NBC News report on police firefights during manhunt for Boston bombing suspects

[Trooper224]

I got that "advice" several times over the years. It was a simple choice, SHTFU and get promoted, or keep being a pain and get the firearms training in the right direction and remain a Corporal forever............I retired as a Senior Corporal and a lot of middle of the night "thank you" calls from the people I got to train.

I feel you. I hold the rank of Master Trooper within my agency and fully expect to retire there. When you're asked for your opinion in a meeting and reply, "Well, the first thing that needs to happen is everyone at the front of the room needs to pull their heads out of their ass." You don't do your promotional prospects a lot of good. Twenty years ago I joined what was one of the finest agencies of its kind. Over the last decade I've watched sycophants and yes-men slowly populate our upper chain of command. You know the kind: people who want to be in charge but can't lead. When asked why I think this has happened I usually reply, "Because sh!! floats to the top and it sticks together." When I sat in a meeting and listened to the current superintendent of my agency refer to us as, "You inferiors on the bottom." I knew the club I joined back when was dead and buried.

[Trooper224]

It was ridiculous the amount of griping and complaining that went on over getting free boots. Some folks are just determined to make a fight out of anything.

I've come to the conclusion you can give some folks ice cream and they'll complain it's cold.

[SeriousStudent]

......

3. Contagious or sympathetic shooting - from the violence literature - it's sometimes called a forward panic. There is a tendency to not want to engage in personal violence and that tension must be overcome. However, when it is pushed through you get an over application of violence. Seen in over application of force in many circumstances. Comes from Collin's book Violence. If you can use the term, fine - if you don't like social science terms - well, I didn't charge you for this tidbit. The flip side is when you could use force and can't bring yourself to do it. The book documents instances of armed officers or military getting the crap kicked out of them and seemingly unable to respond with their firearms.

Is this the book you are referring to?

http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Micro.../dp/0691143226

Just checking before I click on "Buy it now."

Thanks very much.

[Drang]

I feel you. I hold the rank of Master Trooper within my agency and fully expect to retire there. When you're asked for your opinion in a meeting and reply, "Well, the first thing that needs to happen is everyone at the front of the room needs to pull their heads out of their ass." You don't do your promotional prospects a lot of good. Twenty years ago I joined what was one of the finest agencies of its kind. Over the last decade I've watched sycophants and yes-men slowly populate our upper chain of command. You know the kind: people who want to be in charge but can't lead. When asked why I think this has happened I usually reply, "Because sh!! floats to the top and it sticks together." When I sat in a meeting and listened to the current superintendent of my agency refer to us as, "You inferiors on the bottom." I knew the club I joined back when was dead and buried.

You must be the long-lost brother my parents never told me about.

[Trooper224]

You must be the long-lost brother my parents never told me about.

If there's an inheritance involved I'd be willing to give it a shot.

I was one of the founding members of our Special Response Team. Several years in we had a new team leader show up who I used to call "Capt. Hand Wringer". The man lived in abject fear of confrontation and couldn't wipe his sphincter without getting permission from the major. Just the kind of guy to put in charge of the run jump and play squad. Once, before fast roping out of a helo during training I could visibly see him shaking. As I went out the door, I suggested he join us on the ground when his balls dropped.

Years ago I taught traffic stop techniques and officer survival at our academy. Everything went fine for a few years, then we started getting generation X onboard and the pussification of the agency commenced. Strangely enough, the recruits that passed never had a problem with me. It was the ones who washed out that had complaints, go figure. I could see the hand writing on the wall and wasn't surprised when summoned to the Lieutenants office. He told me, "We don't think your mindset fits with our current training philosophy." I told him I agreed, then bent over and blew out the aromatherapy candle burning on his desk before walking out.

Needless to say, there's not a lot of love for "Ol' Crusty" in general headquarters.

[jlw]

I've come to the conclusion you can give some folks ice cream and they'll complain it's cold.

Or they will complain that nobody asked them about what ice cream they should have gotten; and they really shouldn't have gotten ice cream at all. It should have been pie instead.

[ford.304]

If only someone had published a self-help book called something like "How to get ahead while being your own man."

I honestly think that would be one of the best books anyone could write for getting along in life in general.

On the Militarization issue... I always feel like this goes off on a dumb tangent. The problem isn't gear (although we can talk about whether its efficient to pay the maintenance on a Bearcat *instead of* paying for proper training) or pie in the sky FEMA death camps. The problem is the mission some agencies have assigned themselves, and their ways of solving that mission.

Sending half-trained yahoos armed with the latest in second-hand military technology on no-knock raids in the middle of the night is not going to work out well for anyone involved. Especially when the only justification for the raid is that someone might flush some powder. I know this isn't what the good organizations do, but it's what the crappy ones do, and there are plenty of those.

The fun question is, how do we stop that mess without stripping the good guys who actually need those tools of the ability to do their job.

[Tamara]

The report, entitled Too Many Guns: How Shootout With Bombing Suspects Spiraled into Chaos, shows that the initial shootout in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev was eventually killed was almost a circular firing squad, as on-duty and off-duty officers, some in uniform and some in street clothes, arrived on the scene from multiple directions and began shooting no only at the Tsarnaev brothers, but each other:

A quote worth remembering if ever I, as Suzy Civilian, find myself stuck returning fire in an active shooter situation. I think dropping guns briskly might be an under-rehearsed skill set.

[GardoneVT]

A quote worth remembering if ever I, as Suzy Civilian, find myself stuck returning fire in an active shooter situation. I think dropping guns briskly might be an under-rehearsed skill set.

IMO- and this is just a hypothesis- the lack of a thriving civil gun culture spells doom for the competency of LEO's in that jurisdiction. Why? Because then the police know only about shooting from what the guy at HQ approves of, instead of Mom, Dad, or Uncle Bob the family pistol competitor. For the first three years of my military career I only knew what Uncle Sam taught me, which was basically nothing.I learned more about handguns in the last 12 months of my service shooting with an NCO off duty at the local range then I did the entire rest of my military service. None of that knowledge transfer would have been possible in MA or any other Blue Zone .

Example:two off duty reserve officers in different classes separately went to their cars, retrieved their handguns, and engaged a spree shooter at the Kentucky School of Law, and managed to not only avoid perforating each other, but took down the spree killer together after de-conflicting when they both travelled to the sound of gunfire. IMO,gun culture matters: I shudder to think of how that would have turned out at NYU.

[Jack Ryan]

I can't imagine how all those armed civilians at Clive Bundy's ranch managed to wander around with guns for days with no paramilitary funding or federal grants at all we know of with out even once forming the tactical circular firing squad. Maybe they just lacked the enthusiasm for shooting people. Enthusiasm and permission.