Paul Castle's New Show on A&E

[BamaXD]

I'm sitting here watching a new show on A&E featuring Paul Castle and its about his traveling from department to department training LEO's with his system. It's pretty interesting. Just thought I'd point it out. -BamaXD

[45man]

Watching the same show. Really interesting. That 47 year old officer isn't doing as well as one would expect. Love seeing new tactics like these.

[deadin]

I haven't seen so much painting since I had my house redone.
(And I wonder how many of the "trainees" are going to end up with black eyes whern they go live. )

[Jeff #111]

It's not too bad. I'm not familiar with Paul Castle, but as a firearms instructor with my department I found some of what they were doing to be pretty interesting. However doing situps while breaking down and then reasembling your weapon isn't fair if you have a Glock.Many of those West VA officers were carrying S&W autos. A big difference between a Smith auto and a Glock. Other than that it's not a bad show.

[SoldiersSon]

I liked this show a lot...not as much as Dallas SWAT though!

[BreacherUp!]

Show was amusing. But from a trainer's point of view, I did not see a reason for a lot of the wasted time spent with dead mice, throwing helmets, or screaming lines from Full Metal Jacket. Nor do I see a reason to enter and clear a room with a pistol in the tucked position.
The guy's heart is in the right place, but those departments could spend their $$ more wisely with a host of other qualified instructors.

[Deaf Smith]

Paul Castle is the inventor of the CAR (central Axis Relock) shooting and retention position he was showing on the show.

The only thing I did not like was pointing real guns at each other. Yea, I know they were empty, but empty guns have killed lots of people. Plenty of red guns out there now days. No reason to use live weapons unless you have a real real budget crunch.

[pickpocket]

Originally Posted by BreacherUp!

Show was amusing. But from a trainer's point of view, I did not see a reason for a lot of the wasted time spent with dead mice, throwing helmets, or screaming lines from Full Metal Jacket. Nor do I see a reason to enter and clear a room with a pistol in the tucked position.
The guy's heart is in the right place, but those departments could spend their $$ more wisely with a host of other qualified instructors.

C'mon - cut the guy a LITTLE slack. After all, it IS television and they have to create their little dramatic moments.
He and I actually had a decent conversation about this very thing when I got to see the pilot show a few months ago that A&E had given him. I told him that I hoped that the theatrics of television didn't detract from what he was doing. He is actually quite concerned about whether or not this show makes him look like a clown. His heart IS in the right place, and his training is good. He would not teach someone to clear a room with the weapon not at the ready.

The only thing I did not like was pointing real guns at each other. Yea, I know they were empty, but empty guns have killed lots of people.

About the whole "pointing guns at each other" bit - I would have to say that at some level you have to be comfortable that your partner is not going to shoot you. Seriously - in a room full of trained professionals - if everyone shows an empty chamber to at least two people then what are you really afraid of?? That someone will stick a round in their chamber when you're not looking? I promise you, these guys are showing CLEAR to each other constantly. In my class, whenever I got partnered with a new guy I'd show CLEAR, as would he. Every time we left the area and came back, we showed CLEAR. It was safe - people weren't walking up from the firing line and just hoping everyone else cleared their weapons.

We are not talking about officers fresh out of the academy, we are not talking about Joe off the street who is taking his first class after getting his CHL. We're talking about PROFESSIONAL SHOOTERS.

We did an interesting confidence drill in our Instructor's Course with Castle. In our course, no two guys were from the same department...we had come from all over the country to Nashville to train with him - so we were all strangers to each other at the beginning of the week.
On day 3 Paul asked a SWAT guy from Illinois to stand in between two targets...and the guy did. Then Paul asked me to run through one of the shooting drills...and not to shoot my partner. After a quick exchange of glances, both of us were ready and I stepped up to the line. Before I could unholster my weapon, Paul stopped us and explained that we had just done what 99% of the teams he had trained had balked at doing - most of the people he asks to do that begin to stutter and complain about not being safe. When pressed, the guy standing between the targets usually says something to the effect of "I don't trust him to not shoot me"....
Yet, me and this guy I barely knew had stepped up to the plate with no hesitation - confident in each other's abilities.

Come on, people...these guys are SRT's!! They clear buildings with each other, they back each other up, they cover each other's backs when the SHTF. And THEY DON'T TRUST EACH OTHER?? What would happen if one of them was required to take a shot past his partner in a real situation? Would he hesitate because he had never prepared himself

Point was - if you're a professional, then act accordingly. If you're training with a group of professionals, you should assess everyone's skill accordingly and be comfortable that the people around you are highly trained and are all as committed to safety as they should be.
In real life, if you're a cop or SWAT officer, you might very well have to take a shot like that one day - if you don't have the confidence to do it in training what makes you think you'll have the confidence when you need it?

