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Training To Die?

By Lt. Jim Glennon

Pretend that there is no minimum standard or lowest, yet acceptable, score. Pretend, just pretend, that how you train today may be the difference between life and death tomorrow. Would the arbitrary minimum standard established by your agency ensure a win when faced with an adversary hell-bent and—laser-focused—on killing you?

To some that first paragraph might sound like a cliché, and to many it may be, but it is still an accurate description of both training programs and personal philosophies by too many law enforcement officers around this country.

I am beyond blessed in so many ways, and one of those blessings is the opportunity to interact with more than 10,000 law enforcement officers every year as an instructor and owner of Calibre Press. Several years ago, at a Street Survival Seminar, an officer recounted a harrowing experience he had that involved a gun-battle with a very violent felon. He won the fight but at the end of the story he told me this: “I realized afterwards that all the training in my entire career was actually teaching me how to lose a gunfight.” That comment stuck with me, as I held a belief for years that there was a serious lack of realistic training in our profession.

So let’s address REALITY!

Question: “If an attack on you is a violent act: What is the only way to overcome that violence?

Answer: More violence!

What is so unusual about that question and the subsequent answer is that they both use a word that is almost totally absent in law enforcement training: Violence. And why don’t we use that word? It’s too harsh. Too abrasive. Too politically incorrect. In short; the word violence is just too, well, violent.

But a physical assault is certainly a violent act, and more violence is absolutely necessary in order to overcome it. Not mindless endless violence, but violence none-the-less.

And here we come back to training expectations established by the powers that be. These are administrative expectations; but what about yours? What about your family’s expectations of you winning a violent encounter. Are those standards the same? Does your family just assume you are prepared?

Do some self-assessment: How are you training? Really.

I was a Master shot for a good portion of my career; and when I wasn’t I was at expert level. But master and expert are just words, monikers that described an ability to attain a certain score during qualification. And I was pretty damn good during those qualifications. I never had less than an Expert rating.

But an expert at what? Well, realistically, shooting a piece of paper that was just hanging there minding its own business and waiting to get shot.

My expertise came from repetition as we qualified twice a year and practiced qualification two more times every year. So I was shooting the exact same qualification program every three months. Within a couple of years I figured out the timing, the distance, the necessary ocular and muscular skills needed to hit the paper and get a good score.

It didn’t take me long to figure out how long six seconds was. I could, within those six seconds: find my fronts sights, put a round in the ten-ring, readjust, find my front sights again and put another round in the ten-ring from 21 feet away every time. Ta-DA: EXPERT!

But again, expert at what? Shooting a piece of innocent paper that meant me no harm, wasn’t shooting back and wasn’t moving. I realized very early on that what I was really learning was how to get myself killed in a gunfight. Virtually none of it was practical or realistic, and in fact it was damn dangerous.

Chuck Remsburg, the author of the original Street Survival: Tactics for Armed Encounters and first owner of Calibre Press wrote, “Under stress, in a crisis, you will instinctively revert to the way you trained.” What we follow that quote with in the Street Survival Seminar today is: “If that is true then you damn-well better evaluate the validity of your training.”

I can tell you that the majority of departments in this country mandate shooting two times a year at best. And what are they doing when they shoot? Qualifying. And why? To prove they can take the gun out of the holster, point it in the right direction, pull the trigger, hit a target, decock the weapon and reholster without shooting themselves, other officers or some innocent piece of furniture.

Unfortunately most officers accept this bare minimum requirement.

Think about what many of them do when it comes to range practice. They begrudgingly report to the range, take off their jackets, maybe their body-armor, stretch their arms, put on their “ears and eyes”, get themselves in the right frame of mind, maybe practice drawing and aiming, and then finally, when physically and mentally prepared they raise their hands and say “Ready.” Which is exactly how real gunfights happen.

Most programs—not all—but most, operate contrary to reality. Think about it: When on the range, where are you standing 95% of the time you fire your weapon? On the 7–yard line, while standing still, in the wide open. And what are you aiming at? Center-mass! And how are you finding center-mass? Using your front-sights!

