Jim Etzin recently retired as the supervisor of the Farmington Hills (Michigan) Fire Department’s training division and currently serves as the Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services Coordinator for the Oakland County Tactical Consortium (OakTac), a mutual aid organization comprised of 40 law enforcement agencies, multiple fire departments, and other stakeholders protecting approximately 1.3 million residents. He’s also the founder of the International Tactical EMS Association (ITEMS), served as a United States Navy corpsman during combat operations in Operation Desert Storm, and then as a full-time combat medicine instructor for the 1st Marine Division. After becoming the first corpsman to ever attend the United States Marine Corps Military Police School and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) School, he then served as both an operator and medic for the lone full-time Marine Corps SWAT team at the time. In the immediate aftermath of the infamous North Hollywood Bank of America takeover robbery and shootout in 1997, two years prior to the tragedy at Columbine High School, he was the first in the United States to conceptualize extraordinary deployment into active violence environments by conventional fire service personnel.

Mr. Etzin is a member of the review committee for the National Tactical Officer Association’s (NTOA) Tactical Response Operations Standard (TROS), represents the NTOA on the National Fire Protection Association’s 3000 Standard for an Active Shooter / Hostile Event Response Committee, is currently a subject matter expert for the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center, speaks at numerous international, national, and state conferences, and writes journal articles regarding Tactical Emergency Medical Support and collaborative active violence response. He is a trained hostage negotiator, NTOA Rescue Task Force instructor trainer, has obtained numerous active violence response instructor certifications, and serves as an instructor for OakTac’s Active Violence Response, Active Violence Response Supervisor, Warm Zone Care, and Combating Fire as a Weapon training programs Additionally, he has helped develop a federally funded “Emergency Medical Response to Active Assailant Incidents” computer-based awareness course, as well as one-day operations level and two-day technician level courses. In April of 2016, he organized the 1st Annual North American Active Assailant Conference (NAAAC). Currently in its sixth year and attended by nearly 2,000 law enforcement officers, fire department personnel, and emergency medical services providers, it serves as the largest conference in the world addressing emergency response to active violence.

Mr. Etzin has also written numerous successful Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grant proposals for essential regional equipment and training and leads site visits to communities recently impacted by active violence for the purposes of paying forward lessons learned to other law enforcement agencies and fire departments throughout the United States. Given his 40 years studying, practicing, and instructing special operations medicine and critical incident response, he's considered one of the world’s leading authorities on collaborative public safety response to domestic and international terrorism.