In addition to the Close Quarter Combat program, other defensive tactics seminars included "Close-Quarter Application of the Startle/Flinch Reflex" led by Tony Blauer, president of Blauer Tactical Confrontation Management Systems; and "Brutally Effective Assault Survival" by Richard Machowicz of the Bukido Institute. The Bukido program is not so much about defensive tactics as it is a way of thinking. Machowicz spent much of the two-hour seminar teaching the students to recognize threats and see targets that can be destroyed to neutralize those threats.
Classroom seminars were also well attended. There were at least three programs that focused on officer concerns about weapons of mass destruction. One concentrated on what kinds of devices can be used to disperse WMD agents, another on protective gear, and a third on general WMD knowledge for first responders.
Also reflecting the times, four of the classroom sessions involved terrorist interdiction. Instructors from HSS International led courses in ship interdiction and how to assault a train; retired Los Angeles Police Department SWAT commander and National Tactical Officer Association (NTOA) director at large Ron McCarthy presented a session on how local officers can respond to and prevent terrorist attacks; and LAPD detective and bomb tech Ralph Morten taught a 4-hour session on suicide bombers that was restricted to law enforcement personnel.
But, of course, TREXPO started as a police tactical show and, even with war and terrorism dominating the public agenda, it remains so. The overwhelming majority of the seminars were not designed to specifically address terrorism. Tactical police sessions included programs covering the selection of police snipers, K-9 units in SWAT operations, active shooter response tactics, executive security, explosive breaching, use of diversionary devices, tactical EMS programs, high-risk warrant service, and gang interdiction.
The next TREXPO show and conference is planned for Aug. 18-21 in Chantilly, Va.
