Shootings Reveal "Lone Wolf" Terrorists: An elderly man enters a crowded museum in the District carrying a rifle and begins shooting. A young man in Arkansas pulls the trigger outside a military recruiting office. Another man opens fire in a Kansas church. Three chilling, unconnected slayings in less than two weeks. One gunman was a white supremacist, one a militant Muslim, one a fervent foe of abortion... Trying to counter that threat, the FBI has created what it calls "tripwires." These are programs that seek tips from businesses whenever someone buys significant amounts of materials that can be used to make explosives, or large amounts of weapons or ammunition... In the District, Mr. von Brunn apparently skirted such tripwires by using a vintage rifle. With that single, small-caliber weapon, a museum security guard was killed before other guards opened fire and disabled Mr. von Brunn... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/14/shootings-show-threat-of-lone-wolf-terrorists/ Related Commentary: http://townhall.com/columnists/DebraJSaunders/2009/06/14/armed_and_extreme,_but_buried_in_briefs?page=full --- Glock to Offer Adjustable Back Straps: Police supplier GT Distributers announced they received word that Glock is introducing adjustable grip model Glock pistols. GT Distributers reported that they found out earlier today at the National Association of Police Equipment Distributers (NAPED) conference that Glock announced they will bring out the adjustable grip models later this year, or early next year. At this time, there are no photos of the new Glock models, and I was unable to reach any Glock officials to confirm this information, as I received this after their offices closed. Glock led the polymer handgun revolution, but has been criticized by some for not remaining innovative with new designs. The Smith and Wesson M&P has gained back some of the ground it lost to Glock years ago with police departments because of features like interchangeable back straps that allow the user to better fit the gun to his or her hand... http://www.gunsholstersandgear.com/2009/06/09/glock-adjustable-grip-models-announced/ --- NRA-ILA Alerts: List members are encouraged to check the alerts for the week, posted on the NRA-ILA website. http://www.nraila.org/GrassrootsAlerts/read.aspx --- From Force Science Research Center: Lessons learned: Practical tips for overcoming the challenges of an OIS Part 2 of a 2-part series The suspect Tactical Ofcr. Kurt Kezeske was after had just stabbed his girlfriend in the neck and chest so viciously that when she fled their residence and collapsed in a snow bank, she bled to death in moments. Kezeske shoved open the kitchen door, and there he was, 3 feet away, drenched in blood. The suspect raised his knife against the officer, and Kezeske fired 2 fast rounds from his M4 carbine. Hit in the chest, the man fell dead at the officer's feet. Kezeske had to kick the body off his legs. It was the second time in 2 years that Kezeske had used deadly force against a violent, threatening offender. His wife had warned him after the first time that if he was ever in another shooting, she'd leave. "We take care of threats on the street on autopilot," Kezeske observed recently. "It's what happens to us afterward that's often trickier." Kezeske, a member of the Tactical Enforcement Unit for Milwaukee PD, was 1 of 6 police survivors of lethal encounters in Wisconsin who talked candidly about their aftermath experiences during a day-long class on debriefing procedures last month [5/09] at the Waukesha County Technical College in Pewaukee, WI. Along with 2 instructors who've been associated with dozens of OISs, they offered their hard-won opinions about what helps and what hurts officers who are grappling to restore equilibrium to their lives after killing an assailant. In Part 1 of this series [Transmission #123, sent 5/22/09 -- Click here to read it in the FS News Archive], we explored 7 action points that those who've "been there" said departments should consider in making the post-shooting process easier to endure. Today, we look at what you can do to help yourself. PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Be honest with yourself about deadly force. Surviving the aftermath starts with mental preparation and commitment before the shooting. "Can you kill someone?" Instructor Bill Skurzewski, a retired lieutenant with Milwaukee's tac unit, asked officers in the audience. "Can you kill a kid, a 10-year-old active shooter, maybe a neighbor? Can you shoot someone in the face to stop a threat?" Because of where they work ("nothing ever happens here"), some officers are convinced they'll never face that decision, so they have not dealt with the issue beforehand. "If you haven't thought about it and haven't accepted that you can do it and can live with it, then you may hesitate when you can't afford to or you may struggle for peace of mind afterward," Skurzewski said. "Killing may be necessary, appropriate, and honorable, an integral part of the job. If someone points a gun at you, your response should be swift and deadly. There's no grey area. If you have any doubt about that at all, find another profession." 