You Already Know the Answer.

Nothing that I’ve read about assault against law enforcement or discovered from the masses of emails that I receive has been truly ground breaking.  At a certain level, there was nothing truly shocking about being in combat either.  I remember thinking that it was louder than I thought it would be, and that it was harder to see where the bad guys were.  But after I gained additional experience, I was able to view the phenomenon with a certain degree of detachment.  The reactions I saw made sense to me in that environment.  Put another way, combat is common sense.  Hide behind things that stop bullets, shoot back, and communicate your plans and intentions to the people around you (shoot, move and communicate).  The challenge is to accomplish those simple skills in a fluid and dynamic environment (someone is trying to kill you).

I’m certainly no Audie Murphy and I’m definitely no Albert Einstein, but I don’t understand why we can’t use all the information available about assaults to prevent them from happening.  Researchers can tell us the age, sex, height and weight of the average law enforcement officer who is killed in the line of duty.  We can pinpoint the day of the week and time of the day, and even the activity that will statistically put a police officer at the greatest risk of assault.  But over the last 20 years, the number of law enforcement officers killed hasn’t changed.  So I’ll ask again, why can’t we train the risk out of these known hazards?

For those that know me, I’m a redneck from a small town in Florida.  I’ve never been accused of being a genius.  Having said that, I have a theory.  It’s a little half-baked at this point, but my explanation is pretty simple.  It’s laziness.  The training we receive to prepare us for violent assault isn’t perfect, but it isn’t grossly negligent either.  For the most part, our assailants are less trained and poorly equipped by our professional standards.  The training we receive is adequate (for the most part) to prepare us to deal with the hazards of the job.

What happens is that we allow our environment to condition us to expect compliance, not violence.  We ignore the things that we know are right, because they’re harder to do.  We take shortcuts.  After awhile, you begin to think that the shortcut isn’t really a shortcut because, after all, you’re still alive right?  You start to say stupid things like “I understand the streets” or “I can read people.”  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least for a little while.  How many times do you have to get killed before you respect the risks?  Unfortunately, once you’re killed because of your laziness, you don’t get any do-overs.  You’ll be dead a long time.

I had to spend a little time in a courtroom earlier this week and a local police officer was there to offer testimony in an unrelated case.  With all respect, this officer was a victim just waiting for an obituary and a headstone.  She was fat, out of shape and she wore her gear like a person who never thought in a million years that she would need to get her weapon out quickly to defend herself.  She had her magazine pouch on her strong side, directly in front of her holster.  She had her cell phone on her support hip.  Without getting into all the tactics of reloading, I would bet half a month’s pay that she had never practiced magazine changes with her setup.  I’m sure you could train yourself to conduct reloads relatively quickly with your weak hand moving to your strong side hip, but why would you want to?

In the “Violent Encounters” study, there are case studies that reveal all manner of questionable decision making.  One that I found interesting involved a detective who worked in plainclothes and used a concealable holster for his duty weapon.  He had received a new holster from his wife for Christmas and had immediately begun using it for work (“Thanks honey, it’s exactly what I wanted”).  Well, this ill fated detective was having coffee in a diner when two men entered with the intention of robbing it.  They misidentified the detective for the manager (probably because of his suit) and approached him with weapons drawn.  Our fearless crimefighter decided that it was time for him to conduct a speed draw and engage the two assailants.  Unfortunately, the new holster was still a bit “grabby.”  The officer stated “I pulled and pulled, and the gun wouldn’t come out of the holster.  When it finally did, the whole holster came with it.  By then, I’d already been shot twice.  I dropped the gun and it fell onto the floor, still contained in the holster.”

Luckily, the officer in the case study survived.  I say it was luck, because he certainly didn’t do anything to help.  To be kind, I’ve done stupider things than not breaking in a new holster.  I’d guess that he knew better.  He probably thought about getting to the range to practice with his new holster, but he was busy.  He had responsibilities to his department and his family and he just couldn’t find the time.  I’d guess that he’d probably broken a new holster in on the job before, and probably done the same thing.  Put it on, and start carrying it.

Only this time, bad guys with guns showed up.  And his shortcut nearly cost him his life, not to mention the citizens in the diner.  Compared with the potential loss, he was taking a huge gamble.  I’m sure he would have trained more if he knew that he’d be assaulted.  And that’s the problem.  He’d been a police officer for years, been carrying concealed for years, and he’d never been attacked before.  Surely, no one will ever attack me.  I’m a nice guy and people like me.  That works until you are attacked.  And you only have to get killed once.

The bottom line on force is that the bad guy decides how much you have to use.  You don’t get to control the time, place, or circumstances of the attack.  The only thing you can control is your training before the incident, and your actions during the incident.  Your future will be determined by your present.  The training conducted today determines your future performance.  I’d ask how much training you need, but you already know the answer.  I’d ask you what skills you need to focus on, but you know the answer to that too.  Don’t let your training program give you what you want, instead force it to give you what you need.

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