Services and Programs
The National Maritime Law Enforcement Academy (NMLEA) was formed in 2000 as a non-profit professional provider of subject matter expertise in the maritime law enforcement and public safety arena, offering Assessments, Advocacy, Consultation, Training, Tools, Technologies and Service to the professionals that patrol, protect and preserve our Nation’s waterways. (The International Maritime Law Enforcement Academy was formed in 2012 as business subsidiary of the NMLEA.)
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In service to those who serve, the Academy is the world's premier maritime operational consultants, training mentors, business counselors, and advocacy advisors.
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The Challenges for Today's Maritime Public Safety Professionals
Today’s maritime public safety agency or marine unit faces a lot of challenges, as outlined in an NMLEA White Paper entitled Navigating the Changing Seascape of Maritime Public Safety. The maritime domain continues to evolve with rapidly advancing technologies, a challenging competitive landscape, a persistent threat environment, altering and increasing operational requirements, and a dynamically shifting workforce. Those businesses, organizations and governments who work in and around our maritime law enforcement, emergency response and public safety community need operational guidance, acquisition expertise, training assistance, exercise management and strategic vision to meet their goals and objectives. These organizations need the best People, the right Platforms (or Products) to provide to their operators, the most efficient and effective Processes, and the ability to Perform, (or Performance) to meet their mission requirements. This is what we call the “4 P’s of Public Safety”.
And in each of those four categories, leaders must constantly balance and evaluate Capacity and Capability: Do we have the right tools to do the job? Are there better solutions that can enable us to do the job better, easier or more efficiently and effectively? Are our people trained appropriately to do the job and to use these tools, or are we incurring a liability that we could otherwise avoid? Is our training keeping up with the people, the technologies, the environment and the evolving world around us? All good questions that face every organization and its leaders across the maritime public safety domain.
And when it comes to searching for and selecting new pieces of equipment, those challenges are accentuated from loss of institutional knowledge (experienced people within your agency have retired), limited personnel resources (and consequently, the responsibility to search for and select new equipment falls on an officer who is already multi-tasking), and improperly trained or inexperienced procurement personnel. Vendors, equipment providers and manufacturers face similar challenges as they don’t always have the bandwidth and resources to reach all of those prospective clients, and provide them with the information that can help make more educated decisions. As the bridge between industry and the officer, the Academy has the answer.
Acquisition programs in particular, frequently have difficulty meeting aggressive cost requirements, schedule deadlines, and technical objectives. Those personnel put in positions to manage and acquisition process are often challenged to understand topics as diverse as risk identification and mitigation, selection and integration of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, process capability, program management, architecture, survivability, interoperability, source selection, and contract monitoring. Put simply, sometimes the most obvious questions are difficult to answer without access to the right resources and experts.
Therefore, it is the goal of the Academy to provide those important resources, the expert guidance, and the demonstrated areas of knowledge that are essential to operational success for agencies and organizations all across the world's maritime domain. Some specific programs designed to meet these evolving challenges and to help agencies are listed below.
Our Services and Solutions
The Academy Approach to Comprehensive Training Solutions (ACTS Process):
Regardless of your type of organization (manufacturer, retailer, government agency, defense contractor, law enforcement agency or emergency services department,) training is a part of your DNA. Training is what makes you, your people, and your organization function. The better the training, the better the people. The better the people, the better the organization. The better the organization, the more successful you are. Put simply, training effects your bottom line, whether it’s training your employees, or training the people that are going you use your product(s).
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So, what constitutes “good training?” How do you discern good training from not-so-good training, or good training from excellent training? How do you ensure that the training programs you put together actually do what you intended them to do? How do you identify what training is needed, how the training should be designed, or what you should expect after training is delivered? And lastly, how do you know if the training is actually working?
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The Academy Approach to Comprehensive Training Solutions (ACTS) is a process for Evaluating, Planning, Designing and Implementing a Training Program utilizing the skills of Master Trainers, Facilitators, Coaches and Instructional Designers. This is how we ACT (Assess, Consult, Train,) and it is how National Standards of Training are born.
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This is how we become an extension of your Training Staff and enhance your programs through a cost effective and proven methodology.
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Exercise, Exercise, Exercise!
Consultation, Design, Planning, Facilitation, Coordination, Management, Evaluation and Review
As recognized by all of us, the best way to evaluate and measure our preparedness is to test our capabilities through exercises. Beyond the training, it is the table-top exercises, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises that play a critical roll in ensuring our people, our agencies, and our partners are ready for that next port security event, terrorist attack, active shooter engagement, mass-casualty incident, or the next natural disaster that strikes our region. And although often a required element of our role as public safety professionals, agencies don't always have the time, experience, knowledge or resources to put together an effective exercise.
