By Officer Mark Gajdostik
Most officers today are well aware of personal safety and defense concepts. From academy training to veteran cops parting company with the words ‘be safe’, officer safety is a primary concern of cops who plan on going home at the end of a shift. Unfortunately, cops are met with many challenges in an effort to stay safe.
Breaches in the officer safety concept occur when officers get complacent in their thinking and training. The responsibility to overcome this indifferent attitude must be shared by both an officer and their agency’s administration. Part of the complacency is that hand to hand training in many departments doesn’t exist past new officer orientation, and even then, only to supplement a basic DT course at the academy, which in many cases is too sterile and fails to properly prepare an officer for on-duty physical confrontation. Physical skills deteriorate with time, and our body remembers a skill by repetition. Our body will react to a threat how it has been trained. If it has not had training or practice…. it will forget. During a fight, the mind has better things to do than attempt to access and process defensive techniques that should be subconscious and automatic. If you try accessing the physical muscle memory skills needed during an adrenalized fight with some druggie for your duty weapon…the body wont ‘react’. The fight/flight/freeze response may activate to protect you, but it may not be enough. Time must be spent to train and practice hand to hand skills so the body will react on a subconscious level to allow the conscious mind to adapt to the circumstance. This training time must be demanded by line officers and it must be mandated by administrations.
A common administrative excuse for lack of DT training is the cost. Compare the money spent on DT to that spent on firearms training. Cost of trainers, range time, ammo, firearms, support arms, LE capacity magazines, etc…all very important to produce an officer that is competent and is confident in their gun fighting ability. How often does an officer fire his weapon in the course of duty? How often does an officer use his empty hands, impact tool, or lower than deadly use of force to arrest and control a subject during course of duty? According to a recent IACP study, in situations where force was used, police rarely used their weapons. Police used physical force most often. Chemical sprays ranked second and the use of firearms ranked third. LEO’s get a lot of on-duty practice on arrest and control but very little on-going training for it. Many go to what they know, which can date back to academy or even high school wresting…and much of that is the ‘pigpile’ or ‘ground and pound’ method of arrest. This lack of training results in cops using more force than necessary, using dangerous techniques, receiving or causing injuries, increased liability, a lack of confidence, or even worse, false confidence in physical hand to hand abilities. Many administrations cite lack of funding as the reason for not having a good DT program. Compared to the costs of legal defense, workman’s comp, time off to recover from injury, internal affairs investigations, added court time, and hospital bills for injured suspects, the money spent by administrations on an on-going combatives training program would be a wise investment.
Substandard instructors also add to problems with DT. Lack of teaching ability, lack of formal training, the wrong kind of training, and no time to practice are just a few of the problems that surface. This is not to say that all trainers are bad, but many trainers are severely under trained. Several major hand to hand companies offer instructor certification for between 2 to 5 days of training. At most, that is only 40 hours of training to impart skills and knowledge that will be used to teach officers lifesaving combatives skills. Many states have instructor certification programs that also last between 40-80 hours. 80 hours barely qualifies a person as a student of a discipline, no less an instructor. Would you trust someone to teach a college or high school course with only 40 hours of instruction backing him or her? After certification, many of these courses offer no re-certification and no continuation of training that is provided. The newly certified instructor may go for years without any further instruction or practice. Teachers/Instructors should have a huge amount of training and teaching experience as well as in depth knowledge of the field being taught. Even many veteran martial art instructors would not be suitable for the job of department DT trainer. It is like having a flight instructor with 80 hours behind them, or even worse, a Cessna flight instructor teaching how to dogfight in an F-14. Many trainers have good background, but on the wrong type of training. For example, a trainer who used to be a HS/college wrestler, will have very good wrestling skills, but may not be able to understand and adapt the training for a life and death groundfight where points, rules and ref’s are not present. PDT trainers need to have extensive hand to hand / mixed martial arts backgrounds, teaching ability and training, knowledge of LE demands, and a drive and ability to improve and adapt police DT programs to suit the student. All cops are not 6’00, 200 lbs. and in great shape. An officer trained by a professional LE combatives trainer will perform better in actual combat situations than one trained by someone with limited knowledge and abilities. In all other areas of LE training, the best and brightest in their field are sought out to share their knowledge and experience with officers who need the training. Finding the best should also apply to control tactics. The violent dynamics of unarmed encounters are understood by trainers who make study, research, and practice a major part of their lives. I would not want to receive training from someone with limited knowledge, limited practice, limited research, limited teaching ability, and limited ability to help me understand the topic…whatever it is.
