Soldier Becomes Oldest U.S. Woman Competitor in Olympic History

By Tim Hipps
Special to American Forces Press Service

Aug. 13, 2008 - At age 56, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Elizabeth "Libby" Callahan became the oldest U.S. woman competitor in Olympic history with a 25th-place finish in the women's 25-meter pistol shooting event today at the Beijing Shooting Range Hall. "I've been told oldest-ever female Olympian of any nation, of all time," Callahan said. "But I don't know if that's right."

USA Shooting officials could not confirm that claim. At any rate, Callahan certainly has withstood the test of time on the competitive pistol-shooting line.

"Well, it shows my longevity, I guess," Callahan said with a laugh and a smile that rivaled the seemingly never-ending smiles of the Chinese hosts of the Beijing Games. "I'm just still kicking, and I'm not putting any restrictions on myself. It doesn't say I have to stop at a certain age.

"In fact, the oldest Olympic medalist was in shooting," she noted, "and he was 73, back in the early 1900s."

Therefore, Callahan, a four-time Olympian, already is considering taking a shot at the 2012 London Games.

"I'm not ruling it out," she said. "I'm not ruling anything out. I still feel good, and I still have that competitive fire in me."

Callahan's passion for pistol packing already has earned Summer Olympic trips to Barcelona, Atlanta and Athens, Greece, along with journeys to Hyderabad, India, for the Conseil Internationale du Sport Militaire's 2007 Military World Games, and to Salinas, Puerto Rico, for the 2005 Championships of the Americas. She's also competed in five world championships and as many Pan American Games.

After retiring in 2003 from a 28-year career with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, Callahan moved from Upper Marlboro, Md., to Pawleys Island, S.C., to be closer to her seven older brothers and sisters. She now has an unprecedented amount of free time to sharpen her shooting skills and compete internationally.

"What I've probably done in a lot of areas is that I've tried too hard," Callahan said. "I shoot great technique. I've been told this not just by U.S. coaches, but other international coaches. It's just something's happening just a few times in a match that throws me out of some competitions. That's a mental thing. And you know, the brain, the mind, is a terrible thing."

Callahan can easily laugh with herself -- seemingly oblivious to the fact that Father Time could be ticking on her athletic career. Her approach to the sport, however, remains unchanged as she approaches her 57th birthday.

"You still have to have the same mental approach, have to have the same techniques to execute the shot," she said. "There may be a different perspective in maybe somebody who is younger or hasn't been here before, but that's just all part of experience -- just having general experience in life.

"Throughout shooting, you will find that some things work at a certain period of time, and then after a while it doesn't work any more," she continued, "so you maybe try something different. Maybe it's your stance, maybe it's your grip, maybe it's your gun. There are always things that if something's not working and you've worked at it for a while, OK, let's try something different. How you execute, and how you execute under certain conditions, is always the important thing.

"I'm way [more] advanced than I was when I first started shooting," she said, "but it's some mental things that really grab me at certain times, and it hurts me in the match."

Callahan did not advance to the final here, where gold medalist Gundegmaa Otryad of Mongolia equaled the Olympic record with a 590 total. Germany's Munkhbayar Dorjsuren won the silver medal with a score of 587. China's Chen Ying took the bronze with a 585 total.

Callahan's career-best Olympic finish was 19th in the 2004 sport pistol event in Athens, where she also placed 30th in the air pistol competition.

"Some days you're really good. Some days you're really bad. And some days you're mediocre," she said. "That's what makes shooting interesting and, I guess, challenging. You can shoot a perfect score, and the next day go out and you aren't diddly squat."

Either way, Callahan always finds the resolve to shoot another day.

(Tim Hipps works in the U.S. Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command Public Affairs Office.)

Partnership to Help Army Reserve, D.C. Police Share Same Talent Pool

By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

July 14, 2008 - The adage, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," got a new twist today as the Army Reserve and the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia signed a partnership deal so they can recruit, hire and train people for both organizations. MPDC became the first law enforcement agency to partner with the Army Reserve in a unique arrangement that Army Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, called a win-win for the military as well as the police. Instead of competing for the same talent pool, they can now join forces to fill their ranks and train their members.