2. Educate your family in advance. Muskego Ofcr. Jim Murphy described a positive change in family relationships after he fired fatal rounds into a threatening knife wielder. "My wife won't let me go out the door now without hugging and kissing me, my kids too, because they never know what might happen," he said. But other survivors reported marriages that were strained or shattered in the wake of gunplay, often, it seemed, because spouses had been naive about the dangers of the job. "Because I work in a suburb, my wife thought I was just chasing dogs and writing speeders. She never worried about me getting killed," explained Wauwatosa Sgt. David Moldenhauer, who fatally shot an elderly man who pointed a shotgun at him on a SWAT call. "The biggest thing I had to overcome was the look in her eyes. She has never looked at me the same after that, although this is getting better with time." Kezeske said his wife, a county prosecutor, "bought into the Hollywood fantasy" that he'd always come home unscathed, too. After his second shooting, she didn't answer his phone calls for 6 hours. "She didn't want to deal any more with being scared. Our marriage spiraled out of control." They're now in the process of getting divorced. "I didn't educate her," he laments. In addition to the harsh possibilities of the street, he recommended that family members also be advised in advance about the post-shooting process, including psychological and physical stress symptoms the involved officer may experience. Observing you every day, your family can sound early warnings if negative reactions start becoming worrisome. 3. Watch your mouth at the scene. "The media will probably be around, and they have very good cameras, very strong microphones, and very powerful telescopic lenses," reminded Ofcr. Brent Smith of Mequon PD, who killed a suspect pointing a rifle at a fellow officer on a domestic. "You don't want them picking up on any conversations about the shooting." Also remember that your remarks that are overheard by other officers won't be protected by confidentiality in legal proceedings that may evolve. Instructor Mike Kuspa, a sergeant and firearms trainer retired from Milwaukee PD, recalled an officer commenting after a shooting: "I don't feel nothin'. It was like going deer hunting"--a reckless admission that could have boomeranged disastrously on him and his agency. In line with Force Science Research Center advisors, Kuspa advised that you limit the information you convey prior to meeting with an attorney. Any account you give at the shooting location, he said, should be focused primarily on identifying the crime scene ("how much of the area needs to be secured") and protecting public safety ("ensure that the scene is secure and suspect/s are in custody"). After his shooting, Smith said, he gave his sergeant only a "very, very basic" preliminary synopsis of what happened. They talked for no more than 60-90 seconds. 4. Consider consulting outside professionals. Seeking the help of a lawyer in preparing your statement and of a mental health professional in debriefing emotionally after a shooting are givens. But be selective. If you automatically accept the services of an attorney your union provides, you may end up with someone who is top-notch in labor law but not necessarily well-versed in the nuances of OIS investigations, Kuspa cautioned. "You want the best-equipped lawyer in your corner." With psychological counselors, empathy with the law enforcement perspective is important, and so is confidentiality. A counselor who works for your agency may be obligated to report back to it, too. "When I debriefed with a department-hired counselor, I was not honest at all," Kezeske admitted. Consequently, the time spent was of little value. "A privately consulted psychologist or other trained counselor tends to have somewhat stronger confidentiality," Kuspa said. Whomever you see, clarify the confidentiality issue at the outset. "This is going to be an officer's No. 1 concern." A private counselor may also provide a more comfortable setting for your session(s). Some officers in consulting department-employed therapists have had to report to the same mental health facility where they've delivered EDPs for evaluation and commitment, Kuspa said. Regarding legal and psychological aid, "know exactly where you stand and what your rights are before you get into a shooting," Skurzewski urged. "You need to be smart when this happens. There's no place for a dumb cop any more." 5. Tend to your loved ones. You may be absorbed in your personal concerns after a shooting, but remember that others who are close to you may need your attention as they deal with their own consequences of the incident. Smith made a point of telling his children's teachers what had happened and asked that she "keep an eye on them to be sure other kids didn't hammer on them." He wanted what they heard about his shooting to come from him and he conferred with his pastor on how best to describe to them what he'd experienced. Moldenhauer made certain that he told his wife about his shooting--and confirmed that he was ok--before she heard it on the news, where initial reports are likely to be sensationalized, inaccurate, and incomplete. "I didn't want my family to get the news from anyone but me," he said. Milwaukee Det. Jasemin Pasho, who'd shot an assailant who threatened her after disarming her partner, had an entire extended family to tend to. Her mother took to praying with unrelenting fervor, her father was convinced that she would be sent to prison as part of a departmental conspiracy, and "half my cousins" were in denial that she was even a cop, much less that she had come close to being killed. Her family's anxiety added to her stress and feelings of guilt (her father had a heart attack just before the inquest), but she considered it essential to do what she could to ease their pain since she was the only person who could speak with full knowledge of the incident and intimate familiarity with their sensitivities. 