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AFTER ACTION REPORT
“My Sgt. stated that in his 13 years of law
enforcement this was the
first hold he was ever taught that he used
‘Successfully out in the field.’”
Wednesday, June 9, 2004
Tony [Controlled F.O.R.C.E. Executive
Director],
I have been promoting your system out here,
and in fact have taught it to the
department. The current DT instructors have
been struggling to teach something that the
officers would retain, and could use out in
the field. Once I showed them Controlled
F.O.R.C.E. they fell in love with it. They
wanted me to train the department in the
system.
A week ago I finished, but only had four
hours per squad (8 to 10 officers). One of
the officers is my new Sgt. With the time
limitations I was only able to teach the
five holds and teamwork, I did not have time
to bring in the baton, ground fighting,
knife defense, or weapon retention
(Really?). My training Captain is mandating
that the system is reviewed for 10 minutes
three times in a two week period
(Interesting concept huh?). I have provided
a training aid for each shift and am tasked
to go to each shift and supervise this
training.
We were working a detail in one of our most
prestigious spots in town (Sgt and two of
us). Me and the other officer left the Sgt.
to make contact with some kids consuming
alcohol. We returned in time to see our Sgt.
attempting to make contact with a guy
urinating in front of one of the local
businesses. The guy took off on foot and my
Sgt. took off after him.
Me and the other officer started to pursue,
and took the angle to cut this guy off. We
were running through a parking lot and only
a vehicle separated the suspect followed
closely by my Sgt. and us. Right when we
came around the back of the vehicle I lost
sight of the suspect and my Sgt. When I got
around the vehicle both were on the ground,
my Sgt. on top of the suspect in a MACH 2
hold.
The other guy and me quickly got on top of
this guy, assumed the proper roles and got
the guy handcuffed. A crowd quickly gathered
and I broke from the mêlée to keep the crowd
back.
After everything cooled down my Sgt. came up
to me excitedly and said, "Hey I did those
moves." He stated that the guy stopped
running and turned towards him, without even
thinking he went directly into the "Dosey
Doe" [engagement technique] and
hooked his arm. He stated he first put "The
[M.A.C.H.] 1 on the guy, but he was
resisting forward, so I quickly switched to
the [M.A.C.H.] 2 and took him
straight to the ground."
In literally less than 2 seconds from when
the guy stopped my Sgt. had went "hands on"
and took him to the ground and maintained
control of the guy. I asked him if he had to
"think" of what he was doing (because of the
short time teaching I really didn't feel
these guys had enough reps to retain the
stuff.) My Sgt. stated that if he would have
had to gone to a [M.A.C.H.] 3 he felt
he would have had to "think" about it. He
was pretty amazed and stated that in his 13
years of law enforcement this was the first
hold he was ever taught that he used
"Successfully out in the field."
My Sgt. was one of those guys that could not
maintain the "figure four" while
transitioning from 1 to 2. I was constantly
on him about this during training. He stated
that the only thing he could think of when
he took the guy to the ground was to keep
the figure four on him (as he could hear me
in his head "yelling" at him "figure four,
figure four"). Well it worked, nobody got
hurt, not even a scrape on the bad guy.
Take care Tony, and keep up the good work
and stay safe!
Robert B. Benson
Police Officer
Washington
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