Ok one more post before the experiment....

OK my previous post talked about...is anyone ever reading this thing anymore? I guess the reason why is when I used to email everyone sometimes I'd get feedback etc but since I went to this blog style online I never get any feedback at all. I must say I like how it looks better than just sending a plain email out....so I typed that last post and thought to myself...dont cop out (no punn intended). I guess I've been a little lazy with this thing lately....partly because the last few weeks have been a bit boring. I think that comes with the territory though. Not that I'm a salty veteran by any means but I remember that being similar when I worked up at dispatch.....when I first started every single call was exciting and different etc but as the years went on it seemed like all the calls meshed together and you would quickly forget one call from call to call........and the process became the same.....

You get the same information whether you had a critical incident or a barking dog....well maybe not that extreme but I'm finding that its very similar in police work....a rape report can seem totally complicated but the basic investigation is same as far as the process you go through.

TRAINING DAY: Again I appologize....and I say this often but its embarassing sometimes.......I rarely will spell check this or bother with gramar because this is my way of just using stream of conciousness and I type about 100 words a minute trying to get all this stuff out of my head sometimes and often times it takes upwards of an hour on big posts after pausing and then thinking of what I want to type...so if i took the damn time to edit it too this would turn into a chore which is counter productive to its purpose. That being said...again sorry for the grammar sticklars out ther but the other problem is...I used to be a dispatcher and you would use wierd abreviations and spellings like....

nabor...neighbor
blk....black
wm 32 yoa 505 180 bro blu, white chev lic/123abc fled wb nvi
..white male about 32 years of age 5 foot 5 inches 180
pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, driving a white chevy
pickup with the license plate 123abc fled westbound
no victim information

stuff like that.

OK off my soap box about grammar and spelling. Training day today. I've decided under the advise of one of my past trainers that I want to start developing myself via training...there is lots of training for Police Officers out there but unfortunately you have to be a little self starting and initiating and go after it yourself...cause like anything else in the world it costs money...and although my department is pretty good about paying for training they wont be proactive about seeking it out for you.....its no problem..you just have to be the initiater.....so I found this training a few weeks back and it was down south about 70 miles but it was put on by a fellow named Dave Grossman......

The man teaches at Westpoint....he was a Lt Colonel in the Army and well has a resume about as long as my arm. He wrote a book called "on combat" and "on killing" one was nominated for a pulitzer prize. No one else has looked at kind of the killology if you will as he describes it...the psychological effect on having to kill someone else whether it be in combat....being a police officer etc etc. Pretty interesting stuff really.

I have long debated about carrying my sidearm off duty....sometimes I do but I've been finding myself carying much more often off duty. Am I paranoid? I dont think so.....I think the old saying goes.....I'd rather have it and not need it then need it and not have it......alot of the 8 hour class was on that kind of attitude....he talked about how the worst guilt in the world is survivor guilt....or god forbid something happens in front of you like a robbery, homicide etc and you had the means to do something about it but it was sitting in your safe at home. How bad would you feel about that.

He talked alot about school shootings like columbine and Virginia tech...probably spent about 2 hours on that and the psychology of these killers.....and how law enforcement has changed over the years in light of recent events....its very much gone from a wait for the swat team philosophy to a ...proactive active shooter go in and take them out immediately kind of an attitude cause there just is no time....9 minutes was about the total time that virginia tech people had and killed like 40 people...ridiculous.

He was a really good talker...by the end of it I was ready to go buy a couple grenades to carry off duty as well.....he brings up some really good points though....he did a really good analogy about fire fighters and the fire fighting industry.......he went around the room and talked about all the things that go into getting an industrial building up to fire code...from the flame retardant walls, the cement floors, the sprinkler system, fire exit signs, fire lighting, smoke detectors etc etc......and then he started comparing the danger of fire and how we fight it to what we have available concerning school security....sickening really.

He has basically been called in for a tactical debrief for most of the recent school shootings like the Amish masacre a few years ago. He told us some things that dont make the media like kids getting raped etc....no one wants to hear about those kinds of things but the fact of the matter is that stuff happens...and there is some real evil in this world, true very real evil and the people that do its work. I dont like to sound like a politician with words like evildoers but some of the things he was talking about today scared the living shit out of me. I will spare you guys the details but some horor stories of school incidents around the globe.

Point being is it really made me become re-energized about being proactive and thinking about what it is I really do. Its easy to get complacent and you just can't be. Because the bottom line is.....when people here gunfire they run away from it and I'm the one that has to run toward it. All and all it was a very good training....very inspiring. This is turning into a novel like I always make it so I'll leave it at that