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Kit
Jul 3, 2021
Chase Tactical PC with Joey pouch (that has armor insert). RMT from V Development Group. Kryptos Dagger from headhunterblades.com
Amazon Prime Day
Jun 22, 2021
Every single year I make several posts about buying digital memory cheap on sale days. This is one of those days, literally yesterday and today only. Go over to Amazon for Prime Day, and buy up top-tier memory cards. You should have redundant backups of everything digital at all times, don't get caught off guard.
There are also tough (enterprise) type tablets available from Samsung, these are pretty decent for the price.
LEO RMT Use
Jun 10, 2021
Whenever I hear about anyone using an RMT successfully I like to publicize it, especially if I get an email about it. This LEO used his RMT after he was stabbed during an altercation.
Per the LEO's comments, he was able to apply the RMT very quickly and effectively reaching occlusion of his bleed. While this was not a life-threatening bleed, there is never a bad reason to apply a tourniquet when in doubt. There was enough blood coming out that warranted such an application. Remember that the RMT, unlike other traditional (read old technology) windlass tourniquets, can be applied and removed numerous times, for training or the real thing when seconds count. This is important to understand because the RMT allows you to apply an industry-leading tourniquet quickly even if you are in doubt if a tourniquet is needed. The old school thinking of tourniquet application was "last resort" because of a popular dogmatic myth that your limbs may be cut off if you applied a tourniquet, that is just not the case in most tourniquet applications based on any measurable data or research. You should default to a tourniquet first and then figure out what else is needed (which is very likely a speedy trip to your local trauma emergency department). The RMT allows you to do this without having to immediately purchase a brand new tourniquet. Thankfully this LEO got his RMT from V Development Group and they replace used RMT's with verification of real-world use.
BJJ is one of the best possible training when it is done repeatedly and studied appropriately for the niche application of LE. That is something that needs to be understood before we also accept that mandatory training of BJJ, or any other serious physical requirements, for the average officer, is a very shortsighted and knee-jerk reaction to a bigger problem with overall law enforcement hiring standards. LEOs should be encouraged to seek out advanced training, not be forced to train in something which has a lot of liability associated with it.
The above video shows two officers who are very competent in their ability to keep control of a fighting suspect who is armed, without resorting to immediate deadly force. These types of situations should really be applauded in the application of their developed skillsets, but to imagine that this should be the norm is putting emphasis on something that cannot be implemented in any tangible way. You may be asking yourself, surely there is some department somewhere who has done this? The Marietta PD did this exact thing:
The above video links to this page which shows all sorts of cool statistics, many of them are actually pretty interesting, and I would like to point out two specific points from that page. The officers "opted" into this BJJ program and each person's costs were $10 a class which clearly was a hell of a deal by a local BJJ school. I am sure that many people will look at this and believe it is a huge success, and it may be to their standards because of the deal that they got but it's not the model, and shouldn't be expected to be.
The biggest issue here is that any martial arts, or fitness standards, set forth by any police department must be supported by the reasonable allowance of meeting such goals. Meaning that the moment a department says that they need to set up a fitness standard, they not only have to provide time and opportunity to accomplish that goal, but they must also deal with legal issues such as contracts, union issues, and general lawsuits that will definitely be brought forward. Some LEOs might even push to sue through age or sex discrimination. This is a real-world issue which many departments do not want to fight, it's why some are removing age requirements for hiring at the high end. Imagine a policy that requires all officers to run 1.5 miles in under 20 minutes. Pretty easy to do, hell most twenty-somethings can walk that quickly. The issue is that you may have officers towards the end of their careers who have never been held to a physical standard of any kind, now they are forced to meet this standard or be forced to retire, maybe even be fired depending on the department politics. If you think it's just as easy to exclude them or anyone from any such standard setup, you do not know how police departments are set up with policies. It almost always applies to everyone or no one, and if there may be such situations where it only applies to "some" people then lawsuits, union issues, and other legal issues can arise. There is no easy answer.
Now mandate that every single officer hold a blue belt in BJJ to stay on the job, that means they set up an arbitrary standard that they need to meet in order to keep their jobs, or they make it completely optional and people won't sign up because then it puts all the liability onto the individual LEO and not the department that is asking for it. That still sets up more issues down the line because you may have some situations where an officer will be selected for something over an officer who did not opt into this program and that will immediately cause issues in any departments. This may end up being a huge issue down the line believe it or not.
