From Twitter: The Time I Met Roy Moore

Soooo… *taps fingers together nervously*

I’ve been cheating on you, ‘blog. I… I made my last few essays on… Twitter! That hussy…

Anyway, yeah, I’m gonna post ’em up here just to have a unbroken post. They were composed for twitter, which for me is different from how I write on here. First up: The time I met Roy Moore:

So. The time I met Roy Moore. A tale of evangelicals trying to erase the line between Church and State, and claiming martyrdom when the State says no. Sound familiar? Well, this was 2004; and it’s only gotten worse. I first wrote about it shortly after it happened in September 2004 on my ‘blog; but you’ll notice I was very low-key… This was where I worked and lived, and the feeling of being surrounded was very strong; despite the fact that 3 people would ever see it.

Roy who? you might ask. That’s fair; despite bubbling to the top of the news pile from time to time, much like a turd in a septic tank, he’s been quiet lately amidst the other noise. You know, the guy that was the Alabama Chief Justice who got sued into oblivion over placing a granite copy of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Supreme Court of Alabama. It wasn’t the last time he’d be kicked off the bench; he did it again in 2016 by attempting to ignore Obgerfell. THAT Roy Moore.

Not more than a year after his first booting, the county I was Sheriff’s Deputy in had also placed a picture of the Ten Commandments in the county courthouse, and had also been sued by the ACLU. Jody Hice– recognize THAT name? US Representative from Georgia? Who was- at the time- the senior pastor of Bethlehem First Baptist Church in the county, created a group called the Ten Commandment-Georgia Inc., and held a $50 a plate fundraiser dinner to fund the county’s legal fees. All legal and aboveboard, you understand; not being run by a church at all, especially not one whose senior pastor had a series of sermons based around how churches should be allowed to form a lobby. And who asked for a Deputy to guard the church during these sermons in case those godless heathens who would DARE oppose destroying the barrier between Church and State tried to assassinate him. Yeah. As entry team leader for the SWAT team, I got to be that lucky deputy.

ANYWAY, back to September 2004, and the fundraising dinner. Barrow is one of those southern counties that they would have used when filming “Walking Tall” (the 1973 one); and in fact has connections to the Dixie Mafia (yes, a real thing). But it’s proximity to both Atlanta and Athens meant it had to be drug kicking and screaming into the modern era. No less an august, god-fearing persona than ROY MOORE was coming to town! He must be protected at all costs! Now, while there had been some mild protests by the 30 or so ACLU members in Barrow County, there was no reason to think ANTIFA was coming.

Jody Hice — **“You can trust me, I’m a man of God!”**

God forbid. But, yes, the Sheriff does have a responsibility to ensure that no one gets hurt, even if you don’t particularly like them. So, it fell on SWAT to provide close cover and surveillance, and the Traffic Unit to provide escort and visible presence. I was a member of both units at the time, so we planned an escort route from the airport to the courthouse for speeches; and then on to the dinner and back to the airport afterwards. Crowd control units were on standby, but no one thought they’d be needed. SWAT had spotter units on the roof of a couple of buildings, and plainclothes mixing with the crowd. Regular deputies around the perimeter and inside. Lots of overkill, but you know, be prepared; and all that. So a 4 car progression escorted his limo from the airport.

Leapfrogging to the next intersection, I felt for the drivers we were inconveniencing; because… come on. Lights and siren to escort this toad? Shit.

Speech at the courthouse was typical BS; didn’t listen too much because my job was to watch the crowd. It’s BS; but it was my job, and I took my job seriously.

On to the dinner! …Held at the church, of course. We spread out and watched the plate buyers eat BBQ chicken and mashed potatoes. At this point, after 7 hours of sweating in a vest (Georgia in Sept. is still hot) cocooning this idiot we were tired, sweaty, and hungry. Not one of these assholes offered us any food. The entertainment for the meal came from a group of church teens who had come up with a dance routine based off of “Onward Christian Soldiers”, complete with a light show and a loud sound system. Churches have gotten theatrical lately. Several late teen boys (white, natch; this is a very white Southern Baptist church) dressed in the red/black/grey “urban” camo pants that went very well with nearby University of Georgia football colors and black t-shirts with black Army-style ball caps covering closely shorn buzz-cuts began a dance routine involving singing about the Army of God while miming firing rifles, swinging sticks, and lifting weights.

Yeah. Geezus. That sentence made me tired, too.

While this spectacle was laughable on it’s face- my roommate, another deputy, said it reminded him of the Monty Python “Gay Army” sketch– it brought other associations to my mind. Another youth group, frequently appearing in ’30s propaganda films and featuring young men wearing red armbands and military garb. The choice of imagery they used wasn’t accidental. And they’ve been brewing this since waaaay before 2004.

Oh… Did I mention he’s running against the Georgia Secretary of State in 2022? Before the next Presidential election?

Law Enforcement is NOT (yet) a Profession

So… If you’re current or former law enforcement and read that title, and are ready to pour vituperation down upon my head, I ask you… Just read to the end. If you chose that career because you believed you could honestly do good for others, then you will give this article some consideration before attacking it.

A profession, sayeth Mirriam-Webster, is… Well, yes, the first three things; but also:

-a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation;

-a principle calling, vocation, or employment;

-the whole body of persons engaged in a calling

It’s the first one that concerns us here. Organizations such as the AMA and ABA identify four characteristics of a profession: 1) A common fund of knowledge 2) Certain standards or qualifications 3) some type of organization, and 4) Standards of conduct.

A Profession is a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards and who hold themselves out as, and are accepted by the public, as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to apply this knowledge and exercise these skills in the interest of others.

It is inherent in the definition of a Profession that a code of ethics governs the activities of each Profession. Such codes require behaviour and practice beyond the personal moral obligations of an individual. They define and demand high standards of behaviour in respect to the services provided to the public and in dealing with professional colleagues. Often these codes are enforced by the Profession and are acknowledged and accepted by the community.

-Australian Council of Professions, 2003

The 1996 Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council’s Peace Officer Reference Text- “P.O.R.T.” (the acronyms get out of hand pretty quickly); the manual you received Day 1 in the academy, mentions this definition, and compares it to Law Enforcement. It decides that “The first two characterizations of a professional are clearly evident in law enforcement. However, the last two, organization and clearly defined standards of conduct, are major deficiencies that must be corrected.” It goes on to say that while there may be national private bodies such as the IACP and international training organizations, they are private organizations and represent their own special interests. “but no national body establishes standards of conduct for the profession to the extent that members of the profession must adhere to such requirements”, the PORT concludes; “It is evident that law enforcement has taken the first steps towards professionalization. It is the responsibility of all in the profession to complete the progress.”

Whelp.

I read those words 25 years ago in my academy class, and remember it sparking a bit of debate between the class and the instructor. So, how are we doing now, in 2021? Do we have A common fund of knowledge, Certain standards or qualifications, Some type of organization, and Standards of conduct?

*Puts on green eyeshade visor and licks tip of pencil* Well, let’s just see.

Some type of organization

Well, yeah. It’s a quasi-military rank structure that falls under one governmental body or another. LE has that.

