News from ILEETA: A week of teaching and learning

April 25, 2009 03:36 PM •

The last two days of ILEETA 2009 were so packed with great training and information that it was difficult to decide what to attend! Laura Scarry’s course on “The Top 10 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know” took on special significance in the wake of Gant v. Arizona. Steve Jimmerfield’s courses on all weather ground fighting skills (which I once attended in Anchorage, Alaska!) were very popular since ILEETA attendees come from all over the world and work in many extreme climates.

P1TV’s own “Little Joe” Fererra taught “Understanding Reaction, Moving, and Response Time” and CorrectionOne’s Gary Kluglewicz’s instructed his “Verbal Judo” course.

Attendees were bused to the nearby Northeastern Illinois Public Safety Training Academy for various live fire and certification courses, and back at the conference center Rick Guilbault from TASER International provided training updates for TASER instructors and end users. The final day ended with Jeff Fackler and Dr. Minshon Chiou discussing the future of body armor technology. In the past 10 years, 118 police officers have lost their lives after being shot in areas of the torso that were not covered by their soft body armor, making this an extremely relevant topic for all of us.

Congratulations to Ed Nowicki and Harvey Heddon for another incredible conference. This long, intense week ended as it began, with the goal to keep the men and women of law enforcement safe, healthy, and equipped to WIN!

Police Trainers Police Training

Betsy Brantner Smith

My column is undergoing a bit of an identity crisis. I’ve been writing for the Street Survival “Newsline” and the P1 Newsletter for several years. As a Street Survival seminar instructor, I write about officer safety and survival, but I’m also a supervisor, a mom, a trainer, a cop’s wife, and dare I say, a woman, so I’ve got a lot to say about any number of topics (what woman doesn’t?!), and I’ve always received great feedback from our readers. So when Police One approached me and asked me to author a monthly column dealing with women’s issues, I enthusiastically agreed. “What a great opportunity” I naively thought “to bring issues to light that both women and men in law enforcement could all relate to, perhaps discuss at roll call, and ultimately learn something from each other.” Yeah, just call me Sergeant Pollyanna…I forgot that by calling it a “women’s” column, not only will most of our male readers skip over it, but so will at least half our female readers. What?! Why in the world wouldn’t women read a “women’s” column?! Because, there are a lot of female crimefighters out there like me who have spent a lot of years just trying to blend in, to be “one of the guys” if you will…to be perceived as and conduct ourselves as “warriors,” not “victims.” We don’t want special treatment; we just want to be cops.