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| As usual it has been a while since my last post, but what a day today was. To start with, my ENTIRE class of 38 people passed the TCLEOSE exam, a tribute to the top notch instruction we receive there at the academy. Only 8 weeks left until its all over with, hard to believe we have put in 24 weeks already. The second event that happened today was getting into a car wreck. Some guy decided to back his vehicle into the patrol car I happened to be taking to get gas and I had the pleasure of spending about 2 hours getting through the entire ordeal, from the accident investigator to getting back to work. Not really sure how you back your vehicle into a car that is clearly behind you, but one of the city mechanics managed to hit my car anyway. And to top off an already eventful day, we had redman with the instructors. They got suited up in thick pads and we had to place them under arrest. The catch is they were resisting and we had to lay some hands on some folks. It was a blast to use the tactics we had been learning in past weeks on the instructors today with no restraint. My suspect happened to be a female who I am pretty sure would have wore me out if we had been fighting for real. I managed to knee her in the chest and abdomen about 6 times before she loosened up enough that I could grab her arm and take her down. My class had some great reactions when it came time to handle their business with redman, some were passive, some too agressive. We get to watch a video of the entire thing tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing how I did...its all a blur looking back on it. The quote that sums up redman - "When you wake the beast, you have to feed him." | | |
| I am still waiting on the pictures from the OC Pepperspray event. I have some good ones of me taking a straight shot right to the face with SaberRed :( It was a good event. We were sprayed directly in the face with OC Spray. We then had to draw our semunitions weapon and assess a threat standing before us, giving them loud verbal commands to see their hands, drop the weapon, etc. After that we were led over to another area where we had to perform tactics we had learned in DT, finishing with a takedown. It was all so basic looking back on it but in the heat of the moment with OC in your eyes, even the simple things take quite a bit more effort. On a side note, I only have to run my dish washer about once a week. Next Tuesday is TCLEOSE. | | |
| Almost down to single digits in the academy. 10 weeks to go. After finishing 22 weeks, 10 seems like a walk in the park. Two upcoming trials: The final exam and the TCLEOSE test. On side note, tomorrow we get maced. Hopefully I will have pictures to share. | | |
| “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” -Teddy Roosevelt I love that quote. Sometimes its easy for us to let our mistakes get us down. Today we were learning building search techniques and after lunch the instructors broke out the NLTA ammo and semunition guns so we could do live fire building searches. I'll be honest, after a crash course in building searches before lunch, doing them "for real" was really difficult. I felt like I was trying to drink water from a fire hydrant, not enough was sinking in. On our last scenario, both my partner and myself were shot because we improperly searched the building. The instructors are excellent when it comes to constructive feedback, but my natural tendency is to beat myself down over making mistakes like that. I focus so much on what I should have done I sometimes lose sight of the lesson the instructors are trying to share. I like the quote above. Its how we should be. We should make mistakes. We should lose. We should get back up and keep trying, over and over. Its when we quit and give up the fight that we lose sight of our goal. | | |
| I haven't posted in a while. Alot has happened but I think the best lesson I have learned can be summed up by an old saying one of the Sgts reminded us of: When you lose, don't lose the lesson. | | |
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