Etzin, James
High-Risk Unified Commander

Shortly after the April 20, 1999 tragedy at Columbine High School, law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and Canada began training on the "contact team and extraction team" approach to threat and casualty management during active violence. However, because conventional fire department and emergency medical services personnel still lacked the procedures, training, and equipment to enter the warm zones of such environments and Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS) providers weren’t always readily available, significant delays in accessing, treating, and transporting casualties remained. In the 23 years since that fateful spring day in Colorado, more and more law enforcement agencies, fire departments, and ambulance services have realized the importance of collaborative effort before, during, and after such critical incidents. This includes not only operations within the inner and outer perimeters, but also at the command and public messaging levels. Given the ever-increasing amount of mass violence now plaguing the country, virtually every public safety organization in North America is contemplating how to best achieve such collaboration. In response to this need, High-Risk Unified Commander (HRUC) was developed to provide contemporary strategy, tactics, and related information training officers and supervisors can then use to "stop the killing, dying and crying." With four of the eight hours of content being interactive, HRUC is a fast-paced yet comprehensive and realistic training program that offers front-line supervisors an unparalleled amount of information in a reasonable amount of time. Rather than offering theoretical and potentially impractical recommendations, the information shared is based on the experiences of supervisors who have responded to such tragedies. Participants will also learn how to apply lessons learned and recommendations to incidents occurring in urban environments with high operational tempo as well as rural ones with limited resources.

James Etzin - Bio
Jim Etzin is the Emergency Medical Services Coordinator for the Farmington Hills (MI) Fire Department and Oakland County Tactical Training Consortium (OakTac), a mutual aid organization comprised of 40 law enforcement agencies serving approximately 1.3 million people. He is also the founder of the International Tactical EMS Association (ITEMS) and served as a United States Navy corpsman during combat operations in Operation Desert Storm and then as a full-time combat medicine instructor for the 1st Marine Division. After becoming the first Corpsman to ever attend the United States Marine Corps Military Police School and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) School, he then served as both an operator and medic for the only full-time Marine Corps SWAT team at the time. In the immediate aftermath of the infamous North Hollywood Bank of America takeover robbery and shootout in 1997, two years prior to the incident at Columbine High School, Etzin was the first in the United States to conceptualize what's now known as the Rescue Task Force approach to casualty management within such environments. He has been studying, practicing, and teaching active assailant response and tactical medicine for 35 years and is consequently considered a subject matter expert on not only the history of these events but also how to best mitigate them tactically and medically.