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RID Training - Day 5 (Last day)
Whew, with four out of five days completed, I felt just about nothing could stop this train of motivation.
The day started as soon as we got into the instruction room.
The LT for RID told us to break into our teams. Each team was going to get into their cars and head to a certain location where a suspect vehicle was. We were to follow the car without being seen and eventually we’d end up at One of Four Scenarios.
Cool.
The first car we had to find was a red Chrysler Sebring at a gas station. My team immediately targeted it and we followed it around for 15 minutes until it lead us back to the Training Facility.
Apparently our first Scenario was “Vehicle Containment” which we did very well. So well in fact that all of our cars had nice little scratches.
Not bad at all.
Next, we had to once again go back on the road and find a white Ford Taurus at a different gas station. We picked it up and after 10 minutes of following it my partner and I (we were in the same car) rolled up on an accident with injuries that just occurred. I saw a kid that looked to be at least 14 sitting outside of the car holding a very broken arm and bleeding profusely from his head.
Holy shit.
We stopped our unmarked car and rushed to give what First Aid we could to the kid and on the radio we started rescue. The LT heard what was going on and immediately told us to get the hell out of there and head back to the Training Facility… I couldn’t leave a kid like that but he turned that yelling into an Order.
Fine, we went back to the Training Facility.
We were told to get the Simunitions gear on and that we’d be doing a Building Search after an armed subject. No problem. We got our gear on and stacked up in formation. I took position 3 in the stack.
Entry was made to the house and all of the lights were off. We had only small ambient light to go by but no time to draw flashlights. The first room was cleared but it opened up into a hallway to the north and a small room to the west.
I told the Point (Position 1), “Room Left, 3 and 4 will clear, hold point on the hall”.
Now me and the fourth person in the stack, the short girl that couldn’t shoot the other day, needed to make entry into this room.
I knew she was nervous so I told her exactly what to do and then asked if she was ready.
She said Ready and I flew into the room, expecting her to cover my right flank as I cleared the ‘greatest unknown’.
About 5 steps into the room I realized I was all by myself and had that been real life, I’d be dead.
Pissed I started cursing, “What the fuck are you doing?! Cover my damn flank.”
Lucky for me no one was in that particular room.
She yelled back, “I needed my flashlight and its dark in there.. its your fault for going in so fast when I wasn’t ready!”
Oh hell no.
The instructor called ‘TIME!’.
He started telling her that was total bullshit and no matter how WRONG I could have been, her only job was to cover my flank. If nothing more then to shoot back in the direction the muzzle flash was coming from.
He told us to start over and made her be the first person in the stack and made me person four.
We made entry and she got lit up like a Christmas Tree. The rest of us neutralized the threat and completed the Scenario.
After a quick lunch was started our third ‘following’.
That lead us back to a Defensive Tactics Scenario.
The guy bailed out and ran into a back room at the Facility.
Outside of that room another Instructor stopped us and told the first ‘two people’ to come with him.
Me and my partner stepped up to the plate. That instructor then made us run 2 laps around the court yard, do 20 pushups, situps and jumping jacks and then run into a room. He told us that the person in the room was wanted for murder and we had to take him into custody.
Upon entering the room I saw several people sitting down ready to ‘watch’ the fight that was surely about to ensue. The room was 40×40 with a huge blue mat laid out and in the center was a monster of a man. He stood at 6’3 and at least 260lbs of solid muscle.
Holy crap. I looked at my partner and he knew we were about to get our asses beat.
The guy started yelling as soon as we walked up to him. We were maybe 20 feet away when I started talking, “Hey man, listen up. I’m going to be frank, you’ve got a bullshit traffic warrant and we’ve got to take you into custody. We’ll give you some time to call your people and you can bring some cash with you so you can bond out as soon as we get there. Relax and lets do this without any problems.”
I tried lying to see if that would get him to think he was going for a bullshit warrant so he would offer less resistance.
He said, “Man, I killed a guy. You aint taking me alive.”
With that, he rushed us and the fight was on.
Somehow I got pinned on my back and my partner was grabbing the guys legs.
Me and the subject were chest to chest, face to face and he was trying to choke me out.
Not going to happen, I swam through his hands and started a forward choke on him, aiming for the blood ways and not the air ways as to make him pass out, which works a lot faster. He subject realized what was about to happen and managed to kick my partner away and he removed his hands from my neck and instead put them behind my shoulders.
Oh no.. I knew just what was about to happen.
He stood up with me still wrapped about his torso with my legs and holding onto his neck…
Then slammed me so hard into the floor I though I cracked a tooth.
The way we landed, I was able to recover and throw my left arm around his neck and get him in a headlock while my partner re-established a hold on his legs. The guy was so strong that with only his right arm, he was able to fling me off, seriously injuring my left shoulder.
I felt fire run down my arm. Crap, this guy was really fighting.
He mounted me again with my partner still trying to maintain control of his legs and this time got over me and tried to unholster my gun.
Wrong move, I wormed my way out and got onto my right knee, drawing my firearm and screaming BANG! at the side of his head.
Scenario over.
The instructor stopped and said to us, “Why do they always shoot me?!”.
Ha.. har har.
Back into the cars we followed another car back to a Paintball field where we simply played one last game of paintball and then went back into the class room.
They handed out the Certifications to those who passed. I was one of them and the 12 of us decided to go out to a local Pub.
On the way out of the class one of the SGT’s stopped me and said that I was phsyco but if he needed a ‘shooter’ on his team, I’d be his pick.
I enjoyed a nice Guinness with my class mates at the Pub and went home beaming with confidence.
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