threat indicators

Threat Indicators and Personal Safety

 

tactical preschool 7

When you are approaching an area where there is a distinct possibility that you could get yourself killed, you should be paying attention about exactly HOW you are approaching that area.

To begin with, if you are arriving via a vehicle, pulling right up in front of the house is a bad idea. Park down the street and walk your lazy ass a few extra yards. As you are approaching, be aware of what types of cover and concealment are available. You should know by now that “cover” is something that is likely to stop bullets and “concealment” is something that just conceals you from view. While “cover” is always better, don’t poo-poo the value of concealment. If you are not being actively engaged, getting behind available concealment between areas of cover is better than exposing yourself for a long period as you move from cover to cover.

If you are approaching a structure on a “routine call”, I’m not suggesting that you make a “fire team rush” from cover to cover while the citizenry are rolling their shopping carts out of the store, but you should be walking with the intent of passing close to areas of cover and concealment that your “Terminator Vision” is selecting as you walk along.

Speaking of “fire team rushes”..if at some point you do need to maneuver under fire, the rule of thumb is that you should be selecting an area to move to that is only 3-5 seconds away. That is the average time it takes for an opponent to see you “pop-up”…raise his weapon and get you in his sights…and fire. This of course is dependent on the range that is between you. The closer you are, the shorter your exposure time should be. I was taught to tell myself “I’M UP!”…”I’M MOVING!”…”HE SEES ME!…”I’M DOWN!” as I was moving from position to position. However that does not mean that you plop your can down in an open parking lot just because your “time was up”. These are just rules of thumb here…keep your common sense device engaged at all times.

 

follow me if you want to live

Another GREAT post over at Straight Forward in a crooked world. This one is called Dark arts for Good Guys: Flight Plan. In it the author discusses how to “beat feet” if you are ever caught away from home when the shit hits the fan. Right away he addresses what is perhaps the the most important issue when it come to getting people to do ANYTHING…leadership:

The other thing you are going to have to do is lead. You may think its a given, but its one of the single biggest components missing in a crisis. When the shit has hit the fan there is no room for democracy. One person must lead and direct and the others must follow.

CCW classes teach about using shooting tactics and techniques, clearing holsters, and repeating the worn and increasingly untrue statement that most shootings happen at night with less than five shots fired inside seven yards. Very few are teaching students how to lead their people and/or families out of harms way.

Hang with me on this, because the immensity of leading a group, regardless of who they are in your life (co-workers or family), out of an extended hostile environment is far more important than the weapons cache you have in your room.

I’ve been taking to reading this guys stuff more and more lately. In my blogging I tend to focus on “rules of thumb” and “information nuggets” with a philosophical or opinion piece here and there. This guy has a talent for explaining the “nuts and bolts” of this sort of stuff. Give it a read.

 

a lady after my own heart

Tamara K has a post over on her blog discussing how to avoid getting killed. Tamara looks like a girl after my own heart.

For those who read this blog, she and I share pretty much the same philosophy on avoiding violence.

Thanks to Hsoi for pointing this out.

 

the dark arts

Props to James Rummel over at Hell in a Handbasket for putting me onto Straight Forward in a Crooked World. Its a blog written by a man who calls himself a “Professional Problem Solver”, and who is probably best identified as being in executive security. His blog has a number of posts addressing the ugly facts of life involved in surviving an encounter with government entities and security forces in the less “developed” corners of the world. If you ever find yourself stopped by a less than honorable Mexican cop or faced with a hassle at a mid-eastern customs counter you may thank yourself for reading this guys stuff. While the thought of having to resort to bribery is repugnant to me, I’m also open-minded enough to realize that survival is of the utmost importance and that the “facts of life” in some foreign countries are vastly different than here at home.

 

tactical and technical

An argument/debate that I have had in various internet forums is the relationship between the physical techniques of the martial arts and their tactical application. I think that people have different conceptual grasps on what “tactical” or “technical” mean.

Let me give a little example of my understanding of the tactical/technical relationship in training from the LEO side of the house.

In the late 60’s to the late 70’s police officers were being killed on duty at a staggering rate compared to today’s stats. In my dept alone, 2 officers were killed at separate robbery calls within 2 months of each other in 76′. The 80’s ushered in a more modern “tactical” approach to police training. While firearms and defensive tactics were revamped, it was the “other” issues that made the difference; how to approach a car stop, proper distance/blading to the subject, how to respond to alarms/robberies, etc.

