,

20 Survival Tips for Real and Fictional Officers

Cops absorb lots of information during the months they spend in the training academy. Then, when they finally do hit the streets they’re required to ride with a field training officer for a few months, a time when the FTO crams even more important stuff into their brains, all while responding to crimes and complaints in real time.

Over and over again, academy trainers and field training officers drill information and practical skills into the minds of recruits. Over and over and over again. And then again.

And, among all the laws, facts, figures, running, pushups, sit-ups, shooting drills, defensive tactics, and on-the-job training, a common theme emerges—officer survival.

Here are a few tips to help keep officers safe

1. Remember these three words. You will survive! Never give up no matter how many times you’ve been shot, stabbed, or battered.

2. Carry a good weapon. You can’t win a gun fight if your weapon won’t fire.

3. Carry plenty of ammunition. There’s no such thing as having too many bullets.

4. Treat every situation as a potential ambush. This includes during meals, at movies, ball games, and church, etc. You never know when or where it could happen. This is why cops don’t like to sit with their backs to a door. Please don’t ask them to do so.

5. Practice your shooting skills in every possible situation—at night, lying down, with your weak hand, etc.

6, Wear your seat belt.

7. Wear your body armor.

8. Always expect the unexpected.

9. Suspect everyone until you’re absolutely sure they’re okay and pose no threat to you.

10. Trust no one until trust is earned. Even then, be cautious.

11. Everyone is a potential threat until it’s proven they’re not. Remember, bad people can have attractive faces and warm smiles and say nice things. But all that can change in the blink of an eye.

12. Know when to retreat.

13. Stay in shape! Eat healthy. Exercise.

14. Train, train, and train.

15. Take advantage of specialized training classes and workshops outside of the department police academy. For example, the blackbelt trainers at your local gym just might be police academy or military instructors who could address your concerns and weaknesses, and/or enhance your strengths. For example, some of the specialized training I’ve taught include standing, prone, and ground combat, knife and stick fighting, defending against the sudden attack, and personal and executive bodyguard training.

Screen Shot 2016-03-23 at 10.41.04 AM

16. Use common sense and remember your training, because your family needs you safely at home at the end of your shift.

17. Family first. Job second.

18. Make no judgements based on a person’s lifestyle, personality, politics, race, or religion. Treat everyone fairly and equally, from the homeless drug addict to the crooked Wall Street embezzler. However, remain on alert and cautious at all times.

19. Talk to people. Get to know them. Let them get to know you. After all, it’s often a bit tougher to hurt an officer they know and trust.

20. Find a release for your stress. Bike/exercise. Vacation. Talk to someone. Read. Write. Spiritual guidance. Hobbies.

Seek help the moment you notice a change/decrease in your work performance, increase in anxiety, excess use of alcohol and/or you consider drug use, change in sleep habits, you experience suicidal thoughts, or other drastic changes in your normal behavior.

/by
,

“Hanging Out” With Kat Bungler

Bad guys are often portrayed on TV, and in film, as super intelligent geniuses who’re one step away from ruling the world. They’re savvy and wealthy with a gang of bodyguards and accomplices who are always miles ahead of the law enforcement officers who can never quite seem figure out their next move.

TV crooks are unstoppable until the hero of the story overcomes all obstacles preventing them catching the super bad guys, including fending off advances from the most attractive spies the underworld bosses can send their way. TV heroes, those who’ve managed to make it to the final scenes, dodge bombs and machine-gun fire, and they face hitmen who’re the best martial artists in the world, with the exception of that lone good guy who just happens to know one more secret move than the top bad guy learned during his training.

It’s an action-packed adventure from day one throughout the case until the protagonist finally slaps a gold-plated set of handcuffs around the wrists of their adversaries.

Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but in the real world things are a tad bit different. For example, a “professional” crook I once encountered truly who considered himself to be as sharp as one of the TV-type mastermind criminals. He thought he was invincible and couldn’t be caught.

I was still working patrol at the time when my path crossed with … let’s, for the sake of this article, call him Kat Bungler. I was on my monthlong graveyard shift rotation—midnight to 8 a.m.—and the moon and sun were in the process of changing their own shifts, when dispatch called to report an alarm at a local convenience store. This was not out of the ordinary since many employees of various businesses—stores, banks, etc.—often forget to disable alarms before entering their places of business for the first time of the day.

