Core PSD Training Programs

• Rapid Response Diver.  Contrary to the Hollywood mentality, public safety diving is a world where rescues are rare.  However, in certain circumstances, teams have a legitimate requirement for divers who can respond instanteously into the water with potentially life saving skills.  This course is designed for those divers who will find themselves in a rapid response vehicle and who will need to enter the water with mere seconds of notice and preparation.  They will be trained in the use of the so called rapid diver rigs and how to make instanteous decisions on risk factors and the benefits they are likely to provide to a potential victim. 
• Emergency Response or Public Safety Diver.  This is the primary course for the professional and it is designed for the working divers who will do body recoveries, evidence recoveries and other general public safety functiosn.  The Level One course requires approximately 32 contact hours of training and will include skills in surface tending, safety and standby diver as well as a primary diver. 
• Dive Tender.  In some cases, agencies or departments may have personnel that are vital assets to the overall team and bring those skills to potential diving operations but they may be unable to quality of work as actual divers due to health reasons or personal concerns.  Experience has shown that these individuals can be adequately trained to provide surface support to working divers and this course will provide the skills required for those activities.  This course is best conducted in conjunction with an emergency response or public safety diver course. 
• Public Safety Diver 2 or Emergency Response Diver 2.  This course builds upon the level one skills and focuses on providing the diver with more in depth knowledge for risk benefit analysis and resource management.  Exposure to higher risk activities such as deep water recoveries will be covered in this program.  This course requires approximately 40 contact hours. 
• Operation Supervisor and Training Supervisor Courses.  These Level Three Courses are designed to fine tune the supervisory skills and administrative skills required of those individuals who will be tasked as incident supervisors or with maintaining the in service training schedule for an active dive team. 
• Public Safety or Emergency Response Diving Instructor.  This is a 50 contact hour intensive workshop designed to qualify the active public safety diver or recreational diver instructor who has public safety diving experience as a public safety diving instructor.  Candidates must be in good physical condition with superior water skills and excellent endurance before entering the program.  They should be active with a public safety or emergency response dive team, have a minimum of 12 months with the team, and participated in at least 24 operational dives with the team.  These can be training or actual response dives. 
• Law Enforcement Tactical Swimmer -1 (LETS-1).  Law enforcement agencies encounter from time to time the need to deploy personnel in water borne operations for surveillance and intervention.  This program is oriented to provide the skills training for these deployments.  Level One is a surface swimmer course.  Skills for waterproofing tactical loads, packing equipment for transport, and deployment and recovery of personnel in realistic situations are covered.
• LETS 2 is a continuation of the level one course and it introduces underwater capabilities to the deployment scenarios. 
• LETS 3 provides additional training in the stealth that can be provide through the use of closed circuit oxygen or electronic rebreather systems.   
• Law Enforcement Tactical Swimmer Instructor:  This is a two level certification and instructors will be qualified to teach through level 2 if they lack adequate rebreather experience or all 3 levels with CCR experience.

Specialty Qualifications

• Overhead Environment Recovery Diver.  This program is designed for people who will do body recoveries in environments that do not allow direct vertical access to the surface.  This includes dives under man made objects such as peers, docks, etc. into natural geological formations such as caves and caverns or rock outcroppings and underneath large objects such as ships and barges.
• Overhead Environment Recovery Diver Instructor. 
• Vehicle and Heavy Object Recovery.  This is a specialized course in heavy object salvage operations for teams that encounter those requirements for public safety purposes.  This is not a commercial diving course and it does not designed to qualify you to be a commercial salvage diver.  The dive team will actually lift and move an actual automobile or simulated object of similar shape and weight during the program. 
• Vehicle and Heavy Object Recovery Instructor.
• HazMat Diver.  This course will cover the procedures to be used for encapsulated diving for limited hazmat environments including decontamination procedures. 
• HazMat Diver Instructor.
• Hull Search Diver.  In this era of security concerns and concerns for various types of smuggling operations, the law enforcement or security dive team requires skills for searching the hulls of ships and other underwater structures for improvised explosive devices and other contraband.  This course will provide an introduction to these skills and the procedures to be used. 
• Hull Search Diver Instructor.
• Port Security Operations.  This is an orientation course designed for port supervisors and law enforcement supervisors designed to provide a detailed overview of the capabilities of the underwater operator and underwater detection devices including various methods for deploying these resources for use in an actual harbor security situation. 
• Port Security Operations Instructor.