Not as metal as it could be

One of my favorite events of the year is here again: the annual ILEETA training conference.

ILEETA stands for International Law Enforcement Educators & Trainers Association. ILEETA was founded several years ago by Ed Nowicki and a group of other dedicated law enforcement trainers. Simply put, it's the best organization I've ever encountered for anyone in the law enforcement community involved in training and education.

One of the cool things about the conference is the swag. While this year's haul is not as impressive as in years past (times are hard, folks) it's still pretty cool.

This year I opened my official ILEETA duffel bag and found this knife:

Pretty sweet, huh? Now, check out the box it came in:



"DARK SILENCE"! If you ask me, that's pretty f*cking metal. The only way that knife could be more metal would be if they spelled "silence" with a "y".

ILEETA Conference, Day 1: high on swag

Well, day one is over, and I'm sitting here looking over my swag from today. The conference organizers really outdid themselves this year. Here's the haul so far:

-2 ILEETA logo polo shirts

-An ILEETA sweatshirt

-An ILEETA hooded sweatshirt

-A laptop computer briefcase (this saved me some money, because I was about to buy one this week.)

-A black nylon gym bag with the ILEETA logo tastefully displayed on the side, containing:
-A Princeton Tec mini flashlight
-A 1gig flash drive
-2 pepper sprays
-A notebook/binder
-A whole bunch of free pens, carabiners, mini-lights, stress balls and assorted brochures and publications.

Then, while going around the vendors, I picked up a Magnum Claw. The Magnum Claw is a cool tire spike contraption that you can place under the wheel of a parked car; the car drives over the spikes and is deflated. Good times! I also got some more flash drives, a little stress ball shaped like a hand grenade, a canvass tote bag and some gun cleaning supplies from OTIS and a bunch more stuff than I can remember. Finally, I won a coupon for half off the price of a groundfighting class I'm interested in.

Oh, man, I bought some stuff too. Two new KA-BAR knives: a TDI law enforcement knife, and a new product called a TDI-LDK, that's a small knife that can be worn around the neck, or laced into a boot. I also picked up some new neoprene shooting gloves.

Cross your fingers for me, or chant nam myoho renge kyo, or something, because they have a kick-ass raffle later this week. The Bubs family arsenal could really expand if I get lucky.