Same goes for "pointing" weapons at each other. In a room full of trained professionals taking PLENTY of precautions - those weapons are as safe as a plastic blank.
I agree that those techniques are not for everyone...but then are you telling me that a room full of SWAT officers can't be trusted to clear their weapons?

I think we're getting distracted by the wrong things. Sorry if that came out a bit rough - it wasn't meant as an attack.

[donkee]

Same goes for "pointing" weapons at each other. In a room full of trained professionals taking PLENTY of precautions - those weapons are as safe as a plastic blank.
I agree that those techniques are not for everyone...but then are you telling me that a room full of SWAT officers can't be trusted to clear their weapons?

Like the trained professional that shot himself with his "Glock 40". You never know when there will be an accident. That's why they are called accidents. The golden rules are for everyone.

Just my opinion.

[Raptor5191]

SoldiersSon..I know you were kidding, right (I have not been around here long enough to know if the snide sense of humour I have prevales here as well)?

PickPocket: You said a lot of things that I agree with. If you can not trust your teammates after the basic safety precautions have been taken you can not operate in full confidence.

There are some lines that should not be crossed, but you HAVE to have full confidence in your teammates otherwise how can you feel confident covering your AO when you go through a door together? What will keep you from looking over your shoulder and missing the guy behind the armoire? The only thing that ensures that this does not happen is training...therefore trust.

[pickpocket]

Originally Posted by donkee

Like the trained professional that shot himself with his "Glock 40". You never know when there will be an accident. That's why they are called accidents. The golden rules are for everyone.

Oh - that guy was a total idiot. First, he didn't check the weapon...Rule #1, right??? Second, either the person who handed him the weapon didn't check it or he (she? I can't remember) didn't TELL the guy "Hey, that weapon is Condition 1"... so once again, we're back to professionalism and trusting your teammates.

There is no such thing as an accidental discharge. The discharge can always be traced back to at least one act of operator negligence.

Even when a buddy is cleaning his weapon across the table from me and he hands me his weapon - I know it's empty - but I check it anyway. Professionalism is not only a description of trianing, but mindset as well. It takes both.

[Raptor5191]

PickPocket: Amen again! As soon as you saw that retard walking around preaching how much of an expert he was you KNEW how that was going to end up.

[spaceman spiff]

Sorry guys I am going to have to disagree with some of what has been said.

As for standing by a target while someone else shoots it, no thanks. I know they are SRT and can run higher and jump faster but stuff happens.

I am SRT as well. I train our SRT. I would not allow this. What happens when the one in a million accident occurs? In just the last few months I have seen things on the firing line that I have not seen in 21 years of military and law enforcement shooting.

1) We had a casehead seperation durring building clearing drills. This caused the extractor and other parts to go flying out of the weapon. When this happened who knows how far off the intended path the round was. Would you like to be standing beside the target when the SRT operator firing the gun had this occur?

2) While shooting steel targets at about 20 yards we had blow back that struck the shooter hard enough to break the skin and cause a bruise. I have had blow back but not with that force at that distance. I know your not standing by steel but what happens when a round hits just the wrong spot and does the "Golden or magic BB" routine?

While I trust our people I always remember that Mr. Murphy is in our stack and on the firing line. I really dont want to help him by placing people in positions they could get hurt when everything goes wrong.

We fire while moving and in the stack. We do the full range of SRT type traing but WE DO NOT SHOOT AT TARGETS WITH PEOPLE DOWN RANGE. Its not a lack of confidence to me, its an abundance of caution.

I have trained with real weapons but much prefer the red guns for training. When real weapons were used there was no live ammo in the training area and everyone was checked and rechecked, still, red is better. I have NEVER heard of one of them going off after lunch when someone forgot they reloaded.

All of the above is meant with respect and not a slam at anyone. I come here to read some great info and once in a great while share a thought or two.

Everyone stay safe.

Semper Fi

(This is for the moderator)

While Spaceman Spiff is a cute screen name it is one that i tend to use everywhere. I have so many sign in names and passwords at work that I tend to try and use one or two while away from work so I can remember them when at different boards. This is especially important since I rarely post.
Since a lot of the other boards I go to are not LEO related I chose the Calvin and Hobbs refrence. You have to love Calvin

I have checked but can't seem to find a way to change the screen name.

[pickpocket]

Spaceman -
I think it just boils down to a difference in philosophy. While I'm a stickler for safety, I also believe that you don't practice for the Super Bowl by playing flag football. That's not to say that I think standard training in the fundamentals is by any means just "flag football"... what I'm trying to say is that once in a while you have to turn the training up a notch.
Something that bears mentioning is that just because I advocate training as tough and difficult as you can make it, I also don't think that training should be sustained at that level for longer than it has to be - meaning that you spend a lot of time on the fundamentals and less time on the high-speed/low-drag techniques. However, the high-speed training still needs to get done.

