Editor’s Note: In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. This week’s feature is from PoliceOne Contributor Duane Wolfe, who manages to quote Dirty Harry, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and his own mother (each of whom suggest you know your limitations). Do you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members? Send us an e-mail with your story.
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By Duane Wolfe
Parkers Prairie (Minn.) PD
It was a typical Friday night in a small town during the peak of tourist season. I was working the “power shift” ...meaning we had two officers on duty. The night had been busy and a couple of the deputies had come over to help out.
One called out with a possible drunk driver. They were headed toward my location so I joined in as they continued down the street turning into what passed for a small mall in our town. The parking lot was directly across from the busiest bar. It was L shaped with an entrance/exit at each end of the L. He hit his reds and the vehicle came to a stop. I came in on the other side and blocked the exit. We were joined by the two other cars as the stop progressed.
The first sign of possible trouble was when the driver of the car got out and stood up... and up... and up. His driver’s license would say that he was 6’11 and his weight was 350. I think he had put on a few pounds. He was built like a giant potato on stilts.
The deputy ran his license and talked with him. During that time I could see the suspect looking around apparently checking out each of the officers in case he decided to fight or flee. I told one of the officers about my observations and then moved back to my squad to turn on the video camera for the field sobriety tests or whatever might follow.
I had no sooner turned on the camera than the suspect decided to make a run for it. He headed for the corner of a nearby open parking lot. I ran around the back of the car on an intersecting course with the suspect. I could hear the other officer yelling for him to stop. He was obviously not built for speed as I was able to get around the car and get to him on a collision course.
There are times working as a cop you have to ask yourself, “What have I gotten myself into?”
This was one of those moments.
In training I’d heard about understanding your strong and weak points and doing a personal assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. I prefer to refer to those as limitations. The strongest man in the world can only lift so much and then he can’t lift anymore — he has reached his limitations.
Take the fastest fighter jet in the world and it can only go so high, so fast, and can pull only so many G’s. Exceed the limitations and bad things can and will happen. In the last few months there have been several commercial airline crashes caused by the craft exceeding its’ design limitations.
Each one of us as human beings has limitations. We can only lift so much, move so fast, hit so hard and take only so much abuse before we start to exceed our limitations and then bad things can and will happen.
Buy a car or a plane and the manual will tell you what it will do and what you need to do to take care of it. As human beings and police officers we don’t get the manual. It’s up to each of us to do a personal assessment of what our limitations are in every area of the tasks we do as cops. Understand that your limitations are yours alone. We work in a profession that is ego driven, competitive and we are surrounded by type A personalities — like our own.
It’s not a competition — it’s an assessment of who you are and what you can do. As my mom used to say, “You is what you is, and you ain’t what you ain’t. Someone will always be better than you at something, strive to be the best that you can be.”
As Dirty Harry said in one of his movies, “A smart man knows his limitations.”
The nice thing is that we can improve in some areas. Physical fitness can improve by regular work outs. Tactics can be improved through training and practice. Communication can be improved by taking classes like Verbal Judo.
“Police work is the only profession that gives the test first... then teaches the lesson.”
Unfortunately sometimes we learn that lesson at a terrible cost. Good simulations training can go a long way toward solving that problem. If you aren’t getting that type of training then seek it out.
It is also important that the assessment gets done on a regular basis. At a conference a few years ago I heard one of the trainers say, “Every year I get a year older and the suspects get a year younger”. Year after year the majority of criminals come from the late teens to early 20’s age bracket and that statistic hasn’t changed but each one of us gets older every year.
Having just hit “The Big 50,” I’ve had to have some serious discussions with myself about my limitations. I’ve had to come to the realization that I don’t do some things as well as I did in my 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s. To ignore that fact would be like throwing away the owners manual and that’s when bad things can and will happen. I’ve upped my physical workouts and dropped a few pounds but even that doesn’t change the fact that I’m 50. I take those changes into account and work within my limitations.
As I closed at a dead run on the fleeing drunk giant I knew that trying to tackle him would be useless. He was more than a foot taller than me and outweighed me by close to 200 pounds. A TASER would have been great but this was the early 90’s and we didn’t have them yet. I knew from experience I could hit harder with a kick than a baton. I had also been involved in a martial art that emphasized conditioning of the legs and arms by pounding on them until they were desensitized to pain.
With that knowledge of my limitations I planted my left foot and threw an angle kick at his lower leg as hard as I could. The sudden shin to shin impact was enough to start him tipping, his upper body getting ahead of his feet. His momentum carried him from the parking lot, across the sidewalk and into the street. His arms windmilling around as he tired to regain balance.
His head was too far forward of his body for that to happen. He finally slammed to the ground at about the center line of the street.
I swear I felt the Earth tremble.
I somehow suppressed the urge to yell, “Timber!”
The other officers swarmed him and got him cuffed; his fall (and the four cops sitting on him) apparently taking any further thoughts of resistance from his mind. Would I do it differently today? You bet. I’d keep my distance and the TASER would be out and sparking. Could I still do it that way, sure but I’m a whole lot older now and hopefully a little wiser. How and what I am willing to do are also determined by that knowledge gained over the years.
Our most dangerous enemy is denial. We must be careful not to con others and never to con ourselves.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman said it best: “Self-deception is a killer!”
