28 May 2012

How about we give it a face, or 2...

From the Soldiers side
OK, somebody said I was a little hard on some people with my “dumbass” comment.  Yeah, I was.  Today is Memorial Day.  I guess I can understand how some folks can get it mixed up with Veteran’s day…

So, instead of me acting like a jerk, I thought I’d help give Memorial Day something to help folks better remember. Like a couple of faces.  Yeah, I know there’s lots of little Photo Shop pictures on the internet with somebody looking at the grave of a Soldier, but let me give a few faces.

Mike was a very good Sergeant First Class (E7) who I first worked with many years ago when our National Guard Engineer unit got activated for another flood by the State.  I had worked the night shift at my cop job when I got called….so I had no sleep.  Mike and I were supposed to take a Humvee up the where the flood was and meet up with those already there.  I told Mike I hadn’t had any sleep so, even though he out ranked me (I was just a buck sergeant at the time) he said he’d drive and let me sleep. 

I was shocked that a senior NCO would do that.  But I was even more impressed when we got to the Marysville, CA flood.  Mike worked 2 days straight- 24 hours a day directing the repairs on the broken levee.  How could we complain about being tired when this guy went non-stop.  But that’s how he was.

A terrorist, coward got Mike with an IED in Iraq in Nov 2004. 



I met Roberto in Baghdad in early 2005.  He was assigned to a “team” that went into Baghdad 6 days a week.  I had been on other jobs that had sent me all over Iraq, so I hadn’t worked with Roberto.  One day we were in the “shop” talking and we found out we were both in law enforcement and were range masters.  So, we talked guns and how to shoot.  Roberto had a son and we talked about kids (mine were much older, so I warned him what they could be like). 

I liked Roberto a lot, and we were going to go shooting at the range in Baghdad one day. 
I got sent off on another job in Fallujah, and Roberto kept at his job in Baghdad.  Roberto’s group got there 6 months before we did, so they were due to leave 6 months before us. 

2 weeks before Roberto was due to go home, he took out his replacement team – on a last minute job the CO thought they should do.  No planning or route checks.  (to put it politely, they shouldn’t have gone out that late.)

Again another terrorist, coward bastard had planted an IED…and it got Roberto and wounded 3 others in the humvee.  (the gunner who got wounded is worth a story on his own) in June 2005.

So, here’s the faces.  I know I’ll never forget them or what today is for.      


Mike

Roberto

27 May 2012

Memorial Day is NOT Veteran's Day you dumbass

From the Soldier side: 
Memorial Day: is for those who lost their lives in a war.  It’s not for those of us who went to war…that would be Veteran’s Day.  Please get it right…the next knucklehead who messes it up I’m not going to be nice about it.  I’M STILL ALIVE DAMN IT!!!     

17 May 2012

How to be a better instructor

From the Soldier and Cop side:  Sorry even though I'm semi retired, I've been pretty busy the last week or so, so I've not been posting anything.  (in reality, I've run out of stories).  However, one of my best friends who I deployed to Iraq with, sent me this link.  For those of you who want to learn to shoot better, this is the kind of instructor you need:  HIGH SPEED WEAPONS MASTERS

(Let me make it clear, I was not one of these guys,,,, I just did Mess Kit Repair on my deployments.) 

This is more like what I did....

03 May 2012

Let's do it the "Smart Way" not the .....

From the Cop side: I’ll apologize to my 2 readers for not writing more often….I’ve had a few ideas that I thought were great, then when I sat down to write I thought they were kind of boring.  I started to write about what happened 20 years ago- when my old California Army National Guard unit sort of called us in for the Rodney King Riots (RKR).  We were scheduled to have a 2 day training drill that weekend, but we got called early Friday morning and told we needed to come in Friday and make it a 3 day drill.  Oh boy.  Like we didn't have a norrmal job to go to.   

All I did for 3 days was train National Guard Soldiers how to do crowd control and search people detained.  I was given the Army Field Manual on the subject but after a quick review I decided that I couldn’t teach something that was 20 years out of date- so I taught them proper civilian police methods. 