So what are you really learning? How to get yourself killed in a gunfight!

I’ll never forget when my department started doing Simmunition and Airsoft training in the late '90s. We videoed each scenario. What shocked the trainers was how often officers involved for the first time in dynamic training, stood still and/or broke cover when they fired their weapons. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why; we trained them to do that.

Officer Joe Wagner became our range master because of the way he answered this question: "What would you do differently as far as range training?"

Joe talked about many things that at the time were as innovative as they were foreign to our department: having officers move while they fired their weapons, bringing car doors down onto the range, building walls and hallways, and implementing more dynamic training like Simmunitions and airsoft. But what really sold me on Joe was his answer to this question: What would be the first thing you would do? His answer: I’d talk to all the other range officers, they all have great ideas.

That’s what law enforcement has to do collectively. We have to start thinking outside the box, research and enlist ideas when it comes to training. And when I say “we” I mean both administrators as well as individual officers. Each are responsible for training and preparation to battle the violent.

Let’s not do what government does best: ignore reality until an event happens and hits you right between the eyes. Do we really need an officer death before we examine whether training is effective and based in reality? For you individuals out there who are saying as you read this; “Yeah dammit, somebody should do something about this!” Wake up, because that somebody is you!

Lt. Jim Glennon, a third generation LEO, retired from the Lombard, Ill. PD after 29 years of service. Rising to the rank of lieutenant, he commanded both patrol and the Investigations Unit. In 1998, he was selected as the first Commander of Investigations for the newly formed DuPage County Major Crimes (Homicide) Task Force. He is the owner of LifeLine Training & the Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar. .

Fitness Tip from

Despite limited equipment, combination lifts such as the “Medicine Ball Blast Combination Lift” can be used to perform interval training which can increase lactate threshold, ultimately resulting in an increase in performance. Combination lifts combine multiple exercises to make one exercise made up of multiple movements. For a video of how to perform, click here >

Workaholics and the Doomed Pursuit of Perfection

by Dorothy McCoy

Power is my mistress; I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me. --Napoleon

The workaholic is in a committed relationship with his IPad, IPhone and laptop. You see him or her sitting in airports, impeccably dressed and keyboarding or animatedly arguing with their cell phones. They appear frazzled, as if someone has just trampled all over their shiny Gucci loafers or high heels pumps. A workaholic’s career is the core of his or her self-concept, not “what he or she does.” Needless to say, they take their work very seriously.

I have seen this “work is God” mindset in police officers, especially if they are recent academy graduates. Their all-consuming zeal for law enforcement usually declines through the years and they become more mainstream. This is not the prognosis for most overachievers. Workaholics share much with individuals who meet the criteria for Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). This is not the same diagnosis as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), the life-limiting condition made famous in James Brooks’, As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson. OCD individuals may have compulsive behaviors such as checking many times to be certain the front door is locked before leaving for work. As you can readily understand, these behaviors can interfere with the OCD sufferers’ relationships and career. Whereas, the defining features of OCPD is a tendency to be perfectionist, inflexible, and preoccupied with orderliness.

Workaholics miss much of the fun in life. They simply don’t have sufficient time for their families and friends, hobbies, physical activity and restorative relaxation or so they will swear to you. In reality, they have the same twenty-four hours as you and I. Work, which is not only laudable, but decidedly necessary for most of us, becomes the driving force in their lives. A career can be a voraciously demanding lover and taskmaster.

Some experts will insist that this commitment to a career is pathological. These experts may say workaholics are insecure and unable to face life, consequently they hide behind their work. This may be quite true of some workaholics, but human beings are exceptionally complex creatures. There are no uncomplicated answers that will always apply. Enthusiastic workers may gain a great deal of satisfaction from their art or the services they perform. Counselors, clergy, physicians and artists might fall into this category. Many of the more manipulative types crave attention. They might become actors, attorneys, clergy, musicians, politicians and/or “the expert” in any field. Naturally, not all or even most of these illustrious professionals are manipulators or consummate attention junkies. Human beings will invest their time and effort wherever we receive the biggest payoff. The payoff may be anything we value, such as increased self-esteem, power, adoration, money, altruism (…does it then count as altruism?) or pleasure.

