Public Safety Signals

I was astonished when a nearby city of 60,000 decided not to hire their first emergency manager, sighting the economy as the reason. In an effort to convince the city manager he was making a mistake, I prepared a 30 page preliminary hazard analysis for this city manager. Unfortunately, I did not have enough unfettered [...]

A 2009 report released yesterday by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the country’s critical infrastructure a cumulative grade of “D”. Critical infrastructure (CI) includes things like roads, bridges, dams, water and waste treatment plants, energy and aviation, to name just a few of the areas receiving very low marks.
This ASCE report also [...]

As the interdisciplinary nature of public safety continues to grow and mature I am seeing further development of academic honor societies developing as well. Capella has had a chapter of Alpha Phi Sigma (National Criminal Justice Honor Society) for a couple of years now. Jeff Godwin is the chapter president (please contact him with any [...]

We are just hours away from inaugurating a new President. While this inauguration will be perhaps the most historical ever, we must realize that the decisions made by President Obama will affect public safety. How much public safety will be affected is not known and most likely won’t be known for at last a year.
In [...]

Hello everyone, I just returned from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) technology conference in San Diego. There were thousands of chiefs, commanders and law enforcement professionals from the U.S. and abroad. After my own 32 years in the field it is very encouraging seeing the high tech, information sharing and intelligence systems [...]

We have all watched with great interest as the current financial crisis has affected almost every aspect of our lives. From Wall Street to Main Street we have seen layoffs, firings, and a severe drop in the economy. Not only are we seeing people loose their homes, but landlords are loosing their rental properties, and [...]

The Philosopher, George Santayana, never made a truer comment when he uttered the words “Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.” It is in this spirit that I bring this topic to you.
Over 100 firefighters will be honored this weekend at the National Fire Academy during the annual National Firefighters [...]

All too often our public safety first responders are in harm’s way during an emergent event. Hurricane Ike was no exception with public safety first responders helping with rescue and recovery operations. While this is the nature of the job please allow me to say thank you to all of the first responders for [...]

On the night of September 12, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston, Texas at approximately 2:00 am Central Time as a Category 2 hurricane. With sustained winds of 110 mph (1 mile an hour shy of a Cat3), this should not have been a major hurricane by Gulf of Mexico standards. However, Ike was [...]

While planning for National Preparedness Month (September), the United States Fire Administration (USFA) released a new report on August 20th which is the latest technical report in a series regarding being prepared. The report named Fire Department Preparedness for Extreme Weather Emergencies and Natural Disasters shares serious insights on not only keeping the fire department [...]