How many times have you left a class/course/training session and said to yourself, "I wasn't challenged as much as I could have been"...?
I'm all about establishing an operator's confidence both in himself and his equipment...and the only way you can do that is to test them - and not gently.
Doing so inherrently creates unsafe situations - which is why only certain people should be trained at this level. But it still needs to be done. We soften our philosophies and methodologies because we're afraid of that one-in-a-million chance that someone could get hurt during training...we're afraid of what the world will think of us...we're afraid of getting sued.
I spent too many years listening to the politic-aware officer crowd of the military dilute our training...too afraid to get a bruise, too afraid to make someone's mom upset. Too afraid to do what they came there to do.
Accidents happen. We are several times more likely to die in a car accident than we are by a freak training accident...and yet we're MORE worried about the latter.

But you know what I'm more afraid of? I'm more afraid of the fact that 9 out of 10 SRT officers that have been asked to take a shot to either side of their partners (on a square-range, in a safe training environment) either didn't trust themselves enough or weren't trusted by their partners enough to take the shot. They were not even willing to step up to the plate.
That bothers me. There is something fundamentally wrong with not having the confidence in one's abilities and equipment to not perform as expected.

Sorry - that started out as an agree-to-disagree post and ended up more as a general rant.

[spaceman spiff]

PickPocket,

We will have to agree to disagree.

By the way it's not being sued that concerns me. It's killing or permanantly injuring someone. Lets say someone steps up to the plate and takes the shot only to find they were not quite ready. What if that adreniline rush that we all try to simulate in training jumps up and bites someone? It's not a calculted risk that I want to expose people to.

I look forward to reading your future post on this and any other topic.


Semper Fi.

Spiff

[Deaf Smith]

The habit of pointing unloaded weapons at each other for training will lead to one day FORGETTING the weapon is loaded and pointing at another person while training.

This is how the LEO training officer in Arlington killed another LEO in a class with is department issue pistol (forgot he had loaded in at lunch.) This is how a Dallas cop killed another cop in the locker room demoing what they had learned in a training excercise just an hour before (with tapped over muzzles of their unloaded pistols). He 'forgot' he had loaded is duty weapon after training and out of habit pulled it and pressed the trigger, dead into the man's heart.

This is a warning. Familiarity breeds contempt. Keep training with live weaons in class and one day someone is going to 'demo' and 'forget'.

Deaf

[pickpocket]

Originally Posted by Deaf Smith

This is a warning. Familiarity breeds contempt. Keep training with live weaons in class and one day someone is going to 'demo' and 'forget'.

I prefer "Complacency Kills"...

Originally Posted by SpacemanSpiff

Lets say someone steps up to the plate and takes the shot only to find they were not quite ready. What if that adreniline rush that we all try to simulate in training jumps up and bites someone? It's not a calculted risk that I want to expose people to.

I do agree with you here.

This touches on another aspect of how I like to train - I think it is important that a team possess what I have heard called a "Culture of Communication"...
This is where people are not afraid to call BS or "Time-Out" during training if they feel uncomfortable. Team members should feel comfortable letting the team know when they are NOT ok, and the team should be able to accept that, adjust, and carry on.
There will always be the good-natured trash talking, but most of us know when we cross the line. I feel that a good team that has this "Culture of Communication" will be able to conduct risky training while keeping their focus on safety.

With respect to the officers who balked at doing the drill, I applaud them for owning up to being uncomfortable before being pushed into something that they did not think they could do - thereby averting a potentially bad situation. My point was that I think it highlights a deficiency in training or abilities, and once identified, steps should be taken to address those deficiencies.

They were never going to actually DO the drill, my point was that they weren't even willing.

I think you and I might be closer in opinion than it seems.

Stay sharp!

[Hayley]

"Team members should feel comfortable letting the team know when they are NOT ok, and the team should be able to accept that, adjust, and carry on."

I'm really off topic, but I was just thinking how that would play in, say, Seals training. The team would carry-on but without you. Is that from a difference in mission I wonder?

[pickpocket]

It's not that they carry on without you. The true strength of a team lies in the abilities of the members as a whole to pull together and compensate for the shortcomings of any one individual.
If an individual is struggling in an area and is afraid to let the team know about it for fear of ridicule or reprisal, then he(she) then risks becoming a liability to the team in a life or death situation. Rather than risk that, the team member should be able to let the team know and the team should come together to fill in the gap.