Having participated, planned and coordinated exercises all across the United States in the Nation's most complex ports (Boston, New York, Miami, etc.) this is where the NMLEA staff with its cadre of state, federal and U.S. Coast Guard experienced exercise practitioners can help you. From the role of exercise consultant, planner, designer, administrator, facilitator, evaluator, or reviewer, the NMLEA staff can guide you from the beginning to the end of the process; from designing goals and objectives, to coordinating planning meetings, from writing injects to putting role player and participant guidebooks together, and from evaluation handbooks to after-action reports and outlining lessons learned, the NMLEA professionals can provide you with all the tools you need to ensure that your exercise meets your requirements, effectively measures your capabilities within the scope of your objectives, and is executed in accordance with the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) fundamental principles.
The Academy's experience includes:
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Exercise Director for the Nation's first full-scale PortSTEP exercise in the cruise ship capital of the world
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Facilitating and evaluating the maritime component of full-scale Urban Shield exercises in Boston
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Planning, design, and coordination for Operation Vigilant Sentry table-top and functional exercises for DHS Homeland Security Task Force - Southeast
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Exercise design and evaluation consultation to DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection office for maritime component of Area Maritime Security Training and Exercise Program (AMSTEP) full-scale exercise in the gateway to the Caribbean
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Training, evaluation and control for functional Exercise Cape Responder, and Exercise Cape Shield, centered around ferry operations in the Northeast
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Comprehensive table-top review of Nuclear Power Plant exercise operations for DHS Risk Management Division
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Operation Argus functional exercise design and evaluation team for ports of Jacksonville and Canaveral
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Operations Cuddlefish and Namor exercise design and evaluation for U.S. Navy submarine operations, and the testing of joint interagency task force resources
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Table-top exercise design, delivery, and facilitation for the industry leader in the handling and storage of bulk liquid products operating 19 terminals throughout North America
Find out more about our extensive exercise experience, and how it can be put to work for you by clicking here.
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NMLEA STAR Program:
The NMLEA has developed a program to help agencies and vendors discern products in a crowded marketplace by utilizing our staff and our members to provide reviews and evaluations of products. Our cadre of professionals have spent more than two decades compiling a body of knowledge and developing solutions for agencies in the areas of equipment evaluation, testing, acquisition, management and sustainment. We’ve taken that experience to develop an evaluation and assessment protocol and called it the NMLEA STAR PROGRAM: Service Tested – Academy Recognized. Helping teams throughout the Nation at the local, county, state, federal, tribal, military and private sector levels (and internationally through the IMLEA), the STAR Program provides a network of operators, peers and subject matter experts to help in the evaluation and assessment processes.
The FLEATS Program
The NMLEA has spent more than two decades compiling a body of knowledge and developing solutions for these areas of fleet acquisition, management, and sustainment, helping teams throughout the Nation at local, county, state, federal, tribal, military and private sector levels navigate the intricacies of acquiring complex maritime equipment and training. And we use the experience of seasoned professionals full of institutional knowledge. This becomes very important to departments and agencies that have seen a dramatic increase in retirements while struggling with recruitment and retention challenges. (See our White Papers and Webinars on the subjects by clicking the links.)
By being vendor agnostic, and utilizing the extensive knowledge of nationally recognized industry experts, our goal is to facilitate Fleet Lifecycle - Equipment dEsign, Evaluation, Acquisition, Assessment, Testing, Training and Sustainment - Services (FLEATS), and ensure that it is the best choice for our Nation’s maritime first responders to enhance their capabilities and achieve their mission objectives in the most innovative, technologically advanced, operationally efficient and cost-effective methods.
The SAFER-TEAM Program
Given the increase in active threat events occurring throughout the country, the National Maritime Law Enforcement Academy (NMLEA) has utilized its resources to address this growing public safety issue. Announced at its office in Tallahassee, Florida, the NMLEA has partnered with Red Team Safety and Security, a Jacksonville, Florida Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business to create a "SAFER-TEAM" Program for schools, churches, governments, businesses, and hospitals throughout Florida, and the country.
The SAFER-TEAM Program (Standardized Safety & Security Advancement From Enhanced Response Training for Employees, Administrators and family Members) utilizes best practices and instructor experience from ALERT, ATIRC, ALICE, COBRA and other national programs to deliver a customized and comprehensive active threat solution for organizations of all shapes and sizes. "We felt a need to act," said the Academy's Executive Director, Mark DuPont. "Since 2000, we have been dedicated to serving those who serve others, those who patrol, protect and preserve our communities. Those are officers whose families go to these schools, attend these churches and visit these hospitals, and we felt it our obligation to provide the same level of training resources and expertise to those organizations, just as much as we do to those officers."
The SAFER-TEAM concept is a comprehensive threat response program that looks at a facility's safety posture, makes recommendations for enhancement, and then trains the staff on how to respond to active threats in a manner that can protect everyone until law enforcement and emergency responders arrive. DuPont went on to say, "by partnering with Martin Lopez and the Red Team Safety and Security organization, as well as our cadre of Active Shooter law enforcement instructors, we were able to create a very unique program that focuses on training the staff, employees and families in response techniques. So this is not a typical Active Shooter class. We believe that the best plan is a comprehensive and holistic approach that involves everyone in the community, and the SAFER-TEAM Program provides everyone with the basic tools, knowledge and skills to respond."
An overview of the program, its elements (which include assessments, planning, training and online learning for sustainment) can be found by clicking here.
