INTERMEDIATE WEAPONS

I was very interested in the article in yesterday’s Idaho State Journal concerning the Pocatello Police Department’s decision to explore the benefits as well as the draw backs of issuing Tasers to its officers. I will be very interested in learning what they eventually decide.

I was a volunteer patrolman for our city police department while living in Texas. Our city officials like most city officials were always concerned when an officer had to use force in the performance of his or her duties. Our city officials were very supportive of the police, but anytime an officer used the force deemed necessary, the media usually reported the incident and some of our citizens started besieging the city officials with letters and phone calls to complain about the heavy handed treatment someone received, even though there was a department procedure to review all incidents and a good number of those incidents were recorded with the patrol car video camera.

People are understandably concerned that police officers never use more force than necessary. For that reason the police have for sometime now, been researching the use of what we called intermediate weapons in Texas. Intermediate weapons are non-lethal weapons and include, but are not limited to pepper spray, mace, batons or asps when used to disable and not as clubs, and stun guns or tasers. The issue here is that the intermediate weapon must be able to disable the perpetrator, thus assuring the safety of the public, and the officer without any lasting affect or injury to the perpetrator. That is a pretty tall order and if anyone knows of a perfect intermediate weapon that will safely do all those things 100% of the time, I would like to know about it also.

I like pepper spray, but it doesn’t always immediately take affect and it affects others in the vicinity. Mace can cause some lasting affects in some people as well as others in the vicinity, and it isn’t always immediately debilitating. Batons and asps are extremely effective in trained hands, but they can leave some real ugly bruises and injuries that take a while to heal, but they also require the officer to get closer to the perpetrator than is sometimes advisable and have been known to be taken away from the officer and used against him. I really like tasers in trained hands, because they have a good reputation of immobilizing the perpetrator long enough for the officers to get control of the situation without serious injury to the officer, or the perpetrator. Anyone that might have been in the vicinity of the perpetrator is unaffected.

Tasers have failed at times to disable a perpetrator, but in trained hands they have an excellent track record.

POSTS

Like many People, I read from several different news sources each day. I also have regular contact with several friends that I used to work with in order to make sure I know how they are doing and to stay up to speed in a couple of areas where I have a particular interest. I guess I have an inquiring mind and just feel a need to know as much as I can.

When I pull up the J-Hub, I do so to read what is on the minds of the people in this area. If someone wants to include an article they have read as well as their views on the subject, then that is what is on their mind and I am interested in what they think.

I don’t wish to be negative or offend anyone, but posting an article straight from a news source to the J-Hub without any commentary or opinions from the one submitting the article doesn’t make sense to me. We can get the information from reading the newspaper ourselves. A good number of us have probably read about the subject in at least two of the news sources we read every day.

This really isn’t a rant because I don’t have to read anything that doesn’t interest me. However, if there is a very good reason for posting articles from readily available news sources with out any further commentary, I would like to understand the reason and maybe become a little smarter than I currently am.

ADHD

As I was growing up, I exhibited many of the signs of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. However, during the 50s and 60s, there wasn’t as much known about ADHD as is known today. My father was a medical doctor, but in the 50s and 60s, he wasn’t aware of the stimulants that are now used or the drugs Ritalin and Metadate CD, that doctors might now use to help those with ADHD.

I did ok though, because my parents and most of my teachers and other adults that had contact with me felt that I was a pretty decent kid that just needed to be told to tone it down a little or to pay attention and get back on task. I knew that most of those adults liked me and wanted me to be happy and successful.

I was at times, both a Racer and a Spacer. Most of the time I felt I had to be moving and active and doing something physical. When my teachers would sit me down and explain the penalty for getting out of my seat without permission or speaking to them or anyone else without being called on to do so, I became a Spacer, and would drift off into my own world and thoughts to keep my mind off the fact that I couldn’t move or talk without getting into trouble. I was then punished because I was inattentive.

Some of my teachers were surprised that I did so well on the tests and really understood the material while others knew that I was pretty much up to speed and had parents that were active in making sure I knew what was going on in class.

As is the case with most people, I had a couple of teachers that that weren’t very interested in the students such as one I’ll call Mr. B., who taught my seventh grade class for one school year between political appointments. Sure enough, the next year the Governor of Idaho had appointed him to a position and he was off to Boise.

I got along with most of the kids my age, but several of them tried to tease me by telling others that I must be taking LSD or some other drug that made me hyper. My father had participated in boxing as a teenager and had spent some time teaching me to box. After a few fights with the boys who were teasing me, Mr. Pugmire , who was the principal of Franklin Junior High at the time, told my parents that I was a trouble maker and expelled me from school until my father could come to the school and discuss my problems with  him. My father asked me if I had started the fights, to which I replied no, I had just told the other boys to stop teasing me or they would be sorry. My dad thought about that answer for a few seconds and then taught me one of my life’s most important lessons. He made me go with him to see the principal and stand up for myself and tell him how the fights started.