Workaholics cross the line and the venerable work ethic can become a destructive obsession or addiction. Are you a workaholic? Are you tied to your workplace by your iPhone? You may be a workaholic. Let’s find out.

Criteria for the Workaholic

The Workaholic is easy to identify. You will know by the time you finish reading the criteria if you might fall into this self-driven category. Remember, these are choices not dictates by your employer. That is a different category.

• You are the first one at work

• You are the last to leave

• You regularly bring work home

• Most social occasions involve work

• Most of your “friends” are coworkers

• You promise to be home in time for dinner , but seldom follow through

• If you take a vacation you frequently check in with your coworkers or employer

• Your conversations usually revolve around your work

• Frequently, you eat meals at your desk

• You take business calls after hours

• You say you will cut back on your hours, yet that never happens

• You want your performance to be “perfect”

• The only right way is your way

• You are inflexible

• You won’t delegate work unless it will be done your way

• You are overly concerned about rules, schedules, lists and organization

If you have many of these traits you are probably excessively committed to work. You commitment may be causing problems in your personal relationships. Your health may be suffering because of a haphazard diet, lack of exercise, alcohol consumption to reduce stress and/or insufficient sleep or time to relax.

Two of the most common types of workaholics are the Holy Grail Seeker (HGS) and the Overburdened Procrastinator (OP). The HGS believes that perfection exists “out there” and they must find it. He or she looks for it in every assignment, every project and every mission. It doesn’t matter to the HGS that perfection takes a great deal of time (infinity) and the Holy Grail is unattainable. The dedicated HGS continues to pursue in vain. They spend numerous long hours refining and improving. The HGS needs the advice I was given when I was wading through the dissertation process. A professor at Emory University whispered the secret to graduating in my ear, “There are two types of dissertations. One is perfect, the other is finished.” I took that to heart.

The Overburdened Procrastinator takes on too many projects because he cannot say no, or he thinks he is the only one who can complete the job correctly. He can’t designate, because co-workers are unable to meet his lofty standards. He is similar to the frazzled mother who won’t allow her young child to stir the cake batter, because he might make a mess. For the OP there is only one right way—and it is his or her way. Therefore, they accept projects before they have finished current assignments. His desk “floweth” over.

The OP may relish a challenge and the adrenaline rush that follows. Some individuals are trapped in jobs that require a great investment of time and they cannot see satisfactory options.

Again human beings refuse to fit nicely into little labeled cubby holes. Each workaholic burns the midnight oil for reasons that are uniquely his or hers. Generalizations and theories help us to better understand certain behaviors, but they do not give us a map with a giant “X” on it.

The Workaholic and the American Work Ethic

Americans are a hardworking, ambitious people. We work longer hours than most Europeans and we take fewer days off. Research studies indicate that many of us never take vacations.

Companies explored the ideal balance of work and life responsibilities as early as the 1930s. Jumping ahead in time, the “W. K. Kellogg Company created four six-hour shifts to replace the traditional three daily eight hour shifts” (Lockwood, 2003, p. 2). The Kellogg Company reported an increase in employee spirits and competence, possibly because employees were less fatigued or where happy with increased leisure time. However, eighty years later the work ethic is still very much alive in the hearts of many Americans. We admire and respect individuals who are productive and hard working. However, this may be somewhat gender specific. Men are admired for providing well for their families. Women who are ambitious and work oriented may be criticized and accused of neglecting their husbands and children.

However, it appears that both genders may feel guilty when their work life steals time from family obligations. In a study by Rutgers University (2001), most working adults were concerned that they were not spending enough time with their families. This is encouraging news for the partner of an overachiever.

Starring the Workaholic

We have an “embarrassment of riches” when searching for famous workaholics. Let’s begin with the overachieving funnyman and fledgling writer, Peter Sellers. He was so busy that he slept only four hours a night. Sellers starred in numerous movies, including the highly successful and hilarious Pink Panther series. He worked ten years to bring his last movies, Being There… to the big screen. For his efforts, he won a Golden Globe award and an American Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, he died the following year of a heart attack. He was married four times.

