Verbal aggression at gunpoint

[Unobtanium]

It fascinates me personally and I think it's the area least explored and discussed. Everyone wants problem solving to be linear and formulaic and real life rarely pans that way.

I remember AMIS. Realistic scenarios, and the wheels came off for everybody at some point or another. I know people who do what was demonstrated and practiced in that class for a living, who also attended. Noone had any objection to the realism or tactics and thought provocation either there, or later in private. I was very impressed and learned a lot. The one occasion I had, years ago, to consider shooting someone in defense of a loved one...they were drugged up and nutty as hell. THEY called the cops. Thats how nutty they were. You can't predict that. A firearm isn't a talisman, it's a tool. You don't wave a hammer at lumber and get a house. You pound nail after nail until it's built.

[Dagga Boy]

A great thread rediscovered. Thanks HCountyGuy!

I went back and reread the first 6 pages. What stood out to me is that we talked a lot about what doesn't work, what not to do, etc. However, there was little to no discussion from experts about what they would do, what does tend to work in these scenarios, or how they have managed to resolve similar situations over the years. Certainly, this is territory where there isn't going to be a single answer. It's going to be highly situational, nonlinear, and scenario specific. That's fine. But I think these sorts of discussions, lacking that leadership by example, fall short of the pedagogical value that they are capable of having.

What I'd really like to see is a module of some Craig-like classes that has confirmed experienced guys going through blind scenarios for demonstration purposes. Getting good role-players would become that much tougher, since they might automatically kneel at the known experience gap. If it can be done though, I'm imagining something like "civilian FTO training".

Time and time again, LE on this board have told me and others that they way they learned to manage these situations was by watching more experienced dudes. That fits well within my mental model for how learning best occurs. I feel like this is a massive hole in civilian training. Civilians spend most of their training time being told what to do, trying to do stuff they've never seen done right before, and then watching other unexperienced people try to do the same thing.

First, good use of pedagogical in a sentence..... It was the word of the week dropped often in my wife's teaching credential degree, and makes me laugh every time I see it as it is a beloved academia word.

One of the things I try to tell folks, is that one thing heavily experienced street LEO's bring to the table is dealing with crazy, doped up, drunk, angry, and just plain mean (or a combination of the whole group) on a very regular basis. It is often dismissed as "cop stuff" and not applicable to regular folks. I am at the "whatever" point and lost interest in trying to convince folks that it is one group who really knows your criminal well. Folks seem more interested in "Civilian response to active shooters" and Long range sniping for the zombie apocalypse.
Yep, I think there would be a huge benefit to maybe setting a couple scenarios up at Tom's conference for folks to sit and watch a group of folks handle some scenarios. As you said, FTO training for civilians. Part of being a good FTO was bein able to show your trainee's how to deal with things they had never seen, or knew existed before. The problem was often they were wholly unprepared for what they were seeing. Often, the level of crazy, and the level of violence often needed to deal with it was unnerving and not how it was on TV.
I think you are on to something, it is just how to pull it off. Another issue is also going to be what works for so,e may not translate to others. I know that both Wayne and I have both found very good success with the fence hands and "I can't help you, get away". That may not be as effective for someone who is not shopping in the full size clothes department. Also, things like tone and verbalization will also also be different, and not everybody can switch on a tone that really conveys what they want or a true seriousness.

[GRV]

One part of the tone thing though is again going back to mimicry. There's tons of literature on what tone you should take, or what language you should use. That doesn't hold a candle to actually hearing an expert's tone and language.

Here are some key things I think would need to be managed:

- It needs to be a truly blind scenario for the experts. I'm not interested in watching The Full-Size Man Theatre's production of Macbeth. Sorry Darryl

- The experts need to be able to avoid the "gaming" problem. It's extremely hard for us students to fully zone-in to the roleplaying and not get caught up in the artificial nature of it. This manifests itself in a lot of subtle ways that aren't limited to intentionally taking advantage of the situation. It's just straight up hard to walk in and not immediately start planning how you're going to deal with the roleplayer who hasn't popped out yet. Your brain knows stuff your character isn't supposed to know. Since said experts would be experts in dealing with scum, not with acting or playing D&D, I can imagine it might be difficult for them too, but maybe I'm wrong.

- The experts need to be willing to publicly fail, and the audience needs to be prepared to see people they admire lose a fight. Hopefully, of course, the experts will be coming out on top most of the time, and that's the whole point of the demonstration and choosing the experts, but if it's made impossible for them to lose in any way, or the match is artificially thrown in their favor, then it will have defeated the whole point of the exercise. Moreover, I could imagine some experts being unwilling to participate for fear of making a fool of themselves publicly. Watching experts screw up is still orders of magnitude better than watching newbies screw up. Once while trying to learn a language, I told my friend "I'm okay with making mistakes.....I just want to be making the same mistakes that the natives make." Not exactly the same, but kinda gets the idea across.