If mandated, the department has to assume all financial and legal liability for that training, meaning that if an officer gets hurt during a BJJ class (which happens a lot) the department must accept that responsibility, and I can tell you right now that there isn't an insurance (workmanscomp) company that will accept that exposure. Furthermore, you have a lot of different little issues which can arise. The timing of classes, the overall cost of classes, which can be pretty costly as many schools will not accept per class payments. There can be situations where an officer will need to go to work and then a class or the other way around and because of the volatility of the job may end up getting hurt because of BJJ classes before/after. That's a big liability for a department to accept, to the point that most won't. Is there a deadline for this? Does the officer have to keep going after they get their blue belt? It's a lot of consideration and simply cannot be mandated as part of a law.
My question is, why stop at a blue belt? Why not require everyone to be a black belt? Why only require BJJ? Why not require someone to have some sort of other arbitrary requirements they have to meet, all of which applied after graduating from the academy.
BJJ applied to law enforcement requires a very specific understanding and training. I don't know that many schools even have the qualifications to offer this type of training, and that is even if you accept the premise that BJJ is the "only" type of martial art that can be applied to law enforcement, it isn't by the way. In many academies training with firearms, and other tools are taught, they just aren't integrated within the ground fighting spectrum, that's a big mistake that many believe BJJ can fix, that may or may not be the case due to the issues I have stated, especially since many schools are competition oriented and competition BJJ is not applicable to the reality of law enforcement. Remember that all of this, literally every single thing that is taught to an LEO which can be used on the street may end up in a courtroom or the subject of legal inquiries. That means you have to find an instructor who has no issues about going and testifying in court about the use of force that he taught, and by doing this opening themselves up to scrutiny. It's a big responsibility that someone somewhere will be either blindsided with or they will simply fall short on the stand causing the LEO to pay the price for it. That's if they only end up teaching BJJ and not integrating it with some sort of tool application, which would be extremely short-sighted as that's part of a LEOs job. Show me a lesson plan for a LEO to learn BJJ with their duty belt on and I'll show you a lesson plan not vetted for court.
The only way this works is to provide some kind of incentive for officers to either go out on their own and get a blue belt (or just training) and the department to reimburse them or provide a raise in salary if they provide proof of their results in some way. Once a department accepts liability for this type of training it opens itself up and that's simply not something that we will see anywhere, and if there is a law passed in an area that specifically requires it per officer that will quickly end up being a big problem for that department and those officers in the long run.
NAR Kit
May 22, 2021
NAR individual medical kit. Cheap and easy to store, has a bunch of various little items that you'd other need to source individually. Good to keep in a bag, car, or storage area just in case. I've got a bunch of these all over the place.
As you now know, Kim Potter, a former officer of 26 years on the job at Brooklyn Park PD, shot and killed a man with a warrant during a vehicle stop. Potter did so because she believed she was going to deploy a taser on Daunte Wright, even yelling "taser taser taser" just before she fired one round into Wright, which ended up causing his death. This article will not talk about opinions, it will talk about facts as LE has standardized training for a lot of various systems, it will talk about training concepts and it will logically explain how this type of thing can happen. First, watch the body camera video:
"How can a person mistake a taser for a pistol?"
It's the same reason why a person can miss an easy shot at 3 yards, stress, or rather the absence of continuous training in real-world concepts which can be applied every single day. It is true that most tasers in use, like the X26 police version, are yellow (although they are available in black for the non-police market), it has an ambi-safety which you need to click downward in order to turn it on, it has a green LED readout of its power (battery) which faces the user, it's shaped differently than the Glock pistol (or most other pistols) and when you turn it on a red, or green or both, the laser turns on which is used as the visual target impact of the spread of the leads indicator. Most taser holsters are also different than pistol holsters, like Blackhawk holsters for tasers and Safariland holsters for pistols, they deploy differently with different mechanisms. Beyond all of that, when tasers became prevalent in US LE the BART PD / Oscar Grant mix-up occurred which immediately changed how LEO's were allowed to carry their tasers, they had to be mounted in a cross draw and they had to be opposite of your gun. You now literally need to reach across your centerline in order to draw a taser instead of a pistol, this is also part of the standard teaching course officially taught by Taser.
"I still don't understand how this mistake could have happened."
