CISM Perspectives Announces Relationship with Knoxville Police Department
April 29, 2011 - Daniel McGuire, President of CISM Perspectives, announced today that the firm will be working extensively with the Knoxville Police Department, Knoxville, TN, to plan for and respond to incidents when a police officer is killed in the line of duty.
“We are very pleased to be working with such a large and progressive police department as Knoxville,” stated McGuire. “Although we have worked with many local and regional fire and EMS agencies on this difficult topic, the Knoxville project represents our biggest challenge to date, as we provide information and guidance to a police department with hundreds of officers and civil employees.”
“Our nationally recognized training and consulting program Tradition, Honor, Respect™, which focuses on how any emergency services agency needs to pre-plan and respond appropriately when one of their own is killed in the line of duty, will now be used by our largest customer in CISM Perspectives’ 12 years of professional services,” McGuire added. McGuire is also a board certified grief counselor who specializes in educating and supporting all types of emergency responders.
CISM Perspectives is a Rochester, NY, based consulting and training company that works comprehensively with police, fire, and EMS agencies on a topic that is often overlooked. The grim reality persists that, in the United States, we lose more than one police officer, firefighter, or EMT every day due to line of duty deaths.
“One of the key deliverables with a project like this is to enable any emergency responder agency’s leadership to avoid the two most haunting questions that emerge once the funerals and memorials are over. Those two questions are: ‘Did we do it right?” and ‘Did we do enough?’ The answers to those questions will have repercussions for the surviving family as well as the surviving department.”
McGuire emphasized, “The regrettable common denominator in the emergency services is that most departments do not have any type of pre-plan or manual to help them though what we refer to as a ‘high-definition event,’ one that will remain with those left behind, for years to come. Having carefully planned and tradition-guided steps, logistics, and proper death notification tools can greatly lessen the traumatic impact and resulting grief difficulties. Departments that prepare for the worst will be equipped to affirm that yes, we did it right and we did do enough.” The Knoxville project begins on May 3, 2011, and will continue throughout the next several months until completion.
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