- There needs to be a wide spectrum of experts, of different body types, styles, background, etc. People can take nuggets of what works for them from different experts, and what is common among most of them will be suggestive of tactical truth.


Here's another idea too, something I've seen videos of Craig doing a bit in staged ECQC drills, but doesn't seem to happen much in open roleplaying evos: Run a person through, but have experts pause it when they think major flaws are occurring, discuss the issue on the spot, then resume the scenario. I think there is much value in the uninterrupted roleplaying scenarios, but they may not be the best place to first form tactical "muscle memory" for unexperienced individuals. It may be more useful for people to experience first hand what it feels like to do it correctly, in a guided manner, before being let loose on their own in uninterrupted scenarios. It also nips problems in the bud before they grow into reps of catastrophic behavior. Catastrophic failure is also a massive learning experience, no doubt, ask me how I know. This is just a different piece of the bigger picture. Sometimes in catastrophic failure we learn the wrong lessons, because it becomes hard to distinguish exactly what was a mistake and which mistakes were responsible.

That idea was influenced by a recent conversation I had with a supervisor of a small-town department. He said that FTO training didn't do enough in their dept because in a typical probation, recruits probably wouldn't see enough action to learn enough from the FTOs. Also, I think there just weren't enough FTOs to go around. So, with some of the newer guys, he said he'd show up on scene to standby while they dealt with domestics and such. He'd stay largely hands off, but if they were about to do something really stupid he'd pull them aside and correct it before it happened. It sounded like it succeeded at helping the new guys learn the ropes. However, I know jack squat about this, so feel free to step in and say that that's an awful idea for X Y Z reasons.

[scw2]

Catastrophic failure is also a massive learning experience, no doubt, ask me how I know. This is just a different piece of the bigger picture.

Pretty sure the group aced it, going 10 for 10 in the failure department. I do think seeing experts running through many scenarios at TacCon would be helpful for attendees.

[GRV]

Pretty sure the group aced it, going 10 for 10 in the failure department.

And yet...I was the only one who got shot, right? I'm still reminded every time I look down at the scar on my hand.

[GRV]

Adding to the list:

- Again, the roleplayers need to be top notch and not influenced by the fact that they're dealing with experts.

- There would ideally be multiple scenarios, some of which can be solved without force, some which can be solved with some minimum level of force, and some of which are highly unlikely to be solved without deadly force.

[Dagga Boy]

I would suggest dropping the word "expert" and change to experienced. This is not something you get a rating in and often the experience came through failure.
Also, while I appreciate the enthusiasm for laying down the rules on your catered training, have you thought that just maybe a few people here have actually done exactly what you think you would like, and have that experience thing about how to do it? Lectures about checking ego are probably not needed for the folks you may want to see address some of these problems. They likely got their ego checked already tasting their own blood. Just sayin.

[GRV]

I would suggest dropping the word "expert" and change to experienced. This is not something you get a rating in and often the experience came through failure.
Also, while I appreciate the enthusiasm for laying down the rules on your catered training, have you thought that just maybe a few people here have actually done exactly what you think you would like, and have that experience thing about how to do it? Lectures about checking ego are probably not needed for the folks you may want to see address some of these problems. They likely got their ego checked already tasting their own blood. Just sayin.

Sorry, didn't mean to step on any toes.

Used "expert" because I know "SME" is such a specific term around these parts. "Experienced" reflects what I meant better.

Yea, sorry, just brainstorming out loud, I have a nasty habit of that . Certainly there are dudes on here that have been doing this sort of training longer than I've had a pulse, and I unconditionally defer to their judgement and expertise.

[scw2]

And yet...I was the only one who got shot, right? I'm still reminded every time I look down at the scar on my hand.

Fair enough. My comment wasn't intended to one-up you. What I meant was that out of the entire universe of possible outcomes, none of the 10 simulations would have been a desirable outcome in my book. Of those, there were some that were worse.

[GRV]

Fair enough. My comment wasn't intended to one-up you. What I meant was that out of the entire universe of possible outcomes, none of the 10 simulations would have been a desirable outcome in my book. Of those, there were some that were worse.

A race to the bottom! My remark about catastrophic failure wasn't meant to mean that particular incident, but, yea, that was a pretty bad one for all of us I'm sure. If you managed to get your hands on any video of the other scenarios, let me know. I'd really like to see how it played out for others.

I'm on a roll for foot-in-mouth today. I think I'll back away from the keyboard before I say anything more stupid.