The agreement, signed at the Metropolitan Police Academy here, enables Army Reserve recruiters to refer recruits signing on as military police or active-duty military police joining the Army Reserve for civilian jobs with the MPDC. Similarly, the police department can refer its members for Army Reserve jobs.

The arrangement will enable the two organizations to help each other fill critical shortages while also taking advantage of the training and experience base both provide their members, Stultz said.

Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, noted today that the Army Reserve and MPDC are looking for recruits with many of the same attributes. Both want honest, drug-free members who know how to lead as well as follow and love their country and communities, he said.

Army 1st Sgt. Ryan Ervin of the 200th Military Police Command at Fort Meade, Md., also an MPDC officer, said the Metropolitan Police Department and Army Reserve both stand to benefit from sharing the professional, career-minded and goal-oriented recruits each attracts. Army experience gives police recruits an ability to think on their feet, work within a command structure and show flexibility when it's needed, he said.

Meanwhile, Stultz said, civilian police experience brings strong negotiating, interrogation and crime scene investigation skills to the Army Reserve.

The MPDC partnership is the Army Reserve's fifth so far, but about 50 others are in the works and nearly 150 additional employers have expressed interest in forming one.

What makes the concept so popular, even in the face of reserve deployments, is that it helps employers realize the upside of hiring Army Reservists, Stultz said. "Don't look at the Reserve as a drain on your force. Look at it as a value added," he said he tells employers.

As the long list of employers considering new partnerships grows, it's evident that employers already recognize the attributes Army Reservists bring to their work force, said Army Col. Dianna Cleven, an Office of the Army Reserve director. The advantage of partnerships, she said, is that it provides a formal structure so employers can find and tap into the Army Reserve's talent base while also providing an avenue for Army Reservists to link up with potential employers.

"It's a mechanism to link reservists looking for jobs in specific skills," Cleven said. "We're providing that mechanism through these partnerships that helps them connect the dots."

The MPDC, which needs to recruit about 350 police officers a year, sees the Army Reserve as a prime recruiting ground, Assistant Chief Joshua Ederheimer said during today's partnership signing ceremony at the Metropolitan Police Academy. He noted that the two organizations share a cultural ethos of service and sacrifice, with their members understanding and accepting personal risk to protect their fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, because the Army Reserve provides 93 percent of the Army's total military police force, its members who report for duty with the MPDC arrive with extensive military police training already under their belts.

Some arrive after active-duty assignments in military police units. Others are new recruits who attend basic training, then advanced individual training in military police skills before reporting to their Army Reserve units and starting their civilian careers.

"By that time, he is not just a high school graduate. Now he is a soldier," Stultz said. "He's got discipline. He's got leadership. He's got a work ethic and he's had training. Then (MPDC) can take him and develop him further."

MPDC Chief Cathy Lanier called the new partnership "a very significant and important step for us" that will help her department recruit and retain the high-skilled work force it it needs. "It will help make our force stronger and our city safer," she said.

Lanier can look within her own force for a glimpse into what the new partnership will offer. One of her officers, Greg Naguerka, arrived at the Metropolitan Police Academy in 2005 with seven years of military police experience that he said gave him a big leg up over his fellow police cadets.

Now an Army Reserve staff sergeant with the 200th Military Police Command at Fort Meade, Md., Nagurerka said his Army experience made him mentally prepared and physically fit for his police training and provided a strong foundation for his police career.
Army Sgt. Scott Dignan served with the MPDC for six years before joining the Army Reserve 12 years ago, and said the military has trained and tested him in ways that have boosted his civilian career.

"It has opened my eyes to a whole different way of leading and has been a true asset to me," said Dignan, now a lieutenant with the Metropolitan Police Department. "Between the leadership training and the deployments, it has taught me a lot about myself and given me experience that's been invaluable."