You, Again?

During the occurrence of these daily and annoying faux pas, what should be moments of urgency very quickly disappear. After dozens of “wolf-crying” incidents at the same places, time and time again, cops have a tendency to roll their eyes and sigh when they hear the calls come in. Still, they have to respond even if all they’ll do is speak with an embarrassed store clerk or bank manager to learn that another “oops” had occurred. After all, you never know when one of those alarm calls is the real thing.

One particular day, though, in the very early morning hours around 5:30 a.m., a dispatcher announced an alarm call. This time she added two very important words to her message—“In-Progress.” She went on to say the caller said the suspect was still inside the business, a convenience store.

No eye-rolling this time. On went the blue lights and a mad race to the store hoping to catch the crook in the act of crookery.

When I and another officers arrived we, of course, surrounded the place. The clerk who’d reported the crime came running toward my car and through an excited mix of jumbled words she managed to tell me the guy was still inside. Well, that’s all I could make of what she said. I asked to take a seat in my patrol car, then a couple of us approached the front doors. As always we had no idea what to expect? Would he start shooting? No one knew. It was a tense situation.

I called to the man, ordering him to come out, and to my surprise he immediately replied with a lot of yelling and shouts for help. So, with guns drawn and aimed forward, we pulled open the door and took a quick peek inside.

It was all I could do to contain a bout of laughter, because what I’d seen was a large squirming man hanging upside down with the upper portion of his body poking down through the ceiling. His lower half, from his waist down up was semi-concealed above, among a tangle of broken drywall, crumpled light fixtures, knots and loops of colored electrical wiring, and dented ductwork. And the guys was practically in tears.

This genius-level mastermind of the criminal world had used a dumpster and a stack of pallets to climb to the roof and used used an ax to chop hole in the surface. Then he tried to climb down into the store. But he lost his footing and slipped, which caused him to fall and tumble through the the buildings mechanics. Then, just as he was about to exit the ceiling headfirst, his feet caught on a series of electrical conduits. He was stuck in that position and remained there for a few hours while struggling to free himself. He couldn’t go up and he couldn’t come down.

When the clerk stepped inside to open up for the day and saw the guy dangling from the ceiling, she screamed. Simultaneously, she told us, the man began to yell and beg and whimper. She left him hanging and ran next door to call the police.

With the assistance of firefighters we pulled the dizzy Kat Bungler to safety, handcuffed him, and then transported him to the hospital for a checkup to make certain he was fit for jail.

Bungler, of course, was found guilty of B&E and destruction of property. His defense was that he climbed on top of the building as part of his daily exercise routine where he unexpectedly fell into a previously-chopped hole. The judge didn’t buy his story.

Later, Mr. Bungler found an attorney to represent him in a lawsuit against the store, claiming they were at fault for his injuries and that the clerk failed to call EMS when he was clearly in pain and was suffering from severe injuries at the time she entered the store. He called us a witnesses in his behalf. Yeah, that went over well. Sure it did.

 

/by

How to Arrest a Naked Man

I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge. Actually, I’ve rarely shunned any sort of obstacle, including wading into a group of angry armed men to arrest one of their group.

I like other officers, have tackled the biggest and the baddest, the meanest and the ugliest, and I, like many of my peers, received plenty of bumps, bruises, cuts, scrapes, and other injuries as a result of arresting those behemoths.

It’s all part of the job. It’s what cops do.

But there was one guy who caused me to stop dead in my tracks to rethink what I was getting into when or IF (and this was a big IF for a few seconds) I attempted to handcuff him.

The offender, a quite large man who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of three-fifty and towered above me at height of … oh six-six, or so.

He was a real badass.

Built like a bodybuilder and as tough as the soles of a circus sideshow fire-walker’s feet.

He was mean, nasty, and he hated cops.

He was this guy … well, at the time this is how he appeared to me.

20170124_115558Still, his massive size, bloodthirsty demeanor, and bulging muscles weren’t an issue. I’d tackled men, and women, who were bigger, and nastier.

The fact that he’d backed himself into a corner and was begging me, using both hands to motion for me to come closer, was slightly intimidating. But not the sole act that slowed my approach.

Drool dribbled down his chin. His eyes had that look of “I’ve bitten the heads off of live cobras and giant scorpions.”

Still not enough to stop me.

