Understanding change among multi-problem families: Learnings from a formative program assessment.

This paper describes the implementation of a long-term voluntary intervention to prevent chronic maltreatment among multi-problem families with histories of child welfare involvement. A small formative evaluation included a limited number of interviews with program participants during the first year of program implementation (n=10), a retrospective case file review (n=17) of closed cases following the first three years of implementation, and notes from ongoing meetings and discussion with program staff. Findings regarding client engagement, long-term interaction between risk and services, and program refinement are discussed.

Evaluating performance of law enforcement personnel during a stressful training scenario.

Police trainees who were ready to graduate from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) volunteered to participate in an exercise designed to evaluate their survivability. In a highly stressful interactive scenario, which included a hostage situation, performance was evaluated for a range of responses, including: shooting judgment and accuracy, communications, and coping with a weapon malfunction. Nineteen percent of subjects shot the hostage, a failure rate that falls in the reported range of friendly fire casualties in military combat.

Velocity necessary for a BB to penetrate the eye: an experimental study using pig eyes.

Purpose: To determine the V-50 threshold velocity needed for a steel BB to penetrate the eye of a 230-pound pig.

Method: BBs were shot at a distance of 10 feet into the corneas of pig eyes with a pump-action BB gun.

Results: The V-50 velocity for corneal penetration and serious disruption of the eye was found to be 246 ft/sec.