First Responders

My Sheriff has been a mentor in my life who has helped me get to places I never would have been. He pushed me to go back to school and get my bachelor's and master's degree, and put me in rooms I wouldn't have been in without his help and guidance. He has always been pushing me out of my comfort zone and helping me reach greater heights.
 
Transcript: "Who was a mentor of yours who had a significant impact on your life and why? My sheriff has always been a mentor in my life. He's helped me get to places that I never would have been to if it wasn't for his guidance. Exactly like when I was going through the academy and when I was going through my first law enforcement jobs and all that stuff, he helped push me to greater callings. He told me to go back to school to get my bachelor's and master's degree. He put me basically in different rooms I wouldn't have been in if it wasn't for his help and guidance. I believe everybody needs a mentor like that in their life, someone that can pour into you and help push you into the place that you need to go. Sometimes we don't want to go, we want to stay in our comfortable spot, but he's always been one to get me out of my comfortable spot and push me forward. So my sheriff has always been one person, has always been a good mentor, that's helped influence my life and pushed me towards greater."

I find inspiration by listening to motivational videos on YouTube, like those of TD Jakes and Eric Thomas, as well as reading books like The Secret and David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me.
 
Transcript: "Where do you go for inspiration? I go to YouTube to my motivational playlist. I have several videos on there from different people that are motivational speakers, people that can help encourage you, people like TD Jakes, Eric Thomas, Les Brown, David Goggins. I listen to these videos and these records daily just to help get my mind right because if I'm going through a bad time more likely to have something, a clip or either a few words of advice in those videos that I know that can help me get my mind right and help me get back on track. I recommend a lot of videos to different people that I know but I know they help me out. Additionally, reading different books such as The Secret or either David Goggins book Can't Hurt Me, Help Me and that's where I find my inspiration at."

I measure the success of my educational approach at conferences by gauging how well people understand the product, and how they can apply it to past and future investigations.
 
Transcript: "How do you measure the success of your educational approach at conferences? Great question, and thanks for it. I talked before about when I go to conferences to talk about Ballistics IQ, it's not just to sell. It's there to educate those individuals that may know nothing about our product and show them how it's going to help in their investigations. And one way that I'm able to measure the success of talking with the individuals is, you know, I'm able to explain to them that we're a triage tool and we're step one in the NIBIN process. And we're able to provide them real-time actionable intelligence regarding their shooting incidents and provide them the number of firearms that were involved and which is the best cartridge case for entry into the NIBIN system and a rapid ballistics program to be able to provide them links between different shootings in less than four hours. When I go through the whole spiel and show them the demo and we're talking about it, for me it's a real success when they're able to basically mirror or pare it back to me, what I've said, but in a case or an investigation that they had. Basically they'd say, you know, this would be great if we would have had this during this XY investigation because we would have got the information in real-time versus having to wait days or weeks to get it back. So for me it's a success if they're able to grasp what I'm telling them, but then in their own mind, they're immediately able to see how they would have used it in previous investigations and how they're going to use it in further investigations. So that's what I think is a way that I can tell if I'm doing the right thing as it relates to the educational approach and making sure they can comprehend how the product is going to solve their pain points. Thank you."

I'm excited about forwarding the idea of hiring for character in the fire service, which is currently not done. I think that if we change the style and timing of the interviews and focus on getting candidates to reveal their true character, we will find more success.
 
Transcript: "A topic in my field that I'm excited about right now is one that I'm not ashamed to say I'm leading on. Sorry if that sounds cocky, but there it is. Specifically, I'm excited about forwarding the idea of hiring for character. We don't in the fire service. We say that we do, but we don't. We have created a situation where candidates show up with the same resume, the same certifications, the same amount of volunteer time, and we tell them the job is won or lost in the interview room. Then we sit them down in the interview chair and we ask them these mundane questions like, Where do you see yourself in five years? Or, Tell us about yourself. The kind of questions that a 15-year-old gets when they get their first fry cook job. And then, by not asking them the kinds of questions that would have them deeply reveal their character, we end up with problems. They fail out of fire academies or worse, they pass and now they create a long-term problem for a fire department. We need to change the interview construct in the fire service. We need to be changing the style of interview questions, changing the timing of it, having candidates not worry so much about how fluffy their resume is. The interview needs to be leaned on very, very heavily. It currently isn't. I think if we start letting candidates reveal their true character, we'll find far more success."

When my partner didn't answer my calls, I went to look for him and found he was in a closet doing a search. I made sure he was ok and that's what you have to do when your partner doesn't answer - use your lifeline.
 
Transcript: "Hi, the question I have here today is, have you ever encountered a situation where communication with your partner has failed? If so, how did I handle it? One call in particular that comes in mind with the communication with my partner, as in many of the other questions I've answered, I talk about communications. You and your partner have to have communications all the time, either be it verbal, sight communications, line of sight, or radio communication. This particular call, we were doing a search. I tried yelling out to them. There was no answer. I tried on my radio. So at that point, I had to go back and look for my partner and search for him. What I found is that he was in a closet doing a search, and he was so in-depth searching this closet because this closet was full of clothes. There was no way he heard me. He didn't hear the radio, but he was doing a search in a closet. So I made sure that he was all right, and that's what you have to do. When your partner doesn't answer, you have to go look for him. Use your lifeline."

SWAT teams use specialized equipment such as Bearcats, drones, throw bots, preacher tools, gas and flashbangs for various operations.
 
Transcript: "What types of specialized equipment do SWAT teams use for various operations? Well, we use a variety of different types of equipment for different types of operations. Most of the time, SWAT teams are using what we call Bearcats or AMRAPs, which are motorized vehicles that are military grade that can take certain types of ammunition without having damage. Additionally, we use what we have as drones, we have throwbots, if we need to get to an area that we can't easily access and that we want to get to before we breach or anything like that. Also, we use breacher tools such as a hooligan or a ram to get inside residents. It's a lot of different things. Like I said, we use gas, it's just to get a person out, like I say. Flash bangs, it's just an assortment of different tools that we can use. It just depends on the type of situation we're going to, but like I say, SWAT teams have a lot of different tools to make sure that they can successfully complete the mission that they're trying to accomplish. [♪upbeat music♪, silence♪, and no audio for the rest of video. Please see the video description for more information.]"