He growled, like a crazed and rabid beast.

Nope. Still had to go to jail.

He flipped over a large piece of furniture like it was no more than child’s toy.

No, not enough to make me back down.

Actually, none of these aggressive acts of strength, defiance, and animalistic behavior were what stopped me in my tracks.

The thing that held my feet to the floor was the fact that this mountain of a man, the crazy killer of his brother, was totally and completely naked, and he’d covered his shaved body in cooking oil. He was as slick as eel snot, and his skin glistened like the top of a freshly buttered dinner roll.

My first thought, I kid you not, was, “Where and what do I grab?”

Typically, cops have the luxury of grasping and holding on to clothing when tussling with unruly suspects. Clothing is also a welcome barrier between the officer and the offender. There is no touching of nude body parts. No accidental brushes against things no one one other than an intimidate partner should ever “brush.”

And Heaven forbid a tussle end up on the floor with you and the suspect scuffling like two angry pit bulls. Because, well, when a man’s trying to escape he’ll do anything and everything to get away—he wiggles and writhes and jiggles and twists and shimmies and squirms. And it is this frantic series of movements that sometimes causes his upper body to wind up at the officer’s knees and, obviously, the lower half of his torso “ends up” squarely at the poor cop’s face. Neither a front or rear-facing suspect in this situation are a good thing, especially when the waggling and squirming guy is wearing his sweaty, stinky, and often extremely hairy birthday suit.

But back to my suspect. There he was, a huge, slimy, angry man who, while frothing at the mouth and for some ungodly reason, wanted to engage me in some sort of bizarre battle.

Well, I had two options … let him go or bring him in. And, since cops don’t let criminals go, it was on!

file7531233893187I lit into that guy like there was no tomorrow. I grabbed and pulled and pushed and tugged and tried to hold on to an arm and/or a hand long enough to snap a cuff in place. But I simply could not maintain a form grasp. His flesh squirted from my hands like a greased pig at a county fair. Unfortunately, my uniform was easy to grab and pull, meaning I was on the receiving end of more than I was able to dish out and he was doling out real pain.

Therefore, after a few punches to my head and being slammed to the floor and against the walls, I’d had enough. Besides, I despise bleeding. So I did what any desperate person would do in this situation—I grabbed his one appendage (and its accomplices) the one body part that sat there mindlessly, without fingers or toes or other useful purpose at the time, and I pulled hard, really hard. Picture a landscaper whose trying with all his might to uproot a stubborn garden weed.

Needless to say, the big ox surrendered immediately. So I cuffed him, covered him with a blanket I kept in the trunk of my car, and hauled his big, nasty self to jail.

Then I went home to take a long, hot, cleansing shower and put on a fresh uniform. And I washed my hands for a really long time.

In fact, I have an extremely compelling urge to wash my hands right now.

Yuck!

 

/by

Tater Jenkins Done Killed Uncle Billy Buck Robinson: The Crime Scene

“Tater” Jenkins done killed Uncle Billy Buck Robinson. Quick, call the law afor’in’ that son-of-a-biscuit-eatin’ coward gets clean away!”

And so it goes. Aunt Ruthie Mae runs next door to use Lula Belle’s rotary phone to call the police, a department of four men and women of varies sizes, from rail thin to chair-crushing fat—who, after one last bite, drop their newspapers and circular, creme-filled morning breakfast food and trot out to their cars to make the treacherous drive up Banjo Mountain. But not before stopping by the drive-through at Percy’s Pork Skin Palace to grab a sack lunch for the long trip. Along the way, they pass by Billy’s goats, Carl’s cows, several mangy dogs, and a cross-eyed bear who was in the midst of overturning Miss Ethel Turner’s outhouse.

The determined officers motored across Falling Car Creek and the Killzemall River by using makeshift bridges, a handcrafted series of large logs that stretched across the waters. Then, after stopping for lunch and seven breaks behind assorted species of trees (NOT an easy task for the two female officers), the patrol officers finally reached their destination, a grouping of six obviously homemade clapboard-sided, rusty-tin-roofed houses nestled along the hillside, seven miles from the nearest sunshine. Curb appeal was limited to crooked eaves, sagging beams, and lopsided stone chimneys that blew and belched smoke the color of tar paper. Several red-headed children ran to and fro, playing some sort of game that involved a single crooked stick. Their dirt-smeared faces and arms were spattered with summer freckles.