If you look at firearms skills as “techniques”, yes better “technical” skill may give us an edge in a gunfight, but its wasted if we stand still in a doorway or stick our heads in car windows and the BG blasts us from the other side. Some modern gunfighting gurus place firearms survival components in this order; Tactics 40%, Accuracy (shot placement) 30%, Power (caliber/ballistics) 20%, Speed 10%. While these may sound like, “rules of thumb”, they have to be experienced in application to experience the benefit they provide and to ingrain them as habit. My SWAT team training almost always follows the same matrix; weapon/range training, team employment (dynamic entry, officer rescue, stealth clearing, etc.), and a scenario to bring it all together.

The danger of depending on your technical prowess is that you may take risks that you shouldn’t. In the 70’s many cops believed the way to handle a robbery was to walk in and due to their “technical” mastery of gunfighting shoot it out and win….didn’t work….even if i made myself into a Ferrari of a gunfighter (which I do strive for), I wouldn’t just solve a hostage situation by kicking in the front door and beating the BG to the shot, although that may be a last resort option.

No, you cant train EVERY tactical possibility, what scenarios attempt to do is reinforce basic tactical principles that can be applied across most situations. And don’t think for a minute that LEO/Military personnel couldn’t benefit from “civilian” tactics either. We also are “citizens” and frequent all the same locations/situations any “civi” would. Ive met quite a few that could use such reinforcement. What is key is a thought out, purposeful application of scenario training that attempts to evaluate and improve the students tactics, not just scenario training for its own sake.

 

combative and defensive mindsets

There is a distinct difference between a “combative mindset” and a “defensive mindset” and its rarely discussed. In a “defensive situation” your goal is to escape without harm, using deadly force only when all other options have been exhausted. In a “combative situation” you are attacking; locating, closing with and destroying the threat. In the “real word” you may have to cross back and forth between these mindsets several times in one situation. You may be trying to diffuse a situation, deescalating, retreating, defending then suddenly the only option is offensive action. Or you may find yourself the only armed person in an active shooter situation. To save lives you may have to engage and defeat the shooter. It comes down to defining what “victory” is. Escaping from a threat unharmed is a “defensive victory”. If retreat is not an option or no longer possible then it is time to go on the offensive. A military truism is that victory cannot be achieved through defense.  I know..I know..some arts claim to be “purely defensive”…turning the opponents energy against them…and all that. But if you are facilitating that “turning” then it is just a “passive” form of “offense” as I read it. In my opinion, the serious student has to train for bolth worlds. Sometimes “the only way out is through”.

 

The Bulletproof Mind Pt.2 “the good, the bad, and the ugly”

Well…I spent the day listening to Lt. Col. (Ret) David Grossman’s “The Bulletproof Mind” presentation at a nearby state university. For those not familiar with Grossman’s work, he is a career soldier and former Psych professor from West Point who appeared on the radar after publishing a book titled “On Killing:The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society”, which was nominated for a Pulitzer. In a nutshell the book states that humans have an innate aversion to killing and will avoid it at all costs unless one is a sociopath, that this aversion can be overcome through training but at a psychological cost, and finally that the reasons for increased school/mass shootings is due to the operant conditioning of our children via violent imagery in media and video games. He has leveraged the success of this book into other books as well as becoming a topic expert and motivational speaker on the issue of killing and the mental preparation and training of “warriors”. The “Bulletproof Mind” speaking series is intended for LE officers/Military Personnel  and deals with “active shooter” incidents and how ”sheepdogs” can deal with death and killing.

A brief synopsis of the presentation:

• A listing and narrative of multiple mass homicides. With critique of school and LE preparation (or lack thereof) and responses.
• Overcoming denial – The “It wont happen here” thing. (almost to the point of inducing paranoia IMO..but more later on that)
• A speech about measures and techniques that can be taken to deal with/prepare for  mass homicides.
• How violent media and video games play a role in the increase of violence and mass homicide shooters.
• How the Police and armed citizenry are the first line of defense. The Sheep/Sheepdog speech.
• The physiological/psychological reaction to combat, combat breathing and dealing with PTSD.
• The “You are our Warriors..go out and fight for all that is good in our world” hooyah! Send off.