A common fund of knowledge

One thing Law Enforcement does do is share information. Memos and newsletters and bulletins fly back and forth; from state agencies and the FBI, ATF, DEA/EPIC, Homeland Security… Reams of paper of annual statistics, FOUO/LES/SSI memos, bulletins, and updates. Oh yeah, we share info; all the way down to the rural county Sheriff who posts a bulletin about an urban legend he read about on Facebook. LE folds, staples, mutilates, and collates forests worth of knowledge every year. In my own state, the Georgia Public Safety Training Center (GPSTC, pronounced “gyp-stick”… told you the acronyms were getting out of control) has detailed, cross-referenced and thoroughly annotated lesson plans on every topic that could possibly concern law enforcement. Certain specialties, such as accident investigations and forensics, cloak themselves in a scientific aura that sounds impressive but, upon investigation (and not a few Frye tests), turns out to be more attuned to anecdotal evidence than the scientific method.

But… None of them are uniform nationwide. When I went through the academy, it was 9 weeks. In Georgia, it’s now…

A little over 10 weeks. The average number of hours needed to become a mandated officer nationwide is 547…

A little over 13 weeks. And the curricula? Very, very varied. There is no national standard for training. National training groups exist; but they are all private entities… with their own agendas.

Certain standards or qualifications

Again, even more scattered than the last one… each individual agency decides what they need to have; and most of the time, that decision is made based on “what do we need to have at a minimum to keep us from being sued?” Occasionally, state agencies will mandate certain standards… When I started, you didn’t have to qualify with your weapon or have any training on use of deadly force after the Academy.

This didn’t change until 2006. It wasn’t that many years before I went to the academy that you could work for up to a year as a cop before you had to go to the academy to be certified.

And every state is different.

The only requirements you have to fill to keep your certification in Georgia every year are to 1) attend a 1 hour Use of Deadly Force class 2) pass annual firearms qualification and 3) attend 20 hours of advanced or in-service training. The one thing that gets cops year after year is the 20 hour training requirement. Even though I offered in excess of 1,000 training hours a year as the departmental training officer, I had officers every year didn’t get that 20. But hey, no sweat! Yeah, you lost the powers of arrest on January 2 the following year; but all you have to do is make up the training and sign a waiver; and your powers of arrest were reinstated retro-actively! Now it doesn’t matter who you arrested in the meantime; you’re all good!

And every state is different.

Standards of conduct

You already know what I’m going to say here: And every state is different. But actually, every AGENCY is different. Each agency makes their own Standard Operating Procedures (or Suggested Operating Procedures… more on that later). Sure, there are national and state-level accreditation agencies, who certify departments based on what their policies and procedures say: CALEA nationally, and GACLEA in Georgia… but what does that mean?

If you go to their websites, you see vague promises of Staunch Support from Government Officials and Stronger Defense Against Civil Lawsuits if your agency becomes Accredited with CALEA…

But what happens if you don’t; or you lose your accreditation?

Nothing. Except you save $16,125 for agencies with 200-999 officers; which describes every agency I’ve worked for.

Accountability matters, and there is none here.

But, what are the things these accreditation agencies require of a police department before they can be accredited?

Well… on the face of it, they sound good. But in practice, they’re so vague as to be useless. Such as GACLEA Standard 1.10:

The agency shall have Use-of-Force written directives that address the
following:

a. Personnel will only use reasonable force to accomplish lawful
objectives and, when possible, apply de-escalation techniques.

b. Prohibiting the use of choke holds or the use of any technique
restricting the intake of oxygen for the purpose of gaining control of a
subject, except in those situations where the use of deadly force is
allowed by law.

c. When it is objectively reasonable that a subject is in law enforcement’s
full control, any use of force must terminate.

d. The duty and obligation to intervene in order to prevent or stop the
known and apparent use of excessive force by ANY law enforcement
officer, including reporting requirements.

e. Discharging firearms at or from a moving vehicle.

f. The use of warning shots.

See any wiggle room in those? Shit. You could parade all of the entire National Denny’s Gold Customer Award winners through those holes, and that’s pretty wide. How many times have we seen those standards violated, in a very public manner, over the past 4 years?

Let’s look at some that have been in the national conscience lately:

2.1 The agency has a written directive that requires each sworn officer receive
annual training on:

a. legal updates
b. vehicle pursuits
c. authorized forcible stopping techniques
d. bias based profiling
e. search and seizure; and
f. the agency’s Critical Incident Plan.

Whoa, hold on, why does the 06/2021 revision have strikeouts? Do we not care about Bias Based Profiling in Georgia any longer? Maybe it’s a mistake; let’s look at another…

2.2 The agency has a written directive that requires all employees receive
annual training on:

a. off-duty conduct
b. sexual harassment
c. the agency’s policy on citizen complaints/Internal Affairs
d. ethics
e. dealing with the mentally ill or persons with diminished capacity; and
f. the agency’s polices on domestic violence incidents involving
employees of the agency.

Holy shit. That explains a lot, don’t it? And I haven’t mentioned “Suggested” operating procedures yet. You see, that verbiage sounds good on the face… after all, “Standard” operating procedures, with words like “shall” and “must” in them can’t cover every situation a cop might find himself in. He might do the right thing but still get hung on the “technicality” of unbendable SOPs. I sympathize with that…

…but it leads to the untenable practice of “commonly accepted practice” becoming “SOP”. Agencies have been handed a lot of consent decrees based on their “unofficial commonly accepted practices” running afoul of common decency.

There have to be standards. If LEOs are so hung up on imitating the military, then let’s hold them to those standards.

I think we can discount this point, as well. And I haven’t even mentioned that there’s no national standard, and-

Every state is different.

Folks. If you care at all about policing; if you’ve spent hours of sweat and frustration because you believed this was a noble calling, you have to agree with me.

There HAVE to be national standards, in all four areas, that every LE agency conforms to in this country. Otherwise we’ll wake up to headlines about cops committing some atrocity somewhere in the US on a daily basis.

Like we do today.

Law Enforcement is NOT a profession.

But it can be.

Possibly the clumsiest metaphor ever attempted

When I was a rookie cop at my first agency, fresh out of the academy- almost 30 years ago- one of my duties, depending on what shift I was assigned, was to raise and lower the American and Georgia state flags. After a few years they were replaced, and I kept the old ones. I found them last year, buried in a box in the basement. The American flag was given to a Boy Scout troop for proper retirement. The Georgia flag, however, deserves no such respect; as at the time it flew it was the Georgia state seal on a blue field next to- yup. The Confederate battle flag, the stars and bars, the ol’ middle finger to those who died because of racism and who are still dying today. For it, it was combined with a poofer bag of smokeless powder and an electric match as part of a bit of performative theater on the 4^th of July, 2020; after I’d about had my fill of “Heritage, not hate” idiots. It didn’t burn up completely; so I tossed the remains under the deck, intending to burn it in the fire pit later on.

Fast forward to almost one year later, and the wind and critters have moved it to the edge of the yard. The grass had been enjoying all the recent rain, and I was cutting by the edge of the deck when the south rose again.

Yup, the end of the flag got sucked under the mower deck and wrapped itself around both blade spindles, stalling out the mower. Sonofabitch. And it was wound tight around those spindles. But it was my fault; I should have finished the job on the flag a long time ago, and had forgotten about it. Back to the carport to laboriously remove the mower deck and flip it over, and hack, slash, burn, and yank bits of confederate flag out from around the shafts. Then re-install and re-level the deck, and good as new.