Let’s take a trip back in time to the French Golden Era, when Frenchmen glowed with pride in their leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the Empire. Incredibly, he created an Empire that heavily influenced Europe for more than 100 years, on four hours of sleep each night. Napoleon was much too busy conquering nations to waste precious time dozing. In spite of his military brilliance, political savvy, strategic genius, demanding schedule, and scant sleep, he toppled from power in 1815. According to historian, Robert Wilde (2003), “He couldn’t be everywhere within his empire at once, and the forces he sent to pacify Spain failed, as they often did elsewhere.” Perhaps, he was not good at delegating, a problem for many workaholics. The last straw floated down when his army was decimated in a horrific Russian winter struggle. In all fairness to his enemies, he left with 400,000 troops (a number unheard of in this era) and returned with 10,000. He had the workaholics drive and limited long-term planning. Napoleon was banished to St. Helena Island where he died in 1821. He was married twice and home very little.

Famous inventor Thomas Edison was, by all accounts, an enthusiastic workaholic, in fact, his entire team was known for keeping an exhausting schedule. However, after his first wife died he became smitten with a lovely eighteen-year-old. So much so that he could not even navigate the streets safely. According to his diary, “Saw a lady who looked like Mina. Got thinking about Mina and came near being run over by a streetcar. If Mina interferes much more will have to take out an accident policy” (Beal, 1999). Later in his life, after the glow wore off, “he spent a shockingly small amount of time with his family.” From this we learn that a smitten lover will not necessarily transition into an attentive husband.

Understanding the Workaholic

Workaholics are not unlikable or deceptive by nature. Generally they won’t steal your jewelry, fabricate a “façade” personality, profess undying love that also does not exist or get busted on drug charges on a first date. They may have issues with perfectionism and moderate (sometimes severe) inflexibility, but these traits are not cast in iron. They will often yield somewhat if they see a reasonable, rational necessity. If you are a workaholic, use logic to consider the pros and cons of continuing to be an overachiever. Each individual must make this decision for himself or herself after weighting the rewards and the foreseeable consequences. Are you a workaholic or an enthusiastic achiever? You decide. Hint: Ask your significant other for feedback on this one..

Ferguson’s Unasked Questions

PHOTO BY VELO_CITY

By Heather Mac Donald

In the Missouri city and elsewhere, the media clings to predetermined conclusions.

The fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old named Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, this August triggered weeks of riots and looting, as well as nonstop media coverage. The press quickly developed a formula for reporting on the “unrest,” as the media still call such violence: select some aspect of Ferguson’s political or civic culture; declare that feature racist, by virtue of its being associated with Ferguson; disregard alternative explanations for the phenomenon; blame riots on it. Bonus move: generalize to other cities with similar “problems.”

Some examples: Ferguson’s population is two-thirds black, but five of its six city council members are white, as is its mayor. Conclusion: this racial composition must be the product of racism. Never mind that blacks barely turn out to vote and field practically no candidates. Never mind that the mayor ran for a second term unopposed. Is there a record of Ferguson’s supposed white power structure suppressing the black vote? None has been alleged. Did the rioters even know who their mayor and city council representatives were? The press didn’t bother to ask. But this “problem” is disturbingly widespread, in the media’s eyes: MOSTLY BLACK CITIES, MOSTLY WHITE CITY HALLS, announced a New York Times front-page story on September 29, complete with a sophisticated scatter-graph visual aid.