Let's start with the root of this cause, the absolute beginning of why these things happen from time to time with such rarity we actually remember the departments and names of people involved. Training. Many departments that issue tasers to their officers do so because of liability, much like body cameras and OC spray, and the training which is accompanied with those tools is always lacking. Police budgets for training are always fluid and those who make the decision on what training is more important than another usually disregard taser training, much like body camera and OC training, because the number of bad incidents that stem from their use is so low that it might as well be considered a statistical anomaly, which it is. I can think of four high profile accidental shootings-instead-of-tasering in the last fifteen years, contrast that against how many police-citizen contacts occurred during that time, and further contrast it against how many police use of force against citizens occurred with officers who had tasers issued to them at the time, and this falls right around the statistical probability of being hit by lightning twice while the airplane you are in crashing into another airplane in midflight over the north pole while winning three different lotteries at the same time for over 1 billion dollars each. Probably not that improbable, but it's closer to that than not.
Training is the issue at hand here, training is the reason why these types of things happen or the lack of it. Hypothetically, say you have a department of 100 officers, and each one of them is issued a taser for duty work. That means each one of them needs to qualify on that taser every year through training of watching a PowerPoint presentation explaining the physics of electricity, how tasering works, the technology, the issues, the case law applicable to their particular state and federal circuit court decisions, then doing practical application training. The first time an officer gets this training they may be tased themselves so they know how it feels, but sometimes that doesn't happen due to department policies. Then officers are allowed to shoot their taser at a silver foil target which shows them how the leads/prongs spread and how they should conduct targetting (splitting the waistline whenever possible, and aiming for large muscle groups, as well as no-shoot zones - this is all department-specific of course). So just at the first step of issuing tasers to your 100 person department you have 100x the cost of a taser, you have to shoot at least two cartridges in training, so that's 200x the cost of cartridges and then you need 200x cartridges for the officers to carry on the street. Then every single year you need to have every single officer you issued a taser and cartridges to, requalify, another Powerpoint, another test, another session of shooting the cartridges in a flat range / classroom-type environment. Then you need to get officers and supervisors trained on taser use, laws, paperwork, and maintenance. Don't forget the software needed to get the information downloaded, and some of the tasers have cameras built-in, some have automatic body camera activation technology, etc, lots of options. You also need spare tasers, spare cartridges, etc. That is the best-case scenario for the minimum training requirements for the taser to just start off. So far the cost is huge.
Except some departments don't even do that. They may simulate the taser shooting, they may not even make you go through the motions of drawing your taser since remember, you are also paying 100 officers 8 hours of in-service hours for training. If this was the 1970s the FBI would be investigating this as a pyramid scheme meant to defraud departments because of how prevalent it is and how expensive its upkeep. This is why some departments take shortcuts and don't require officers to ever draw their tasers in training at all, and the only time that officer actually has to draw their taser from their taser holster maybe for maintenance, to remove and replace the cartridges, or in real-life use of force situations.
The majority of departments do not require you to use a taser in force on force training, meaning that if a department even offers force on force with simunitions, they will not provide you with taser cartridges that actually fire or even require you to draw your taser in those scenarios. Those departments that do offer all of the above, multiple times a year (as in quarterly, so maybe 4-6 days a year of this type of training) are extremely rare and should be considered the vast minority of departments in the US. This is definitely not standard in the LE training world. Even in those departments that offer all the above, this means an officer is required to draw their taser from their holster on their duty belt something like 4-10 times at most, per year. This also applies to pistol shooting, rifle shooting, and actually every other type of tool training. Hell, if you think this is bad ask any LEO when the last time they were mandated to train with their expandable baton after initial training and issuing of it?
This is a concept I have repeatedly hammered on every chance I get, and it is one of the reasons why I refuse to burn bad repetitions (reps), regardless of circumstances, because when you are on autopilot (condition black, heart rate above 175 bpm) you do not think about how to draw your gun or taser, you just do what you train to do. The biggest issue in modern LE is the lack of consistent and repeated training on systems, and logical processes, that have been proven to work in the real world. While this absolutely falls on the individual officer and that each officer needs to accept the fact that if they solely rely on their academy, and yearly qualifications or in-service training, they will fail at some point as police department mandated training is never designed around officer safety or real-world application, but liability protection for the department. This is the biggest failure in law enforcement today, caused specifically by weak top brass. The top brass, the chiefs, and the admin desk jockeys in any given department who make policies and develop training programs have no clue as to what the street officer does, this is because they do not work the street and don't want to, they shouldn't be sworn LEOs as the concept of having someone develop training programs and policies for a job they don't, and won't, do is insane in any form. Beyond that, not allowing LEO's to get outside-department training to further their own skillsets is another big issue. Yes, top brass will make officers use their own time and money to seek out training that the department failed to provide them, but hey at least the top brass actually let officers have tasers, right?