This was a day long presentation and I am not going to rehash his entire speech. I have seen his entire work offered on youtube for those looking. What I will say is that he does a good job of taking a few basic principles with valid implications and making his point with them and that is part of my criticism of his stuff as well. I think that sometimes he takes valid points and stretches them a bit too thin in order to cover a large issue.

I think that in “On Killing” Grossman points to some anecdotal evidence and uses it to support his theory regarding mans inhibition against killing his fellow man. One instance is the “multiple loading” of Civil War era weapons. He states that many rifles/muskets were found double or triple loaded (which there were) and that this is evidence that soldiers loaded and aimed their weapons to please their peers/leaders but wouldn’t pull the trigger, so they just loaded another round on top of the old one. Perhaps…but it avoids another more likely scenario that Civil War soldiers were scared shitless facing off at spitting distance, forgot to put a cap on the nipple and pulled the trigger thinking they did fire in all the fear, noise, smoke and confusion. This is just one lone example, but there is a thread of this sort of thing that I found in some of his work.

The same thing can be said about the video game issue. I have no doubt that the media DOES play a role in school violence, but life is not so simple that one thing can take all the blame. Where are the parents in the equation while Junior is spending all day watching Saw and playing Grand Theft Auto after setting the cat on fire?

So as a general critique of Grossman’s work, I detect a hint of using “evidence” to support a preconceived concept vs. forming an opinion based on evidence. There was also a hint of fear mongering. While I accept and agree with the premise of preparation and not falling into the “It won’t happen here” trap, there was a large chunk of overstatement of the “IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN!!!” type going on. School shootings and terrorist attacks ARE statistically rare. The odds of any one of us being affected by one IS slim. That does NOT mean that it could never happen to us. The people of Columbine could have rightfully thought the same thing up till 1110hrs on April 20th. The question is how much of our life, freedom and stomach lining should we sacrifice to that possibility? Mr. Grossman referenced Gavin DeBecker’s book the “Gift of Fear” as being seminal, but he seems to have missed explaining DeBeckers point about being prepared but not “living in unwarranted fear”.

That is not to say that much more of what the man had to say wasn’t dead on. We DO have to get our heads out of our asses and look at public safety and security as being as vital as fire safety. Mr. Grossman repeatedly makes reference to all of the fire safety measures we have in place; fire drills, alarms, sprinklers, fire codes, signs, hoses, extinguishers, etc. and how we accept them and their added costs even though the odds of dying in a fire are minuscule. Conversely, when we talk about taking safety precautions like, lockdown drills, locking doors and having armed security in schools/malls we are accused of being paranoid. I agree that trained and armed citizens and off-duty officers are the best and probably only chance to stop these crazies before they can kill the next record amount of victims. He states that we rise and fall to our level of training and that “force on force” training with simunitions and airsoft is perhaps the best tactical advancement of our generation…right on! He’s also a big proponent of hunting as instilling warrior traits, much as I have stated previously in this blog.

Perhaps the most interesting thing he said as it relates to the topic of this blog was the following… “Screw Golf!!!”

If I heard him correctly, Col. Grossman stated that he was publishing a work of science fiction and a line from it was “Screw Golf…a golf course is a waste of a good rifle range.” His point was that Warriors…people asked and expected to move towards the sound of the guns and deal with the wolf at the gate…should not waste their free time doing frivolous activities. If a “warrior” wants to have a “fun time” hobby to unwind it should be something like shooting, hunting, fitness training, martial arts, weapons training and other “warrior hobbies”…or at least reading or writing about them. Perhaps a bit overdramatized for effect, but I get his point…as anybody who reads the stuff here can tell.

 

awareness and preparation

The Bushido Shoshinshu has this interesting entry titled Escort:

When a warrior is on duty and accompanying his lord on a journey, it is essential that he have a clear understanding concerning the place of stop-over that night which direction the lord’s encampment faces, how wide the area is, what roads lead into it and to have a general recognition of the place before the sun sets. The reason is that, should the encampment be in danger during the night from a sudden fire or a bad shift in wind direction and the lord have to suddenly leave, one should be able to take lead and direct the lord to safety. Moreover, when the sun has set, one should chat with the local people, making landmarks of the mountains, forests, temples, and shrines that could be seen from the area; and one should ask about, and have an understanding of the directions, east and west. This is also done with the intention of being able to answer quickly should something happen during the night, and the lord asks one for directions.      