After that my dad contacted a couple of athletes from Hawaii, he knew at ISU who also had Black Belts in Judo and Shodokan Karate and arranged for them to teach me the Martial Arts. My father had been to Hawaii on a mission for his church and had seen many martial artists there and had been impressed with how gentle and civil they were to everyone. He hoped those attributes would rub off on me if I spent some time with theses Hawaiian athletes. I don’t know how much influence my association with those athletes and my interest in continuing to learn the Martial arts long after they had graduated and gone back to Hawaii, had on me. I do know that I liked them a lot and learned a lot from them. At any rate by the time I entered high school I could take teasing in stride and could sit still as long as necessary without being inattentive. It would seem that the original Racer/Spacer tendencies were disappearing. That would make sense since ADHD appears to be caused by a delay in cortex maturation. Dr. Phillip Shaw, of the NIHM Child Psychiatry Branch, has stated, “Finding a normal pattern of cortex maturation, albeit delayed, in children with ADHD should be reassuring to families and help to explain why many youth seem to grow out of the disorder.”

My purpose in writing this post was to simply bring a little attention to ADHD by those other than the families that have members with ADHD. About 8 percent of school age children in the United States [4.4 million] struggle with ADHD. That means that in a class of twenty-five, two will have ADHD. Those kids need support from family, friends, teachers and medical professionals.

As some J-Hub readers may remember, I wrote a blog a while back, concerning my views concerning a Concealed Carry Course in Idaho. Judging by the response to that original blog, people as a whole didn’t seem to be as interested in such a required course as I am. I can accept the fact that Idahoans as a whole may be perfectly happy with the State’s current system of reviewing applications for a concealed handgun license and don’t want a mandatory course forced upon them. However, an interesting thing happened after I wrote that blog. Several people wrote to my e-mail address asking, if I generally supported concealed Carry licenses for law abiding citizens, why I was opposed to allowing those citizens to carry their weapons on board a commercial airliner and thus avert tragedies like 9-11-2001? Shortly after 911, I responded to a letter to the editor on this subject and apparently offended the writer because he mailed a letter back to my brother, thinking he was writing to me. My brother forwarded the letter to me and I wrote the following response back. If you are one of the J-Hub readers who have written to me asking for some clarification on this subject, hopefully the following will answer your questions.

October 19, 2001

Dear

You did not send your letter to the right person, but you were close enough that he forwarded it on to me. Doug is my brother and attorney. I am called Smokey to avoid confusion because my father and I have the same first name.

As you may have suspected, not all my letter to the editor was printed. I suspect the editor felt that the last paragraph would have upset you, although that was not really my intention. At any rate it seems I have managed to upset you anyway.

Since I can write to you directly, I will no longer upset you publicly if I have something that I think you should hear. Your second letter really didn’t shed any new light on the original issue anyway. I would have hoped that if you wanted to respond to my letter, you would have stuck to the original issue of civilians carrying guns on commercial aircraft. I made my point in my letter to the editor and now it is up to those people who read the article to decide for themselves what they think.

I won’t try to impress you with my credentials. The people in this area who know me are very aware of what I was doing for the last twenty five years until I retired a year ago to return to Idaho. Besides, those who throw their credentials into the face of others who disagree with them usually do so because their case is weak. If you really wish to know my credentials, you can contact Doug and I will authorize him to make them available, or you can contact me directly if you think you can stay calm. I suspect that if you read the rest of this letter carefully you will begin to see where some of my expertise lies.

I don’t really know how to speak on this subject except to be very direct but professional and hope you realize there is no underlying wish to insult or offend you.

On September 11^th several suicidal terrorists boarded four different aircraft. If you had been properly trained, you would have known three things immediately. The terrorists you can see aren’t the problem until you can identify those you are not aware of, or “Sleepers”, as they are commonly referred to in the trade. The sleeper’s job is to accomplish the primary objective if the others fail. Two, the primary objective of suicidal terrorists is to kill everyone aboard the aircraft. If they can crash the aircraft into an important building, that is simply icing on the cake. Three, if suicidal terrorists are not thwarted before the aircraft takes off, you have an almost insurmountable problem.

My point here is that even the terrorists who ended up crashing their aircraft in a Pennsylvania field accomplished their primary objective and an untrained civilian with a handgun would have made no difference. It is true that some brave people probably rushed those terrorists and kept the plane from hitting another target, thus saving the lives of those who were in the intended target building.

Your training in the Air Force did not prepare you to deal with terrorists once the aircraft is in the air. The Air Force does do a great job of making sure unauthorized folks never get any where near their aircraft. I have a high regard for the Air Force Military Police.

Commercial aviation does not have the kind of security military bases have, where unauthorized people really stick out. Our recent experience has certainly resulted in tighter security at public airports, but I’m sure you would agree that it isn’t anything compared to Air Force base security.

Since you claim to understand the structural integrity concerns of a commercial aircraft, I’m surprised you made no mention of the hydraulic, oxygen, air conditioning, heating and electrical as well as other lines that run through a commercial airliner. If any of those lines are severed, anything from a fire to a hydraulic failure could occur and disable the aircraft before the pilot could normally land. If everything went well, the pilot might be able to land the aircraft assuming that all the terrorists including any sleepers could be neutralized before they could interfere

The problem we faced on September 11, 2001 was different than the majority of airline hijackings we have dealt with, in that the terrorists on September 11^th planned to kill themselves and everyone on board the aircraft. They were professionals who had trained for at least two years for this mission.