6. Reaffirm your actions. Kuspa noted that he had been involved in 26 OIS investigations in his career. "In every one, the officer thought he or she did something wrong." It's inevitable, Skurzewski added, that you will "question whether there was another way" to resolve the situation you were caught in. The lawsuit(s) that most likely will be filed, replete with accusations great and small, may only increase your self-doubt. But, said Kuspa, "Even the most righteous shooting will probably generate a lawsuit. Some family member will want money for the person you killed, whether they liked him, loved him, or hated him." In a bit of reverse psychology, Clinton Ofcr. Kim Rau, who killed a homicidal suspect during a domestic, started playing "what if" games in which she imagined what could have gone worse in her situation. That helped affirm that she'd taken the right actions. Re-examining what happened with an eye toward improving future performance is healthy and positive. But allowing yourself to become mired in endless remorse and recrimination is self-destructive and can lead to such sabotaging behavior as alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide. Perhaps you could have done better. Probably you will do better the next time around. But for now, remember this: In the big picture, free of nit-picking details, the chances are overwhelming that you did the right thing Pasho finally reached that conclusion via a torturous route. Her assailant was so close when she shot him that his blood sprayed her face. "I'm a poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder," she said. "I have experienced every symptom in the books. I can still smell and taste the blood of the guy I killed as I talk to you today. It will never go away. I don't know why, but I'm ok with it. "Would I shoot someone again? No problem. He deserved to be 6 feet under." 7. Bring meaning to your ordeal. One way the survivors on the panel do that is by repeating their stories to other officers. Pasho explains: "I want someone to learn something positive from what I went through. I hope that every time I do this, someone grabs something that helps them through difficult times. That gives meaning to what happened to me." Kuspa commended the survivors for their resilience and ended the day with these remarks to LEOs in the audience: "You will wake up tomorrow at 0-dark-30. You will strap on that gun and that vest and you'll go out there, able to do whatever needs to be done. "Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth...and you have front row seats!" ================ (c) 2009: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail: info@forcesciencenews.com. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at Minnesota State University, Mankato. ========= --- From John Farnam: 8 June 09 Why we instruct students to "Arrest the Sling" during our Urban Rifle/Shotgun Courses. This from an long-time colleague: "One of our students discovered, graphically, why we insist on taking the time to 'arrest-the-sling' as they mount on their military rifles. By 'arresting the sling,' we mean that the Operator holds the front loop of his two-point sling against the rifle's forend with his support-side hand. Adhering to this practice discourages the 'pendulum effect,' and also keeps the sling from interfering with the sighting plane and from crossing the muzzle. As our recalcitrant student raised his rifle to perform a course of fire, his overly-loose sling crossed his muzzle at the moment he chose to break the shot. The sling was, of course, blasted asunder, and subsequently slapped him in the face. He suffered only a few minor abrasions, but the incident impolitely interrupted his train of thought. Fortunately, he was wearing safety-glasses. In amazed disbelief, resembling a catatonic seizure, he gawked at his rifle for long moments, while standing, motionless, on the X. In an actual gunfight, this episode could have easily proved fatal! This sort of pragmatic lesson, born from the School of Hard-Knocks, once again, reminds us that self-correcting errors are often benign in their outcomes, mostly due to the benevolence of a Higher Power! Good results often reinforce incompetence, masked as good technique. Arrogance, as in this student's case, manifests itself as grandiloquent stupidity (masquerading as skill) until it all unravels. 'I was told the sling is just a holster. I don't arrest my holster,' said he. This is what passes for logic in pre-school. For an supposed adult to be given such drivel is truly astounding. ... which is why adults are in charge of pre-schools, or at least they used to be!" Comment: Most of what constitutes our Lesson Plan has been gleaned from bitter experience, over many decades. Sometimes, the True Way is not obvious. Arrogance never fails to make it even less so! I like students who are assiduous, humble, courageous, open-minded, and who are not afraid of work. The vain, arrogant, indolent, and pusillanimous need not apply! /John (This doesn't seem as though it would be an issue with a one-point sling, which attaches behind the receiver on the AR-15 family of rifles, so long as the rifle is slung.) 10 June 09 Police Fratricide With large departments, and with departments that are spread out over large areas (like state police), fratricide is an sticky issue. Within small departments, most members know each other personally, but when department membership numbers in the thousands, it is not unusual for officers to spend an entire thirty-year career and still meet other long-time members of the department, for the first time, on their last day of work! Fratricide rears its ugly head when members of the same department, or other LEOs working in the same area, confront each other with weapons in hand, and at least one is not in uniform. Under these circumstances, LEOs have been mistakenly shot to death, and many others have been shot at. It is a world-wide problem, but only in America do we look to technology, rather than training. NYPD, in the wake of several high-profile incidents of fratricide, has asked a technology company to design a system whereby "radio-frequency tags" (whatever that means) would be installed on police guns. In theory, these tags would allow officers to