Rinsing off in the shower later- I cannot work on any piece of machinery, no matter how simple, without getting covered in grease and dirt- I thought about how apropos this situation was. Racism, once burnt and beaten, wasn’t properly disposed of… and it lurked in the background, moving closer to the light, until one day- perhaps emboldened by an orange man- it leaps out and tries to strangle the mower. The mower is only interested in law(n) and order (sorry); but now it’s hopelessly entangled with racism, so tightly wound around its core as to stall the whole mechanism. It ignored the danger, not realizing that the threat would come from it’s cutting edges.

Fixing it is an arduous, dirty, frustrating task, that calls for patience- and dismantling part of the whole machine. But only after the bits that are choking it off are removed can it be re-greased and re-assembled. Had it not been a strong riding mower; had it been the old, clapped-out push mower instead, it might have seized the engine beyond repair. But this is a strong mower. It’s well designed, and it can take- and has- a lot of abuse. It just needs maintenance, a clearing of the detritus- and a wary eye for dangers in the tall grass.

Removing the entangled shreds of racism from law enforcement will take the same patience, hard work, and dirt; and in some cases, dismantling the mechanism and rebuilding. And maybe the machine should be more narrowly focused instead of trying to solve all problems with it. Planting more areas of native wildflowers would reduce the amount that had to be mowed, and would increase the diversity and amount of life in the yard as well. You wouldn’t use the lawnmower to tend to the flowers, of course. There are far better, less destructive tools for that.

And I think I’ve stretched this metaphor to the breaking point.

The excellent tactical training I gave cops is why policing today is such a hot mess

When I was a cop, and I saw that another cop was in the news, I would read the news article with a lot of trepidation. “Oh, geez… what now? It’s hard enough trying to gain the trust of the public, without the fact that every time I turn around, some cop somewhere else is proving the public’s mistrust isn’t unfounded.” And it didn’t help that a lot of the things cops do aren’t very well understood by the public, and a commonplace action gets misinterpreted as something sinister. For example, the practice of raising the hood of your police car if you’re stationary on a hot day and have to leave the car running. There were many times when I’d be blocking a lane of traffic with my car while I worked a vehicle wreck in the middle of a Georgia summer, leaving the car running to power the strobe lights and the AC. If I didn’t raise the hood, the car would start overheating, despite the heavier duty engine cooling that Ford police interceptors had. I saw a picture of this recently, with the caption “Cops raise hoods to block their dash cams, so they won’t get in trouble!”

Sigh.

But…

Maybe…

Just maybe…

The public wouldn’t be so quick to attach nefarious reasons to everything cops do…

If the goddamn cops didn’t keep proving them right.

This past week, we all got to see yet another confirmation that sometimes, the public’s opinion is- and has been for a while- correct. If it seems like there are a lot of cops out there who think they’re part of an occupying army, well… The events that befell Army Lt. Caron Nazario in December in Virginia have once again proven that this assumption is correct.

Lt. Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was driving home from his duty station in a recently purchased vehicle, a black Tahoe with darkly tinted windows. The articles and video I’ve seen show that there isn’t a license plate affixed to the rear; but do state that the tag was visible in the rear window once someone was close enough. And, in fact, this was the reason for the traffic stop that Windsor Virginia police officer Daniel Crocker began on the vehicle. This, in itself, is entirely routine; both the stop, and the tags being inside the car in the back window. I do not know if Virginia issues paper temporary tags to newly purchased cars; but Georgia does, and it was not uncommon to have the temporary tag stolen off of your car- being paper, they are easy to remove- so a lot of people would place the tag in their rear window until their paperwork had reached the tag office for a permanent one.

Officer Crocker calls in the traffic stop and activates his blue lights (the bodycam footage I’ve seen starts shortly after the stop is initiated, but before Nazario pulls over). Nazario continues to drive, at a very slow speed, until he reaches a lighted, public area, where he pulls into a gas station and stops.

Again, none of this so far is unusual. In my time as a mandated officer, I lost count of how many traffic stops like this I made for no tag visible; in a lot of those cases, I would see the tag in the window (usually it fell over) when I approached the car. Then it would just be a quick chat with the driver- “I stopped you because I couldn’t see a license plate, but I now see it in the rear deck. When you get home, maybe put a little piece of tape on it so it doesn’t fall down.” I also stopped hundreds of cars with dark window tint- a violation in Georgia at the time, but I never wrote a ticket for it, not even when working a traffic unit. I never stopped a car on suspicion of illegal window tint; I was never that desperate to write a ticket. And I’ve had many cars continue very slowly to a safe space to pull over, something I appreciated. There were always stories in the news about some guy putting blue lights in his car and pulling people over; not that common but common enough to make people think twice about pulling over for a slick-top car. Mostly, I appreciated it because there’s nothing quite like the pucker you get when a car passes a foot from your ass at 70mph when you’re talking to the driver of the car you just pulled over that isn’t over far enough.

So, by all rights, this would have been a routine traffic stop. (And if you, dear reader, are about to pounce on me over my use of “routine traffic stop”, just hold your water; we’re going to talk about that phrase, and how it’s really at the heart of this issue.)

So, how did this stop go wrong? And when?

It went wrong as soon as the video starts.

The footage is from Officer Joe Guiterez’ body camera, as he follows behind Crocker. Crocker can be heard over the radio calling out the chase, calmly and professionally, noting speeds- 18 mph- and lane position. As would be standard after a vehicle finally stops after a chase, both Officers begin the “Felony Stop” procedure; a method of controlling a situation so all occupants of the car can be removed and secured, one by one, minimizing the risks to the Officers.

Can you see in that paragraph where things went wrong?

It went wrong the moment this stop became a “chase”.

There’s always a moment of tension when you turn on the strobes to pull over a car. Is this guy gonna take off? Is there something I don’t know about the driver that would make him want to run from the cops, when all I want to do is see if he has a tag or not? Did he just rob a bank? Am I about to get in a shootout?

Wow, that sounded kind of… paranoid. More on that later, too.

So, when the car didn’t immediately pull over, sure, there’s going to be some concern. I’d let Dispatch know the car hasn’t pulled over yet, but… 18 miles per hour? He’s not running… And as he started to move over and pull into a well lighted public area, well, I know he’s just looking for a safe spot. I’ve even had drivers call 911 to tell the dispatcher to let the officer know they’re going to a safe spot.

The video I’ve seen doesn’t start right at the beginning of the stop, so I can’t hear what Crocker says when the car doesn’t pull over immediately, but I’m betting the words he used were “vehicle is failing to yield”, which immediately has connotations to anyone hearing it on the radio that there’s about to be chase… Or, “10-80”, which was the formal declaration that this is a chase.

I don’t know what was said. I’m sure more will come out as Nazario’s lawsuit proceeds. But what I did see suggests that these officers already considered it a chase, to be concluded by a felony stop, which is what then happened.