Example: Ferguson issues fines for traffic violations; 20 percent of its municipal budget comes from such receipts. If people with outstanding fines or summons don’t appear in court, a warrant for their arrest is issued. Conclusion: this is a racist system. The city is deliberately financing its operations on the backs of the black poor. The only reason that blacks are subject to fines and warrants, according to the media, is that they are being hounded by a racist police force. “A mostly white police force has targeted blacks for a disproportionate number of stops and searches,” declared Time on September 1. What is the evidence for such “targeting?” Time provides none. Might blacks be getting traffic fines for the same reason that whites get traffic fines—because they broke the law? The possibility is never contemplated. The most frequently summonsed traffic offense is driving without insurance, according to the New York Times’s “exposé” of Ferguson’s traffic-fine system. Perhaps the Times’s editors would be blasé about being hit by an uninsured driver, but most drivers would be grateful that the insurance requirement is being enforced. Might poor blacks have a higher rate of driving without insurance than other drivers? Not relevant to know, apparently.

The next highest categories of driving infraction are blasting loud music out your car and driving with tinted windows. Attend police-community meetings in poor areas and you will regularly hear complaints about cars with deafening sound systems. Should the police ignore such complaints? Are they ignoring similar complaints in white areas because they want to give whites a pass? Do Ferguson’s white and black drivers blast loud music from their cars at the same rate? We never learn. Tinted windows pose a possibly lethal threat to the police during traffic stops, since they prevent officers from assessing the situation inside the car before approaching. Ignoring this infraction puts officers’ lives at risk. Should the police nevertheless do so? Such is the implication, if doing so would mean fewer fines for black motorists. The New York Times quotes a victim of the racist Ferguson traffic-enforcement system, who was fined for driving without a license. Why was his license suspended—was he driving drunk? Did he hit someone? We will never know. What is the crime rate in the black areas of Ferguson? Also something that the mainstream press is not interested in finding out.

But the most ubiquitous “Ferguson is racist” meme was the most familiar: the police force is too white. Four of Ferguson’s 53 officers are black. This imbalance must be the result of racism and must itself cause racist enforcement activity. How many qualified black applicants to the force applied and were rejected? Not an interesting question, apparently.

The “too-white police force” meme, which the New York Times generalized into another front-page article (MOSTLY WHITE FORCES IN MOSTLY BLACK TOWNS, September 10), complete with another impressive set of graphs, is of particular interest in light of the federal government’s current investigation of New York City’s sprawling Rikers Island jail complex. In August, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York issued a report denouncing the “deep-seated culture of violence” among Rikers corrections officers towards adolescent inmates. He accused guards of handcuffing juvenile inmates to gurneys and beating them. Rikers has been bedeviled by such claims of officer abuse of inmates for years. The resulting problem for the “abusive white cops” meme is that the Rikers’ officer force is about two-thirds black. (New York’s population is 23 percent black; no one has complained about the racial imbalance among Rikers guards.) This August, the Detroit Police Department emerged from 11 years of federal oversight for alleged abuse of civilians, including a pattern of unjustified shootings. The Detroit force, too, is about two-thirds black. The U.S. Justice Department opened an investigation of the New Orleans Police Department in 2010 for a pattern of civil rights violations; in 2012, the Justice Department imposed on the New Orleans PD the most expansive consent decree in the nation to try to rein in the alleged unconstitutional behavior of its officers, the majority of whom are black.

Now perhaps these civil rights allegations against these majority black forces are trumped up. But if so, perhaps similar allegations against majority white forces are, too. Or maybe the race of officers has little to do with whether they can police fairly.

The facts in the Ferguson shooting remain unknown. A videotape captured the 300-pound Brown committing a strong-arm robbery minutes before his encounter with the police. Brown’s supporters claim that officers stopped him for walking in the middle of the street and then shot him in cold blood, either in his back or when his hands were up. The Ferguson police department has not released the officer’s account of the shooting, but the officer’s supporters allege that Brown had fought viciously with him while resisting arrest. A grand jury is under enormous pressure to charge Officer Darren Wilson with murder for shooting Brown, with the usual threats of even more vicious riots to come should the grand jury fail to deliver an indictment. Officers have been shot at in and around Ferguson, violence which the authorities hastily discounted as related to the ongoing protests; death threats against officers have been made. Whether or not an uncontested account of the incident will ever emerge, it is certain that the media spin on Ferguson itself has been driven by facile and ultimately dangerous preconceptions.

Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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