issue focused.
And I was blind to it. Blind to my own, well, narrow-mindedness.
Then two things happened that opened my eyes. One, I met Sgt. Keith Wenzel from the Dallas PD. Two, I talked to my friend and mentor Chief Jeff Chudwin and he introduced me to a new program called Below 100.
Keith Wenzel & the New Street Survival
I met Keith in 2008 when he hosted a Calibre Press Seminar. We hit it off immediately and talked openly about what was right about training and what was sorely missing. We became fast friends and with his guidance, we almost completely redesigned the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar with one perspective in mind—REALITY.
Keith pointed out that felonious assault, while the “sexy” topic in officer safety training, wasn’t the most common way police officers die. So we created and recreated with that always in mind. Keith is one of the best researchers and searchers I’ve ever met. He is the definition of an outside-the-box thinker, and being in his company totally changed my perspective on a macro level.
We addressed what we now call the Fatal Four—the most common ways officers lose their lives:
1. Felonious Assaults
2. In Cars and on Roadways
3. Heart Attacks
4. Suicide
We then discussed what the contributing factors in each were, and the factor that was most obvious and clearly evident was: Stress!
Below 100
Immediately after relaunching Street Survival we were at the ILEETA conference in 2010. Jeff Chudwin told me that we needed to attend a new program called Below 100. He told me that it was right up our alley and was going to be a “game-changer” when it came to saving the lives of police officers. As much as I trust Jeff, I was still skeptical. But I went because I respect him.
Ten minutes into the program, my wife, now the CEO of Calibre Press, looked at me and said, “My God, these guys are talking our language, we have to get involved with them.”
And we did, immediately.
Below 100 had an audacious and controversial, yet simple and noble, goal: Lower the number of officers who die in the line of duty every year to below 100.
The last time that happened was in the 1940s. There are more than 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States today. People have access to more weapons. They seem more violent. 177 officers died in the line of duty in 2010, 140 died in 2009, more than 150 in 2008 and more than 200 in 2007. It seemed there was no way that number could ever be reduced to less than 100.
Fast-forward to 2013, Dec. 3 to be exact. We stand today at 93. That’s 93 too many, but it’s still an astoundingly low number compared to where we have been for several decades.
Below 100—and I’d like to think Calibre Press—broke the barriers of simply addressing armed assailants. They took the sole responsibility for officer safety away from administrators and trainers and placed it on each individual officer by doing four things.
1. Expose how we die. Addressing the ways we are actually dying outside of felonious assaults—car crashes, getting hit by cars, complacency, heart attacks, suicide—opened the eyes of many and shocked even more.
2. Reality-based training. The training is steeped in reality, pulls no punches for the politically correct crowd and is in the proverbial face of the students. Videos and photos are used to be sure, but also employed are true stories that feature up-to-date incidents (sometimes things that literally happened the night before), conversations with family members of the fallen, the aftermath, and the true devastation associated with loss.
3. What’s Important Now: Perspectives, attitudes and stress. By showing officers how stress, perspectives, attitudes and the resultant behaviors contribute to line-of-duty deaths, the need for personal responsibility becomes evident. Examples are given of how lowering speed, controlling complacency, and wearing seatbelts and body armor actually save lives. This dramatically impacts all in attendance.
4. Culture. Organizational cultures need to be examined honestly. If officers are speeding unnecessarily, not wearing belts and armor and are complacent, it’s because the culture allows it. Assessment, creation, maintenance and leading cultures to make true change must be a top priority.
Go to the Officer Down Memorial Page now! Read the losses this year. Ask yourself honestly how many were preventable. Getting to Below 100 is not pie in the sky, it is not a pipe dream, it is not a future goal—it is here! It is up to us!
Together, it’s more than possible. It is an absolute must!