A typical “Felony Stop” involves the police stopping two vehicles side by side behind the suspect vehicle, illuminating it with headlights, takedown lights, spotlights. One officer is the cover, one is the contact. Cover officer only gives the commands to prevent confusion– hands out the window, left hand to reach in and turn off the ignition, then drop the keys outside the window, open door with the outside handle, step out, turn around with hands raised (raises shirt hem above the waistline to see if there’s weapons), back up to the sound of my voice, stop, down on both knees, go prone, arms out like an airplane… contact officer moves to handcuff while cover officer covers the car at gunpoint. All people in the car are removed this way and handcuffed; then the car is searched for other occupants. As its name implies, it’s used when the occupants of the car are expected to be armed and expected to fight the cops if given the chance. It’s a high-risk, armed encounter; and hearing the words “Felony stop” immediately puts everyone into a heightend state of tension.

In other words, they’re not usually done on a misdemeanor traffic stop, even with the flags of the car not stopping immediately and the tint making it very difficult to see inside. I’ve yet to see window tint so dark that a spotlight at the side of the car didn’t illuminate the interior, and two officers can “L” the car if lighting conditions aren’t right.

So, that’s the setup- this minor traffic violation has now turned into a dangerous felony stop.

And here’s where this smoldering dumpster-fire of a traffic stop ignites: When Officer Guiterrez gets his jackboots rustled.

Multiple commands to open the door, open the door and step out, open the door by Crocker, who has assumed the role of cover. I can almost see him thinking “The Book says he should be getting out now, but he’s not… Why isn’t this working?”

Then Guiterrez loses his patience and yells, full throated, “GET OUT OF THE CAR! NOW!”

You can see this startle Crocker. Startles him so much that he shifts his grip on his gun, moving from a perfectly serviceable modified Weaver, though he’s leaning back too much, into a… well, I don’t think there’s a name for it, other than “railroad tracks”… because with his left thumb riding across his right hand, and directly behind the slide of the Glock, if he fires that gun, the slide will cut across his thumb, leaving parallel cuts in the skin– railroad tracks. It’s not something you normally do more than once on the range, because it’s a very painful lesson. Crocker also yells, much more forcefully, “open the door and get out of the car!”

There might have been a chance to salvage this stop before Guiterrez lost his patience. A chance to slow down just a step, figure out what’s really going on, and de-escalate. But once Guiterrez started controlling the scene, Crocker mimicked his actions and escalated as well. Crocker’s actions make me believe he’s more inexperienced than Guiterrez.

Guiterrez now moves to the left of the vehicle, around some gas pumps, using “meh” cover (not really cover, more concealment), and Crocker follows, keeping to the rear. We can now more clearly hear Nazario asking “What’s going on? What’s happening?” as the commands to exit continue. And then Guiterrez shouts the real reason behind his seemingly irrational anger- “You know what, I’m a veteran too! I learned how to OBEY!”

That’s about as close as you can get to “Respect mah AUTHORITAAAAH!” without actually being Eric Cartman.

OK. This will not end well. From the very start, this routine traffic stop was doomed to fail; doomed by the very training that was theoretically designed to prevent injury and violence.

To the officer, that is.

(Side note: There has been a lot of Twitter fury directed at Guiterrez saying “You about to ride the lightning, son!”, but for the wrong reason. It is another indicator of his bull cop tactics and attitude, yes; but most people took it to mean Nazario is about to be executed in an electric chair. It is also a common cop term for someone getting Tasered… and, in fact, Guiterrez holsters his Glock and unholsters his Taser after saying it. Still a clue into Guiterrez’s mindset, but not an indication of immediate execution. Context is important.)

The rest of the video continues as we’d expect- Nazario doesn’t exit until after he’s pepper sprayed repeatedly by Guiterrez, doesn’t get immediately to the ground and is kicked down prone. Nazario doesn’t make any violent or sudden gestures, however, and genuinely seems afraid and confused; especially after being pepper sprayed. Having been pepper sprayed many, many times myself, I can say that this is a completely understandable reaction.

Notable is Crocker attempting to open Nazario’s door after pleading for Nazario to exit- “Sir! Just… get out of the car! Work with us, and we’ll talk with you!” Textbook Academy presentation. He, at least, realizes something’s wrong and is trying, a smidge, to de-escalate. But Guiterrez orders him aside and begins spraying OC.

(Also notable is Guiterrez coughing after spraying Nazario… When you spray OC, it leaves a cloud of vapor and droplets that get on everyone nearby. You can even see it hit the lens of his bodycam. But, instead of the discomfort reminding him that he’s going too far, he probably wore it as a badge of honor.)

I haven’t mentioned possible deeper-rooted reasons for the cop’s reactions; but it can’t be ignored. When I was a cop and someone saw a car with limo tint, their muttered comment was “Probably a gang-banger”. And those dirty, dangerous, elusive “gang-bangers” were, of course, Black or Latino. Did that play a factor in why this became a felony stop? Don’t know, but it can’t be ignored. What also can’t be ignored are the number of POC that have been killed after following police orders to the letter and were still shot. I am a the whitest, most anglo-saxon male you could ever find- my picture is in the dictionary next to the entry for “honky”- but even I know that fact, that danger from the police, is in the back of every POC’s mind when they encounter the police, especially in this manner. So, yes, while this might have been avoided had Nazario just exited the vehicle… it might have ended even more tragically, and Nazario knew that, just by virtue of being a POC today.

I’ve mentioned in this article several times the evidence I’ve seen of Crocker and Guiterrez’ excellent tactical training. A lot of it was textbook, tactically; the same things I taught hundreds of cops in Georgia. But it’s also this training, taught officially and unofficially by the field training officers and senior officers in every department, that truly caused this encounter to end the way it did; and probably caused countless other encounters like this, infamous or unknown. It’s the training that says “there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop”.

I started in Law Enforcement in 1988, a freshman in college, as an auxiliary officer- a glorified Security Guard working for a University Department of Public Safety. I became a police dispatcher in 1991, and, having an interest in firearms as part of some strange but common ideal of manliness, often went to the range with the sworn Officers of the department. It was a Lieutenant, impressed by my marksmanship, who convinced me to go to the Police Academy in 1996 to become a Mandated Officer, with the powers of arrest- a cop. In the Academy, I excelled- Top academic score, Top Gun at the range, and voted Class President (after, though, the first Class President had to quit the Academy after being fired by his department for some scandal). At the Academy Graduation (after 11 weeks of training; a sadly paltry amount), I had to give the Commencement Speech. I was introduced as the Top Gun, Honor Graduate (with an overall academic score of- get this- 94%), and Class President. I spoke nervously about networking with one another post-graduation, to teach each other what we learned on our separate paths, and therefore become better in our profession; and was met with a standing ovation by the class and my instructors.

Afterwards, an older, black, County Commissioner, who was invited to attend the graduation (this was a regional state academy that actually used to be run by my department until the State consolidated Academies), made his speech. He congratulated all of us… and then proceeded to say that it was a shame that the Top Gun score of 99.8% on the handgun qualification was higher than the top academic score of 94%. He said that the study of Law Enforcement, the Profession of Law Enforcement, to fairly and equitably enforce the laws that our society holds as important to civilization, should be more important than the ability to kill another human being accurately.

That caused a jolt in me. I was, after all, the holder of both those achievements; so it felt like an insult to me, personally. Afterwards, when diplomas were handed out and we did our diploma walk, all of the instructors whispered words of encouragement; including “To hell with that guy, you deserve this.”

