Public Safety Signals

Today marks four years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. While we have learned many lessons from that catastrophic disaster, there is always more work to do as a community and country, as we can never predict the nature or extent of the next emergent situation heading our way.
In fact, the new [...]

Ever have a “duh” moment? It seems to me the older I get, the more of those moments I have. I thought I would share my most recent “duh” moment with you, because it truly relates to public safety. If I do my part of acting on it, and you [...]

Our doctoral level first course PSF8002 has been awarded Blackboard’s Exemplary course award for 2009.
Joe Pascarella led the faculty subject matter experts on this course development project. He was supported by several of our expert faculty and by a number of individuals and teams who regularly work to ensure the quality of our education, educational [...]

The U.S. war on drugs continues, now CNN reports that U.S. law enforcement confirm illegal drug cartels are operating in over 200 American cities.
Does the U.S. drug appetite fuel illegal gun trafficking across the border?
Are we winning the war on drugs? Opinions seem to be varied. Some suggest that it may be time [...]

The World Health Organization has declared a pandemic for the novel H1N1 virus.
This is the first flu pandemic is nearly four decades. The good news seems to be that the virus has not mutated and spawned even worst mutations. Yet there are deaths associated with the virus. The CDC continues to recommend commonsensical health and [...]

My father used to tell me “Son, … you can’t cure stupid.”, and the longer I am in this business, the more I have to agree with that statement. You would think the general public would learn from past disasters, but a recent report by Rice University claims that lessons learned during Hurricane Katrina were [...]

I checked in with a colleague recently, James Soukup, who manages a PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point) and Countywide Emergency Communications Center (9-1-1). I asked him to identify one of the most critical issues facing emergency communications today and he shared the comment below about how our cell phones connect – or don’t – [...]

A busy week is on the horizon starting March 11, with a host of public safety scholar practitioner events. These events span the spectrum for public safety, from criminal justice and law enforcement, to homeland security, security management, emergency management and IT security. I’m proud that several of my faculty colleagues will be presenting at [...]

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 [...]