Finding mistakes before they bite you

June 14, 2007 07:21 AM •

The importance of searching prisoners before turning them over to another officer/jail cannot be understated. In fact, many street officers conduct only a visual search or a frisk search on their prisoners at the point of arrest.

Even prisoners in custody often get only a cursory search. The bottom line is that you need to conduct your own THOROUGH custodial search whenever a prisoner it turned over to you from another agency, left in a non-sterile area, or who is being turned over to another jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, trust is a wonderful thing but has no place in law enforcement. You want to find mistakes before they bite you physically in terms of being assaulted by the weapon that someone missed, legally in terms of missing contraband found later that you end up being disciplined for, or psychologically in the case of knowing your poor searching led to another officer injury or death.

Gary T. Klugiewicz

Gary T. Klugiewicz is the director of ACMi® Systems, and a member of the Team One Network that in cooperation with the Northwest Wisconsin Technical College provides defensive tactics, firearms, and tactical training throughout the United States. He is retired from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department after 25 years of service where he was promoted to the rank of captain.

Gary has a background in Knockdown Karate where he won national championships and fought several times in Japan. He brought this high impact intensity to law enforcement training.

Gary’s name has become synonymous with the development of safe but realistic, intense, dynamic simulation training. As former Street Survival Seminar instructor and nationally known defensive tactics instructor, Gary has impacted literally 100,000’s of law enforcement officers.

His training is an officer survival program in action. Gary is the developer of the Active Countermeasures System of Unarmed Blocking and Striking Techniques that is the cornerstone of High Level Control Tactics. He has developed programs for police, corrections, mental health, security, and military personnel.

Gary’s team tactics training for SWAT, CERT, and Crowd Management Teams are among the best in the world. His instructor training programs stress adult learning, sub-skill development, guided discovery, decision making simulation scenarios, and positive group debriefing techniques.

Even more importantly, as a righteous police officer use-of-force defense expert, Gary has defended scores of officers in legal proceedings. Currently, he is the lead instructor for Verbal Judo’s Tactical Communication for the Correctional Professional training program.