Calibre Press Newsline - February 14, 2008

For a brief period last year there was a series of articles in the media attending to the fact that 2007 was about to be a horrific year for law enforcement, then it was mostly forgotten by those outside of the profession. The year ended with an approximate total of 181 law enforcement deaths due to assaults and accidents. The real issue for us was whether we needed to take action or write the year off as an aberration, a weird series of bad events where the cards of life dealt us one bad hand after another?

Well, the deaths aren’t abating and the reasons aren’t changing. We are dying at an accelerating rate due to assaults and accidents. The trends match last years with multiple officers’ deaths due to assaults and males disproportionally dying in numbers that predate all our safety gear, high retention holsters, and air bags! The average experience of the dead is around 10 years, and their age is in the mid-thirties; this has been the one constant regardless of the total of law enforcement officers killed…our “deadly bell curve!”

LAPD SWAT, who I had the pleasure of training with decades ago, just lost their first officer. Kirkwood, Missouri just lost two of our brothers and a part of their city government in an armed assault over citations! Mall shootings, school shootings, off-duty killings, standoffs, all these are not unusual in our society, but the sheer violence and toll has increased dramatically; was Virginia Tech a warning to us all and has law enforcement responded properly?


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While walking around the massive exposition known as “The Shot Show” one is overwhelmed by the plethora of new equipment for law enforcement and military personnel…fantastic new body armor, uniforms with tourniquets built-in, advanced first aid supplies, and an abundance of weapons with lasers, lights, gas, electricity, and scopes attached! We can zap em, gas em, stun em, or shoot em, based on the threat presented and one shudders when you wonder what the body count of our heroes would be without all this stuff? Would we have lost three hundred last year? An officer shot in the seventies not only probably didn’t have body armor on, but also went to an emergency room that would be vastly primitive compared to today’s high tech marvels.

So here is the gamble we must take. We have to assume history will eventually tell us what is happening. Whether it is the rise of the super predator criminals so long predicted, a social reaction to the stresses of the age, the placing of too many distracters in police vehicles, failure of training to match the diversity of tools on our “Bat Belts,” or simply another odd year where fate deals a disproportionate number of officers in various high risk situations a fatal hand, we must act as if training can make a difference!

Training is the long-term modification of behavior. Many of our skills are perishable and need to be refreshed, practiced, or they will deteriorate. Other skills are never learned to the point where they can overcome the effects of habits we have that eliminate or mask them, such as standing with our hands in our pockets while interviewing subjects without the proper reactionary gap between us and them! Even more skills are mutated or diminished by routine that teaches us that traffic stops are safe, that alarms are false, that people are “yes” people and just don’t worry about it.

In the Street Survival Seminar, we teach officers not to worry but expect something to happen. To be in the anticipatory mindset that allows us react quickly and increase our odds in what are often novel and dangerous situations, we call it “When/Then Thinking.”

Since humans like a plan, let’s give some assignments. First, who will be responsible for training our officers, deputies, investigators, troopers, agents, dispatchers, call takers, and everyone else responsible for officer safety? Each of us, everyone is first of all responsible for themselves, to seek knowledge, skill, and training that gives us the edge and then help others find it as well. This is called “locus of control” and means the center of control in your life is in you and this is one of the most powerful beliefs a human can have to overcome whatever comes their way

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Next, all supervisors have to believe it is their assignment to monitor the habits of their people to make sure they are not falling into bad habits. Whether you are a patrol supervisor or narcotics sergeant it is important you monitor the attitudes and actions of you people toward safety, whether it is driving or making an entry into a building.

Training personnel should review all accidents and injuries in their department to insure no trends are appearing that might indicate a training deficit or problem that training could remedy.

Finally, a culture of safety has to permeate your agency. From the top to the bottom everyone has to believe they make a difference in the safety of those who serve and protect. Call takers and dispatchers need to feel part of the solution and should be encouraged to find out what their people need to know and how to get it from witnesses and complainants. They need to know when it is time to give verbal rather than written updates on a hot call…too many officers are dying while driving and trying to attend to their MDT or MDC!

A culture of safety doesn’t imply we aren’t going to respond to high threat situations, but we accept our responsibility to first, take care of ourselves so we can take care of our fellow officers, then help the public! This priority of care is a basic principle of our profession. If we can’t take care of ourselves we can help no one!

So, sit back, evaluate honestly the risks you face and how you are dealing with them. Do you wear your seatbelt? We may have a similar personality profile with fighter pilots but one key difference is: they want to be ejected in crash and we don’t! Do you maintain your skills? Is your mind right? Do you have When/Then Thinking? Do you care enough to challenge a brother or sister who has developed a possibly deadly habit such as turning their gun-side toward offenders, or cuffing lackadaisically, or frisking subjects while standing right in front of them?

Calibre Press has been trying to make law enforcement officers safer for over 28 years now, we have the best equipment, weapons, armor, communications, and medical care in our history and we must all work together to make absolutely sure 2007 was an aberration not a trend!!

Dave Smith is an internationally known motivational speaker, writer and law enforcement trainer who has been an integral part of the Calibre Press family for over 20 years. As a career police officer, Dave held positions in patrol, training, narcotics, SWAT, and management. In 1980 he developed the popular "Buck Savage" survival series videos and was the lead instructor for the Calibre Press "Street Survival" seminar from 1983 to 1985.

He was a contributor to Calibre's popular "Tactical Edge" handbook and helped pave the way for what "Street Survival" is today. Dave joined the Law Enforcement Training Network in 1989 and was the general manager of Calibre Press until January of 2002. Now president of Dave Smith & Associates, a law enforcement & management consulting company based in Illinois, Dave has developed hundreds of programs across the spectrum of police & security training needs.

Dave is now the Street Survival Seminar manager and lead instructor and his experiences as officer, trainer, manager, and police spouse lend a unique perspective to the "Street Survival" experience.