The commonly held belief that officers are safer when carrying fewer tools is a fallacy.

According to the National Institute of Justice’s study, Less Lethal Weapon Effectiveness, Use of Force, and Suspect & Officer Injuries, confrontations in which officers used less force than the suspects they were apprehending tended to last longer and lead to more injuries than confrontations that were subdued in the first iteration, or use of force. Hospitals that presume that tools add risk are actually pushing themselves into a higher risk category. Continue...

As a CEO, I’m most excited by companies that are using technology to make the world a safer place. And remarkably, I’ve been privileged enough to have been involved in two different companies that have been able to combine security and technology to create a better world.

Digital Ally helped law enforcement departments upgrade their incident recording capabilities. At the time, believe it or not, police cars had big, heavy VCR recorders in their trunks that needed to be wired to the dashboards. Digital Ally pioneered the deployment of the digital dashcam in a way that made it accessible and affordable, leading to widespread adoption. This technology is now used in the majority of police cars today.

There was no better feeling than going to sleep at night knowing that I was part of a company that was developing technology to make America safer.

So, naturally, I couldn’t stop there.

This is in response to Tom Smith's post, Hospital-Based Police, which was a response to The Downside of Hospital-Based Police published in Hospital Dive.

Every healthcare facility faces the question of "how do we best protect our people, patients, guests and institution?" But very few have the option - because of proximity, funding, or type of facility - to rely on local police or their own police force to secure their facility. The main difference between a hospital police officer and a hospital security officer is not who they are, but what they carry and the power to arrest.

Use this data to get the tools you need. 

Last month, a lone gunman shot and killed Dr. Michael Davidson at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. By all accounts, Davidson was an outstanding doctor, husband and father of three with a fourth child on the way. No one saw it coming.