A three-legged mutt slowly lifted its head when the police cars pulled to a stop, dragging clouds of white dust in their wakes. The dog, uninterested in the action, lowered its head and resumed its nap.

Mr. Onion Parson, a man with a single tooth that sat slightly askew in a mouth as dark as a cavern, called out, “Over here, Five-Oh!”

“One Tooth” shooed a few chickens from their new perches atop the forehead of one very blue and very cold Uncle Billy Buck Robinson. “He’s right here, and he’s deader’n a doornail,” said Onion. “He done chopped Billy Buck in the haid with my best ax.”

Later, the lead officer would include in her official report, a description of that remarkable tooth as “shaped exactly like the state of Delaware.” She noted that a bystander saw Tater flee the scene on the back of a mule named Homer. However, the officer omitted all references to the chickens, an unfortunate decision that would come back to haunt her when a savvy defense attorney pointed out to the jury that the presence of chicken prints on the forehead of the deceased raised the possibility of “murder by rooster” and not by an ax-wielding Tater.

“After all,” the attorney said to the judge, “a very aggressive rooster named Killer was known to violently attack the hands that fed him. Heads, too.” Another point omitted from the officer’s report. The jury agreed with the defense attorney and “Tater” Jenkins walked away from the trial a free man. The rooster, however, was sentenced to serve as Sunday dinner. The hens, obviously brainwashed by their leader, were not charged, citing Stockholm Syndrome as their defense.

Preserving a Crime Scene

So, what really happens once patrol officers arrive on scene? Well, for starters, much of the above could be sort of true. I recall meeting several people during my career who could’ve been members of these fine families.  However, here’s how it really happens …

Screen Shot 2017-02-09 at 10.31.23 AMFirst on the Crime Scene

Uniformed officers are normally the first police officers on the scene. It’s up to these front-line cops to take charge, calm the chaos, and make things safe for citizens in the area, EMS and firefighters, and for the arriving investigators, medical examiner, etc.

Sometimes, crime scenes are large and complicated; therefore, it may be necessary to set up a command post—a central location for coordinating police activities.

Many police departments use some sort of mobile command centers, such as converted motor homes and travel trailers. Some patrol supervisors drive vehicles designed to quickly transform into a fully functional command post.

A command post could be, however, anything and anywhere—a local store, store parking lot, an officer’s patrol car, and so on.

The Two Types of Perimeters

  • the first is an overall periphery for the purpose of containing suspects within a specific area.
  •  an area to preserve the crime scene and the evidence within.

Crime scenes may be as small as a single room, or they can be as large as several city blocks, or more. There are no set boundaries. Investigators on the scene make this determination, as needed.

It’s best to establish a large boundary at first to ensure that all evidence is protected from outside interference/contamination/disturbance. You can always reduce the size of the permitter, but enlarging it after the fact is mostly a waste of time because there’s a risk of evidence being disturbed by bystanders, news media, EMS, firefighters, other officers, etc.

Do not rush into a crime scene without first taking everything in. Take a moment to assess the area. Are there any dangers, including hidden ones, such as gas leaks, poisonous chemicals, A KILLER WITH A GUN?

Absolutely do not allow anyone inside the scene unless they’re a vital part of the investigation team. This includes members of the police department, including command staff. Of course, if a chief insists, well, make certain to document her entry and exit times.

Do not allow anyone to leave the area until you’ve interviewed them. Treat every single person as a possible witness. Sometimes people don’t realize they’ve seen an important detail until they’ve been questioned by police.

Crime Scene Investigation Facts:

Carey A. Body just murdered his longtime girlfriend, Ida Kissedanyman, and fled on foot through an alley, over a fence, and into the rear parking lot of Beulah Bell’s Hog Jowl Emporium. Body, sweating heavily and breathing like a huffing locomotive traveling a 72% steep uphill grade, ditched the murder weapon inside a fat rusted dumpster that was stuffed to the brim with discarded hocks, pinto beans, and hunks of Crisco-drentched fried cornbread.

Therefore, even though the dumpster was four blocks away from the actual scene of the crime, the dumpster is now considered a crime scene. Why? Because evidence of a crime is located there. And, yes, detectives and/or CSI’s must paw through the garbage, by hand, searching for evidence.

