NAPD 5801 SW 120 Ave Miami, FL 33183 Phone 1-866-200-2123

THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF Police Diving

The NAPD was formed in 1988 by a group of full-time police divers to establish a national standard for police and public safety diver training and certification.

The NAPD is concerned with police and public safety diver training, state of the art diving techniques, training methods and underwater investigations.

The NAPD has provided training to police officers, fire departments, military divers, and environmental investigators from throughout North America, Central America, Russia, Australia, and The Caribbean.

Police Diver Course Overview The Police Diver Course is an intensive 80-hour course designed to enhance the knowledge, skills, and abilities of public safety divers. The course will combine classroom instruction with practical in-water application. The student will be exposed to tasks that directly relate to public safety diving:

• Underwater Search and Recovery • Selection of Search Patterns • Underwater Crime Scene Processing • Underwater Investigation • Dive Team Management and Organization • Understanding the Psychology of Stress, Fear, and Panic

Upon successful completion of the course, each student will receive a certificate, recognizing him or her as a Police Diver.

Course Requirements This is a strenuous course of training. Each participant must be in reasonably good health to take part in the class. Because of the dynamics of the course, extreme flexibility is required in each day’s schedule. Anticipate daily sessions of 8 to 12 hours. A list of required equipment will be sent to the student upon receipt of registration.

Course Fee: $790.00 The course fee includes tuition, student manual, underwater writing slates, navigational compass, rigid grid, dive pin for uniform, air fills for course dives, a Special Response Diver T-shirt, and the first year of membership in the NAPD.

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Prerequisites A current Open Water Rating from a nationally recognized SCUBA certifying agency: and current CPR and First Aid training.

The Instructor Michael Gast is an active police diver with Miami Dade, Florida police dive team. He has extensive experience, with over 20 years as a full-time police diver. He has personally been involved in more than 5,000 underwater recovery and investigation operations. He was the Dive Coordinator for the recovery efforts of ValuJet Flight 592 in 1996. Michael is the founder and president of the NAPD.

Required Equipment Each student is required to provide his or her own dive equipment. Some dive equipment is available for rental at course location on a limited basis. You may discuss this option during registration. The following is a list of equipment required to participate in the course.

• Buoyancy Compensator Device (BCD)

• Regulator

• 2 Air Cylinders

• Weight with weight belt

• Gear Bag

• Mask

• Fins

• Snorkel

• Wet Suit

• Dive Boots

• Dive Knife

• Underwater Watch

• Underwater Knife

• Gloves

“The Cutting Edge in Public Safety Diver Training”

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A Critical Look At Police Diver Training by Michael W. Gast President of the NAPD (National Academy of Police Diving Inc.)

Before one can look critically at police and special response diver training that individual must first understand the mission of the response diver. He must be qualified to evaluate existing training programs and recognize the problems and strengths of those programs. Only then can a properly weighted critique be produced and discussed. This writer shall endeavor to stay within the above criteria in this article.

The mission of the police diver is as varied as the mission of any other police officer. The primary responsibility of the police diver, regardless of where he or she works, is to conduct underwater recovery operations. This at first may sound simple, but the police diver must be properly trained to handle anything from a simple recovery of lost property to an intense search for a murder weapon. The police diver might be required to change the propellers on a police boat, check for explosives on a cruise ship, or recover a drowning or murder victim. All of this is conducted in environments ranging from zero visibility to near perfect conditions, from black-water diving to groping on the bottom under two to four feet of mud. The police diver does not have the luxury of scheduling his or her dives. He or she might be awakened from a restful sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning ready to dive within the hour. Some police divers are afforded the opportunity to use high tech equipment, while most must do their jobs with common sense and perseverance. The common thread, which should tie all police divers together, is police diver training.

Since 1958, when Mike Nelson a former US Navy diver assisted local law enforcement agencies in conducting underwater investigations on the weekly TV series Sea Hunt, the number of police divers has grown. Police agencies have come to see the need of police officers conducting underwater investigations. However, the question is, what type of special training is necessary for a police officer to become a competent police diver?

