Glitz and glamour

22 Oct 2008  in the early evening  Matt Winckler

I finally got some pictures of OC day from a fellow officer here. Now you too can witness the glorious after-effects of oleoresin capsicum!

I don’t distinctly recall when that one was taken, but I think it was within about 10 minutes of initial exposure. I can attest that my expression pretty well sums up my general feelings at that moment. For the record, the tooth-gritting grimace was at least partly for show, but the eyes being screwed shut definitely wasn’t.

And FYI, this second photo is a lie. Contrary to the soothing expression on my face and the reassuring thumbs-up, things are pretty far from being okay in my world at that precise moment. As a matter of fact, I remember things as being pretty darn unpleasant. I must have thought it would be funny to pretend that everything was great, but it turns out that this merely turned into an example of what OC does to my cheesy car salesman smile. Having seen the result, I don’t really think I like it. That second photo was taken about 20-30 minutes after exposure.

11 down, 7 to go

18 Oct 2008  around lunchtime  Matt Winckler

Time keeps crawling by, and allegedly I’m getting smarter. I’m pretty sure there were a few things I learned this week, so once again I shall regale my experiences and maybe you’ll learn something too.

After surviving the hazmat class on Monday, Tuesday we began exploring the fascinating world of drugs and their users. I have a better appreciation of what “addiction” really means, and I know about four thousand percent more about drugs than I did before this week. Some interesting tidbits include the fact that PCP was formerly used as a horse tranquilizer, and Ecstasy (the drug of choice at raves, a.k.a. the “hug drug”) was prescribed a lot in the 1950’s as a sort of chemical marriage counselor. (In addition to making one mellow and lovable, it is also a strong enhancer of sensory perceptions.) We got to examine actual samples of virtually all common street drugs, including meth, cocaine (powder and crack), LSD (a.k.a. “acid” and also definitely the strangest of the bunch–it looks like a small section of light brown construction paper perforated into little 1/4″ squares or “tabs”), heroin, and of course marijuana. The Criminal Justice Training Commission doesn’t permit controlled marijuana burns to get the scent, but one of the instructors had a synthetic imitation scent which is supposed to be pretty close, so he burned some of that so that we could recognize the scent on the streets. (The class evidently had an above-average number of students who had never used illegal drugs of any sort–there were probably 7 or 8 of us out of the 30. The instructors said the number is usually 2 or 3.) The class also involved a section describing meth labs in some detail and the process for manufacturing meth. All I can say after that is that the people who manufacture and use methamphetamines are truly crazy. I don’t remember all the parts of the manufacturing process, but various points of it involve extremely dangerous conditions, whether it be violent flammability or the production of gases that are lethal in doses of only 5 parts per million.

As part of the meth lab portion of the class we also got to see pictures of the sorts of people we will be dealing with on the streets. Meth is a little unique in that it produces extreme physiological addiction (92% of users become addicted) and the rehabilitation rate is only 5-6%. With any drug, the body must find ways to eliminate the toxins. This usually happens by excreting it via urine, sweat, hair follicles (THC in marijuana) or breath (as with alcohol). In the case of meth, the only effective way the body has to excrete the toxin is through the skin. This, in addition to the damage it causes to nerve endings, cause small spots and sores known as “meth mites” all over the user’s skin. The irritated skin becomes very itchy, so the meth user scratches it and eventually they develop into large open sores. I won’t link to any photos here, since they’re pretty grotesque, but if you are curious and have a stout constitution you can Google “meth mites” and get some good examples. One example shown in class was of an addict who had developed open sores on his forearms that were so large (perhaps 4-5 inches in diameter) that his tendons had rotted away and his fingers no longer worked. (He eventually had his arms amputated and died shortly thereafter.)

The moral of this story is “just say no to drugs”.