25 years later, I think on this; and I realize…

The County Commissioner was right. And foresaw where we were headed. He wasn’t insulting me, personally; but rather taking exception with this idea that cops are faced with “combat” every day, guarding the “Thin Blue Line” between Order and Chaos; so much so, that skill with a weapon is more important than knowledge of the law or things like empathy and de-escalation techniques. And it’s this attitude that leads to some police instructor, just like me, using the phrase “There’s no such thing as a ‘routine’ traffic stop!”, that’s a perfect example of the mindset.

Oh, I used that phrase innocently enough as an instructor. I wanted to impress upon my students the fact that you always have to be ready for the unexpected, always in Condition Yellow/Orange while on duty, that you can never let your guard down. That guy you just stopped for a broken tail light- or, maybe, no license plate- Might… Might… have just murdered his girlfriend and stuffed her in his trunk. So you better position the take-downs and your car just right when you stop them, and let Dispatch know. Take a second to watch the driver… is he fidgiting nervously? Reaching under the seat? Shoulders raised, indicating he’s pulling a gun from his waistband? Slowly exit, keeping your eye on his reflection in his side mirror. Stop at the trunk to push down on it to ensure it’s latched; just in case there’s a gunman in there ready to pop up behind you (wait, I thought the dead wife was in the trunk? Never mind.) This would also leave your fingerprints on the trunk, in case they had to identify this car after you were gunned down, in the days before dashcams. Hug the side of the car; shine your flashlight in the back seat to make sure there’s no one hiding there. Stop at the B-pillar of the car, so if the driver tries to shoot you he has to turn all the way around. Get a good whiff of the air inside the car when he rolls his windows down, to sniff for booze or pot smoke (those degenerates). At the end of the stop, sigh heavily; happy that you’ve survived another encounter with a…

Civilian.

And so on, and so on. Yes, every one of those possible scenarios during a traffic stop has happened in the past. These lesson plans were developed on the blood of another officer, another line of duty death… but. Those things, even in the big city, don’t happen that often. Especially not on the University campus, or in the urban counties where I worked. But we taught these horror stories, and the officers ate up this training, throughout my career; and long before then. Buoyed by Starsky and Hutch and Hill Street Blues and Cagny and Lacy and Miami Vice, we believed the danger was constant and omnipresent. When there was a real danger that any agency might have to deal with- Active Shooters- we, as a nation, spent more time learning SWAT-style tactics instead of asking why these kids are shooting up schools and how the hell did they get these guns, anyway?

This kind of training- you must always be alert, must always mis-trust the people you contact; this constant paranoia- may have saved a life or two, but is corrosive on your world-view and your mental health. What are the statistics on cop divorces and rate of alcoholism and suicide after retirement, again? They’re pretty shocking.

There is, also, and always, the question of race. I’ve been faced with that my entire life in the South, and it’s always present in Law Enforcement. When I joined my second agency, a metro-area but still mostly rural Sheriff’s Office, a “sundown” sign had existed until a couple of years before my arrival along a stretch of state highway that passed through an area known, by the sign the crotchety old white guy who lived there put up, as “Struggleville”.

A “Sundown sign”, in Georgia, means a billboard that says “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you here”.

Yeah. One of the first black deputies to reach the rank of Lieutenant at this Sheriff’s Office used to tell stories about how black deputies didn’t ride through Struggleville alone, lest they be lynched. Memories of the “County-Line Gang”, the Southern Mafia, Buford Pusser’s nemesis in “Walking Tall”, had connections to my county and it’s history.

Once you combine this militarization of Law Enforcement with the also deep-rooted, but subtle, racism inherent not only in the south but all of white society in the US, you get the reason why cries of “Defund the Police” have some merit, even if the messaging isn’t clear. There is a deep, deep rot in Law Enforcement; that seems plausible on the surface- it can be a dangerous profession- but the actual level of danger is far, far less than justifies the current state. It’s the mindset that leads two officers, one of whom has a serious authority complex and another that seems too inexperienced to know better but knows it’s wrong on a deep level, to over-react this badly on a, yes, ROUTINE traffic stop. And this “law and order” ideal is also shaped by the general attitudes of the public towards what they think Law Enforcement is about.

There must be a re-boot of policing. A tear-down and re-birth, based on humanity and compassion… the things those of us that became cops… some of us, anyway… thought Policing was about, even if we found out later it really wasn’t.

And if you’re a cop today… you need to have a real talk with yourself what you thought the profession was, and what it has become… and work to change it.

On Open Carry; or, Jesus Keeerist Annie Oakley, Put That Thing Away!

Author’s Note: In this essay, I’m not talking about “open carry” in the sense that you’re camping or hiking in an area with dangerous wildlife, or hunting, working in your personally owned business, or even lounging around naked in your home (you sweet, sweet pervert you); no, I’m talking about openly wearing a firearm, handgun or long gun, in populated, public areas. Also, you’ll have to take into account that my Law Enforcement experiences ended in 2010, and may not reflect cops today.

Standing in the checkout line at my local Northeast Georgia Wal-Mart, I find myself behind a portly gentleman wearing a t-shirt extolling the products of a certain firearms manufacturer, and sporting a large stainless semiautomatic handgun (that I know for a fact retails between $900-$1200) in a kydex pancake holster on his hip. I’m familiar with the holster, I used it myself as a cop in plainclothes assignments. I do have to admit, it is a comfortable holster; although it was banned from being used at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center because it requires you to press a button with your index finger to draw the gun- and the button is in line with the trigger. After a couple of cops shot themselves in the ass trying to draw their guns on the firing range, they nixed that holster.

As I waited in the interminably long line, I idly wondered if he practiced drawing from that holster enough to do it safely; and did he realize that a person standing behind him can easily pluck that thing out because he’s not paying attention to anything but his phone?

I wasn’t particularly surprised to see someone openly carrying a gun in my local Wal-Mart; first off, it’s Wal-Mart, what did you expect? Secondly, there’s been a huge number of people in the past few years pointedly showing off their guns in public even before they started doing it at Trump rallies. It happens so much where I live that I’ve started getting bored with critiquing their weapons and carry styles. Even before recent events, I’ve been immersed in the world of firearms in some way for the past 40 years; starting with the Marksmanship merit badge in the Boy Scouts, through to becoming a law enforcement instructor in every firearm used by Law Enforcement, to serving on two different SWAT teams as entry team leader, as well as rangemaster and armorer for three departments. I’ve been around guns most of my life, and lived mainly in places where guns in private citizen’s hands are omnipresent.

So. You know. One more guy in the checkout line with a gun on his hip is no shock. But…

Why carry it openly? Out there for everyone to see (and snatch fairly easily)? Why is it better to let everyone within eyesight of you know you’re carrying a gun?

If you ask open carry advocates, they’ll usually spout a few similar reasons. Let’s look at the ones that sound sort of reasonable on the surface:

1) It’s the foundation of the Second Amendment

OK, that seems a little of a stretch… Open Carry, by itself, is the only thing holding up the 2^nd Amendment? Without it, guns will surely be banned any second? Usually, their rationale for this is that the Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 held that the 2^nd Amendment states that possessing and carrying a weapon, whether open or concealed, is protected by the constitution. What they ignore from that ruling- and subsequent others from lower courts- is that the Second Amendment is not unlimited, and states can regulate how it is carried out.

