This is the original and “creme of the crop” of Executive Protection schools and certifications.
Regarding the flagship course, the very experienced & highly credible staff, very high instructor ratio, ROI, selectiveness of the attendees all packed into a 100 hour Providing Executive Protection / PPS certification course is impossible for anyone else to beat.
This is not the typical “pay for play” open enrollment training course. It is also one of those the so many others have tried to duplicate. It is also one of the most job relevant of all schools and taught by long time, very established practitioners in the field of protection of corporate, celebrity, and high net worth individuals. That is unlike other newer schools that compete for the same audience, which seem to be offered by folks who do not even have a fraction of the experience of the EPI staff, have many of these high risk overseas PSD specialists, or even instructor who have never been in the protection field. EPI teaches precisely what is job relevant to professionals in lower profile, smaller details and for the very top clients. Not days at the range, driving track, and flipping people around a room as you see in the sexy advertising of some lesser schools. (But, EPI does a great job with introductory training in some of the reactive/defensive skills such as driving, shooting, defensive tactics, etc.) EPI’s instruction is focused on what the protectee client actually needs.
In fact, there were attendees of my course who had attended other lesser schools and who admitted that they were either turned down for EP/PPS work due to the lack of what EPI teaches, or were learning that they needed information from the EPI 100 hour course that the other schools either did a lousy job at or did not cover at all. Then while on a very large detail with graduates of protection courses good and bad, the detail leader instructed me to push two of the graduates of a small-time state level school to attend EPI. (they had been to a 40 hour school taught at a gun range and barely meets their state’s requirements, not a 100 hour total immersion in executive protection that EPI is).
I got introduced to this field directly from founder Dr. Kobetz during several trips to EPI while I was working at Sig Sauer Academy and staying at his mansion long before attending the course. Every aspect of EPI displays professionalism and job relevance to the field of personal protection / executive protection.
This is also why you do not see them naming or bragging about who their clients are or were.
With four decades of longevity, its prestige as a leader, credibility, and ROI, this is the “Harvard” of protection schools.
Respectfully, John M. Peterson III
Nine Lives Associates Member
Special Projects Director & General Advisor, International Association for Counter terrorism & Security Professionals (Appointed 1997) and the Counter terrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation