The Crime Fighter Guy, Darren Laur

The Social Network Show welcomes Darren Laur on the April 18, 2014 episode.

Darren Laur, a Staff Sergeant with the Victoria City Police Department in British Columbia, Canada and founder of Personal Protection Systems Inc. has been working for over 20 years to protect people online and off by teaching internet and social media safety, violence prevention, safety awareness and self protection. How does he succeed at this? Darren says that he gives an open and honest message to people and is available to help people as well as refer them to other resources.

Listen to the show to hear what he says about safety and how even young people are acting as digital 1st responders. Hear how the police department has used Twitter to crowd source at an event to keep it safe. Hear the breaking news about the Amanda Todd case.

Personal Protection Systems Inc. is a family run company dedicated to teaching pro-active internet and social media safety, violence prevention, safety awareness and self protection strategies to men, women, children, schools, businesses, corporations, law enforcement and government.

Darren Laur lives in Victoria British Columbia, Canada.  In 1993, Darren and his wife Beth started their company, Personal Protection Systems Inc. and both have presented internationally to thousands of men, women and children as well as to schools, businesses, law enforcement agencies and Federal/Provincial Ministries. Both have written over 170 internationally published articles and four books on the topics of personal safety. One of the books, Total Awareness A Woman's Safety Book, won a major award. In May 2013, Darren, Beth and their son Brandon, also won the prestigious Social Media "Derek K Miller" Award, which recognized their unique work in the area of Internet and Social Media Safety both in Canada and the United States.

To date, Darren and Beth have presented their Internet and Social Media Safety programs to over 200 schools, 160,000 junior and senior secondary students, and to thousands of teachers and parents throughout British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the United States. They have been featured on numerous radio and television broadcasts, publications and media articles as experts on the topics of personal safety, workplace violence prevention, child safety and social media/internet safety

Darren, also know as "The White Hatter", has dedicated his live to public safety and is currently a serving Staff Sergeant with the Victoria City Police Department where he has over 28 years of law enforcement experience, with a strong interest and background in online and social media investigations. Darren is an internationally and court recognized safety expert and advocate, award winning published author and highly sought after international keynote speaker, in the area of personal safety and self protection both online and off.

Recently, working with others in his police department, Darren helped launch the very successful use of social media (Twitter) for the purpose of crowd sourcing and police call response during the 2013 and 2013 Canada Day celebrations in Victoria; a first use of its kind in North American policing. Darren is also a certified Forensic Open Source/social Media Investigator, a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Neuro Linguistic Psychology (NLP) practitioner, and integrates these studies and disciplines into all programs and presentations.

Darren and Beth are proud of the fact that their company also financially supports three not-for profit organizations in British Columbia that are dedicated to helping youth when it comes to bullying and suicide prevention: NEED2, Bullying Ends Here and Stop a Bully.