The GREETERS​​​: ​​​​  

 

 

Here is Frank Perez, greeter and Pancake Breakfast committee member who brought in $2,000 more than last year from sponsors, thanks to all the club members and their generosity, especially Carrie Lifer...Way to go, members. Frank is seen greeting PDG Harvey Smith, with Phil Raynes in the background. It appears their inner light is shining brightly.

 

And here are the Pancake Breakfast committee members who are still smiling a week before the big event. 

 

And Chuck King is setting up the equipment for our guest speaker this day, 

Centerville Police Officer John Davis.

 

And here is Don Overly, having arrived with his wife Dottie, always a delightful guest.

And here you see Tom Broadwell (L) and Chuck King getting the sign-in table ready.They seem to be in the dark, but that's just the way the sun shines inside, or doesn't.

Phil Raynes (R) has stopped to talk to Dale Berry. Word is Phil went golfing Saturday.

Chuck introduced our speaker, seen in the picture below.

 Chuck said Officer Davis has been a Centerville Policeman for 25 years and is president of the Miami Valley Crime Prevention Association, and vice president of the Ohio Crime Prevention Association.

 

Officer Davis said the presentation was designed to be an hour but he would try to squeeze the essentials into the half hour allotted. It was developed by the MVCPA, he said. It has been presented for the past three years across the country, from Long Beach, Calif., to Las Vegas, and places East. They were in Las Vegas three times, he said, and someone who had attended his presentation out there wrote him after the recent mass shooting, telling him they appreciated what he had told them, as he heard sounds that people said were probably fireworks, and realized he should move out of harms way, in time to be ahead of the crowd that realized it was gunshots and rushed to leave.

 

Officer Davis said, "The key is to recognize it (danger) and to do something." He asked the club members who they thought might be likely victims. "Anyone," they said. But he said most people think that "anyone" is "someone else." 

Law enforcement takes about two to three minutes to get to a scene. It is not law enforcement's job to stop and help you, but to find the armed terrorist or gunman and get rid of the threat, he said.

You should not have a gun in your hand when they arrive, even if you found the gunman's gun, or have a gun of your own. You should also not point your hand as if you had a gun in it, he said.

Police are looking for the gunman and if you are not him, then you'd better not look or act like him, he said. 

He asked what event have we seen that was a turning point in terrorist attacks, and the answer was Sept. 12, the day after 9/11. He showed the area of the country where most of the attacks have occurred. It's not in Montana, but concentrated more in the Mid-West area. See map below:

 

The circled area below shows what has happened within an 8-hour drive of our area. 

"It could happen here within an eight-hour drive," Officer Davis said.

There have been 40 more incidents, 231 casualties, 92 killings, 139 wounded. From 2001, 16 of the shooters have committed suicide, 14 have been killed by law enforcement, 12 have been arrested.

Six people were harmed when the public did something and 26 were hurt when people did nothing and sat there and watched. When they reacted and did something the mortality rate was 2.7 percent, and when they did nothing it was 13.1 percent.

You need to react if something doesn't feel right, Officer Davis said. Do something different, he said. You need to always be aware of your situation, know where your exits are. "Don't assume a hallway leads you to the outside. If you see something, say something," he said. Know your options: Run, hide, fight. If it is the only option, then fight, he said. Move with a purpose and don't waste time gathering up things, like briefcases and purses. Know the difference between something that can cover or protect you, versus something that just conceals you but easily lets bullets pass through. A chair won't do, and bullets will pass right through two doors of a car in the middle but not by the engine or back of the car, where there is more blockage inside the car.

If you can run, make sure you run in the right direction. You may have to leave others to go to safety, and should not try to stay behind, he said.

The police do not wait for a SWAT team but seek to take the fight to them, and people can get behind a door and use things to hit a guy trying to get in, but be sure the doors don't open out, and that he can just open them up and shoot away. Make sure if you hide that you do not find a place that restricts your movement. Bathrooms are a bad idea, he said, as there is only one in and one out, the same door. Also, everything is bolted down, he said.

Grabbing a fire extinguisher to use may not help as you will also be inhaling what comes out of it. It takes a lot to knock someone out, but if enough people go after someone, it can be done, he said. 

Still, "you're more likely to be stuck by lightning," than to be killed by a gunman, he said.

  An aside: A woman who worked at the DDN once told me about her dream that you have to keep laughing about. She said she was in a castle that was being stormed from outside. She gathered up things about her and jumped into a carriage and had gotten by the intruders, only to have to tell the coach driver to turn back. She had forgotten her purse, she said...I still have to laugh...it is so true...and hard to leave a purse....but as the Police Officer said, "LEAVE IT!" when needed to save your life. When Ace Elliott, long-time police reporter for the DDN was reporting on the missing wife of an employee at the newspaper, he told me one day that they had found her purse in a trash can. Then she just can't have run away on purpose as some had speculated, I told him. "A woman doesn't leave her purse behind." I knew then that Ted Sinks was the murderer. They found her body at the top of the old building at Fourth and Ludlow, where the newspaper operated then, and Sinks worked as a plumber. The mistake made, was that he had an employee at the paper help him carry a heavy canister from his home and then up to where they were pouring cement in an area at the top of the building, using the canister as a fill. When the connection was made that an employee had helped Sinks carry something from his home and they shut down the heating and cooling system to dig up the canister, the murder mystery was solved. A purse tells a lot of stories, which is why, perhaps for women it is their life line. One that if left behind might save your life and/or help solve the mystery of your disappearance. Let's hope we don't have to find out.
 

 

The song we sing for the upcoming Pancake Breakfast Fund-raiser Oct. 28, from 7 a.m. to noon, is

Don Gerhardt's original Pancake Breakfast song, sung to the tune of Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

 

The meeting was closed with the reciting of the Rotary Four-Way Test.