Blog Archives




 

  • Mass Attacks & Gun Control
    By Frank Borelli - Thursday January 24, 2013
    Virginia Tech… Aurora Theater… Sandy Hook…  Names of place we’re all too familiar with.  There are others we could list but they are all oriented around the same type of event: an evil person takes guns illegally into a given setting and proceeds to start shooting people.  It used to be common for these folks to then kill themselves prior to being arrested, but with the Aurora Theater shooting we saw the perpetrator being apprehended. (Editor's correction: I incorrectly stated that the Sandy Hook shooter was also arrested.  Adam Lanza committed suicide like so many school attack shooters do.)  I’ve been an Active Shooter Response Instructor since 2000 and I’ve studied the history of active shooters in the United States...

  • PRE-SHOT Show "Heads Up"
    By Frank Borelli - Thursday January 10, 2013
    Yes, fans, it's that time of year again. Next week in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Shooting, Hunting & Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show will happen.  SHOT Show is the largest show held each year that supports anything related to hunting, camping, fishing, backpacking and everything that might be attached to law enforcement or military if it's manufactured by the same represented companies.  Last year, according to the SHOT Show website, over 61,000 people attended the 2012 event.  Of them, nearly 2,500 were media representatives (that's a lot of reporting).  There were attendees from every state in our country as well as from 100 OTHER countries.  With over 1,600 exhibitors and 630,000 square feet of exhibit space... well, you get the idea; it's...

  • Officer Survival in 2013
    By Frank Borelli - Friday January 4, 2013
    All:  Welcome to 2013.  Happy New Year!  May it be a safe and prosperous New Year for you and yours.  Now that I have the pleasantries out of the way, welcome to a year that’s kicking off with plenty of debate about a couple of topics that certainly have the ability to impact our day (or night if you work graveyard shift). Our year starts off with a huge debate over gun control, spurred by the most recent heinous crime committed in Newtown, CT by an obviously disturbed person.  Whether he was mentally or emotionally disturbed, knowingly carried criminal intent, was mad at the world or was simply evil and bored doesn’t matter in our world.  For us, response to and neutralization of the threat is what we focus on.  In this...

  • No Answers...
    By Frank Borelli - Wednesday December 19, 2012
    As I type this there is one week to go before Christmas.  Two months ago in October, I marked my 30 th anniversary in law enforcement.  It’s quite literally what I’ve done all my adult life (minus eight months between turning 18 and reporting for the Army to become an MP).  Today I mark five years with Cygnus Business Media: more than four as the Editor for Officer.com and now a few months as Editorial Director for the Cygnus Law Enforcement Group.  For all that; for everything I’ve been taught; for everything I’ve experienced; for everything I’ve taught as an instructor since 1989… I have no answers to this one simple question:  “Why?” Anyone who watches the news or follows social media in any form has seen the...

  • 'Tis The (Magnified) Silly Season
    By Frank Borelli - Tuesday December 4, 2012
    Every year near Thanksgiving, “The Silly Season” kicks off.  It’s almost like you can watch it following Santa Claus down the road at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  “Oh, look!  There’s Santa!!”  “Yep.  And there’s supreme idiocy following right along behind him.”  Thankfully, in years past, the idiocy was somewhat contained to specific dates.  Black Friday.  Cyber Monday (and thank God we don’t patrol the virtual world).  Most of December up to and including Christmas Eve.  And that increased stupidity we encountered mostly revolved around shopping.  Welcome to the dawning of a new era. This year, still thinking about shopping, we didn’t get to wait until Black Friday.  Many a...

  • Lessons Learned From Sandy
    By Frank Borelli - Tuesday November 6, 2012
    It seems like every time we experience another natural disaster some people have already forgotten the lessons we learned from the last one. It's all the more exasperating when you realize how simple some of these basic preparedness "lessons" are. Let's review a few of these lessons and contemplate (perhaps) a few new ones. A little rain never hurt anyone, but a lot of it can kill you. That was one of my favorite lines from the movie " Jumanji. " In some parts of the mid-Atlantic states they received over sixty hours of rain with rainfall totals upwards of eleven inches. Let's try to put that into some kind of perspective we might be able to visualize. In a previous article about the value of rain barrels (for another site) I...

  • Two Dream Glocks For Me
    By Frank Borelli - Friday October 5, 2012
    With 23 different variations of Glock available you'd think they make something for everyone.  I have to confess that, at one time or another, I've owned six of their handguns in 9mm, .40S&W and .45ACP.  Certainly their handguns are reliable, simple and "convenient:" easy to handle, easy to maintain.  Still, I find myself wishing Glock would make two more variations - and I readily admit that it's all about me (as I write this) although I'm sure some folks out there would also take an interest in the fictional weapons I'm going to describe. First would be the Glock Model 40 in 9mm.  For the basis of this model I draw from the frame of the Glock 17 and the slide assembly the Glock 19.  When you think back about the popularity...

  • The Rifle in Your Patrol Vehicle
    By Frank Borelli - Friday September 28, 2012
    It was the year 2000 and I was sitting in an Active Shooter Instructor development class.  The instructor posed this question: " How many of you have a rifle in your patrol vehicle? "  About two-thirds of the attendees put their hand up, obviously quite delighted to be able to answer this question in a positive fashion, and expressing some pride that their agency was so forward thinking (for that time frame).  Then another instructor qualified the question further: " Okay, how many of you with your hand up have a rifle in an actual rifle caliber such as .223 or .308, not a handgun caliber like 9mm or .40S&W? "  More than half the hands went down.  Out of the class of about 30 veteran police instructors, maybe seven or eight of them had...

  • 9/11/2001: I Will Never Forget
    By Frank Borelli - Tuesday September 11, 2012
    9/11/2012: This year, just like the past ten, I'll spend some time this morning remembering that horrific morning eleven years ago; where I was, what I was doing, how I heard about the first tower strike, watching the second one... the man standing next to me turning to me and saying, "Oh my God; we're at war." I'll remember the fear and frustration I felt on that long ride home; my concerns about my family; wondering where my National Guard unit would be deployed to; wondering what my police department would need in overtime coverage. I heard about the crash at the Pentagon on the drive home followed by news of Flight 93's crash in that Pennsylvania field. I remember wondering how many more were going to go down. I had friends working...

  • Coast to Coast 24/7/365
    By Frank Borelli - Tuesday August 28, 2012
    After nearly 30 years in law enforcement I've seen agencies that are huge (NYPD as the example), big (Washington DC PD as the example), medium sized, small and only part time.  I've seen campus police departments where the officers served more as armed walking information centers than law enforcement officers.  I've seen agencies that were so small they only had officers on duty 20 hours per day, five or six days per week.  But during those other hours, the officers were on call.  One part time officer was also a volunteer fireman and lived at the firehouse.  He was NEVER off duty if he was within the town's borders. I was struck by that thought this morning and created the accompanying graphic.  The "thin blue line" hasn't been...