Lloyd Bridges (Mike Nelson) brought scuba diving into our living rooms, and has been recognized as the father of sport diving from which there has been a yearly geometric increase in the number of non military personnel trained in the use of scuba. Within this growing group of divers there were always police officers that volunteered their skills and equipment to their respective agencies. This in fact is the way most police dive teams were started and unfortunately this practice continues today. However, this is not to say that all police dive teams fall into this grouping. For example, in 1959 the Connecticut State police started their dive team by sending volunteers to the US Navy underwater diving school in Groton, Connecticut. About this same time the Miami Dade Police Department, then the Dade County Sheriff's Office, hired a recently discharged US Navy diver. His name was Edwin Blaze Zehnder. Because of his diving ability he was assigned to the accident unit. During his first year as a Deputy Sheriff he contracted spinal meningitis along with another Deputy. Both were involved in administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a victim they pulled from a submerged car. Ed survived the treatment with the loss of his hearing, while his partner died.

During his recuperation Zehnder was approached by a commander and asked if he would, bearing on his amassed training as a navy diver, write a police diver-training manual for the department. Zehnder agreed. Though hampered by an eighth grade formal education, he produced a diver training manual for the Public Safety Department of which its content and standards foreshadowed the safety diving standards established by the diving industry in following years. By 1961 he was the officer in charge of the Dade County Public Safety Department Underwater Recovery Team. Edwin Blaze Zehnder has been reported to be the father of police diving, and his dive team one of the best. The Miami Dade Police Dive Team today consists of five full time police divers, one sergeant and four police officers. Each diver is assigned personal dive equipment and a marked police dive van. All are on call twenty-four hours a day. Officer Zehnder retired from the Miami Dade Police Department in 1989, but his badge number 100 is prominently displayed on the dive team logo. His dream was that one-day all police divers would receive the same training and standards, and that there would be established a forum for the exchange of new ideas and expertise among police divers.

Several years ago the State of Florida, Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission began moving in the right direction when it authorized the establishment of standardized training for police divers. This course is entitled Underwater Police Science and Technology and is approved for second dollar funding. The problem is that the goals and objectives of the course are not achieved in a standardized manner. This is primarily because of the lack of practical experience on the part of the instructors who are utilized to teach the course. Any individual who has a police instructor 3

certification in the State of Florida can teach the course regardless of whether or not that individual has any police diving experience. It seems that the prevailing mind set is that there is little difference between sport diving and police diving, and to this I will say that I have personally observed sport divers with instructor ratings attempt low visibility task oriented dives, only to become stressed out of control and abort the dive. Indeed, police diving is a special type of diving that requires special training and skills, as well as a predisposed mindset. Several reputable dive-training agencies have attempted to gain a foothold in this unfamiliar area of training with little success, with the exception of one. Dive Rescue International out of Ft. Collins, Colorado has succeeded. They have established a great deal of empirical based instruction and information. They have excelled in their ongoing training and upgrading of procedures. However, the primary complaint from individuals who have participated in Dive Rescue International training is that they are given textbook answers without the substance of practical experience. It is my understanding that Dive Rescue International is in the process of improving it's practical/experience base instruction. If this is accomplished, then Dive Rescue International will have achieved its goal. This is perhaps the reason why police divers lack the proper skills to perform safely and effectively. Based on firsthand observable information, they appear no more than glorified sport divers. Public Safety Diver training as a singular entity cannot meet the requirements necessary to conduct police diving. Even though there is a considerable amount of common ground between a police diver and a fire rescue diver, there is a substantial amount of expertise to be derived from each.

The National Academy of Police Diving Inc. (NAPD) is a non-profit corporation in the State of Florida. It was established for the purpose of standardizing training and the certification of Police and Special Response Divers, as well as establishing a viable resource of expertise and experience in police underwater search and recovery. With the goal of establishing interagency cooperation and training, enhancing the exchange of information among police divers through publications and training seminars, and providing an educational outlet to the general public pertaining to the mission of police diving it is successfully promoting safety in the aquatic environment.

As a professional organization, the (NAPD) was established with the idea that the best qualified individuals to teach police diving were active police divers. With this in mind, the academy has grown from three police divers from three police agencies to encompass police divers from over twenty-five agencies across the country. Incorporation academy staff members have assisted in eight police dive courses through out the state of Florida.

In summary, the training of police divers is still in its crawling stage. It is imperative that standards be established and held firmly pertaining to police diver training. That they be properly solicited from individuals who are on the cutting edge. By being active they are more able to define the training needs.