Chris Butler retired as an Inspector after 34 years in law enforcement.

Prior to joining the Calgary Police Service, Chris was a Search and Rescue Technician for six years, responsible for conducting high-angle mountain rescue, swift water rescue, and avalanche rescue. During this time, Chris was involved in developing and delivering intensive training for Search and Rescue Technicians. This began his interest and study in human factors, human error, decision making, and motor learning principles.

After joining the Calgary Police Service, Chris became a full-time instructor in the academy, teaching both recruits and in-service police officers a variety of physical use of force techniques as well as combat firearms instruction. For the last several years of his career, Chris developed and instructed Incident Command training to sergeants, staff sergeants, and Inspectors.

Chris has an extensive background in law enforcement use of force and has been certified as an instructor or instructor trainer in numerous incident command, firearms, physical combatives, less lethal/chemical agents and emergency vehicle operation disciplines. In addition, Chris has training in special event risk management and close personal protection. Chris is currently a National Trainer for National Law Enforcement Training Center (NLETC). Having worked with law enforcement trainers at the local, state, and national levels, Chris’s ambition is to ensure training methods are based upon the most current science and research in human factors.

Chris has made presentations at National and International law enforcement conferences and has been qualified in court as an expert in firearms safety, police firearms training, law enforcement use-of-force training, and evaluation. Chris has testified over 30 times as a use of force expert in criminal matters pertaining to officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths.

Chris is a partnering instructor for Force Science and has been certified as a use of force investigator and Advanced Force Science Analyst. He has instructed the Force Encounters course throughout Canada and the United States for the past ten years. Chris is also certified as a shooting incident reconstructionist through TriTech Forensics and the International Association for Identification.