2) Education

Education, in this case, means “Educating people that there are guns out there and that they shouldn’t be afraid of them”. Hm. I’m not sure carrying an AR-15 over your shoulder to a political rally is a great educational tool. It’s almost as if there’s another reason for it… I think I’m getting closer to the real reason people open carry…

3) Practicality

This usually broken down into 1) it’s more comfortable, 2) it’s quicker, 3) the cops do it all the time, and 4) it lets you carry BIGGER GUNS!

Really. I’m not exaggerating that last one.

-More comfortable… well, yes, it is more comfortable than concealed carry. The whole rationale of why concealed carry is better than open is that in concealed carry, no one knows you’re armed. To do this, you’ve got to carry a relatively small weapon, depending on your body size, and keep it snug against you so it will be hidden by your clothing. Cheap holsters and bulky guns tend to poke, prod, and bruise you when carrying concealed. Even with compact guns and well-made, comfortable holsters, effective concealment is hampered in hot weather by restricting what you can comfortably wear. The only concealable holster I could use with shorts in the summer in Georgia was a fanny pack; which did the job quite well… but that’s not exactly an option for macho men, now is it?

-It’s quicker… Yes, it is this, as well. The time to draw a handgun from concealment can’t compare to the time to draw from an open holster; especially if you’re carrying it in basically a sock with no retention capabilities at all. I mean, that’s why-

-The cops do it all the time… Sure, because they’re automatic targets. You can’t hide that you’re armed when you’re wearing a very visible uniform. But… those cops are also wearing retention

holsters that are very difficult to remove a gun from very quickly- so difficult, in fact, that it takes a lot of training and practice to draw from a triple-retention holster as quickly as from an open one. The first time I tried to draw from one in the Academy, I came damn near to lifting myself off the ground. They’ve also had a lot of practice, from day one, on weapon retention- keeping someone from snatching that gun from it’s holster and shooting you with it. Even with all this, 8% of officers killed in the line of duty from 1994 to 2003 were killed with their own gun.

While we’re talking about cops- and firearms trainers, whether law enforcement or civilian- ask them why they prefer to carry concealed when they’re off-duty. They’ll tell you that they’d rather not be the first target in an armed robbery or some other confrontation. Armed guards haven’t deterred bank robberies; the armed guard gets it first. If you’re a cop in the bathroom of a 7-11 and, when you’re done, you use caution when you open the door; it’s in case the place is getting held up and you’re about to walk into it. Same reason you sit facing the door- you want to know if trouble’s coming, to give you time to assess the situation and make the right decision on how to handle it. And yes, those are both actual situations that have happened before, and have therefore been ingrained into cops.

Most cops and serious instructors would rather keep their weapon concealed, so they have time to assess the situation and decide how to handle it. Charging in guns-a-blazin’ with little forethought usually ends up in the shooter, the robber, and some bystanders dead. In fact, we were taught in Law Enforcement that if we were off-duty in a store and it was robbed, the last thing you do is start waving your pistol around- in some situations, it’s better to be a good witness, than a gunslinger. (One scenario we ran all the time was being in a convenience store when the guy in front of you pulls a gun to rob the cashier. You fearlessly draw down on him and snarl something along the lines of “Go ahead punk… make my day”, while checking out your look in the mirror

…aaaand the accomplice who came in earlier as backup, who you didn’t notice, shoots you in the back.

Do you think the guy in front of me in this line at Wal-Mart has the situational awareness to avoid such a fate, even if he was carrying concealed and less likely to be a target?

Hell no. He’s still scrolling Instagram on his phone. Remember last post where I talked about the Cooper Color Codes and situational awareness? When you carry a gun, whether concealed or not, you have to be in at least Condition Yellow at all times…

…and this guy, giggling at the funny meme he just saw, is in perpetual White.

***Props for rockin’ an AT-4 missile; even if it is fake… You never know when you might need to defeat some light armor.***

– It lets you carry BIGGER GUNS!… It sure does that. Just look at the photos from recent protests where one of the anti-ANTIFA (you reduce the fractions on that one) protesters was carrying Barrett M-82 .50 BMG rifle that is 4 feet in length and weighs 30 pounds. Not exactly subtle. Some advocates will claim that bigger handguns are easier to shoot- for example, this:

“It’s that simple. Larger guns are better weapons than smaller guns. Sure, you can compensate for some of this with training, but that same training would make you that much better with a full-sized pistol. All guns make compromises but compact and sub-compact guns make the most. “

Hoooold on there, hoss. First off, the fundamentals of shooting a handgun are the same for big ones and small ones, semi-autos and revolvers. You should be practicing with your handgun often to ensure proficiency, but you toss that off with a sneering “Suuuure, you COULD practice until you’re as good with a smaller gun as you are with a bigger one; but who’s got the time?”

This attitude pisses me off to no end. It’s the “I’ve been shooting all my life and I know what I’m doing; you can’t teach me nothin’!” attitude I see in every self-proclaimed expert who then proceeds to 1) miss their target even at ridiculously short distances and 2) do something flagrantly unsafe and get pissy when you call them on it. So don’t use this excuse on me. My best range scores- consistent 100%’s on a more difficult version of the Georgia Double-Action Course- were shot with a compact Glock .40 cal, the weapon I practiced with the most and was most comfortable with. Size didn’t matter; training did.

No, what they’re talking about here is the concept of “ballistic advantage”- the idea that more powerful rounds are more likely to defeat attackers with fewer rounds; which means that rifles are even more betterer because the bullets they shoot are 1) faster 2) heavier 3) both… they’re more ballistically advantageous.

You know… the bullets are thicker and longer than wimpy pistol bullets.

…which means they’re also more likely to overpenetrate the target and hit the person behind the target (yeah, right, you were thinking about your backstop before you pulled the trigger. Sure, sure. You won’t even take a training class; why should I believe you?) or, the more likely scenario, out of the 20 rounds you just sprayed off, one hit the target and the rest went trough three walls before hitting bystanders. Never mind that the weapon itself is heavy, bulky, and hard to deploy from a sling on the back. So why would you even want to open carry a long gun in day to day carry? What could possibly be attacking you in the Wal-Mart that necessitates that much firepower? Hordes of armed robbers wearing body armor? A Hollywood style bank robbery shootout on every corner of your small town?

But having that AR-15 on your back or that 7-inch barrel .44 Magnum revolver on your hip sure looks coooooool.

… Hmm, an idea of why people advocate open carry is forming…

4) It deters crime

It seems like it would, right? Criminals are opportunists; they’re not going to rob a liquor store where the manager is openly carrying a gun, are they? If a large portion of the public is carrying and everyone knows it, the “bad guys” will go somewhere else?

We’ll leave aside who, exactly, a “bad guy” is- and how their skin tone might affect that identification amongst open carry advocates- for now. Is it statistically sound to say that open carry states are safer than non-open carry? Matt Gaetz said in 2015, during his bid to get open carry legalized in Florida, that “It is important to note that in the states that allow open carry, violent crime was 23 percent lower, the murder rate was 5 percent lower, the aggravated assault rate was 23 percent lower and robbery rates were 36 percent lower.”

Is that true?

