Sergeant Frank Beran began his law enforcement career in October of 1991 and currently serves in the patrol division of the Hodgkins Police Department. During his almost thirty-year career he's been directly involved in Gang Crime Suppression, Undercover Narcotics Investigations, and Use of Force Training Coordination. Frank attended the College of DuPage where he received a Criminal Justice AAS in 1990. He's also attended Northwestern Illinois University where he received certification for Law Enforcement Supervision. Additionally, Frank has successfully completed the NEMRT instructor development course and seeks to add his EHF1 course curriculum to the NEMRT catalog.
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Growing up, Frank was curious about martial arts and combat sports. He subsequently experimented with Judo, Boxing, and Wrestling and ultimately realized that no single discipline held all of the answers for one to be proficient in a real-world empty hand contest. His curiosity drew him to study Okinawan Karate and by 1986 he was competing at the black belt level in local and national competitions. Frank would go on to fight in a small number of professional events sponsored by the PKC (The Professional Kick-Boxing Council) but in 1991 he was forced to step away from competition to begin his career in law enforcement.

At that time he believed his pursuit of these skills was behind him. However, this completely changed in 1993 when he watched an event called The UFC in which the smallest man in the competition easily defeated three opponents in one night without injuring any of them. This man was a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) practitioner. At that moment Frank began to search for someone to teach him these skills and in 1998 he began his study of this very difficult discipline. Today, he's a brown belt under Mark Turner at BJJ Lab in Naperville, Illinois.

In more recent years Frank has entered a small number of BJJ competitions in addition to Muay Thai and MMA exhibitions but he now spends his time teaching these skills to those who are seeking to enhance their physical fitness level or self-defense capabilities.

In 2014, because of Frank's combat sports background, he was tasked with finding an appropriate defensive tactics system for use at his home agency. He was consequently sent to a number of instructor level courses to investigate the current material available to law enforcement. However, according to Frank, the vast majority of skills offered by said courses failed when tested against the kind of vigorous resistance officers are likely to encounter in the field. This motivated him to draw upon his combined experiences in combat sports and law enforcement to develop something better, and after several months of trial and error, the Empty Hand Force (EHF) curriculum was born. Since it's adoption at Frank's home agency EHF skills have enjoyed a 100% success rate when used in the field.​