(Police Foundation Vice President, Jim Burch, moderated the briefing)

Guardian 8 was invited to speak at a briefing in Washington D.C for the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Law Enforcement Caucus as part of a discussion about alternative, non-lethal, and less-lethal use of force options in law enforcement. The featured speakers at the briefing included the caucus co-chairs, Congressman Reichert (R-WA) and Congressman Pascrell (D-NJ), myself (Guardian 8's Training Headmaster), two senior NYPD command staff members, a Washington State SWAT officer, and one other less-lethal technology company representative. 

Aside from discussing the current state of policing and the less-lethal tools available to officers in the field today, nearly all of the featured officers mentioned the importance of a tool's effectiveness to end a use of force encounter at first iteration.  They also discussed at length the importance of scenario-based training when preparing and training their officers to deploy a new device.  It was great to hear that what is important to officers in the field is already incorporated into the Pro V2's capabilities and the Guardian 8 training platform.

When it was my turn to speak, I emphasized the concepts of de-escalation, documentation, and defense as critical supplements to law enforcement's traditional "Protect and Serve" motto. Guardian 8 acknowledges that the law enforcement profession is at a crossroads based on recent highly-publicized events, and I discussed the capability of the Pro V2 to increase transparency, reduce liability and decrease community mistrust.  These features make the Pro V2 an especially appropriate tool for highly-sensitive law enforcement arenas such as schools, universities and hospitals.  Anytime we can reduce the severity of a conflict and document the conflict for the record we reduce community strife and gain the trust of the public, which will hopefully allow us to avoid future incident

Feel free to read through the statement delivered to the caucus staff at the briefing below: