
Kent Davis

TITLE: Senior Principal Consultant
PHONE: 800-231-9106 x 121
EMAIL: kdavis@ThreatSuppression.com
DIVISION: Operations
OFFICE LOCATION: Corporate Headquarters: Charlotte, NC
Kent Davis, MPA, BS, EFO, CFO is a Senior Principal Consultant with Threat Suppression, Incorporated. Kent has worked at Threat Suppression since 2014. Kent focuses on integrated active shooter response, response to complex-coordinated attacks, response to fire-as-weapon events, response to large-scale civil unrest, and planning for National Special Security Events (NSSEs). Kent currently serves as the Deputy Fire Chief with the Matthews Fire Department in North Carolina.
Kent served seven years in the United States Air Force Reserves with the 437th Military Airlift Wing, where he received an honorable discharge at the rank of Staff Sergeant. Kent was responsible for supervising maintenance and flight inspections on multi-million dollar aircraft.
Kent is a 35-year veteran of the fire service. Prior to accepting the job in 2022 as the Deputy Fire Chief with the Matthews Fire Department, Kent retired in 2021 with 30 years’ experience with the Charlotte Fire Department. As a firefighter, Kent was assigned to a busy ladder company in the city and then to one of two heavy rescue companies in the city. After promotion to captain, Kent returned to the Special Operations Division as a captain on one of the heavy rescues, leading responses for complex, technical rescues and city-wide major emergencies. Kent was promoted out of the rescue company to battalion chief in 2005.
Kent then spent nearly a decade commanding the downtown battalion (Battalion 1), which is one of the busiest battalion chiefs in the Southeast. This battalion contains more than 50 high-rise buildings, a National Football League stadium, a National Basketball Area, a AAA baseball stadium, three major hospitals, and four college campuses. Kent has served as the incident commander of numerous multiple-alarm incidents, including fires, mass casualty incidents, building collapses, and multiple technical rescues. In 2015, Kent was promoted to division chief where he served for six years as the shift commander responsible for 43 fire stations and 350 firefighters. The three shifts respond to more than 130,000 calls each year. In 2020, Kent was assigned as Chief of the Special Operations Division, overseeing all Special Operations units and activity at the Charlotte Fire Department.
Kent also served for a decade as the Charlotte Fire Department’s lead on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Active Violence Taskforce. This Taskforce was responsible for the development of a unified public safety active shooter response protocol for the 15th largest city in the United States, with a population of more than one million people. In addition, Kent worked with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Special Operations Division to create unified response plans for large-scale civil unrest, fire-as-a-weapon, and other integrated law enforcement/fire department events. Kent served as the fire department incident commander at the Christmas Eve 2015 Northlake Mall shooting which resulted in one fatality and 17 injuries. Kent served as the fire department incident commander during the seven-day 2016 Charlotte riots. Kent also served as the Operations Section Chief at the 2019 University of North Carolina at Charlotte active shooter event in which two people were killed and four others seriously injured. Kent has deployed as the Taskforce Commander on numerous civil unrest deployments throughout North Carolina.
Kent was assigned to North Carolina Urban Search and Rescue Taskforce 3 and served for more than 15 years as the taskforce leader overseeing the Type I USAR team. Kent has deployed as a USA&R taskforce leader to numerous large-scale natural disasters. Kent has been a public safety diver and served as the program coordinator for the department’s public safety dive program. This program consists of 100 divers from the Charlotte Fire Department and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The dive program is responsible for numerous dive rescue/recovery operations, both locally and throughout the region.
Kent has an undergraduate degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is a graduate of the United States’ Fire Administration’s Executive Fire Officer program where he conducted research on response to active shooter events. Kent holds the Chief Fire Officer designation from the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Kent can be reached at kdavis@threatsuppression.com.