As a hobby I do adventure racing with a team of guys - which aremulti-hour/multi-day "races" that cover multiple disciplines; cross-country running, land navigation, climbing, kayaking, mountain biking, and any number of outdoor skills that the race coordinator can think of to toss in. In order for the team to be successful we have to know that any one of us can let the team know we're hurting or struggling because the team can then form a strategy around how to compensate. In order for us to finish, the entire team has to cross the finish line - and after a multi-day race with only a couple hours of sleep, we become very dependant upon each other. There is no option to leave one person behind...we succeed or fail as a team regardless of circumstance.
If I am into my second day and struggling with the mountain bike legs then the team must have an opportunity to pull together to compensate. If I'm afraid that they'll make fun of me or that I'll be regarded as the weak link then I'm not going to want to speak up...which puts the team's ability to finish the race in jeapordy.

Same concept. Does that make things a little clearer?

[Glockamolie]

"They were never going to actually DO the drill, my point was that they weren't even willing."

THE most important statement made on both sides of the argument.

That was a good test of the "temperature" of the people being trained. I'm not SRT-trained, but I was an officer. If the SRTs can't get it done when the chips are down, what are they gonna do, call the cops? THAT exercise was a great way to push the reset button in the minds of those being trained, IMHO.

[Shawn Dodson]

In regard to pointing real (unloaded) guns at others during training: IMO it's a necessary evil to overcome the psychological reluctance to point a gun at anybody, even a bad guy, and especially a bad guy who doesn't "fit" your image of what a bad guy should be (the recent Tacoma Mall shooting comes to mind). Everyone involved has given their consent to train this close to the edge.

Same thing with having a real (unloaded) gun pointed at you during training. IMO one has to learn to recognize threat cues and to act effectively under danger of lethal injury when staring down the muzzle of an actual firearm.

Red guns are okay for many training scenarios. However in others there's no substitute for the real thing.

Others may disagree, and that's okay with me. Just my personal training and mindset philosophy.

[M1911]

About the whole "pointing guns at each other" bit - I would have to say that at some level you have to be comfortable that your partner is not going to shoot you. Seriously - in a room full of trained professionals - if everyone shows an empty chamber to at least two people then what are you really afraid of??

pickpocket, more than a few trained professionals have died this way. It happens just about every year and there is absolutely no reason for it to happen.

The same training can and should be done without real guns.

Red guns are okay for many training scenarios. However in others there's no substitute for the real thing.

I must respectfully disagree. Airsoft guns can do the same thing more effectively and more safely than a real gun.

[pickpocket]

pickpocket, more than a few trained professionals have died this way. It happens just about every year and there is absolutely no reason for it to happen.

I don't disagree. However, this comes back to professionalism and trust. Every situation that someone can dig up where someone has died can be traced back to negligence....which comes full circle to lack of professionalism or lack of training.

My honest opinion is that this is a case where we choose not to hold the INDIVIDUAL responsible for their actions. Rather than force people to accept responsibility that their lack of regard for safety may end the life of another human, we simply remove the possibility by limiting the use of equipment. You can't be trusted, so we'll just hold your hand and make you safe. I feel that when we're talking about advanced levels of training that this is a luxury that we cannot afford. It's fine for the uninitiated, but we really should expect more our of our trained professionals.
To expect someone to carry a gun all day and be responsible for their actions yet make that responsibility a non-issue during training is simply backwards to me.

Please understand, I'm not advocating unsafe range practices...quite the contrary...a large part of my training focuses on responsible and safe practices. I just feel that we overcompensate sometimes.

Stay safe -

[M1911]

pickpocket:

One of the fundamental rules of gun safety is expressed two different ways. I'm an NRA instructor, so the NRA wording is most familiar to me: "Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction." I don't care how "professional" someone is. I'm not a safe direction. My training partner is not a safe direction. The NRA safety rule does not read "Always keep a loaded gun pointed in a safe direction." Just because a gun is unloaded doesn't mean you can point it in an unsafe direction.

Jeff Cooper uses a slightly different wording for the same idea: "Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy." I am not willing to destroy training partner. He or she better not be willing to destroy me.

Please understand, I'm not advocating unsafe range practices...quite the contrary...a large part of my training focuses on responsible and safe practices.

Either we disagree or I am misunderstanding you. If you are suggesting that it is ok in training to use unloaded real guns and point them at each other (even after checking them), then I believe you are indeed advocating an unsafe range practice.

People make mistakes. Even professional people make mistakes. If your training involves pointing real guns at people, then a single mistake can take someones life. This has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. Even to "professionals." Because people mess up. Yes, you can hold that person accountable for messing up, but that's going to be cold comfort for the widow.

And the thing is, there's no need to take that risk. You can achieve the same quality of training with airsoft or dedicated simunition guns.

[pickpocket]

Agree to disagree.