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Failure is not an option

Sykes Group Protective Services Bulletin
"Failure is not an Option"
June 2011
In The News

Train with us now for the day shall come!

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Report finds workplace violence still a high risk, but awareness growing

Threats of workplace violence should remain at the forefront for security professionals. The recent release of the 2011 Workplace Violence Fact Sheet found that more than 5,900 people have been victims of homicide in the workplace in the last 10 years. Workplace homicides continue to be the third leading cause of death for people at work, according to the report, with an average of 590 homicides every year.

However, that number doesn’t include the number of attempts or suicides that happen in the workplace, said Barry Nixon, founder and executive director of the National Institute for the Prevention of Workplace Violence, a consulting, training and research firm that specializes in working with organizations to prevent workplace violence. That number is much higher, he said.

The industries that are at the greatest risk for workplace violence include...read more

5 Gunfights That Changed Law Enforcement

Twenty-five years ago, eight FBI agents pursuing two armed robbery suspects attempted a felony stop that resulted in a hail of gunfire, four deaths, and a reexamination of law enforcement weaponry, duty ammunition, body armor, and vehicle-stop tactics.

The gear and training employed by officers is much different today, partly as a result of the FBI Miami shootout. There have been other game-changing gunfights in the last quarter century. The following article examines each of them and how they changed your tactics, procedures, and policies.

We've ranked each one in order of importance (from fifth to first) and settled on an even five just to simplify matters. There are others, and there's no doubt a few readers will mention the Newhall incident in which four California Highway Patrol officers lost their lives in a fierce gun battle on April 6, 1970. But we wanted to stay....read more

A Look at Kidnapping through the Lens of Protective Intelligence

Looking at the world from a protective-intelligence perspective, the theme for the past week has not been improvised explosive devices or potential mass-casualty attacks. While there have been suicide bombings in Afghanistan, alleged threats to the World Cup and seemingly endless post-mortem discussions of the failed May 1 Times Square attack, one recurring and under-reported theme in a number of regions around the world has been kidnapping.

For example, in Heidenheim, Germany, Maria Boegerl, the wife of German banker Thomas Boegerl, was reportedly kidnapped from her home May 12. The kidnappers issued a ransom demand to the family and an amount was agreed upon. Mr. Boegerl placed the ransom payment at the arranged location, but the kidnappers never picked up the money (perhaps suspecting or detecting police involvement). The family has lost contact with the kidnappers, and fear for Mrs. Boegerl’s fate has caused German authorities to launch a massive search operation, which has included hundreds of searchers along with dogs, helicopters and divers.

Two days after the Boegerl kidnapping, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) posted a message on the Internet claiming to have custody of....read more

Video: Officer attacked at Ohio police station

ELYRIA, Ohio — Cameras were rolling inside the Elyria Police Station early Sunday morning, as a Cleveland man attacked a police officer.

Videotape obtained by Fox 8 News shows 29-year-old Anthony Wayne Thomas jumping the counter in the station's booking area and hitting Officer Bill Witt with a flurry of punches.

Witt's fellow officers in other sections of the station were unaware that he was in the...read more

Homicide BOMBERS

Tactics for first-responding officers

The following information, while not all-inclusive, highlights issues law enforcement officers face when confronting a homicide bomber. Much of this information has been written about and examined at various levels, but I'll focus on first-responding officers.

As police officers, we approach potential threats at all times, but a police officer making an approach to a suspected suicide or homicide bomber may trigger the response you want to avoid. When the threat potential exists based on your reasonable belief or information received from citizens/witnesses, the following tactical issues may spell the difference between...read more

Candidates, police wrestle with security concerns

As 2012 draws near, officers have to navigate a delicate balance between protection and accessibility

MINNEAPOLIS — When a prankster dumped a box of glittering confetti in Newt Gingrich's lap at a book-signing, the presidential candidate brushed off the stunt with a smile and quipped that it was "nice to live in a free country."

But the man's easy access to Gingrich raises questions about security on the campaign trail, particularly in the early months before the Secret Service begins guarding candidates. And the first events of the 2012 campaign are playing out just a few months after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

For White House hopefuls, security is always a...read more

The Bin Laden Operation: Tapping Human Intelligence

Since May 2, when U.S. special operations forces crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border and killed Osama bin Laden, international media have covered the raid from virtually every angle. The United States and Pakistan have also squared off over the U.S. violation of Pakistan’s sovereign territory and Pakistan’s possible complicity in hiding the al Qaeda leader. All this surface-level discussion, however, largely ignores almost 10 years of intelligence development in the hunt for bin Laden.

While the cross-border nighttime raid deep into Pakistan was a daring and daunting operation, the work to find the target — one person out of 180 million in a country full of insurgent groups and a population hostile to American activities on its soil — was a far greater challenge. For the other side, the challenge of hiding the world’s most wanted man from the world’s most funded intelligence apparatus created a clandestine shell game that probably involved current or former Pakistani intelligence officers as well as competing intelligence services. The details of this struggle will likely remain classified for decades.

Examining the hunt for bin Laden is also difficult, mainly because of the sensitivity of the mission and the possibility that some of the public information now available could be disinformation intended to...read more

The Mental Edge: Resilience
Tough times don't last—tough people do.

Talk about mindset and the mental edge, and you’ll usually get references to the late Col. Jeff Cooper’s Awareness Color Code or his Principle of Personal Defense. These are sound concepts and recommendations that still hold true today, but there’s more to what’s required for today’s law enforcement street warriors.

Times are tough my brothers and sisters in blue. Whether you patrol urban or suburban streets, or in a large city or a small town, it makes no difference. Officer fatalities are up: Today’s numbers from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund indicate an increase of...read more

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Failure is not an option!

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M3 Report

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider....learn more

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Sykes Group LLC
Sykes Group LLC
Law Enforcement/Security Training & Consulting
P.O. BOX 50309
S.I., NY 10305 – USA
1-718-753-3446
info@sykesgroups.com

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