0256 – Karen Bartuch & The Women’s Tactical Association

January 18, 2012 by PaulCarlson Leave a Comment

In any profession there can be frustration in the disconnect between the decisions made in the central office and what happens in the trenches. It isn’t different in police work. What is different in police work is whats on the line. You must understand that when things go wrong for our LEO’s the consequences are more severe than an incorrect invoice, a botched part, or an upset customer. In police work often lives are on the line and the decisions of officers have drastic consequences to extraneous people involved, to themselves, and to the ones that they love. In police work, just like office work, these problems often go unsolved despite that fact that the consequences by far exceed frustration.

Smart officers solve these problems for themselves by making sure that they are prepared to handle the situations that can result in negative consequences. It might mean that they have to sacrafice their own time, energy and funds to prepare but they do it because they realize that they themselves and the ones that they love must bear the consequences when things go bad.

The Women’s Tactical Association gets it. Karen Bartuch and her cohorts realized this scenario. As they took care of their own training, they realized that they weren’t the only women in the situation that they were in. So, instead of getting pissed off, they set about fixing the situation. And so, the Women’s Tactical Association was born.

0256 - Karen Bartuch and The Women's Tactical Association [ 19:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (395)

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Filed Under: Podcast, SHOT Show 2012, Training, Tweet Tagged With: association, badge, Bartuch, Cop, female, Karen, le, LEO, Officer, officers, police, violence, violent, women, Womens. tactical

0248 – Ride A Long To Understand Awareness and Crime Prevention

January 2, 2012 by PaulCarlson Leave a Comment

One of the problems with becoming more skilled with awareness and crime prevention is the fact that we often don’t have the opportunity to gain experience in a wide variety of situations. We can make sure we are aware on our way to and from work, to and from our car, to and from wherever, but at some point and time we need to move into unfamiliar situations. The same goes for crime prevention skills. We can max out our skills only so far in our common circumstances in life. At some point we have to venture out and look at things from a new angle to gain further understanding. I spent December 30, 2011 in a police car, in the front seat, learning about crime prevention and awareness.

0248 - Ride A Long To Understand Awareness and Crime Prevention [ 19:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (472)

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Sponsor of the Day: Dale Fricke Holsters
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Filed Under: Crime Prevention, General Safety, home security, Podcast, Training Tagged With: a, along, long, police, ride, sheriff, Trooper

0222 – Using 911 Efficiently

October 26, 2011 by PaulCarlson 2 Comments

Whatever the situation is, when you dial 911 stress is likely to be high. Whatever is happening is probably high stakes and it certainly isn’t a good time to have to deal with logistical challenges. We know that response time cannot be instant no matter how much we want it to be and what we want to make sure is that we don’t delay help any more than its delayed already. Yet that might be exactly what we may be heading into when we dial 911. In the US our emergency response system is efficient and effective, but that efficiency and effectiveness can be compromised when we fail to do our part. Today we will talk about some simple things you need to do to make sure 911 works for you!

0222 - Using 911 Efficiently [ 18:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (368)

0222 – Using 911 Efficiently

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Sponsor of the day:

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Reliable 911

When we think about emergencies one of the first concepts that jumps into our heads might be 911. If we are ever involved in any kind of a serious situation it is likely that at some point emergency responders may also be involved. The most common way for them to get involved is by someone dialing 911.

We have talked about the concept before, but it bears mentioning that 911 is not a magic pill for all of our problems. The system is advanced, wonderful, and I’m glad that we have it, but it has some inherent issues that we must understand.

Response Time

We must understand that 911 Is a reactive service. Police officers, fire fighters and paramedics would love to be in the right place at the right time to prevent something bad from happening or be able to instantly respond when something does happen. That just isn’t possible based on several issues:

911 isn’t omniscient
Emergency resources are limited
Emergency services aren’t every where
Emergency response depends on communication from you

Communication with 911

Today we aren’t going to talk about how to speak with the emergency services dispatcher. Although that is an important topic we are going to move farther upstream and talk about how to get them on the line in the first place. Seems like an easy enough task. Pick up the phone and dial 911 right? Hopefully that is the case, but sometimes it doesn’t go so smoothly. Lets talk about how we can make the connection.

Know how to connect with 911

Seems silly. It’s only 3 numbers, but every year there are situations where people are unable to successfully dial 911. Lets look at some of the reasons:

Know the number

Seems kinda silly but you need to know what to dial to get 911. I was recently working on a school campus where it was required to dial 9-8-911 to access emergency services.

I’ve been on a college campus where the emergency number was 123.

I feel pretty strongly that you should be able to pick up any phone in any location and press three numbers and have an emergency services dispatcher on the other end of the line. We are moving in that direction, but we aren’t there yet. It is our responsibility to know how to connect. If you don’t know, ask.

Verify

Every emergency cervices district is responsible for making sure that a certain percentage of phone numbers in the area are properly connected to the 911 system. This means a percentage of land line phones must be able to dial 911 and reach the proper emergency services call center. If you are smart you will make sure that 100% of land lines that you spend time around are verified. It is your skin after all. A quick search on the internet brought up several ways in which counties across the U.S. verify 911 service. In my county I simply fill out a form and drop it at the county Sheriff to verify the information. Here is how it is done in Sussex County, Schenectady County and Franklin County. The process is different if you have a VOIP system like OOMA or MagicJack.
A Word from MagicJack

911 Emergency Services are for United States and Canadian addresses ONLY.

Canadian addresses require Canadian numbers

US addresses require US numbers

NOTE: 911 Emergency Services will NOT work with magicJack APP

1. Register your current U.S. address during the registration process.

2. Make sure that your address information is always complete, up-to-date and accurate. (If you travel, you must update your 911 service address.)

3. Wait for a confirmation email from magicJack that your 911 service address is registered.

NOTE:
- Our 911 Emergency Service is different than 911 service offered on traditional phone lines.
- magicJack may not work during a power or internet outage.
- Only use 911 in case of an actual emergency.
Dialing 9-1-1:

1. REQUIRES prior activation on your part. You must register your current service address and update your registered address if you use your magicJack from another location.

2. WILL NOT function during a broadband or power disruption/outage.

3. WILL NOT function if the magicJack is damaged or disabled.

4. IS subject to the limitations of the 911 emergency response system where your registered address is located.

You should maintain an alternate means of dialing 911 and make sure other users of your magicJack know this.
Practice

We are ultimately responsible for making sure that our call gets to the right place. If we take the time to find out how to dial 911, verify that our phone system will work as advertised all that is left is actually dialing the number. Easier said than done. There aren’t a whole lot of people out there that dial 911 on a regular basis let alone while they are under stress. If you think about it we are much more likely to dial other -11 numbers than 911. 411 for information, 611 for customer service, 811 is the new national call before you dig hotline. We can be thankful that these are more likely to be used, but at the same time, that can be a problem for us when we actually need to dial 911.

At home and work unplug the phone form the wall, check for a dial tone, and then practice. Just the dialing at first, then write a script and practice it too.

On your cell, take out the battery and press 911 send. Mechanics and the script.

A little practice could make a big difference in helping you call 911 instead of information.

The steps are pretty easy: