Post
by Serious Redneck » Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:31 am
Well, I tell ya, I try to be polite here cause I don't want to get banned, being as this is truly an international forum and all. Americans from the U.S. like me might tend to irritate some folks from other places if we let our ignorance show. So I try to be careful, and besides the older I get the more I realize I don't know it all.
I've read some articles by Massad Ayoob, but couldn't say if any of the guys I know have been to his school or not. Most major departments have incorporated a great deal of tactical training in to their programs. I know my dept has in the last ten years or so developed a bunch of close quarters combat stuff that we have to train in. If you are familiar with the Colombine high schooll shooting that occurred in Colorado about ten years ago. That incident birthed a entire branch of street level patrol officer tatical training, so that first responding officers could make a difference and not wait until SWAT was on scene. Also and this may be more of an answer to your question, we train so that out guys will know what kind of physiological effects to expect in a gunfight, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, loss of fine motor skills (aiming well), stuff like that. We hunt each other in role playing scenarios using simunitions, fired from real guns, to replicate combat stress for example. I just sat through a class a couple weeks ago that went over this stuff again and also what we should expect from our departments investigation process and the civil legal defense we will get if we are sued. I've been sued twice so far, but both times the County has defended me for no cost (its in their best financial interest to do so anyhow).
An author I would recommend to read is a man named Col. Dave Grossman. He is a psycologist that was a U.S Army officer (retired) and a West Point instructor. He has studied killing and combat and their effects on the human body and mind. Very good writer, knows what he is talking about. He teaches a class called "the bullet proof mind", I haven't been to it (county would pay for me to go) but I have heard it is excellent.
Happy Day to ya as always