The Tactical Life

I hear ya. It’s always worthwhile to look at how outcomes can be improved. As it stands I think our police are doing a pretty damn good job overall, considering the situations they find themselves in and the already high expectations we put on them. On top of risking their lives every day, we expect them to be experts at dealing with the mentally ill, resolving interpersonal conflicts, family counselling, driving at high speed, first aid, multicultural differences, and making difficult decisions under extreme pressure that will be subject to intense scrutiny later on. Why not make them expert martial artists and expert gunslingers too?

In my opinion most of the opportunity to improve outcomes lies with the public, not the police.

More time training the aspects you describe, not related to weapons and force would be more beneficial to society than increased force training IMO.

As far as more money for training, are we going to cut the school budget? Stop fixing potholes? Cut heating assistance to little old ladies in the winter? Stop paying the city attorneys to fight legitimate workmans comps claims? That’s crazy talk!

My experience in the fire service is similar to Z’s in the military, the hours we actually spend training are few and far between.

I’m just here to point out shortcomings, not offer solutions haha.

There are no easy answers, and would seem that improving one public service means degrading another. Too many baskets, not enough eggs.

Could raise minimum qualifications, but you’d have to pay em more to attract similar numbers of bodies. So yeah. Shitty.

Right now, every police department in my area is short on manpower. 10 to 20 years ago they would have had hundreds of qualified applicants to choose from. Now they’re down to dozens, and some of the ones they hire would have ended up in the cull pile.

No disrespect to those who would have been culled in the past. That’s a thankless, almost impossible job. My hat’s off to you.

Thought for the day:

A great discussion and I appreciate all who responded. This a subject near and dear to my heart, since, I have been responsible for training LEO’s and military for almost all my adult life. I bleed a little every time I read about a fellow brother killed in the line of duty, especially yesterday, when a 24 year old Navy veteran, engaged to be married, just graduated from the Arizona State Police academy on May 5th, died by his own gun. Tragic.

As I have said before, it is safer working in a war zone, than the streets of USA.

There are no easy answers for the problems everyone discussed, but, there are some major changes that , (IMHO), need to take place before there will ever be any standard changes in the USA.

1. Although the USA will never go to a “Ministry of Interior” type of law enforcement, where the police are an arm of the military, having worked in numerous countries, this organizational method has some massive advantages, especially in budgets, where the money is part of the defense budget. (France, for example, has no issues with the cost of training and equipment)

I would like to suggest that the USA reduce its police force to only 50 police departments and eliminate the local politician that will do anything to control the department. There are over 17 thousand police departments in the USA and that is just plain stupid.

Each state would have a state police force, headed by a police commissioner and the Governor. Training would be standardized, small department officers,( who suffer most from tight budgets), would be eliminated. Training standards, methods, weapons, tactics, and equipment would all be the same for every officer in the state. The police budget could be controlled in one locale, the state house, and eliminate the local mayor, who decided to build a bird sanctuary instead of a training program for the locals.

2. I once spent 2 months with the Tokyo police department. I was impressed with their organizational standards. If it is still the same, an officer actually went to the Tokyo police academy for 4 years. When they graduated, it was with a “degree” and solid training. I would like to see this method in the states, go to Police College for 4 years, graduate, be fully trained and have a college education. This would certainly eliminate those who were either unfit for the job or lacked the dedication to see it through. The rigorous physical standards for SF is not to “get you in shape” it’s to weed out the ones who don’t want it bad enough.

3. Being a “Defensive tactic instructor” I can say from experience, that most officers could not fight their way out of a birthing center. And you know what? The brass doesn’t care. “They got a gun, make sure they learn how to shoot, so they don’t hit some civilian and get us sued”. Every officer needs a least a year of “controlling tactics” and “verbal judo” before ever working the streets, because, you cannot lose a fight, if one never starts. Learn to talk a situation down. This will never, ever happen and you will need dedicated officers like Batman 730, who trains on his own. Believe me, nothing is harder than trying to teach “in service training” to experienced officers and they don’t want to be there. The “it will not happen to me” syndrome is alive and well. Why don’t I have this problem with tactical troops or SWAT? Because they have been shot at, simple.

4. Salary. The biggest problem. Police are professionals, but paid like paupers. Why? Well, everyone will say “taxes” but, I believe it’s a way for local governments to keep the boot on the throat, same with public school teachers, our local leaders really hate the authority figure. We have to have you, but, fuck paying you anything. Create 50 departments, require a “4 year academy” pay a decent salary obtain dedicated professionals.

5. Police officers are dying about every two days now. I blame social media. It “ok” now to kill a cop, it’s expected of you. Hey, shoot a cop, become an instant hero. Law enforcement in the USA in under attack, and that is a fine thing with most of the populace. How many will be shot and killed over the weekend?

2 Likes

Gotta disagree. The primary role of police is to stop bad people from doing bad things. We don’t need to train police to be better social workers and mental health personnel. We need more social workers and mental health personnel. We need them to be available when people are having social/mental health crises.

Let police be police. Let them do street checks and vehicle stops. Let them develop CIs and get guns and drugs and impaired/dangerous drivers off the streets. Let them get in gang members faces and hammer repeat offenders. Let them prevent and investigate crimes and enforce the law. Give them the power and confidence to do these things by training them and backing them instead of leaving them out to dry whenever the media or some civilian oversight body pipes up.

Verbal judo, de-escalation and all that is great and necessary and in some situations it may keep everyone alive. Multi-culturalism is fine, but the law is the law. If you can’t run, drive, shoot and fight you can’t police. Let cops be cops, not baby sitters, marriage counselors and back catchers for every other overburdened government agency that can’t fulfill its mandate.