More crime scene investigation facts …

  • Patrol officers often assist investigators/detectives with the recovery and collection of evidence.
  • Not all crime scene investigators are sworn police officers. Many police departments employ specially trained civilian crime scene investigators/technicians. Non-sworn crime scene investigators do not:

(As seen on TV)

  • arrest criminals
  • interrogate or question suspects
  • carry weapons
  • participate in, or conduct autopsies
  • engage in foot or vehicle pursuits
  • handcuff criminal suspects (What goes on during their free time is of no concern to us. Unless, of course, you’re writing a scene involving hot, steamy … you know).

All police officers are trained to properly collect and preserve evidence. After all, sometimes detectives are unavailable. Therefore, in those instances, uniformed officers assume the duty of investigating the crime.

detective and patrol officer bagging a gun at a crime scene

The police are in charge of crime scenes. Coroners and medical examiners are in charge of the bodies of murder victims.

NOTE: Not all medical examiners and coroners show up at crime scenes. In those instances, EMS or a local funeral home typically transport the bodies to the morgue where the M.E. will have a look as soon as possible. Detectives, in these instances, are in charge of the body and sometimes travel in the ambulance to the morgue to preserve chain of evidence/custody.

Releasing information to the media—hold your cards close to your chest until you have an idea of what information can be released to the public. Remember, what you say will be on the evening news! I know this one all too well…unfortunately.

Hamilton One 121

*As always, rules, policies, and procedures vary from area to area and agency to agency. If 100% accuracy is your goal then you make a quick phone call to the public information officer (POI) at your local police department. This is often the officer you see providing official updates on your evening news.

 

/by

An Officer’s Perception: Sound Before Sight, Motion Before Color, and Color Before Shape

“Perception is key. How did the officer perceive the encounter? Did she fear for her life or the life of others?”

Before we delve into the topic of perception, please allow me to set the stage by using an experience from my past. I apologize in advance for rehashing the tale, but its use here perfectly  illustrates the information below.

Many of you have heard me speak about the deadly shootout I was in back in the 90’s. Others have read the story here on this blog. In both I tell of the involuntary engagement of a “slow motion switch,” and the switching-off of all sounds.

The shooting seemed to occur in slow motion while in a vacuum where sounds were not permitted to enter.

car.jpg

FYI – Pictured above is the robber’s car. I fired the round that penetrated the side and rear glass of the car. At the time, the robber had already begun shooting but the only part of his body I could see was his head. That view was through both panes of glass. My round struck the side of his head. He immediately went down, but almost immediately returned to his feet and resumed shooting.

The large hole in the side of the car just above the wheel well was fired by a rookie officer who was fresh off his field training program. The  round was fired from a shotgun. The “slug” was later found in the rear compartment, inside a duffle bag filled with clothing.

To learn more about slugs and what happens when they strike an object, including a human, please click to watch the video below.

Sights, Sounds, and Auditory Exclusion

me-at-car.jpg

FYI – Pictured above: A police car destroyed by gunfire. That’s me in the foreground, with the porn star/cop mustache and my sweaty hair pulled behind my ears. A state agent who’d responded to assist stands behind me near the shoulder of the highway. The suspect’s vehicle is pictured in the distance, directly to my rear. My partner’s unmarked vehicle is seen parked on the opposite side of the median, top right. He’d been in court when he learned of the shooting and had arrived on-scene at the conclusion of the incident.

It was an extremely hot August day and I’d worn a suit. I was preparing to go to court when the call came in, a 10-90—robbery in progress. Mere moments prior to the news reporter taking this photo, I’d killed a man.

FROM MY EARLIER ARTICLE:

“The sound of his gunshot activated my brain’s slow-motion function. Time nearly stopped. It was surreal, like I actually had time to look around before reacting to the gunshot. I saw my partners yelling, their mouths opening and closing slowly. Lazy puffs of blue-black smoke drifted upward from their gun barrels. I saw a dog barking to my right—its head lifting with each yap, and droplets of spittle dotted the air around its face.”

During the exchange of gunfire, I saw the mouths of partners moving and I saw a dog barking, but I did not hear either. The reason I didn’t—auditory exclusion.

Auditory exclusion, like it’s first cousin, tunnel vision, can and does often occur during moments of intense stress, such as life-threatening situations including shootouts or potential shootouts. Actually, guns don’t have to enter the picture for these stress-induced phenomena to occur. However, that’s the focus of this article so that’s the path we’ll travel today.