"So how do we fix this?"
If you are an LEO who is issued equipment, your department (likely) failed to train you properly on, you should every single day before your shift while in uniform, draw and get into a fighting stance, maybe make a few airstrikes with your tools, do some transitions from tool to tool and backward in the use of force continuum. Don't use your cartridges on your taser every single day, that will be extremely expensive. Remove the cartridges before deploying the taser, but every single time you draw your taser do so with the mindset that you will be using it and intentionally draw it, removing the safety and aiming at something that resembles a person. If your department policies forbid you from turning on your taser every single day or doing a "spark test" then submit a letter to your chief asking them to amend the policy, given the current situation in Brooklyn Park, and to provide a policy for how to train daily with the taser. You should be doing the same thing with your other tools. Every time you put your duty belt on, you should draw your pistol, aiming it at a safe position, unload it and dryfire, make sure you reload and reholster when you are done dryfiring an empty pistol - all done as safely as possible! Same with your ASP, same with your OC, same with your handcuffs, etc. Every single day you should make sure all of your tools are functional, that they are loaded, if applicable, and you should handle all of your tools every single time you put them on your person before going out on duty.
For the responsible citizens who want to try to affect police departments positively, you need to go to your chiefs, your mayor, your township managers, and you need to ask for their training materials, to see what they are doing. You need to see where they are lacking and if they are, you need to ask them to budget appropriately in order for their officers to be trained properly every single year. That may mean the top brass and admin don't get brand new unmarked takehome vehicles with the full star wars lights package, that may mean they don't get those fancy new desks and chairs, it also means that these types of incidents are further moved into the statistical anomaly section. Unless, of course, you want your city to be burned to the ground by the peaceful protestors.
Training is the way, the only way, and training which is developed through logical mindset, through proven concepts is the only way LEOs, and responsibly armed citizens alike, get through the use of any level of force. There is no exception to this rule. Never accept what some police department trains you with, or on, because they are liability-minded, not officer survival-minded. This is especially true in large urban departments, where it is cheaper to bury an officer than payout in a lawsuit. Think about that when you go to training and when you are working to better train yourself.
Leupold DeltaPoint Micro Red Dot Sight
Apr 6, 2021
Backup's for your Backup's
Mar 28, 2021
Every few months I post up to remind everyone that they need to back up their data, last time was around Black Friday 2020. This is extremely important, even more so than you may believe. We live in a very digital world and once your data is lost, no one will go out of their way to find it so the responsibility falls on you to back up all of your data and keep it backed up. What you should do, is keep all of your important photos, files and videos backed up on redundant setups. Memory is getting cheaper and cheaper, you should go out of your way to make sure you are backing everything up (twice) and having at least one such digital storage device in a secure place.
I have several of the above WD Elements portable hard drives, I use them for redundant backing up of my files. They work well and for under $100 for a 5TB version, that's pretty much a steal. Even if you are a full-time photographer 5TB will last you a few months at best, and if you're just a soccer mom (or dad) taking photos and videos of your kids (or cat/dog), you can probably store an entire year worth of photos and videos on one of these. You should purchase two, back up your files to one, then copy/paste to the secondary drive. Take the secondary, write a sticky note on it with the date, add it to your calendar to remind you in three months, and store it in a waterproof case or off-site in a safe deposit box or otherwise. This is important because if your house ends up burning down to the ground if you did the right thing now by saving all your essential documents in digital format and storing them off-site, you'll end up having all them to access without any issues.
I also have each one of the above drives and they all work really well. The WD Black versions are probably the higher grade of the Western Digital portable devices, they have excellent reviews.
Samsung makes some of the best SD and MicroSD cards on the market. If you are going to buy one for any device - which I highly recommend because most devices are able to record at 4k@60fps, which means you need a class ten card in order to properly record video without degradation - then you should make sure you buy the correct type of card. Most phones, laptops, and other smart devices are able to interface with these cards in some way, so you should make sure your setup is compatible.
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