Sykes Group LLC Law Enforcement and Protective Services Newsletter

In The News

I want to become a trainer

There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t get an email, a phone call, or get approached in person at a seminar or conference and get asked this: “How do I become a police trainer?” I start by explaining how I personally got into training (“fell into" is more accurate), then I tell them about the paths followed by some of those trainers out there that I truly admire, and finally I let them know that there isn’t one formula or career track that you can follow to reach the goal of “trainer.” Some people are just born to do it (like Dave Smith, Dave Grossman or Val VanBrocklin) and some people just stumble into it (like me) and still others work hard at a particular specialty, like ASP or TASER or cultural diversity and then work their up. However you plan to do it, here are some things to think about if you’d like to add “police trainer” to your resume and maybe even make a living at it.

Start Small

Each Street Survival seminar instructor gets asked at least once at every seminar: “How do I get hired to teach for Calibre Press?” The first question I ask is “what kind of training do you do now?” Oftentimes I get this answer: “Oh, I.....read more

6 tips for getting the most out of any training

Cops love training. Lock and load. Hit the range. Slap some leather. Punch some holes in some paper. Lay some tread on the track. Mount up. Sign me up for SWAT school!

But let’s face it, not all training is worthwhile, not all subjects are fun, and not all trainers are gifted educators. Here are some tips to get the most out of training - even....read more

Why You Should Attend Tactical Conferences

Those who attend police and tactical conferences, courses, seminars, workshops seem to be cut from the same cloth. No matter what their agency, position, or geographic location, they share a common purpose. They want to not only better themselves, but also improve their agencies, and ultimately the law enforcement profession.

What is admirable is how many attendees go at their own personal expense, on their own personal time. Of course, there are many attendees whose agencies send them to training on departmental dime and time. They’re the “lucky ones.”

The contrast can be seen in....read more

What Is a Trainer?

Every member of your department is important to its success, and to the fulfillment of your mission. The patrol officers and the investigators are the ones who get the job done, and the administrators structure the workplace so that all of you have a suitable environment for doing your jobs. Of course, the middle-level supervisors are the conduit between management and workers, conveying the administrative message down to the street, and providing the means for feedback to get to the bosses. Everybody has a job to do, and most do it well.

But—and it's an important but—none of it would be possible without the trainer.

That's probably an overstatement. Of course we could...read more

Mexican Cartels and the Fallout From Phoenix

Late on the night of June 22, a residence in Phoenix was approached by a heavily armed tactical team preparing to serve a warrant. The members of the team were wearing the typical gear for members of their profession: black boots, black BDU pants, Kevlar helmets and Phoenix Police Department (PPD) raid shirts pulled over their body armor. The team members carried AR-15 rifles equipped with Aimpoint sights to help them during the low-light operation and, like most cops on a tactical team, in addition to their long guns, the members of this team carried secondary weapons — pistols strapped to their thighs.

But the raid took a strange turn when one element of the team began directing suppressive fire on the residence windows while the second element entered — a tactic not normally employed by the PPD. This breach of departmental protocol did not stem from a mistake on the part of the team’s commander. It occurred because the eight men on the assault team were not from the PPD at all. These men were not cops serving a legal search or arrest warrant signed by a judge; they were...read more

Unarmed Security

A friend of mine is a security director for a large institution that serves a special population in a metropolitan area of Ohio. He started his protective services career nearly 40 years ago as a young military policeman in Vietnam. Since that time he has developed his security career to include obtaining numerous Director positions within the private security sector, mostly at vast hospital complexes. He is truly a professional. Nobody knows more about protecting people in his venue then he does.

Over the period of several years in his current position, he noticed several lapses in his organizations security posture. He drafted a plan of action, documented it, and approached his boss, who was the VP of Facilities, while seeking the approval to fix those issues. Of the recommendations offered by my friend, some of them were in the category of either pay now or really, really, pay later. The VP of facilities is an expert at planning for HVAC installation and roofing repairs, but clueless about the dynamics affecting the health, welfare and safety of human beings. Regardless, someone in authority still appointed the facilities VP to be in-charge over the security director as the division leader. In the end, when the security director made his boss aware of glaring security problems, what do you think the VP did? If you guessed.....read more

Preventing School Shootings

A Summary of a U.S. Secret Service Safe School Initiative Report....download report(pdf format)

Fingerprints now used to find drugs, explosives

Scientists have found ways to tease even more clues out of fingerprints' telltale marks — one in a string of developments that gives modern forensics even better ways to solve mysteries like the anthrax attacks or JonBenet Ramsey's murder.

For example, if a person handled cocaine, explosives or other materials, there could be enough left in....read more

Hotel find is cyanide, police confirm

Denver police confirmed today that a granular substance found inside an upscale Denver hotel room is sodium cyanide.

A Canadian national was found dead Monday in room 408 of the Burnsley Hotel where the cyanide was found in a plastic container.

The Denver Coroner's Office has not completed the autopsy of 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie to determine how he died.

Denver police spokesman John White said Dirie's death appears to be....read more

Finding Nemo, the Terrorist Librarian

As the war on terror continues to infiltrate the blogosphere, an increasing presence in the jihadi movement is a virtual terrorist who uses the nom de guerre Nemo.

Nemo — a name meaning "no one," taken from Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" — has compiled a comprehensive archive of virtual terrorist training manuals and....read more

Officials told to look for fake emergency vehicles

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government is telling emergency managers to be on the lookout for fake emergency and commercial vehicles, as security tightens in the two cities hosting this year's presidential conventions.

Terrorists could used these "cloned vehicles" to conduct surveillance or to carry out an attack, according to an Aug. 21 bulletin from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Cloning a vehicle is easy and relatively cheap, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

For about....read more