​Boynton Beach FL police released the unedited video showing Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael DeMarco approaching his ex-girlfriend Yuly Solano with a gun on Oct. 12. The image above is a screen grab from the video, which shows the officer walking towards the woman with his gun in his right hand. Three seconds later, he kills her and then himself. Deputy DeMarco was apparently distraught over the end of the relationship and an argument over property the two had acquired together during the relationship.

This is an extremely sad case. However, it is not the first of its kind. And it could have been worse for law enforcement.

Shawn Bryan, 35,was a State of New York corrections officer who served at the Rikers Island jail complex. On June 4, 2012, a judge issued a restraining order against Bryan at the request of Bryan’s ex-girlfriend. Bryan showed up at the Springfield, MA apartment that same day and created a disturbance. Officer Kevin Ambrose responded. When the officer agreed to stand by and allow the suspect to enter the residence to retrieve personal belongings, Bryan suddenly pushed his ex-girlfriend inside, leaving the officer outside the apartment.

When Officer Ambrose tried to force entry to intervene in what had become a domestic, Bryan used his duty weapon to shoot the officer through the front door. He then shot his ex-girlfriend multiple times while she held their 11-month old baby in her arms. Bryan fled the apartment and committed suicide in the parking lot a short time later. The property in question was a television purchased when the two were living together. The ex-girlfriend survived and the baby was unharmed, but Officer Ambrose was killed trying to protect them.

In the Boynton Beach case, the couple were in dispute over bedroom furniture. Don't mistake this situation for a simple disagreement about everyday objects worth just money; there is a symbolism here. Deputy DeMarco had filed a lawsuit over the property. Solano had told others that he was extremely angry about the idea "that another man would sleep on a mattress he had purchased." This kind of romantic obsession with a former lover can lead to deadly outcomes.

Sadly, the officer in this case was completely consumed with his obsession. It destroyed him. He was unwilling to let her live and unwilling to live if he could not have her. It is a sad case, but it could have been worse for law enforcement.

Read more on this article at http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/12/02/shocking-surveillance-video-shows-sheriffs-deputy-shooting-ex-girlfriend.html.

​Friends: The deadly protests in Dallas and Charlottesville involving the loss of multiple heroic police officers and civilian casualties has created a tremendous need in my professional life to seek out comprehensive answers for our profession. Can you help? 

I would like to identify 5-10 experienced law enforcement, riot or crowd control, and tactical experts who can help me create written recommendations and training for police commanders, decision-makers, and rank-and-file officers about the lessons learned from these types of incidents and how to prevent them. 

The experts I am looking for will have any of following skills/experience/training:

• 5+ years of law enforcement/policing experience, preferably in a mid- to large-sized jurisdiction;
•  Personal experience with riots/major crowd control incidents;
• Ability to share lessons learned from your own experiences or training with riots/crowd control;
• Mastery of current training methods/understanding of riots/crowd control;
• Understanding of insurgency/counterinsurgency principles;
• Combat/military experience involving movement and control of large crowds of non-combatants;
• Antifa/BLM/anarchist splinter group mindset and operations experts;
• Tactical experts in deploying less-lethal weaponry like tear/pepper gas/pepper ball;
• SWAT and SWAT gear experts;
• Police ICS/command post experts; and
• Anyone (including non-police observers) with inside knowledge of the unfolding of violent protests in Dallas, Baltimore, Berkeley, Seattle, Charlottesville, or Boston or similar incidents.  I have police sources at some of these sites, but would like input from you, if you were there.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: You need the true desire to use your knowledge, experience and training to help guide police training and policy for future incidents, not just to critique, tell war stories, or do "Monday-morning quarterbacking" of other people’s incidents.  We are looking for people with potential solutions that work.

Is this you?  Then partner with me to teach police officers what you have learned.  Even if you've never taught before but you have the expertise to share, I am interested in learning from you.  Please share this request with others outside LinkedIn.

Let’s write the comprehensive guide and create the training that police departments need to prevent and stop these incidents from turning violent. Think of it as the police answer to the anarchist's playbook.  The tactics of violent protesters are changing.  Let's build responses to better protect ourselves and civilians. Better planning, better equipment, and better tactics.

It's easy to sit back and say: "It should have been done differently."  Experts seek to share the solutions that will better prepare others for similar incidents.

Contact me by email at abumbak@yahoo.com or through my website at Dynamic Police Training with a summary of your skills and experience and outline what areas you can contribute. All inquiries, contributions, and identities will be kept 100% protected and confidential unless authorized for disclosure in writing by you.

Thanks for reading.  I look forward to working with you.

Hey, gang. A quick announcement for all my followers: the new NRA Officer Down seminar is being pushed back to summer 2018.  Why?  The short answer is: time.

With all the LODDs in my research queue, I still have so many pending responses from police departments that I can't put together the class in time for this summer.  I just can't rush the process of the research.  It takes a lot of time and I have not finished researching the most recent LODDs that you need to know the details about.  Despite overwhelming demand for this course, the seminar wouldn't be the best it could be, so we will plan to put it on next year.  Many thanks to Tim Cole at the NRA for helping us reschedule.