Law enforcement officers have the opportunity to meet and greet the lowest forms of human life in the worst environments. Drug houses, trash filled alleys, dark and narrow hallways, urine soaked stairways, busy highways...the list could go on and I’m sure everyone has their favorite ‘most hated’ place. Does any of the DT training officers receive reflect or simulate these hostile environments? How often is training done or simulated on a slippery surface, in darkened hallways, in blinding sunlight, with sirens blaring? LEOs don’t have the option of moving the badguy to the mat filled room or changing into less restrictive clothing. Training in an open, mat floored room can be important during the instruction of very basic combatives, but for the student to effectively apply the knowledge, realistic scenarios must be used, complete with environmental or simulated environmental conditions.
Training should be done wearing the equipment you will have when on duty. Body armor, duty belt, hats, gloves, & boots, if normally worn for current conditions, should be the standard training uniform. To protect against scenario injury, a limited amount of equipment should be worn by the trainee, and a correct amount and type should be worn by the instructors (badguys). I have yet to encounter a combative subject who moves like the Michelin man, but it seems that the favorite badguy protective suits are those that do not allow the badguy to move in a natural fashion. In some cases the suits will protect the attacker to the point of them not reacting to incredibly hard impacts. Not to discount the excellent, huge, padded protective gear on the market, it has its place for certain training techniques, but most don’t allow the user to move and act with realism. There are a couple companies that offer lighter weight, more maneuverable suits, but this brings us back to money issues because most of the suits on the market cost close to $1000. A creative trainer can come up with less expensive alternatives, like combining martial art sparring gear with hockey equipment. Leasing gear from some companies is an option, as is sharing cost with other agencies.
Many times, even with good equipment, it is hard to get someone to be the punching bag. It takes even more to effectively fill the role of the combative threat. An effective badguy needs to be a decent actor, needs to be familiar with how actual situations develop from pre-fight indicators to physical contact, needs to know what buttons to push and weaknesses to look for so they can launch ‘sucker’ attacks, needs to be able to fight and counter the techniques executed, and needs the ability to absorb blows and to give an accurate reaction to the strikes. In most cases, the best people to play the ‘threat’ are the instructors. As a badguy, I enjoy being on the receiving end of successful defensive or offensive techniques in reaction to my attacks on students. It gives me the opportunity to evaluate first hand how well an officer absorbed the instruction topics. The training and abilities of student will suffer if they don’t learn to control realistic threats in realistic environments.
When funding and time issues are positive, sometimes nothing short of an executive order will motivate officers to train. Sometimes the best motivation is leading from the front. In other situations, showing the lack of officer skills is successful. From my research, many officers are over-confident in their combatives skills. Some rely on strength, some in pigpile or ground£ methods. What must be realized by under-trained officers is that there are more efficient methods for controlling threats. The first thing everyone experiences in my program is getting ‘killed’. They begin the mini-scenario by interviewing a person known to be in possession of a knife. The first trainee is usually at about 5-10 feet away from the subject. The last is about 30 feet away from the subject. The officers are told to defend themselves, but sadly many are ‘killed’ with the rubber knife before they can fire their ‘redgun’. As we all know, the fight is not over until the threat is down and out. Even after fatal gunshots to a threat, they may continue to fight, and may still be able to kill. There have been a few that have survived the scenario of the rubber- knife charge. They usually have very good hand to hand skills. Most run backward, many fall, some are taken down, and a few are stabbed and then ‘shot’ with their own weapon. Combatives is not a place for ego; it is a time to learn how to save your skin when the situation goes violently wrong. It seems that the cocky students are the easiest to ‘kill’, but the most motivated after realizing that their skills need improvement.
My instructors and I are all very skilled at defensive tactics, martial arts, disarms, and weapons fighting. We are aggressive and sneaky, and we have a plan of attack to back up our skills. We represent a worst-case scenario of a threat and we understand the potential consequences if we fail to impart our knowledge to our students and officers. A few hours of learning the basics can be enough to save a life. Constant practice and realistic training can make the difference in an officer’s safety, and can make an officer better able to serve and protect. As combatives instructors, we need to overcome administrations, time constraints, money issues, teaching quality, and officer motivation by being diligent and creative. The lives of our fellow officers may depend on it. We all want to go home alive and unscathed at the end of the shift. Instructors, command staff and officers, lets improve training so this can happen.
Train Hard & Be Safe.....Una Stamus
About the Author: Mark Gajdostik is an Oregon police officer, certified defensive tactics instructor, martial arts instructor, multi-agency DT trainer, developer of TNT-Police Combatives Program, and has trained police and civilians from throughout the Pacific Northwest. He can be reached at 503-789-1356 or send email to TNTcombatives@aol.com or through the humble TNT website at http://members.aol.com/tntcombatives/police.html.