Tuesday, May 24, 2016

The Improvised Sit Room

From a discussion over at edcforums comes this tip from a Police negotiator:

[I carry] 3 pages of easel pad sized paper - Several years ago I stumbled across a pad of large easel sized paper that had the sticky adhesive on the back making them like GIGANTIC sized sticky notes. After some contemplation, I used waxed paper to create a backing for the sticky adhesive strip. Once the adhesive was covered I folded the sheets down to a size suitable to fit in my ziplock bag "first responder" kit. Now, when I'm in my patrol car and am on scene of a situation I can pull out these large sheets of paper, pull the wax paper backing off and stick them to the side of my patrol car (Tahoe) to start some very rudimentary situation boards. This has saved my rear end a couple of times and most of my team has adopted the idea and carry them also.

To be able to turn any space, even a collection of parked cars, into an information and strategy center is incredibly powerful. I could easily see how this setup, plus anti-Blah Blah Blah skills, could go a long way towards organizing a response to a high pressure and fluid situation.

The super sized Post It notes this officer is referring to can be found here, and while they're probably a great value, they aren't cheap enough for me to consider them an impulse buy. Still, I'll keep an eye out for them, perhaps I can catch a deal? You just never know when you'll need to improvise a coding design session or work out a Lego army attack strategy.

Related to this is the old whiteboard marker on a car-window hack. Though a few poster size sheets of paper are far easier to read than scribbles on a window. And the paper serves as a permanent record, too.

See what else this particular negotiator carries here.

No comments:

Post a Comment