Stultz called today's signing ceremony a big day not just for the Army Reserve, but for the Army as a whole, which counts on its citizen-soldiers to sustain the all-volunteer force. To do that, he said, the Army Reserve needs to work cooperatively with civilian employers.

"A number of employers out there are saying that this is a great idea," and a way to attract everything from truck drivers to medical technologists to engineers to law enforcement officers to their work forces. "You name it, we've got it," Stultz said. "Partnerships help provide the conduit."

Military Servicemember Books

Military-Writers.com is a website committed to listing military personnel who have authored books.

William Gately is a Vietnam veteran and former vice-cop from the Metropolitan Police Department (Washington, DC). In 1970, after a three year enlistment in the Marines and tour in Vietnam he took the oath of police officer in the nation's capital. For the next eight years he served as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department. On June 17, 1972, William Gately was assigned to the Metropolitan Police Department tactical unit that surprised the Watergate Burglars. After leaving the joined the U.S. Customs Service, eventually rising to the rank of assistant Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Customs in Los Angeles.

William Gately co-authored Dead Ringer: An Insider's Account of the Mob's Colombian Connection. According to publisher’s weekly, “Gatley, an employee of the U.S. Customs Service; Joe Caffaro, a Sicilian-born businessman with Mafia ties; and Leo Fraley, an American career criminal who became involved in Colombian drug-smuggling--these men are an unlikely trio to be the subjects of the same book. Yet all played major roles in court cases which tied the Medellin drug cartel to the mafia in Sicily and thence to the U.S. mafia.”

William Butler was a police officer for the Gilmer Police Department (Texas). In addition to his law enforcement career, William Butler is a former member of the United States Army. During his more than seven years as a soldier he attained the rank of sergeant (E5) and his duty stations included: Fort Sam Houston (Texas); White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico: and, two overseas tours. One of his military assignments overseas was as a patrol officer assigned to the Allied Checkpoints Bravo and Charlie in Berlin, Germany.

William Butler is the author of I Remember Tomorrow. According to the book description, “In an attempt to rebuild her life, Jeanette relocates to a quiet little town, after spending ten years in the military and suffering a failed marriage. But Jeanette is a precognitive; able to see the future.”

Douglas J. Vaughn graduated with honors from the New York Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Criminal Justice. He is a former United States Marine and Vietnam veteran, having served as a forward observer for artillery, naval gunfire and air strikes. He spent most of his thirteen-month tour in Vietnam just below the Demilitarized Zone near the Cua Viet River with the 1st Amphibious Tractor Battalion where he served with Ron Kovic, the author of “Born on the Fourth of July.

Douglas Vaughn is also a veteran of the New York Police Department. While assigned to the 48th Precinct in the South Bronx, he gave technical advice to Paul Newman during the filming of “Fort Apache The Bronx.” He also worked in the 20th Precinct on Manhattan’s upper West Side and in the Highway Patrol Unit. Douglas Vaughn He spent his final years with the Police Department planning escorts for dignitaries and was forced to retire in his twentieth year due to an injury incurred while escorting former President George H.W. Bush. He is also one of the 200, or so, officers who has been awarded the Police Combat Cross since its inception in 1934. This second highest Department award is given for “exemplification of extraordinary bravery in armed combat.”

Douglas Vaughn is the author of From the Heights. According to the book description of From the Heights, it “begins in the New York City of the 1930’s and takes the reader to the war in the Pacific and the secret workings of the OSS in Italy and Switzerland during World War II. It is a story of the privileged that summer in South Hampton and the poor who swim in the Harlem River. It is a story of social climbing and empire building. It follows the lives and loves of two generations and delves into the inner workings of the New York Police Department and battles fought by United States Marines in Vietnam.

Military-Writers.com currently lists 41 current or former military servicemembers and their 86 books.

Vampires, Hell Raisers and Homeland Security

Editor's Note: Two of the authors are servicemembers.

August 13, 2007 (San Dimas, CA) Police-Writers.com is a website that lists over 700 state and local police officers who have written books. The website added three additional police officers who have authored books: Frank Borelli, James Lardner and Willard M. Oliver.