Edited for clarity.

5 Likes

Sounds like your vision of what police work should involve differs significantly from mine.

Regardless, I think it is an exceptionally difficult job to do well, and I don’t think our society does enough to equip them with all the tools they need to do their job well.

Well you’re certainly entitled to your opinion. Objectively stated, the common law duties of police are: To preserve the peace, protect life and property, prevent crime, enforce the law and apprehend offenders. I didn’t make this up.

The other things are ‘extras’. The ‘extras’ e.g. social work, mental health intervention, adult babysitting, data entry etc. are increasingly becoming the focus of police work at the expense of the core duties listed above. Some people (apparently yourself included) think this a good thing. I don’t.

Bringing it back to the discussion at hand, if the primary role of police is social work, counseling, community outreach, mental health and data entry then the focus of training would need to shift to reflect this, leaving even less time for tactical training. We are increasingly seeing this shift, both in academy training and in continuing training offered thereafter.

It’ll be interesting to see what policing looks like 5-10 years from now. Right now it seems like there are far more people on your “side” of the issue than there are on mine.

Just like teaching. And just like teaching it’s simply politicians and activists, sometimes they’re the same thing, burdening other people with the task of affecting social change and curing social ills because they lack the courage to do so themselves and, it gives them someone to blame when things don’t work out.

You hear a lot about community policing but the thing that those people conveniently leave out is that you need an actual community first. In my town these things are not an issue because the police are our neighbors, their kids go to the same schools as our kids, some of us went to school with them or are related. But this is because we are an actual community. It’s almost as if these people want cops to engage in community building. It’s like they want teachers to be surrogate parents to the students.

And since teachers and cops, and you could include firemen, EMTs, etc., all are the type of person who has a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty, it’s easy to pass the buck to them. The sad thing is that some of the happiest and stress free teachers I’ve met were all those who stopped caring about anything more than doing their jobs well enough to keep their jobs.The young teachers who specifically want to work in urban areas because they want to change the world are quickly kicked in the face by reality. They have break downs and cry, every day.

2 Likes

I definitely agree overall, but I’d like to clarify a couple of points; particularly the idea of only doing what it takes not to get fired. I think cops should be taking the initiative to go out and actively do the things I mentioned above. I think we should be out hunting, checking people, making contacts and digging, always digging.

I think that my time on shift is better spent trying to find out who’s breaking into houses, who’s moving meth and pills, who has guns that they shouldn’t than it is sitting in emerg for four hours with someone who made a suicidal comment on Facebook or telling people how to parent their kids or trying to sort out who gets the cellphone in the divorce.

I think the community is better served by me as a trained cop if I am out hassling criminals than trying to teach people how to adult and then writing endless reports about having done so.

I don’t want to do less work or shirk my sworn duty. I want to do police work. Lots of it. I want to go hard, but I want to focus those efforts on actual crimefighting. That’s how police can help fix social issues. We pull the weeds so others can plant the garden. We hunt the wolf. It’s what we’re supposed to do.

Totally agree with your comments about community policing. It works much better in smaller, more established communities where people are already engaged. It’s a feel-good buzzword and makes for some great photo ops, but it’s a distant second to actually getting your hands dirty and doing actual cop shit.

2 Likes

Sorry for the rant(s).

Don’t be, big fan of the rant. Well said

Fact, well said.

“Tactical Training” has become the new “enemy”. “Cops aren’t soldiers” they cry. Well, make sure you know that when an active shooter hits your school, bar, or work place.

So true.

So true. The sad part and the part that makes me angry is that “we” just take it. Imagine a large metro area with no first responders for 24 hours? Will the ones who hate the police step up? ha.

No rant, well said.

Stumbled upon this, thought of this thread.

https://www.range365.com/guns-predator

Love that movie so much. Seeing it so many times at such a young age, I think it definitely helped me prepare for some “tactical life” situations, believe it or not.

Anyway, I love Ol’ Painless.

“I ain’t got time to bleed”, also one of my favorite quotes of all time.

My fav scene in the movie is when Sgt. Billy says fu*k it and gets ready to throw down with his blade. I’d personally rather go out like that against the predator than firing a gun.

Motivational Monday: You can never train too hard for a job that kill you.

cop

“Why do I preach health, fitness, and training in some form of martial arts? Because of this shit right here. K9 Ofc. XXXXXXX”" was in the fight of her life with a drugged up male suspect much bigger than her. For around 5 minutes it was just her and her K9 partner going at it with this dude who was so high on some drug that he did not feel any of her strokes or the Dogs bites and just kept attacking. 5 minutes! That feels like an eternity in those circumstances"

“Last night XXXXXX posted about her night, which included these 4 pictures. She is briefly goes into what and how this happened to her, but then goes into a few points she felt she needed to get out. One of those points was Fitness. She mentions her fight was 5 minutes long. Anyone who has ever been in a fight knows 5 minutes can feel like an eternity. She was in a fight with a male collegiate athlete who was bigger than her, yet she stayed in the fight. She harps on the fact that her fitness training outside of the job is what kept her in the fight. Although there are a ton of things to take away from her post, I just wanted to mention the fitness portion. Some may not believe it, but one day there is a legitimate chance you will be fighting for you or your partners life (if you haven’t already). Train, train hard . I am not saying you must train a certain way, but you must train. Weight lifting, CrossFit, Judo, Boxing, BJJ, whatever. Anything is better than nothing, and anything can save you life”

A 17 year veteran: Respect and Condolences to the family.

cop2

1 Like