Well, as usual per Mr. Gaetz, he cherry-picked data from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Reporting (that most agencies resent having to send data to), and didn’t provide any verifiable methodology behind his research that anyone can validate. However, there have been a lot of studies on this very topic, including a 2020 Rand Group study, and the results are…

Inconclusive either way.

So, while we can’t disprove the idea that open carry deters crime, neither can we prove it. However, mass open carry is a relatively recent thing… will the “bad guys” move away to areas where there aren’t so many people armed, like a giant mass migration of predatory locusts? You know, using those intercity mass transit systems that residents around here always vote against because they’re afraid “those people” will use them to commute from downtown Atlanta into the sticks to rob, rape, and pillage?

Snort. I’m sorry, even in the heart of “white flight” Georgia, that’s never been an issue. No, the “bad guys” will stay local… except, now they know they have to deal with people openly carrying.

But, let’s ask the open carry advocates what they think:

Rather unfortunate ad placement on your uber-masculine site

“The first rule of not being a victim is not looking like a victim. This is one of basic laws of nature and one that most of us learn in grade school. The best way to avoid a fight is to look like you can win one.“

OOOOoooooohh. I think we’re getting to the heart of the matter here. The real reason people choose to open carry, and not the excuses they hide behind that I’ve laid out here.

It’s not because that without it, the 2^nd Amendment would vanish.

It’s not because they’ve been trained on how to do it safely (because they haven’t).

It’s not because of any practical necessity. It’s not because it has any practical advantages over concealed carry other than it’s “easier”.

And the only “educating” of the public that they’re doing is showing them that they’re ready to blast the “bad guys” with overwhelming force and no mercy…

While they’re at a Proud Boys rally where the “bad guys” are anyone who disagrees with you.

No, Open Carry Guy, it’s all really because…

You want to look like a badass. You want everyone around to know that you’ve got the biggest dick, and those “bad guys” better watch out; we’re not taking any shit any longer from them damn Antifas and BLMs and drug dealers and Jews and Ragheads and uppity black folk…

Oh dear. I’ve said the quiet part out loud, haven’t I.

There’s a reason I never played baseball…

…because I throw like a girl.

Another day (late night), another barricaded gunman. Story is the same- man gets drunk/stoned/forgets his meds, rants at the family, pulls a gun and threatens them, they manage to escape, he holes up in the house threatening to kill anyone who comes through the door. Seriously, almost every barricaded gunman call I’ve been on starts like this, and usually occurs at the worst times… middle of the night, raining, really cold or really hot. In this case, I was still getting over a nasty head cold; stuffed up and not firing on all cylinders yet. But when the phone rings at 11pm and the caller ID is the 911 center, you know what it is. You groan, and bitch, and curse fate; and then answer it to see what it is this time.

I arrived on the scene and get the story. Yeah, drunk guy; yeah, long history of problems with anger and the police; yeah, family ran out and called the cops. No idea if he’s still in the house; he hasn’t answered the phone or the bullhorn or shown himself. It’s a one story with a full, unfinished basement, and he’s armed with a rifle, the family says. We gather around the swat truck and hash out an operations order. Now, I’m still slightly dizzy from the congestion and really not feeling very convivial, so this is more of a chore than usual; but we put together a workable plan.

Plan is: Go through the unlocked front door, clear the living area and kitchen, hold on the narrow hallway to the bedrooms. He was last seen in the bedroom, so we’re expecting him to be there; but no one wants to stare down a rifle easily capable of zipping through our body armor. So, before clearing the bedrooms, we plan to toss a flash-bang down the hallway and clear the rooms, holding on the stairs to the basement. Then another banger down the stairs and clear the basement.

Flash-bangs, more properly known as “noise-light distractions devices” (but what an ungainly mouthful), are designed to disrupt that OODA cycle we mentioned in an earlier post. They produce an 8 million candela flash, a 170 decibel bang, and a nice bit of overpressure. You feel a good hard thump in the chest, your ears are ringing (and in some cases subject to vertigo from inner ear imbalance), and you’ve got nothing but a huge orange spot in front of your eyes. Even if you’re expecting it, it’s quite disorienting, and gives a tactical team a few precious seconds to get in and get the person controlled. They’ve got a 1.5 to 2 second fuse, so there’s very little time from their appearance to their performance.

So, the initial entry goes fine. Through the front door, kitchen and living area cleared in seconds, team stacked on the hallway. I tug a CTS flashbang from my vest and line up for the underhanded lob into the hallway.

…except there’s a team member in my way. I move to the side, intending to lob it to his right into the hall. Pull pin, swing back, lob!

Ohhhhh, shit. My lob is too far to the right, and the bang lands on top of a bookshelf. I cry out “Short!!”-meaning a short throw, the bang is still in the room with us- and turn my back to it. The rest of the team doesn’t react to this in time.

KA-BLAAAAAM! We’ve all been exposed to flash-bangs before- in fact, our training includes everyone holding hands in a circle, eyes open, while a banger is dropped in the middle- so we know what they do and what to expect. But it’s still a shock when it happens in front of you. There goes our OODA cycle. As I had turned my back, I missed the brunt of it and turned to find the team staggering backwards. Crap. “Gogogo!” I shout and start shoving people down the hallway. Off they go, staggering like the crowd leaving a bar at closing time, bouncing off the doorframes and into the rooms.

Of course, my toss down the stairway was textbook perfect, and of course, the guy wasn’t there. He’d slipped out the back door before the first unit arrived.

Why was I never picked first for stickball, again?

Murphy is with us, the sequel

You wouldn’t think of SWAT operators as psychologists, but if they’re serious about their profession, they become students of human behavior and physiological/psychological effects of stress on the body and the mind. It only makes sense, given the way SWAT operates. Ever wonder why they wear black gear, go crashing through doors, shouting their presence? It’s basic human psychology, called the OODA loop- for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It’s what every person does in their head when presented when something new and unusual. For example, say you’re sitting at home watching the TV, and suddenly your high school principal comes bursting through the front door, dressed in a tutu. First, you must observe what has just happened. This sounds simple, but if you were zoned out watching the TV, you might not have noticed the things that announced his presence; like noises outside the door, the dogs looking out the windows, the faint scent of madness. Then you have to orient that to what you were expecting- which, in this scenario, is probably just the next commercial. Once you’ve done that, you have to decide what to do next- punch him, grab a gun, grab a camera, grab a can of whipped cream- and then act on that decision. SWAT teams operate by disrupting that OODA cycle- shock and surprise the bad guy (through speed and violence of action and disruptions like flash-bangs and the like) so he gets stuck at Observing or Orienting and can’t Decide or Act for a few seconds. In other words, he freezes up, and gives the team the time they need to get him under control.

Unfortunately, it also works in reverse. You’d think a team executing a dangerous operation would be ready for anything… but Murphy is always there to make that anything really mean anything. Case in point…

The narcotics boys had been investigating a low-level dealer of methamphetamine. They knew where he lived and sold out of, and knew that it was a father and a son. They also knew that one of them was bedridden, but not which and not why. Armed with our search warrant, we loaded up (at this time we were bailing out of a 15-passenger van with no seats) and headed for the house.