Lieutenant Frank Borelli is the Training Commander for the Fairmount Heights Police Department (Maryland) and has been a law enforcement instructor since 1989. Using his six-year military background and twenty-year police background, Frank Borelli regularly writes equipment evaluations and incorporates new technology into his police training programs. Currently Lieutenant Frank Borelli teaches use of force programs at all levels of law enforcement and corrections.

In addition to his police and military service, Frank Borelli began a writing career in 1999. With several dozen articles published internationally, he has become a recognized expert on police training techniques and technologies. Frank Borelli is currently a weekly columnist for the Blackwater Tactical Weekly as well as Officer.com, and Editor of the Borelli Consulting Forum News & Intel page. Frank Borelli s also the Editor In Chief for New American Truth magazine, a monthly publication launched in January 2007; and, a contributing editor for American Cop magazine, published bi-monthly. He is also the author of A Cop's Nightmare: Cloning the Ancients, A Cop's Nightmare 2: Vampires in the Old West (the first two installments of a planned 12 series) and American Thinking.

According to the book description of A Cop’s Nightmare 2, it “pits Morgan Blackwell and his best friend, Chuck Bendetti, against a conspiracy to recreate the state of Colorado as a “pure” vampire region. Traveling back to the 1860s, Morgan and Chuck find themselves pitted against a full team of vamp-clones, sent back to further the success of the conspiracy. As Morgan and Chuck battle vamp-clones and Indians in the old west, Karl and Don keep the modern-day vampire mayoral candidate from successfully completing the plan of a pure vampire colony started one hundred and thirty years before!”

James Lardner is a senior fellow at Demos was a police officer for the Metropolitan Police Department (Washington, DC) for two and half years during the early 1970s. Today, he is a well-regard researcher and writer. As a journalist, he has written for the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Nation, among other publications. He is the author of Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk; and, the co-author of NYPD: A City and Its Police and the editor of Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences.

According to the book description of Crusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk, “When David Durk joined the New York Police Department in 1963, he found an organization with its own set of rules, where bribery and payoffs were routine and no one wanted to be disturbed. Durk set out to fix the whole mess. For 22 years, until he was forced to retire at age 51, he was a thorn in the side of mayors, police commissioners, commanders, sergeants, and beat cops alike. His crusading led to an investigation into police corruption in the 1970s by the Knapp Commission (credit for which usually goes to Frank Serpico) and more recently, the Mollen Commission.”

Willard M. Oliver began his law enforcement career as a summer police officer for the Wildwood Police Department (New Jersey). In 1989, he enlisted in the U.S. Army reserves and served as a military police officer in Desert Storm. From 1991 to 1994 Willard Oliver was a police officer for the Arlington County Police Department (Virginia). In 1994, Willard Oliver embarked on his academic career by becoming an assistance professor of criminal justice at Glenville State College (West Virginia). Today, Dr. Willard M. Oliver, Ph.D.,is an Associate Professor at the College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University (Texas). Willard Oliver is also a Major in the United States Army Reserves, Military Police Corps.

Dr. Willard Oliver is the author of Community-Oriented Policing: A Systemic Approach to Policing, Homeland Security for Policing, The Law & Order Presidency, and Community Policing: Classical Readings. He is the co-author of A History of Crime and Criminal Justice in America and The Public Policy of Crime and Criminal.

According to the book description of Homeland Security for Policing, is “unique in focus, Homeland Security for Policing presents a framework for understanding the role police play in today’s era of Homeland Security. The only book of its kind, it examines the events that led up to this new policing era, the relationship between national, state and local agencies, and specific strategies, operations and tactics that can be used to prevent and protect against future threats. Special emphasis is placed on understanding 9-11, the entire framework of Homeland Security in the U.S. and the unique issues faced by local law enforcement.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 705 police officers (representing 325 police departments) and their 1521 police books in six categories, there are also listings of United States federal law enforcement employees turned authors, international police officers who have written books and civilian police personnel who have written books.