Further, should one be on foot when accompanying his lord, he should precede him going up a hill and follow him going down. Although this seems extremely trivial, it is one of the mental attitudes taken by a warrior on duty.      

One should take these words as keys and make some effort in turning them about in his mind; and, as he is a warrior in service, should strive without negligence, night and day, in the effort to help his lord in some way at least once. This is the basic intention of a warrior.

I find it an interesting anecdote about the importance of awareness, preparation and mindset. Think about this passage for a minute and apply it to your everyday life. How often do you think about exactly where you are? Could you direct 911 to your location? Do you know the address? What direction and near what cross street are you while you drive to work?

I make a habit of finding seating in restaurants where I can see the entrance and most of the room while putting my back to a wall or corner if possible. In my career I do many of these sorts of things; not pulling up directly in front of houses, approaching cars in a special manner, walking into convince stores from the side lot and looking in through the window before entering to buy a coffee…and many others. This is not done out out of fear or paranoia, just out of habit. Awareness and a bit of forethought will keep you alive a lot longer than fighting skills.

What sort of parallels can you find that apply to your everyday life?

 

dont be a sheep

Image by eir@si via Flickr

Many people are sheep. When I was in college, I had a evening class in a large lecture hall. Every time I went there people would be standing outside the door waiting for the professor to show up, walk in and turn on the lights. One night I decided to try something. I walked right past everybody, went in, turned on the lights and sat down. Thats when I learned that 99% of leadership is “doing” and 1% “telling”. Everybody just followed me in. Its the “somebody else will do it” thing. The point? 9/11. I was thinking about how a few terrorists with box cutters could do what they did. Outnumbered as they were. The story I have heard is that people on cell phones were telling their loved ones that the flight crew was telling everybody to remain seated and stay calm. Granted, that was SOP at the time, but it illustrates the tendency humans have to “follow”. IMO much of it is because we give little thought to what we would do in these situations. I think it is either out of denial (that will never happen to me) or believing somebody else will take action. In that situation, if the BG’s had guns or explosives, I could see waiting. Contact weapons though…there was probably enough heavy objects in the overhead compartments alone to pummel those dirtbags to the deck just by throwing them.

I believe as martial artist, training for self defense, that techhnique is useless if the students mindset isnt propper. Somebody with no training, but a determination that they will never be forced into a truck at the hands of a killer. That they will die on the spot rather than be taken somewhere else to be tormented and killed. Is going to be more formidable than a black belt who hasnt made that conscious decision.

Stories of the Samurai are filled with such examples. The way of the Samurai was “to take hold of the long and short swords and die”. Now with that in mind, they trained daily because the goal was still to defeat the enemy. However they had already determined their mindset and that is what made them formidable warriors. Skill was secondary to mindset. Note I said secondary, not exclusive from. Skill followed close behind. Im not saying “forget about training if you have the right mindset” by any means. Just that training in any skill alone isnt going to do you any good if you are taken by suprise or are mentally unprepared to use those skills.

The best way to develop this “mindset” is to simply decide whats worth fighting for and how far you are willing to go to survive. Like the situation I mentioned before in regards to being forced into a vehicle. Dont become paranoid that these things are going to happen to you. Just decide what you are going to do. That way when the !!!! hits the fan the odds are better that you are going to act. This comes directly from LEO training. When I respond to a call I run through a general scenario in my head. How Im going to approach. If im going to wait for backup. Is this a “guns up” situation? What is the arrest plan going to be? Granted the way it turns out is never to plan, but the point isnt to make situations “fit” the plan. The point is to be ahead of the BG in the OODA game by having my “decide” list already narrowed down. That way I can hopefully Act faster than the BG can Orient on what Im doing. In your day to day life you can play this game too. “What am I going to do if a BG trys to hold up the store im in?” “What am I going to do if that guy on the corner approaches my car at this red light?” (did you leave enough space between the car ahead of you to pull around?) Play out a little scene in your head.

Last and probably most importantly, when the time comes to act, act. Better to be slow in the decision than halfhearted in the execution. And remember that “winning” is surviving, not beating your opponent. Do what you need to survive. If you can run, run. If this is a deadly force situation grab whatever can be used as a weapon. A pen, coffee mug, stapler, anything. I believe it was Musashi who (loosely) said “it is disgracefull do die with a weapon yet undrawn”. All this H2H stuff is for when you are caught totally unprepared and unable to grab anything. Start there as a base, but not as an end all be all.