When we arrived, we bailed out and headed swiftly for the front door. The sidewalk went in front of a row of windows, all open, before leading to the front door. We could see that a female was seated against the windows, her back to us. As we approached the front door, she saw us and screamed. Well, there goes some of the surprise factor… as the point man, I threw the door open and went in, weapon at the ready, shouting “Sheriff’s Office! Search Warrant!” at the top of my lungs. The woman was standing up from a couch, cradling an infant in her arms, but began going to the floor as I entered. You have to clear the doorway when you make an entry, to keep from bottle-necking the rest of the team and making yourself an inviting target, so I kept moving; trusting that one of the other team members would pick her up and keep an eye on her. I continued to sweep the living-room with my eyes, gazing across a hospital bed in the middle of the room, upon which rested…

Holy shit. A gelatinous blob of pink flesh covered the bed and dripped off both sides. A small coconut topped with a thatch of hair delineated a head, with two calloused, blobby feet sticking out of the other end. The only thing that moved were the two small eyes, deeply sunk in flesh, that followed our movements. A tiny yap-dog, Pomeranian or something of that ilk, snuggled against this mound of meat. A 750 pound, buck naked man lay on this bed.

That, dear readers, was absolutely the last thing I expected to see in this house. Needless to say, it derailed my OODA cycle quite handily at the Orient stage, and I stopped dead, staring at Jabba. The rest of the team ran into my back, thump-thump-thump, and the next guy in line slapped the back of my helmet; re-starting my loop. Oh, yeah; continue clearing. I moved into the kitchen to finish clearing the rest of the house.

Jabba, as it turned out, was the dealer. He kept his stash under a fold. We couldn’t take him to the jail- not only would he not survive a night in jail, we literally couldn’t get him out of the door without cutting through the wall. We finally got a judge to sign an OR- “released on own recognizance”- bond and left him there. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna run away.

Just goes to show that even when you’re prepared for anything, there’s always something you won’t expect.

Murphy is with us

S.W.A.T. Sounds impressive. Conjures up images of steely-eyed, square-jawed, resolute men in black gear kicking in doors, rolling across the ground and coming up with pistols at the ready, and generally doing in the bad guys with panache and manly, testosterone-laden gusto.

Weeeeeellllll…. sort of. Every agency wants a SWAT team, if only for the cool factor. There is a need for them- the old saw is that when the police need to be bailed out of a dangerous situation, they call SWAT. And the tactical guys do have the training, experience, and equipment to deal with situations that the ordinary patrol cop isn’t prepared to handle- high-risk search warrants against violent felons, barricaded gunmen, active shooters, and hostage rescue. But the reality can get pretty far from Hollywood’s fantasies.

For one thing, no one regulates SWAT teams. Any agency with a few guys and some black nomex can throw bodies in the back of a van and call it a SWAT team; and, unfortunately, some do. The smaller the agency, the more likely that is. The reason is largely financial. Smaller agencies can’t afford the overtime salary for extra training, the ammunition costs (which can be quite substantial- 1000 rounds per month per operator is barely sufficient to keep the level of marksmanship skill required; at $334/1000 rounds, $3340 for a ten man team per month, $40,080 per year just for practice ammo for the swat team), the equipment costs… so the teams don’t get the training they need, never really gel as a working team, and it shows in their performance. Mid-sized agencies (100-500 employees) are in the grey area of being able to field a really respectable team if they play their cards right. Large and metro agencies are really the only ones who can afford to have those teams operate full-time.

But, I’ve had the honor of serving on two different mid-size agency SWAT teams that, for all their problems, worked well as a team and got the job done despite the budget handicaps. Working as a team in this respect means a lot more than corporate teamwork. When you and a teammate enter a room to clear it of hostiles, you each take half the room as your own. You have to know that the guy going in the room with you has got his half of the room and you’re not going to get shot in the back. You have to trust him to shoot a target one foot from you without error, if it came to that. When you get a team that works that well together, you’ve got a formidable tactical unit.

This isn’t to say that things always go smoothly. Ooohh, no; far from it. Murphy, in the title of this post, is “Murphy’s Law” Murphy: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. And even in the world of meticulously planned tactical operations with highly trained and competent tactical operators, Murphy’s always around the corner, ready to screw up your operation. And I’ve got countless examples of those.

And, since A) I’m never one to turn down a teaching opportunity; B) I haven’t got any pride; if an embarrassing screw-up can be used to emphasize a teaching point, I’ll tell stories on myself; and C) some of them are pretty funny; I’ll relate some of them to you. Posts with “Murphy” in the title will probably have one or more of these stories. This one isn’t exactly a “Murphy”, per se; but I found myself thinking about it last night.

Most of our tactical operations were in support of the Narcotics unit as high-risk search warrants. When the drug boys developed a suspect and got enough for a search and/or arrest warrant, they did a risk assessment on him- prior criminal history, history of violent acts, possession of weapons and propensity to use them, fortifications, surveillance, etc. etc. If the risk assessment scores high enough, they bring in the SWAT team to execute the warrant. This one was no different; a fairly low-level drug dealer known to have weapons and a violent past living in a one-story three-bedroom with his wife and child. We planned the warrant for early in the morning, to catch him in bed (and therefore less likely to react quickly) and suited up. Door is breached quickly, team enters and spreads out, calling out “Sheriff! Search warrant!” at the top of our voices. The den and kitchen area are cleared in seconds and the team enters the hallway with the bedrooms. I get to the master bedroom door with my second- it’s locked, but he gives it a good kick and it comes open right away. The wife is standing by the door in a nightie; and, instead of being hysterical and screaming like most, is standing there rather dejected, hands in the air, a “not this again” look on her face, as if this were a common occurrence for her. Well, married to a drug dealer, it probably was. My second got her proned out for handcuffing while I focused my attention on the husband, standing on the other side of the bed, naked as the day he was born. He had his hands up as I started to approach him from across the room, keeping my MP5 subgun in a high-ready position, yelling at him to get on the ground.

And get on the ground he starts to do… and then he lunges under the bed and out of sight. The first thing that pops into my head as he disappears is that he’s going for a weapon and I suck my BDU pants up my asshole. He pops up again, right into my sights, and I see he’s got a baggie and not a gun, and my finger slackens up off the trigger…

Crap! He grabbed his stash bag and ran for the toilet to flush it. I dropped the MP5 to hang on its sling and ran after him into the bathroom. He’d dropped the bag in the toilet and was reaching for the handle. I tackled him across the chest, got an arm under his chin, and started pulling him away from the toilet into the tub behind me. He was gripping the toilet bowl, trying to pull himself forward enough to flush. Gripping so hard, in fact, that he moved the toilet enough to break the water supply line behind the wall. We stayed at this impasse for what seemed like minutes (in reality, more like 8-10 seconds); him straining to reach the handle and me straining to pull him back while calling for a “second” at the top of my lungs. When a team member made it into the bathroom to help, the first thing he did was start laughing.

OK, fine, so seeing me wrestle a naked guy off a toilet is amusing, but can you give me a hand here? We got the guy subdued and handcuffed and fished his drugs out of the toilet, and my second finally told me why he was laughing. Seems that while the MP5 was hanging from it’s sling while I was sprawled out with the naked bad guy, the muzzle of the subgun was resting on the head of the bad guy’s penis. Had he tried to grab my gun, he probably would have blown his johnson off.

Aaaah, all in a day’s work.

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