This week we also performed low-light shooting at night on the firearms range. We learned how to manipulate and fire our weapon while handling a flashlight. Unfortunately, I encountered my first real disappointment at academy when I failed the low-light qualification on Thursday, missing the minimum score by just 5 points. I wasn’t alone in this (three others also failed the qual), and I’ll re-qualify sometime before Thanksgiving, but it was frustrating and very disappointing nevertheless.

We finished up our class on Criminal Procedures (40 hours or so) with a couple of tests and four hours worth of mock scenes. The mock scenes were set up such that two student officers would respond to a situation presented by the instructors and have to deal with it, applying the rules and procedures learned in the class concerning when we can seize a person, when miranda rights must be read, and how we are permitted to control subjects. Not everyone got to participate in a mock scene due to time constraints, but I did get to do one, and it was a very good experience. One of the most incredible things is how you get a phenomenal case of “tunnel vision” when actually put under stress and forced to evaluate all your actions beforehand. Watching other students do their mock scenes, the correct action would be blatantly obvious, but when you’re actually standing there trying to control suspects, figure out what (if any) crime has been committed, and all the while watching closely to ensure your own safety, it becomes unbelievably difficult. I always thought that the first few months of police work would be tough learning the ropes, just as with any other job. However, I am quickly realizing that the first few months of police work are going to be brutally unpleasant, because not only is the learning curve much steeper than most other occupations, but the stakes are also much higher. Most other occupations do not grant the employees the power to deprive others of their liberty (and be subsequently sued for their actions when and if they are unjustified.)

Unfortunately, these mock scenes revealed that most people in the class have not been practicing their handcuffing techniques during their off time, and there was some pretty sloppy work on display. This caused the instructor to notify our DT instructor that we needed some more practice, and on Friday he obliged by setting another PT brutality record. The drill was to bear crawl (think crawling on hands and knees, but using the soles of your feet instead of your knees) approximately 20-25 yards one way, handcuffing a suspect, bear crawling all the way back, handcuffing a suspect, and repeating. We did this four times, after which we did about 150 crunches, 40 pushups, 35 flutter kicks, 20 more pushups, 50 ankle-touches, 10 Japanese pushups (the Japanese, if I have not already mentioned it, should be prohibited from inventing exercises), and some other things I’m forgetting. Then we began learning about weapon retention, which was mostly fun and interesting, and fortunately all the “bad guys” made it through the day with no broken fingers (which will not be the case if the situation ever arises in real life).

And that was my week. We’re almost two-thirds of the way through, and if you ask me, it can’t go fast enough.

I saw the light

13 Oct 2008  in the early evening  Matt Winckler

Today was “Instructor Appreciation Day” in Defensive Tactics, also known as “boxing day”. It involved students boxing one-on-one with instructors, and there was only one rule: the students were not allowed to hit back. As with many things at the academy, this was my first experience, and it was sufficient to convince me that boxing is not a sport I would like to take up for fun. During my bout with the instructor, I stayed on my feet and blocked a few strikes, but more of them found my face and head. Five or six of these strikes provided a sufficient jolt to cause my vision to explode into blinding flashes of light. (For those who, like me before today, have never experienced this sensation, the cartoons with stars circling around a character’s head are not strictly fiction, but in my case it was more like a camera flash directly in the face.) The exercise only lasted for roughly a minute, but by then I was ready to be done.

Following that we paired up with another student and began another boxing exercise. This time we went one-on-one with a student and boxed in three timed phases: first one was on offense-only and the other defense-only, then the roles swapped, and finally we would both fight. Each phase lasted for perhaps 30-45 seconds. I received a few more blows, but at least I had the opportunity to deal some back. I think I was somewhat too hesitant to hit hard, though; I certainly didn’t deliver punches at 100% for fear of causing more injuries. After the experience I’m left with a strange mixture of feelings–not particularly wanting to do more boxing, but at the same time wanting to go back and do it better than before. I was also left with a headache that is only now subsiding, ten hours later.

