Awareness (noun): Knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. Let’s face it. Being AWARE can help the CO more than any other skill-set, AVOID, DETER or DE-ESCALATE most bad situations before they get out of hand. Very often CO’s forget that just like any other skill-set in their toolbox, Awareness is perishable and if…
Category: Mindset
Terror at the Mall: Why Civilian Operators Matter
I just finished watching the HBO documentary “Terror at the Mall” about the Nairobi Kenya Westgate Mall Attack last year by Al-Shabaab Terrorist that left 67 dead and 155 wounded. Almost all of the documentary is CCTV footage from that day narrated by the actual survivors. There is also some awesome LIVE video and photographs…
First Rule: Always Assume they are Armed!
[youtube=http://youtu.be/wQIAFeC10cY] Today’s lesson boys and girls involves ALWAYS ASSUMING YOUR ENEMY IS ARMED! As we see in the above vid, these two “loss prevention clerks” did not, and it almost cost them both DEARLY. The only saving grace in this incident was that the alleged shoplifter with the knife was UNTRAINED and UNMOTIVATED. As CO’s…
CO Combatives: The Side Choke
There has been quite a lot of flak in the news lately about the use of illegal police chokes since the death of a New Yorker Eric Garner who died while being arrested in July. It was later found in the autopsy that Garner’s CAUSE OF DEATH was from the choke hold and “overt compression on…
“Shoot em’ to the Ground” Fire Superiority!
One of the most frequent questions I get from students is “How many rounds do I fire in a situation where my life is at risk?” I often answer this with the very simple answer “As many as you need too to put the threat down.” I then refer back to the military term of…
Addressing Fratricide in CO Training
Fratricide of “friendly fire” has been an unfortunate part of war since time in memorial. Several things contribute to “blue on blue” incidents, most of them stemming from poor communication between supporting units. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan War have seen their fair share of friendly fire incidents, one of the most tragic being…
Carry 24/7 or Guess Right!!
For all of the unfortunate and violent stories of incident’s I have posted of CO’s fighting for their lives to help us LEARN and therefore GROW as Civilian Operators, I think the above story can do the most good-by far. It touches on 4 skill sets that I have always felt are integral to staying…
Technology Dependent and Useless……..
It can be stated categorically that over-reliance on any one thing is BAD. This point was reinforced and qualified for me when I heard a story about the military brass in the Pentagon getting report after report about new line officer’s (the combat platoon leaders in the field) when stripped of all “electronic gadgets”…
Life Lessons from a Combat Platoon Leader
I came across an article in Tom Rick’s Best Defense which is a section of Foreign Policy online magazine recently that I found very enlightening, not only for the non-nonsense manner in which it was written, but also because of the universal way in which the lessons learned can be applied to the training and the…
Practice Makes Permanent
From the Archives, 2015 I first heard this from a Military Drill Instructor while on the firing line a long time ago and it stuck with me. I apply it to just about every area of my life now, but especially FIREARMS TRAINING HABITS. To me, it is the essence of WHY we should…