Arizona Police Officers Association is hosting a women’s public safety and self defense workshop at the Clayton House in Old Town Scottsdale on Monday, June 26 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

The Clayton House is located at 3719 N. 75th St., across from the Scottsdale police station. The event is free to the public.

The workshop mission is to empower attendees to be more assured and competent in the areas of public safety and personal self-defense utilizing outside-of-the-box intelligence and tactics not normally taught in a standard self-defense class, according to a press release. The U.S. Secret Service and Dignitary Protection Details consider an actual physical force encounter as a failure on their part as many layers of security were either not implemented or not properly addressed. This workshop is designed to minimize and ideally eliminate an actual physical encounter from even occurring.

During this workshop, attendees will learn to recognize where the most violent encounters occur and how to utilize many natural improvised weapons created by these environments. They will learn proven psychological tactics to make them appear to be hard targets and immediately change how they defend themselves and those they love. They will learn about the fight or flight response that affects everyone and then learn how to manage this response to their advantage and to their predator’s disadvantage. Finally, they will learn about numerous great equalizers that immediately change a person from a potential prey to immediate predator when confronted.

The primary instructors in this course have thousands of hours of training citizens, law enforcement, police SWAT Teams and many Tier 1 Military Special Operations Groups both in and out of the United States, the press release stated. Instructor Durazo is an internationally recognized leader in law enforcement training. He is the founder and director of training for Tacflow Academy and previously served as the director of training for Navy SEAL Chris Kyle’s company Craft International.

Instructor Sloup is an AZPOST certified firearms instructor and SWAT team leader on a large regional SWAT Team.

Instructor Echiverri is a retired Scottsdale Police watch commander and AZPOST certified instructor holding lead instructor positions in use of force, police defensive tactics, chemical munitions and less lethal munitions instruction. He is also a graduate of the FBI hostage negotiator school and force science de-escalation school.

Reservations may be made at EJ@azpoa.org. Visit the website azpoa.org for information about the organization.

The event is free, but the organization welcomes donations on its website to support its goals to provide needed equipment, training and emotional wellness help for Arizona police officers. These needs are outside of the officers’ department budgets, the press release stated.