Charles J. Key, Sr. — Key Associates

Key Associates is a group of highly competent men and women whose professional experience encompasses the entire spectrum of police related subjects. Some of their areas of expertise include: police training, practices, and policies; narcotics investigations; homicide investigation and training; police involved shooting investigation and training; domestic violence; police and civilian use of force; police canine training and operations; crowd control/civil disturbance; and SWAT training and operations.

Charles J. (Joe) Key served nearly twenty-six years with the Baltimore Police Department, ascending to the rank of Lieutenant. During his career, Mr. Key was assigned as a detective in the Intelligence Unit, where he investigated police corruption, terrorist activities, and organized crime. After being promoted to sergeant, he became the first Training Coordinator/Supervisor for the Special Weapons and Tactics Unit, where he wrote the teams' recruiting, training, and operating protocols, and the Department's General Order for the resolution of sniper, barricade, and hostage situations. He spent his last ten years with the Baltimore Police Department as the Commanding Officer of the Firearms Training Unit. In that capacity he analyzed over five hundred police involved shootings for the Police Commissioner and responded to the scene of more than one hundred. Mr. Key reorganized the use of force training for the department, oversaw the three thousand plus member agency's transition from revolvers to semiautomatic pistols, and wrote the department's policy and General Order on use of lethal force. He also drafted the police firearms training regulations for the state of Maryland. He has lectured at various universities and taught police use of force to thousands of federal, state, local police officers, and hundreds of civilians in numerous states. Since retiring from the Baltimore Police Department, Mr. Key has consulted in hundreds of use of force cases and has been qualified numerous times in federal and state courts as an expert in firearms, ballistics, use of force, and related subjects. In addition, he was featured by NBC Dateline, Fox News and National Public Radio as an expert in a police practices. He was named as a defense expert in the Ruby Ridge, Idaho case and plaintiffs' expert in the Amadou Diallo civil case in New York City.