I always look forward to Red Shirt News, the newsletter by my old friend and colleague Terry Smith. The Red Shirts were those of us who reached a high level with the Monadnock PR-24 side-handle baton, training the instructors who would in turn train other officers. The Monadnock program encompassed other non-lethal weapons as well.
Another old red shirt friend is Larry Smith, late of the San Diego Police Department. In the current issue he does an excellent review of “Time Is Always On Your Side” by Michael E. Musengo, Lynn L. Westover and Lon D. Bartel. The single most powerful lesson I saw him extract in his review was this:
“…in law enforcement time isn’t a luxury—it’s a contested resource.”
It’s true in any form of human conflict. I hear some people say “There’s no timer in a gunfight.” My answer has always been “Sure there is. It’s located in your opponent’s trigger finger.”
Many thanks to Terry and Larry, and of course Musengo, Westover and Bartel.
The PR-24 was a heck of a tool back in the day. Not sure how many agencies issue/authorize their use today.
All very true, but there’s a sobering stat with respect to Col Boyd’s OODA. Post WWII, the Allies (not sure if Russia participated) got the leading aces of all the air forces involved in the European Theater together to go over lessons learned.
Their first item was that the vast majority of their victories involved pilots who weren’t aware of the enemy until bullets started hitting their aircraft. It’s kinda hard to grasp the mindset. Here you are in enemy airspace during a war just cruising along fat, dumb and happy. OTOH, we see this a lot in drivers who’s eyes never leave the road immediately ahead. Especially at night. The mirrors are there for a reason.
WR Moore,
I remember reading that The Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, said the same thing. Half of his victims never knew he was there.
Dick Marcinko, who created Seal Team Six, said that when he was in Vietnam, half of the men he killed never knew he was there. As a special forces operator, he spent a lot of time manuevering to get in a position to ambush his enemy. I believe I read that near the end of his book, “Rogue Warrior.”
Achieving the element of surprise is a great way to win a fight. Unfortunately, we good guys don’t get to act first. If a bad guy wants to achieve surprise, he can do it.
To WR and Roger, military and paramilitary warfare definitely seems to have their own distinctions from civilian combat. Your comments reminded me of the old saying about “have you ever actually seen the enemy?”, asked of those who were in firefights because the enemy typically ensconces themselves and maneuvers behind concealment until they get the best opportunity to take their shot. You simply just dont see fast movers or actual silhouetted humans running around in those things, especially when a mechanized unit that’s moving takes an ambush. There’s really alot to think about. I recently relistened to Mas’s interviews of Dr. Richard Carmona since i perusing Gail’s new setup of the pro arms podcast youtube channel and something stuck out to me on this second listen that i dont think did the first time. The doctor mentions a difference in how things went and how his mind was processing this “one on one” fight he was in, and mentioned that it was different than his previous fights in the military, he didn’t elaborate on it, he just kept with the gunfight in question. But both of your comments made that pop back in my head and think it over again in the context of this entry and both of your comments.
Musengo, Westover, and Bartel bring up the Las Vegas/Mandalay Bay shooting as a good example of moving quickly through the OODA loop to stop the ongoing threat quickly.
It is a good example, but I think the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee may be a better one. Officers arrived on scene and entered the building within a minute, and had located and neutralized the attacker just a few minutes after that, clearing rooms and hallways and communicating with each other the whole way. It was like their department looked at the Uvalde response and said, “Yeah, we’re not doing that” (which is probably exactly what happened); everything the Uvalde responders did wrong*, the Covenant responders did right.
My untrained, non-LEO opinion: The Covenant response is a master class in limiting loss of life in a mass-killing situation.
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* – Come to think of it, Uvalde made all the same “form a perimeter, wait for backup” mistakes that Columbine responders did two decades earlier, only more so — and Columbine was the event that forced police to change the scripted response to a mass-killing in a school. I don’t know what they were thinking in Uvalde … or if they were thinking at all.
I participated in some of the post-Columbine discussions and you are absolutely correct about the LE reaction to that.
Another question that comes up from time to time: How many extra rounds do I need to carry?
Answer: at least ONE MORE than the “bad guy”.
I saw one recently. I think I still have mine.
Your analogy of today’s “drivers” is spot on. Not only are they vast majority NOT well trained, they are now utterly dependent upon their gadgets and automatic features. Can’t even swerve to miss a rock on the tarmac because Mommy Won’t Let You without first asking permission by using your TURN signal. This inserts a new OODA loop prior to any possible action, and so few are capable of THINKING these days. ABS will “prevent” skidding.. mine didn’t, twice it nearly cause me to crash. I disabled i. I can modulate my own brakes, thanks all the same. Done it successfully for well above two million miles in everything from a Honda fifty to a Kenworth pulling a fully loaded maximum length dry van.
