Okay... then I WON'T tell you about some of the uber-retarded "SWAT rifles" that we get in the lab from quite a bit small of S.O./small town PD that these guys shoot at stuff with a lot. At times, it is amazingly horrible. I had to deal with, a couple of weeks ago, what was originally a BushMaster carbine AR that a certain small-town S.O. deputy "fixed up". The thing weighed almost as much as a BAR- an original, real BAR- that I've handled and a shot a few of.
Dealing with some of those things is difficult to do. I used to comment about it, then realized that we have too much going on to try to fix some of these eager-but-basically-clueless folks. Sad... but time goes on.
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Yet another reason why I have 1x4/6 optics on all my rifles. Being able to tell my commanding officer, "no, that's a paper bag in his hand", saved us/me from a bad shoot approximately 10 years ago.
"There is magic in misery. You need to constantly fail. Always bite off more than you can chew, put yourself in situations where you don't succeed then really analyze why you didn't succeed." - Dean Karnazes www.sbgillinois.com
Had a large pissing contest with our SWAT Commander (we despised each other) over this stuff. He was big on "green lights" and assorted crap in which he would make the lethal force call. Didn't seem to like my opinion that if any officer presses a trigger, it has to be because they can articulate use of lethal force, not because a "Commander" told them to or not. He was even more pissed when I told him that I didn't need his permission to shoot folks who are shooting at me or trying to kill me. A lot of folks need to quit watching SWAT movies.
I didn't want to sound like I was trying to capitalize on a tragedy, but my sales pitch for magnifiers for red dots in patrol was the ability to tell the difference between a gun and a cell phone (or toy truck) from across the street.
Communication is CRITICAL on these things. We had a guy who almost shot a deaf mute on a felony car stop one night. I was literally screaming at my fellow officer that the guy was deaf and to not shoot him to get him un-tunneled enough to prevent a tragedy.
Overall....this one is a disaster and will hopefully be something people can learn from. Of course that will take the agency admitting it was a total cluster to back the critics off so we can get to useable training lessons. The best thing LE can do for itself is to learn from mistakes rather than try to cleanse them.
Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".
Mine was a shooting just occurred, shooter on foot, male hispanic, in all black clothing, 6 rounds into the house, last seen running S/B towards a park by responding officer. I was on the other side of this park, with my rifle with, at the time a 1x4 sent to me to T&E, (that previously guys gave me grief about; "Hunting elk today?"...). Another officer sees a M/H in all black clothing running through this same park, S/B, towards a school, the same school I've already set up on waiting for dude to come to papa. I see the runner, put the rifle on him, see something in his hand, it's a brown paper bag, and I see he's wearing a cook's smock type shirt, and he looks to be in his 40s. I get on the air and let them know he's worth stopping just to be sure, but he's not our guy. Another officer later told me that he was already putting his Eotech donut on dudes chest from about 40 yards away, (it was 1930ish so kinda dusk out), because he had seen the object in the runners hand, another officer said it was the bad guy, and so he was getting ready to go to work when I called it out as a no-go.
Guess who didn't hear anything else about my rifles having 1x4/6 optics?
Last edited by Paul Sharp; 07-23-2016 at 02:36 PM.
"There is magic in misery. You need to constantly fail. Always bite off more than you can chew, put yourself in situations where you don't succeed then really analyze why you didn't succeed." - Dean Karnazes www.sbgillinois.com
I'm always amazed at the number of officers that don't have binoculars. Especially with all the guys that are worried about getting ambushed, but don't see the value of being able to stop a couple blocks out and try to scope out the scene. They don't get a lot of regular use outside of chasing dope, but when you need them they are critical equipment.
There are a lot of situations were scoping out a scene with the optics on a rifle is completely inappropriate. The are plenty of situations where it's time to grab a rifle and get to work, and grabbing every other little piece of gear for every conceivable scenario just isn't going to happen.
Twenty years ago I brought a pair of binoculars and they've been hanging of the head rest of my driver's seat ever since. They're only utilized once in a blue moon, but they're awfully handy when that time comes.
Last edited by Trooper224; 07-23-2016 at 11:04 PM.
We may lose and we may win, but we will never be here again.......
I often deal with agencies who do not allow magnified optics. I had to fight in my place and we limited it to 4X and I got an exemption after 911 for a 5.5x. The problem with trying to keep people from putting 10x pieces of junk mounted to the top of a carry handle is not allowing anything....which is stupid. Most of the times I deployed a rifle in patrol was guns set up as DMR type guns and did some stellar work by being able to communicate with officers what I could see in detail that they could not.
Ditto the binoculars. I also got a ton of use out of a Swarovski small monocular.
Just a Hairy Special Snowflake supply clerk with no field experience, shooting an Asymetric carbine as a Try Hard. Snarky and easily butt hurt. Favorite animal is the Cape Buffalo....likely indicative of a personality disorder.
"If I had a grandpa, he would look like Delbert Belton".