Reflex Protect: The Missing Piece

I’m often asked why I joined the Reflex Protect team and am now working at helping grow the company into a household name. The simple answer is, “Reflex Protect is the missing piece.”

Now, let me explain that in a little more depth. I’ve been teaching safety, self-defense, weapons, and improvised weapons for a long time. I’ve been focusing on Active Shooter and Active Threat Response since the 2012 shooting at the Aurora, CO, movie theater.

Most of the weapons I’ve taught require you to be within arms reach of your attacker to defend yourself. The cane provides a little distance, and pepper spray provides a little more. The problems with these are that most of them take a fair amount of time to become competent with, especially those that require you to be close to your assailant, and I’ve only recommended pepper sprays for outdoor use in certain situations because of the way it contaminates everyone in the vicinity, often including the person who sprays it.

Improvised weapons are just that. You improvise with whatever is available as you have no other choice. Improvised weapons are more of a mindset than an object. I can use a pencil as well as a “tactical pen” (Although I don’t know if I can kill three people with a pencil like the legend about John Wick), and I can use a stick to defend myself as if it were a Korean Dan Bong (short stick) or ASP baton. Heck, thanks to my friend and fellow Hapkido instructor Geoff Booth, I can use a plastic shopping bag to execute Hapkido techniques with. (Geoff calls it Bag-Fu in his seminars.) But again, it’s mindset over object. Realizing and recognizing you can use anything to defend yourself.

Why Improvise When There Is A Tool For The Job?

But why plan to improvise? When I was teaching Active Shooter and Active Threat Response classes to teachers, hospital staff, and other business people, I had to teach them how to improvise when defending themselves, because weapons were not allowed in the places I was teaching, and as I said above, pepper spray has too many negative consequences when used inside a building. That’s why I say Reflex Protect is the missing piece, and that is the exact thing I told the CEO of the start up when he asked me my thoughts on it. Instead of showing a teacher how to use a fire extinguisher as a weapon (Something I still do in case Reflex Protect isn’t available), or how to hammer fist with keys or a stapler, I can show teachers and others not trained in fighting to defend themselves with the Reflex Protect Defensive Spray and keep themselves and others safe.

Reflex Protect makes a device that shoots a patented, non-lethal debilitating gel with great accuracy. Unlike pepper spray, the gel does not contaminate a room and debilitate bystanders. It also has a neutralizing agent that works faster than any other defensive spray decontaminate. It’s been approved for healthcare, schools, houses of worship, and other offices, and has been successfully deployed to prevent harm to healthcare workers in a hospital setting.

It really is the missing piece. One standard I looked at was my high school daughter. Besides my firearms, I don’t think she, or her friends, could stop me with most of the weapons in my office. (And I have more than you can imagine.)  And the biggest drawback with most of the weapons I have is that she would have to get within arm’s reach of me, and that means I can hit her back. With Reflex Protect, she could spray me from 15 feet away and put me down. Yes, that’s the missing piece for non-lethal response to violence. Programs abound, mine included, telling people to “Run-Hide-Fight” or another similar model. But we are not giving people a tool and means to fight back effectively.

With Reflex Protect, I’m teaching an “Escape-Deny-Defend” non-linear model with the low impact and highly empowering classes we’ve been conducting along with a Reflex Protect certification as part of the Defend component. So we are not only teaching people to fight back when necessary, but providing a non-lethal tool that has been accepted by boards, administration, legal departments, risk managers, and insurance companies.

And this goes beyond Active Shooters or Active Threats. It solves many workplace violence issues that need to be resolved with a non-lethal means in the most humane way possible. And that is why insurance companies are starting to agree that Reflex Protect is the best practice for workplace violence response. Physically stopping someone often results in injury to both the suspect and often to those responding. Sometimes these injuries are permanent. In our litigious society, this costs a lot of money. Stopping a person with Reflex Protect Presidia Gel, and then being able to reverse the affects of the gel within a matter of minutes with Reflex Remove, the patent pending decontaminate, is much safer and more humane for all. Not to mention a lot cheaper!

Hitting a guy with an ASP baton can cause severe injury, even when trained personnel are attempting to cause minimal injury with their strikes. A person can go down fast when being tased and injure themselves, sometimes severely if their head hits something. (Not to mention tasers are very expensive and wouldn’t be able to issue to all teachers or nurses, etc.) Pepper sprays cross contaminate the entire area and will get into the HVAC system. Improvised weapons can severely injure a person, and are difficult for non-fight trained people to employ. Reflex Protect is the only thing I know of that doesn’t have any of these drawbacks. Again, it really is the missing piece.

It’s easy to use, intuitive, and effective. A person can be trained in a short amount time and be able to stop a violent person from a distance. Is it a magic wand? Of course not. Could it be defeated? Yes, such as a person wearing a motorcycle helmet with mask. (However, I do think the Presidia Gel sprayed on the mask would make it harder to see through.) To be effective, you must spray it in the violent person’s eyes. So, it’s not the answer to everything, and it’s not a 100% cure for all workplace violence. But nothing is. However, I will say Reflex Protect is the best non-lethal defensive tool I have come across, and that’s why I joined the company, and that’s why I say Reflex Protect is the missing piece.