know where other officers are. Much is being made of this idea, even though the technology doesn't currently exist, and no officer with more than a week on the job would ever trust such a system anyway. It is reminiscent of the ill-fated, long-discredited "safe-gun" technology that was, under the Clinton Administration, miraculously going to eliminate gun accidents. No such "safe guns" were ever produced, nor marketed. The whole ridiculous idea fell into well-deserved ill-repute. Then, as now, "safe guns" are little more than a wet-dream of leftist techno-geeks, none of whom have ever so much as touched a real gun in their sheltered lives! Time and effort spent on this fool's errand has been, and continues to be, a waste. The correct way to address the issues of (1) negligent discharges, (2) unintentional hits, and (3) fratricide is through reinvigorated training. Officers need to be trained as Professional Gunmen who are not taught to be afraid of guns. They need to spend lots of time on the range under the tutelage of professional instructors who insist on sound tactics, suburb [sic] marksmanship, and correct gun-handling. Departments with a casual attitude toward training will continue to have high incidents [sic] of gun accidents, even fratricide, until training is given the attention it deserves. The public, and officers themselves, need to insist on it. No miracle-gadget will save them! /John 11 June 09 More comical suggestions from DHS: In the wake of yesterday's fatal shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, a museum industry association has distributed pocket cards and booklets, put together by DHS, describing what to do in the event that an active-murderer finds his way into your life. Aside from the usual "run and hide" advice, this is included: "Attempt to take the active shooter down as a last resort." Unfortunately, there are no specifics on how this is to be accomplished when all employees and visitors are prohibited from being armed. Employees who have been stripped of anything that even resembles a weapon are advised to "take them down," but, of course, there is no description of exactly how the unarmed are supposed to do that! I can't believe supposedly sane people write, publish, and read, this illogical, incoherent, intelligence-insulting nonsense with a straight face! In one breath they insist that we peons are too stupid to even own guns, much less bear them. In the next, they encourage us to be heroes in the face of impossible odds! I often wonder how inclined they are to take their own advice! /John 12 June 09 Comments on "advice to victims," from a college professor at a large, state university: "Just one year ago, university administrators, and the media, were insisting that we offer no resistance whatever to violent criminals. We were advised to 'speak to the shooter in a calm voice' ...ad nauseam. I noticed a stark change in my school's web page within the last six months. Here is the current advice: 'When the gunman starts shooting people, you need to make a choice: (1) stay still and hope he doesn't shoot you, (2) run for an exit while zig-zagging, or (3) attack the shooter. All foregoing options are dangerous, but certainly no more so than doing nothing. A moving target is harder to hit than a stationary one, and the last thing the criminal will expect is to be attacked by an unarmed person. Any option chosen may still result in a negative consequences.' I'm sure that last sentence was inserted at the insistence of the university attorney! While still scrupulously avoiding the subject of being armed and trained yourself and thus skillfully and assertively engaging active-murderers with gunfire, at least our administrators are (reluctantly, I'm sure) starting to face reality, instead of contemptuously ignoring it, as they've done up until now." Comment: It is indeed refreshing to see this movement (albeit slight) in the philosophy of those who consider themselves "social elite" and media stooges who slobber at their feet. Some are willing to patiently wait for dithering politicians to confront the foregoing and finally get around to addressing the notion that our lives are actually important, and thus make it legal for CCW license holders to carry on campus. Others of us are not! /John 13 June 09 Comments on "Advice to Victims," from a friend and practicing attorney: "Actually, the entire advisory was probably insisted upon by lawyers. This classic piece of drivel is what I call 'weak-lawyer-speak' It renders no useful advice, while placing full responsibility for what it euphemistically terms 'negative consequences' upon the advisee! This is typical wishy-washy lawyering. Wishy-washy lawyerly advice goes like this: 'Well, Mr Client, you could do this, or perhaps that, or, then again, any number of other things, and any one of those options can render a 'good' result. But, of course, both you and your case may well end up in the toilet, no matter what you do. Or, the 'Law of Unintended Consequences,' might bring about a third, unknown (but probably bad) outcome. Hence, my advice is to do A, B, or C, or maybe even something else' The part left unspoken is that, no matter what choice the hapless client makes, the lawyer is never to blame for 'negative consequences,' and his bill is to be paid, preferably in advance. Conversely, good attorneys, like good doctors, actually tell the client, in plain English, what he should do and why, without mumbling, paltering, nor sugar-coating. When the client doesn't like what he hears, he may decide to find another lawyer. There is no confusion nor double-talk, and, either way, the client gets good information he can actually use!" Comment: "Life is just as deadly as it looks. Fiction is more forgiving." Richard Thompson /John -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .