What is it about cops and acronyms? Expressions of foul language denoted as SNAFU, FUBAR, and HUA. Tasks or events described as INFOSEC, PHYSEC, or SITREP. Then we have the "alphabet soup" of law enforcement agencies at the federal level of government. Some are well-known, such as the FBI, DEA, and USMS, and others not so well known such as OSI, DSS and so on. The point is that these abbreviations, although they represent important facets of law enforcement, never helped me in my policing career, except for one: ASIS.

If you have been a cop for any significant amount of time you have learned that networking is the absolute key to being successful. The old adage is true: "It is not important to always know the right answer, but to know where to find it". That is what ASIS does for a cop. It puts the police--at least once a month, "shoulder to shoulder" at meetings, and in contact with their private security counterparts.

ASIS, founded in 1955, originally stood for the "American Society for Industrial Security" and has been changed to "ASIS International," (for good reason: there are over 33,000 members worldwide), but within in the industry it is known as just ASIS, pronounced "as-is". I have found that the local chapter membership contains the "Who's Who" of not only security, but those cops seeking to be informed law enforcement as well. Let's face it, if an active shooter steps into your local shopping mall with deadly intentions, then the first responder is, guess who? Not you. It will be mall security. Therefore, as a tactically oriented and forward thinking cop, I would want to obtain whatever floor plan (at a minimum) of the mall that I could before the potential catastrophe. I may, even as a patrol supervisor or SWAT commander, want to rehearse a full-blown deployment or at least a table-top exercise involving those who perform physical security at the site in question.

Whether training for the eventuality or actually responding to the real thing, it pays to know who the security manager is at the mall, or anywhere for that matter, before the first shots are fired. To be effective, you have to network.