Yet MY insurance has doubled these past two years to pay for the many “oppsies” of those other drivers staring at that number plate on the bootlid of the car ahead.
Tionico:
My wife’s new Subaru (2024) came with the complete plethora of gadgets and giz-widgets, even though we didn’t want them and don’t like them. The first thing we do after getting in, buckling up, and starting the car is to turn the darned things off. You are not allowed to semi-permanently turn them off; you have to do it every time you start the car (don’t get me started about the utterly useless “auto-engine-kill-when-stopped” thing).
The one that scares me the most is the “automatic collision avoidance” system that takes control of your steering if it senses something in front of you. Here in NW Wyoming there are lots and lots of twisty mountain roads without guardrails.
I wonder how many people have been swerved off a cliff and killed by these systems that “saw” a deer or cattle in front of them and simply steered the car around, without being able to sense a multi-hundred foot drop just off the shoulder? People have probably died trying to regain control of their vehicle as they skid over the edge.
I’ve read that the auto stop/start ignition is being trashed as not providing a significant fuel saving benefit. (Having seen LA traffic I doubt that, but I’ll take the victory.) Per a discussion with the local Subie dealership, I’m not sure that the nanny takes control of the steering. However, supposedly you can interrupt the auto braking by slightly moving the wheel.
When I dropped a rear wheel off the edge of the pavement on a snowy night (couldn’t see the edge of the road), during recovery, vehicle stability control tried to “help” me and things got exciting. I REALLY didn’t need a single rear wheel brake application to realign the vehicle with where my front wheels were pointed. I’ve decided that I’ll drive my current 2014 until either one of us dies. I don’t need any more “help”.
In the name of safety, we’re mandated to have automotive gadgets that would be considered enabling inappropriate behavior in any other circumstance. Driving is a privilege, not a right. If you can’t do it, you shouldn’t be licensed.
WR Moore,
About driving with newfangled gadgets; agreed. And, we don’t need self-driving cars for anything, except maybe drunk drivers.
Attention inventors. We don’t need any new inventions, but we could use anything that will strengthen individuals, marriages, and families. Oh yeah, and while you’re at it, try to figure out a way to educate voters, so they no longer vote for people with bad policy ideas.
Mas,
If you were still on patrol, do you think you would use a PR-24 or would you prefer one of the expandable batons?
Interestingly, I believe batons are legal for civilian carry in Florida (unless you are a felon). But they are far more obtrusive than a Persuader/Kubotan.
All types of batons inherently carry more “reloads” than TASERs.
I would, Jeff. There was just so much more you could do with it than with the straight stick.
My Daddy worked armed security off and on back in the 1980s. He always carried a Model 19 & occasionally carried a baton too. When he did, it was one of the old straight hardwood type. Ive still got it, along with his Sam Brown belt & holster.
The PR 24 Baton is superior to any other Baton. I used it with great success in many situations. It loss favor after The Rodney King Riot In Los Angeles.
Mas, you always seem to pick out some great reading material. On an unrelated note Paul Howe just uploaded a video on his CSAT Way YouTube channel about the sul position. I just listened to your last appearance on gun owners radio out in san diego and you discussed it briefly as a “pet peeve”. Paul’s take on it was interesting, as was his preceeding video on the “thumb index”, which I’d never heard of before. I’m not a sul fan but i do teach the how and discuss the when of it. I’d rather just put my hand on the gun if i were approaching something hinky though. Oh and i watched the cctv footage of that man who attempted to stop that guy who was shooting people in the walmart in new mexico, then the maniac’s wife shot the man who attempted to intervene. You wrote about it in something, i think you titled it “tailgunners” or something like that but i noticed the man put his hand on his holstered pistol he was carrying at about maybe 5 oclock on his belt, it looked very obvious, i think thats how the murdering wife noticed him. So that’s one more thing that makes my mindset be more like “hey, don’t try to “look” tacticool, stay as surreptitious as possible in these things”. Sorry for the rant but that just popped in my noggin while I was thinking about it.
I would definitely carry a PR 24 if I was still on the job. We had them for about 3-4 years before they kind of fell out of favor. After that we could carry an expandable or a straight stick if we had started with that, which I had. I never carried an expandable on patrol. A number of guys had incidents where they didn’t feel like it hit nearly as well as a straight stick. I was a Detective for most of my career so I did actually carry an expandable when in plainclothes to give me an extra option beyond pepper spray and before my firearm. In uniform for OT gigs I would carry a wooden straight stick my FTO gave me when I graduated from the FTO portion of my probie year. That always got attention later in my career when virtually everyone carried an expandable. Young cops and even citizens would say, “what’s with the nightstick?” My response: “ Real men carry wood, son!”