We followed up boxing with a block written exam (which, against all odds, I once again scored very well on) and four hours of an extremely boring class on hazardous materials. The class had few redeeming features, but it did have some interesting videos (such as this one).

10 down, 8 to go

11 Oct 2008  just before lunchtime  Matt Winckler

Back home again for another weekend at last. This past week overall has been pretty light as far as homework goes, but the physical aspects are ramping up–or at least the physical hazards are ramping up. PT itself wasn’t too bad (except for Monday), but both Wednesday and Friday we did active arrest drills in DT, and this resulted in one officer fracturing his collarbone yesterday. It wasn’t a bad fracture; he was just standing around with ice on it and was reluctant to even go to the doctor. However, having been diagnosed, it’ll keep him out of PT/DT for 4-6 weeks. The nice thing is that the academy staff are very willing to work around stuff like this and so long as he keeps up academically, he’ll be fine and can take the DT tests later on when he’s recovered. This is another perk of going to the Spokane academy; from what I understand (based solely on hearsay), an injury like this in Burien would result in dismissal from the academy, meaning he’d have to start over from scratch once he’d recovered. For myself, I escaped yesterday with seemingly nothing worse than some mildly bruised ribs from the minute or so of active fighting I engaged in.

One important lesson from all this is that when you’re really going at it with somebody one-on-one, it does not take much time at all to become completely exhausted. I’m not sure how long it took me to completely subdue my suspect, but I’m pretty certain it was not more than 60 seconds (way too long–while proned out on the ground with me kneeling on his head, he was keeping his hands under him against my commands and I had a terrible time finding the right spots to apply some pain compliance techniques as he wriggled around), and I was well on my way to total exhaustion. Fortunately by that time I was able to find the magic spot to make his arms shoot out to the sides (incidentally, I found it with my knee–the one on his head–instead of my knuckles) and the fight was over.

Yesterday afternoon we had a grisly session of Investigative Techniques, in which I saw some truly horrible pictures. I shant darken the light of day with any detailed descriptions. Let’s just say that they were the first ones to make me feel pretty queasy and they involved a Ka-Bar fighting knife, a butcher’s cleaver, some internal organs, and a copious amount of stabbing and slashing upon an unfortunate murder victim. It reinforced the idea that a knife is truly a deadly weapon–some people find it disproportionate and inappropriate if the police fire their guns at somebody charging them with a knife, since “he only had a knife!” Those sorts of people need to see the results of what a “mere knife” can do. On top of that, the soft body armor worn by most police officers does not effectively protect the user against knife attacks.

There were some other pictures, too, since we were covering the topic of all kinds of death–accidents, suicides, and so forth–and about that I’ll just say that there are some truly sick people out there. Oh, and also some truly dedicated ones. One picture involved a suicide by hanging in which a male in his early twenties had hanged himself with his feet nearly flat on the ground. That takes some willpower!

Stark rooms and rubber hoses

09 Oct 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

It turned out that the Radio Procedures class, far from being useful and applicable and whatnot, was a horrendous waste of time. The class was four hours long and we actually spent more time talking on the radio during our brief pursuit in EVOC several weeks ago than we did in this class. So much for that.

In Firearms on Tuesday we began learning how to effectively use cover and how to shoot from three different kneeling stances. We also conducted some close-in combat shooting practice, teaching us to focus on the target instead of the gunsights at close range. We also practiced delivering multiple shots in quick succession (such as a “hammer”, two shots fired in rapid succession within the same recoil sequence), and when to transition from hammers to “controlled pairs” at longer ranges (involving actually finding the front sight again after each shot). All of these were fired at targets that simply had a cutout hole in the center instead of a ten ring, the objective being to put all shots through the hole. If you’ve never done it before, it is actually surprisingly easy at close range to put your shots in the ten ring without ever looking at your sights, if you have a good shooting stance.