We have known for some time that these kinds of terrorists would ultimately try something in the United States. We have even thwarted several attempts over the past few years. The problem we have been struggling with is how to preserve all the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights and still safeguard our citizens as they freely move about. The answer, unfortunately is that we can’t do both.

It is unfortunate that you were never trained as a sky marshal if you had an interest in the profession and could meet the physical and psychological requirements. The training is very intense and is comparable to advanced SWAT training with the exception that the training focuses on thwarting criminal activity in and around commercial airports and on the aircraft also. Your teachers would have come from the military elite units, the best police instructors, as well as the FBI Hostage and Rescue Team. You would have learned non-violent dispute resolution, the ego modes everyone goes through every day and how to get people into an ego mode you can deal with, the five threat levels and the degree of force authorized for each threat level, close quarter unarmed combat very similar to that which was taught to the Hong Kong police during the British 90 year lease of that city, and Firearm safety and proficiency. The firearm proficiency training is very intense, forcing one to make life or death decisions in the blink of an eye. You would have been trained to engage multiple assailants, deciding whether to fire and who to shoot first, second and so on depending on the threat each presented. You would have been trained in a stress fire technique called the Turret, which works well in small confines such as an airliner. 

This degree of training is not available to private citizens in any state’s concealed carry training program. Those individuals in law enforcement and the military who generally provide this training are adamantly opposed to providing this training to private citizens at any price.

Massad Ayoob, who owns Lethal Force Institute in New Hampshire, and Clint Smith who owns Thunder Ranch in Mountain Home, Texas, both have great firearms training programs that civilians who qualify for state concealed carry licenses, can attend. Both men are true professionals who provide three or four levels of training for about $1000.00 to several thousand dollars depending on the level of training. Both men are highly regarded by both the military and police. As a matter of fact most of their students are military or police training officers. You can look them up on the internet if you are interested.

You may find it appalling that you would be punished for injuring an innocent third person while trying to stop a criminal act, but when it comes to deadly force, you are held responsible for every bullet you fire. If your bullet hits an innocent person or goes through the bad guy and hits an innocent person, you are responsible and will have the opportunity to give everything you own to the innocent victim or his/her family with the exception in some states of your retirement from Social Security. The law states, THERE IS GENERALLY NO PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW FOR INJURY TO A THIRD INNOCENT PARTY WHILE TRYING TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR OTHERS. The police are held to the same standard, but they get a city appointed attorney and the city pays their legal bills unless there is reason to believe their actions were criminal. There are no heroes when deadly force is used. Deadly force is either justified or it is not. Even if you are acquitted in criminal court, you can be tried in civil court if the person you shot or his survivors decide to file charges. You might even win in civil court, but by that time you could have spent over one hundred thousand dollars trying to defend yourself. For this reason we generally advise people to defend only themselves or their immediate family.

It is obvious that you do not know the five threat levels or the response that is justified for each level. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been appalled that the injury to innocent individuals as a consequence of your actions would result in legal action against you. Since Idaho doesn’t require you to take a course or even test your proficiency with a handgun before issuing a license to carry concealed, there are probably few outside of lawyers and the police who are aware of the threat levels and appropriate actions to each level.  You along with many other people who believe in the right to keep and bear arms are referred to in the security and law enforcement trades as unconsciously incompetent.

This isn’t as derogatory a term as you might think. It simply refers to someone who assumes they are qualified because of their interest and often enough, reasonable skill with arms, but lacks training and understanding in the larger issues involved. These people are no match for highly trained terrorists, particularly suicidal terrorists.

I fully support the right of law abiding citizens to carry a concealed weapon such as a hand gun for personal protection if they so desire. I personally would like to see a quality course made available for those who wish to carry concealed so we could define the parameters a little better for them. Still it wouldn’t qualify them to carry concealed aboard a commercial airplane. I am adamantly opposed to private citizens carrying concealed weapons aboard commercial airplanes. It really is a moot issue anyway because private citizens are not allowed to carry weapons aboard commercial aircraft.

So go ahead and act if you want. I know where it will take you. As for me, I don’t need to ponder. My training forced me to make the most important decisions a long time ago while I had the time to search my soul and decided what I could live with. Now, I am not burdened with extraneous thoughts. If necessary I can function in the blink of an eye but I know my parameters. You should also avail yourself of the best training available to you if you wish to carry a concealed handgun. Otherwise you will lose the gun fight or make a critical mistake that you and your family will have to live with for a long time. I’m sure you don’t want to see something like happen and I wouldn’t want to hear of it happening to you or your family either.

Please contact me at the above address if you have any questions or feel I didn’t adequately address an issue you wanted addressed. Perhaps I could provide you with some pertinent information on concealed carry and the laws pertaining to deadly force. I do not provide stress fire training to anyone I am not completely familiar with because of liability concerns. I suspect that I have offended you again. If so, that was not my intent.

Sincerely