Stress can interfere with our physiological ability to receive and act on information

In very simple terms, stress can interfere with our physiological ability to receive and act on information received by the brain. Basically, we’re wired to survive and we do so by fighting or fleeing and sometimes freezing in place/not reacting during dangerous situations.

Typically, when faced with danger our bodies automatically increase the release of adrenaline and cortisol, which produces an uptick in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, pupil size, perspiration, and muscle tension. Blood flow to the brain, heart, and large muscles is accordingly increased. However, fine motor skills that require hand/eye coordination begin to deteriorate. This decrease in the functionality of fine motor skills allows the continuation of the more effective (at the time) gross motor skills that help when running or fighting.

One way our bodies react to intense stress is to induce inattentional blindness, a phenomenon that reaches across all senses, including vision (tunnel vision) and sound (auditory exclusion). In short, the brain processes only what the person/officer is focused on, such as a potentially deadly threat. In my case, it was a bank robber who was firing a gun at me and I know that auditory shutdown is a very real thing during high-stress situations. Again, this is from my own personal experience.

NOTABLE POINTS REGARDING PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO STRESS

  • Optical affinity can occur—increased ability to see things at 20 feet and beyond while closer objects may seem blurry, if seen at all. The same is true for near shutdown of periphreal vision. The latter is due to vasoconstriction of the blood vessels on the periphery of the retina (tunnel vision).
  • Perceptions are often distorted, such as the ability to correctly perceive a danger.
  • Sounds are processed by the brain faster than what we see. Touch is the next fastest, and smells reach the brain the quickest.
  • Motion is recognized faster than than color, and shape is slowest of all sights processed. Yellow is the fastest color we can identify. Darker colors being the slowest.
  • Furtive movement – done in a quiet and secret way to avoid being noticed (Webster’s).
  • During stressful encounters, such as those involving deadly force, furtive movements (see above definition) are sometimes perceived incorrectly, such as the movement of hands holding a dark object whose shape somewhat resembles a firearm. but understandably so when factoring in physiological phenomena such as auditory exclusion and tunnel vision.

I See Colors. Or Do I?

Remember, darker colors are identified at a slower rate than bright colors, acute vision at closer distances is greatly decreased, sounds have all but ceased to exist, adrenaline and heart rate are higher, officers are trained to fight not flee from danger, and officers are trained to react to threats. And all of this occurs in a the blink of an eye. There is no time to sit down, discuss, plan, and map out the premium response. This is wholeheartedly in contrast to the armchair cop experts who chime in after the fact with the uninformed, misinformed, social-media-educated, and inexperienced “cop’s are too quick to shoot”comments.

  • Our minds, during stressful situations, see what they expect to see. We expect a man suddenly pulling a dark object from his pocket after repeatedly telling him to not put his hands in his pocket, all while knowing he matches the description of a guy who’d just shot and killed four people, well, our minds are telling us he’s going for a gun.

If the object he brings from his pocket is dark, such as a cellphone, a vaping pen that looks like a gun barrel, especially when held like a gun and pointed at officers, a BB gun that’s nearly identical to the officer’s duty weapon, or even a bare hand that comes up and out of pocket rapidly, and the movement is in contrast to the officer’s direction and expectations, and it all occurs within a split second, well …

Remember, sound is perceived before sight, motion is perceived before color, and color is perceived before shape. These differences can and do greatly affect how an officer perceives and processes what’s unfolding in real time. And, those perceptions will definitely affect and/or control the officer’s response(s).

I can say from experience that during a potentially life-threatening situation, barking dogs, screaming officers, sirens, and gunshots are sometimes the loudest sounds you’ll ever NOT hear.

robber.jpg

After an intense shootout with an armed bank robber, I shot and killed the man (68 rounds were exchanged—I fired 5). That’s him above as emergency medical personnel treat him.

Even today, at this moment seated here at my desk, I can hear the deafening quiet of that morning. And I still view parts of the scene in slow motion.

Click here to read about the shootout.

By the way, not once during the entire shootout did I or the other officers smell the odor of cordite lingering in the air. Why not? Because the stuff hasn’t been around since the end of World War II. So please, please, please stop writing it into your stories.

 

/by