Yesterday was DT again, and we began conducting “active arrest drills”. In these drills, one student is designated the bad guy all suited up in protective gear and another student acts as the officer. The bad guy receives some secret instructions from the instructor on how he should behave, and the good guy receives one simple instruction: “the bad guy has an arrest warrant. Arrest him.” Some bad guys were mostly compliant, whereas others were instructed to actively resist or become assaultive, and the officer had to quickly decide what level of force was appropriate and then successfully execute it to get the bad guy into a prone cuffing position. The drills were very helpful at applying the concepts we’ve learned in a slightly less “sterile” environment than doing simple practice repetitions. However, as a result of drills like this and Monday’s all-out wrestling, we have two students on limited participation due to injuries and another female student (one of three) whose neck has been sore for the past two days because of a particularly brutal hair takedown executed by one of the other female officers. (If I were a female in police academy, I can tell you right now that I’d shave my hair and buy a wig just to avoid having 27 other students practice hair takedowns on me. But that’s just me.)

Also yesterday we had four hours of “Interviewing and Interrogation”, which is going to be way too short (ten hours total). We had four more hours of it this morning, and it is a fascinating and extremely applicable class. The main goal is teaching us how to appropriately interview people, and how to transition to an interrogation when appropriate and secure a confession from a guilty suspect. I can tell right now that after some practice, this arena is going to be one of my favorite parts of the job. I had written up a couple of paragraphs describing some more detail about what we learned and what we’re allowed to do, but then I realized that some of it is probably best kept out of the wrong hands, so I deleted it. If you know me personally, ask me sometime, because it’s fairly amusing.

Before I move on to this afternoon’s activities, I should mention that this morning started off with a possible gas leak in the training facility, so we spent time outside in the freezing cold practicing handcuffing procedures. Management alerted the appropriate authorities (the Real Heroes and the utility company) to investigate the situation. It should be noted that the Avista utility truck arrived before the Real Heroes (who live approx. 1.5 miles down the road). *golf clap* The TAC Officer had a good time mocking them this afternoon by doing a credible impression of one of them stumbling out of the fire truck while rubbing sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles. On a completely unrelated note, I learned last week (or the week before) that the Real Heroes’ motto is “Sleep until you’re hungry and eat until you’re sleepy.” I’m not entirely sure why I’m a police officer instead of a firefighter.

Moving on to this afternoon brought us back to the firearms range for four hours, where we did one-handed shooting drills for half the time. The other half of the time was spent practicing close-in shooting at grappling range with a subject exhibiting a lethal threat–i.e. while interviewing someone, he suddenly lunges forward and pulls a knife or gun on you. This type of shooting requires special practice because you’re actually firing your weapon in mid-draw just after it’s cleared the holster and rocked forward. In this position the muzzle is still parallel to or even slightly behind the position of your head, since you’re leaned forward in a fighting stance, and therefore you feel a significant shockwave from the muzzle blast when firing, which can be surprising and a little disorienting or disconcerting if you’re not ready for it. We spent a couple of hours drilling in this situation, during which I picked up on my favorite firearms-instructor-phrase thus far, referring to the number of rounds to be fired during the drill: “Two’s not enough, and four might be too many, so let’s do three.” Works for me. I can think of all sorts of situations where this saying might apply, the most ready-to-hand being “number of beers to consume after a hard day of PT/DT.” (Yes, alcohol is still prohibited here at the apartments and I’m far too much of a tightwad to go buy it at a bar or restaurant.)

The other good saying to know for all things firearms-related, should you wish to know it, is “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

And if that’s not enough pithy wisdom, then take this closely-related one: “You can’t miss fast enough to win a gunfight.”

Anyway, we managed to get through the close-in firing drills without shooting ourselves or anyone else around us, so the day’s a success.

Tomorrow we’ve got more PT, more active arrest drills in DT, possibly some boxing (oof), some Criminal Procedures, Report Writing, and Investigative Techniques, and then it’s the weekend. Hopefully I get to that weekend without contracting strep from the fellow who was absent yesterday due to this very condition. The cold I’ve got is enough for me.