For 21 years, Sam served as an instructor at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy, which is a section of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. His primary duties were in the areas of defensive tactics, response to resistance, officer survival, combative firearms training and physical conditioning. He spent the next 5 years as Chief of Police at the Mechanicsburg Police Department. Upon retiring in 2013, Sam has focused his attention on the Response to Resistance survey and legal services. To date, well over 60,000 civilians, law enforcement, correctional, and security officers have been surveyed in every state in the United States.

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Sam’s professional goal is to make history by supporting and educating the public safety community on the use of force topic. Nationally, there are no guidelines for what constitutes reasonable responses to resistance, assault and aggression. Imagine, going to a football or baseball game where each team has their own rules for how to play the game or worse, there are no standard rules at all. This is the current, national situation for the public safety community. Some departments have an established Response to Resistance/Aggression Policy, others have no policy. Sam intends to “even the playing field” by establishing national guidelines that define what are reasonable responses to resistance.

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As an Expert Witness, Sam has testified in more than 350 law suits throughout the United States in defense of police and correctional officers and their respective organizations. This includes 120 law suits relating to the use of a firearm by the officer(s).  Sam conducted a series of national research projects to define reasonable responses to resistance and aggression culminating in the creation of the Action-Response Continuum. He holds a fifth-degree black belt in Karate and is a past gold medal winner in the Ohio Law Enforcement Olympics.  Sam is a 1997 winner of the Ohio Attorney General’s Professionalism Award.