In other news, we do have a off-duty/plainclothes seminar with Rappahannock Regional CJA coming up in the early fall. Please join us there, if you can.  We also have several pending seminars with other agencies in the works who are interested in hosting this one-of-a-kind course.

Look for the Officer Down seminar to return to the NRA next year.  It will be worth the wait, I promise you.  Have additional questions?  Contact me.

The ballroom we had wasn't big enough to hold everyone! We had standing room only for our presentation in Nashville this week.

Thank you to all of the IADLEST members who showed an interest in our new training platform, Officer Down Online. We have 200+ people who have signed up to use the system already and hope to get your input on this new way of sharing information about LODDs.

Some great takeaways from the attendees: 
"Add pictures or icons to the system."
"I don't like having to guess details about the offender-- make it more straightforward."
"Let's push this training out to every municipality in the country."

It was an honor and a privilege to be invited back to IADLEST this year to share what we are doing. We made some new friends to whom we hope we can provide support and assistance. We truly hope to continue to be able to serve your organization in the coming years. 

We had quite a few police audience members at our course last week at the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA.  Just as a reminder, the course you attended is available for purchase on this site.  You participated in Courses #16 and #17.  There is a great deal of interest in plainclothes and off-duty encounters and how to keep our folks safe in these situations.  Contact me with any questions about this course.

Those of you who attended know that we learned about a life-saving product available to law enforcement officers only at www.dsmsafety.com.  Go there and get the equipment you need for you and your folks.  Also, be sure to check the back few pages of your student manual for the link to the NRA conference materials.

Many thanks to Tim Cole at the NRA for hosting our course and allowing LEOs from seven states to attend.  It was a privilege and an honor to have the opportunity to share what I have learned from 150+ LODDs with you, the people who need to know.

Thanks for all the inquiries about the upcoming seminars, gang.  I've been working long hours on my upcoming books over the holidays (and into January now!).  Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you all and my eager training audiences for 2017.  You expect great things from me and I plan to deliver everything you need.
 
I'm preparing for a new book launch next month, but this week I'm transitioning to preparing my seminar materials to teach you everything new that I have learned about LODDs.  You can find me at ILEETA in March, IADLEST and the NRA in May, and the regularly-scheduled Officer Down seminar at the NRA in August.

The ILEETA course will be on Fatal Off-Duty Encounters.  Register for ILEETA here.

At IADLEST, I will focus on sharing the Officer Down Online platform.  You can join us at IADLEST here.  

My two NRA courses this year will be: Fatal Off-Duty and Plainclothes Encounters (8 hours) and the Officer Down seminar (8 hours).  You can request seats at NRA here.  As always, these are tuition-free courses.

Please join me in the classroom or presentation auditorium this year.  I need your feedback to continue to improve what I do for the law enforcement community.  Fallen officers' stories need to be heard.  I ask for the opportunity to share their stories with you.

Police departments coping with an LODD often feel that they must protect their fallen officers-- which is a noble cause. But, we need to talk about LODDs.  Let me tell you why.

Last night, I had the great privilege of speaking with the patrol commander who was on duty when the public assassinations of Officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo occurred at the Cici's Pizza restaurant in Las Vegas on June 8, 2014.  I am glad to say I learned a tremendous amount of information about this incident directly from the department who lost these brave, well-trained, and dedicated men.

One of the things I noticed when I was researching this incident last month was the wide, public availability of detailed, open information provided by the department regarding the facts in this case.  This is not always the case.  Departments feel uneasy about sharing too much information about the incidents involved in LODDs.  They don't want their guy (or gal) criticized.  However, protecting fallen officers from scrutiny and withholding important case-related facts are two very different things.

In the case of Beck and Soldo, like the cases of so many fallen officers, no criticism can be laid at their feet. They were eating in a public place when two violent people decided to publicly murder them as a political statement.  LVMPD demonstrated a great openness about this incident, not just with me as a researcher and author of books about fallen officers, but with their community and the media.  They released much of the footage of the stand-off while preserving the dignity of the human beings who did not survive this incident. 

The commander I spoke yesterday said this about transparency in policing: "Our community expects it, and that's what we do."

As police assassinations continue to occur-- like they have in Dallas and Baton Rouge this summer, I think we need to become more willing to have conversations about the motives, means and opportunities cop-killers use to commit these atrocious and unprovoked attacks on police.  

Officer Down Online is now out of BETA testing! Thank you to all of the police and non-police testers for the feedback you provided.

For those who are not familiar with the language of video gamers regarding "BETA" testing, that means that the bugs are mostly worked out of the existing platform.  We now have a marketable product available for you to learn from without a risk of a big crash or problem.

I'm putting the Officer Down Online system on sale so you can pick it up for under $20. Try out several scenarios for free under the TRAIN ONLINE tab and see what you think. Our testers gave us many thumbs up! We hope you will, too.