Other National Guard units got there and got things under control for LAPD and we never left the armory…so all said- it was boring so I decided not to write about that.  The major problem for the CA Nat Guard was the only place we could have gotten ammo for our weapons in the state...the guys working there just went home at the end of the day and there was NO AMMO.  Guard units responding had to stop and buy ammo on the way to the riots. 

How about a Cop story?  One of the things I must have done a thousand times was search a home or building looking for bad guys.  I got pretty good at it and always took it seriously because if a bad guy was really waiting inside with a gun, we were at a big disadvantage. 

One evening several years ago, we had one of the Admin Pogues (AP) filling in for the Patrol Sergeant.  When we had an AP filling in, we would just tell them to stay in the office and we’d call if we really needed any help.  On this night, we had the absolute worst cop AP in the world as our supervisor.  This guy had been in police work for over 30 years, but had never figured out tactics and things like that because early in his career he was given command of a desk.  You can’t get a desk hurt unless you spill your coffee on it. 

We got a call from a woman who was out of the state and said somebody was in her house in our city.  How did she know this (before the computer video stuff was so common)?  Because the suspect was on the phone talking to her…the suspect was her crazy nephew and he wanted to know if he could live in her home since she was gone.  She didn’t want him there, so we got called to evict him. 

So, in a small police department there are many times when there are only a few cops…there were only 2 of us that night and the AP weenie.  My partner and I got to the house within a few minutes (remember, the cops are only minutes away when you need them in seconds) and “surrounded” the place.  (OK, we couldn’t really surround the place, but if the media was there, I guess that’s what they’d said.)  The house was not a perfect square or rectangle, it was all kinds of shapes, so you couldn’t look down one side and see the other side…it had been added onto so many times that it looked like many houses that had been stuck together and it was impossible to really put a perimeter around it with 2 guys. 

So, since I was the “senior” copper, I said let’s find an open door where the suspect went in…then the AP guy showed up and “took over.”  He was lost, so I “suggested” that we find an open door where the suspect must have entered.  He was pondering this and trying to think up something different because I later found out, he never listened to any suggestions from officers. 

Since our safety was more important than actually catching the suspect, I told my partner that we were staying together as we went around the house….as we walked around, the AP guy walked behind us. 

Lucky for us, that night we had one of the best police dispatchers working.  She said she was going to call back the RP (Reporting Party) and see if a neighbor had a key to the house because she knew we were going to have to go in and find the guy.  A minute later, we found an open window.  The AP guy said: “Climb through the window and come around and unlock the door.” 

I thought that was a bad idea…when you have to climb through a window, you are totally venerable to anybody on the other side--- never go through windows if you can avoid it.  And my plan was that my partner and I were going to stick together.  I tried to be as diplomatic as possible and said: “why don’t we wait a minute and see if a neighbor has a key to the front door!” 

The AP didn’t like that I had not just done what he told me to do.  I didn’t care, I wasn’t going to get hurt because he was a retard.  A minute later the dispatcher told us the neighbor had a key and we ran over and got it.  As we got to the front door, I explained to my partner that I was going in first and he would “stack” behind me…I had to take the AP in with us, but I was afraid with our guns out that he might get excited and shoot one of us in the back.  (yes, he was that messed up). 

We got through the front door and cleared most of the house.  We were at the last room—the master bed room. The door was old and narrow and it was hard to get 2 cops through at the same time, so I went in. 

The suspect was trying to hide in the closet when I saw him.  He had something black in his hand…it was either a gun, or a cordless phone.  I backed up to the door jam and told him to throw whatever was in his hand onto the bed.  He did….it was a black cordless phone. 

He came out of the closet and was cooperative and totally nuts.  I didn’t take him to jail, but to the county mental health unit where they counted his marbles and wound up his little spring and let him go after 72 hours on a 5150 hold.  He never knew how close he came to getting a 147 grain 9MM HP round into his center mass.