What works well with me is, I tell myself every time I exit my car that “someone is going to try to kill me.” I find facing the fear that we all have is much better than denying it. Denial is our enemy. Once you’ve accepted that someone will do harm to you it is not a surprise when it happens, and it makes it much easier to combat those actions.
I once was dispatched to a man with a knife at a bus station. My dispatch advised that the man was drunk and he was threatening people with the knife. We arrived to find the man standing by himself.
I noticed he was wearing a fanny pack and tight jeans. I immediately knew that if he had a knife he had to have it in the fanny pack. The man was very polite and cooperative until I asked to pat him down.
He was reluctant to put his hands behind his back. I then prepared myself mentally by accepting that this man could stab me. I mentally walked myself through the lethal and non-lethal steps I would take if he decided to pull that knife.
I got the man to place his hands behind his back. I began to reach for my cuffs to secure him so I could pat him down. I told myself, “If this goes to shit, I’m going to leg sweeping him to the ground and disengaging to a safe distance with my firearm.”
Sure enough, the second I had his hands behind his back he tensed up and broke his left hand free and went straight to the fanny pack. I leg swept him face first to the ground.
He had already pulled that knife as he rolled to his back and met the barrel of my handgun pointed at him. He refused to drop the knife as he was laying there. My partner deployed the TASER, which changed the suspect’s mind real quick.
I simply tell myself what I’m going to do to people before the actions happen. Reaction is always slower than action. However, I prepare myself mentally with what I’m going to do if it comes to using force. When you rehearse what you are going to do inside your head, reaction becomes virtually as fast as the action.
Shane Gearhart
Ohio