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RID Training - Day 3
I showed up early at the training facility hung out inside the lecture room.
The LT and Sarge came in at 1300 (1PM) and we had an hour long lecture on Building searches.
Now, I’ve down many many building searches. It’s part of my current job and I’ve taken enough training courses in it that this was fairly dull.
They class divided into its 4 squads going to two separate locations. Squads 100, 200 went to Survival City, a small city block which our department has that has several buildings in it, all designed for training, to do Building Searches.
The 300 and 400 squads went to the Range #3.
The first even for the day was CQB (Close Quarters Battle) Paintball. The range, which is 100 yards long and 50 yards wide was divided into 2 halfs, down the middle. We placed barricades around the field and went in teams of 4 people out onto the field in only our normal clothes, a small mask and a Paintball Marker with 50 rounds.
The instructor came out, “Gentlemen, I want you all to start in the middle back side of your area behind a standing barricade facing away from the other team. When I say GO, you WILL engage your opponents. I want cooperation, teamwork and good verbal commands. If you get hit, put your arm into the air with the Paintball Marker up and walk off of the field”.
He yelled go and my team turned around. I ran towards the middle of the field to a barricade that was laid down longways, shooting as I ran and diving into position. I creped out to the side and started working an angle of view, cutting a pie as best I could. I saw a member of the opposite team and lit him up like a Christmas tree.
My team mates were yelling out locations and I was facing the wrong way. As I turned around, I got shot in the foot.
Damn.
I threw my hand up with the Marker and walked off of the field. My team proceeded to win the battle and we went several more times.
Then the instructor said, “I need 2 guys for a suicide mission. It’ll be 2 on 4.”
I stood up, “Too easy. Let me at it.”
He looked at me like I was crazy but told me to gear up. A fellow teammate, who is a SWAT member in the County to the north of ours also volunteered.
The instructor said, “Anyone on the 4 man team that gets hit owes me 50 pushups. If all of you get hit, you owe me 200.”
If that wasn’t incentive to tag me and my partner, I don’t know what was.
We took the field and went to our rear back side to take position while the other team mirrored.
I turned to the SWAT guy and said I was going straight up the middle and for him to take the left flank and that we’d work our field of fire right. He agreed knowing it was a sound tactic.
The instructor yelled, “GO!”
I ran up to the middle barricade, which was about 5 feet wide and 1 foot long, sliding up to it in the wet grass. I saw my fellow teammate get to his position. I started creeping out to the left of my cover and spotted 2 people running towards the same side of their field, effectively trapping my partner.
I started laying cover fire, screaming for him to move up and flank.
Pop Pop Pop fizzle fizzle click.
What the..
My Marker started to not cycle. I looked at the gas pressure reading, no CO2.
Shit.
“Hey SWAT! I got a malfunction and I’m out of gas!”
He was overwhelmed and got marked.
Shit..
The instructor saw my malfunction and paused the match.
“Dash, grab another marker, return to your position and do not look at the enemy locations.”
I replied with a hearty, “Sir yes Sir!”
I ran and got another marker, laid back down behind my barricade.
I thought to myself, I have no idea where these guys are now, they know where I’m at. What the hell do I do? I decided that they’d expect me to peek out of the sides of the barricade, as I had done for several matches. I also kept thinking about how I had no idea where they were. I was at a severe disadvantage.
Then I had an idea. Hmmm..
I had a wide barricade and they weren’t allowed past a central line, so I was safe if I stayed in the very middle of the barricade and didn’t expose my flanks. I laid on my back, sitting with my legs crossed at the very center of the barricade middle. I took a few deep breaths and did a sit-up, quickly scanning the area and then threw myself back down to the floor.
I saw every last one of them and I knew I was going to get tagged no matter what.
The easiest target was on my right side, so I rolled out from the barricades cover, fired at least 10 rounds at the guy who was exposing his left leg from behind his covered and tagged him.
The Paintballs started raining down on me and I was definitely tagged more times then I want to remember, but I got one.
Good deal.
The block of instruction was now over and we headed to Survival City for the block of instruction on building searches. That went well as I’ve done it so many times that I basically walked my team through with no problems.
We had a 20 minute lunch break and had to be back for a Defensive Tactics course.
No problem, I ate light expecting to fight.
The instructors brought us upstairs on the only two story building the in facility. They took us to a back room that had Wall to Wall padding.
Holy crap, I was about to get my ass kicked for sure.
The instructor said, “Okay, we’re going to do a scenario. You’re the first unit on scene to a call at a convince store. The owner called the police because a guy that robbed his store at gunpoint last week returned and was sitting in the back of the store casing the place. The instructor will be acting like a normal subject so talk to him like you would on the street.”
Thats it. That’s all they gave us.
We all went back downstairs and the first Officer was up. He walked up the flight of stairs and 7 minutes later, returned sweating and with several new bruises on this neck.
Man… just what I thought.
He wasn’t allowed to say anything to us as to not ruin the training but it was fairly obvious what happened.
11 more officers went upstairs and came back the same exact way.
Then it was my turn. I mentally prepared myself for a total beat down.
I walked up the stairs and entered the main room. An instructor was there who handed me a fake plastic gun to put into my holster and then I went into the small 15×15 padded room. I immediately noticed a camera in the top corner of the room and a guy posted up against the back wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
I said to him, “Hey man, whats going on?”
He replied back with, “Nothing, the fuck you talking to me for?”
I snapped back with, “Relax man, I’m not here to mess with you. Let me do my thing and you’ll be on your way home soon. Partner, how long have you been here?”
He said, “A while”.
Hmm. “Okay, well did you buy anything?”
The subject said, “No, why the fuck are you bothering me. I ain’t done nothing”.
So that’s how it was going to be. I was still standing 10 feet away from him. He started lifting up his shirt and saying he had no weapons on him. That was the dead giveaway.
I said, “Look, I don’t care if you got some fire on you, I’m not looking for that. If you do that isn’t an issue just let me know about it and you’ll be alright.”
He looked at me for a second blankly. Then he started yelling about some non-sense trying to distract me when he reached behind his back and started to pull a gun on me.
He didn’t make it past the brim of his pants before I had already unholstered, pointed my firearm at his head and yelled, “BANG”.
The subject / instructor looked at me puzzled for a few seconds. Apparently no one had shot him yet, let alone not fought with him.
He said to me, “On the street that quick draw may not always work. You got lucky son.”
I told him, “Hey now, I’d rather not fight if I don’t have too. I’d rather talk to someone and get them to calm down and submit first from a distance and I am always ready to engage if they decide to escalate. From the second I walked in this room I knew that you were going to die and I was going to draw my firearm. I knew exactly where you had it when you posted up on the wall, I was only waiting for you to go for it.”
The instructor thought about that for a second and then walked up to me, “You know what, that’s the best damn reaction to this scenario I’ve seen yet. Good job young man.”
I walked back downstairs without so much as a drop of sweat. The guys that had already finished were standing away from the people that didn’t go yet, out of ear shot.
I went up to them and they looked at me completely confused. One of them said, “You can’t be over here if you didn’t go yet.”
I tried not to smile, these sort of things make me seem cocky when its really just confidence.
I said to him, “I went already. I never got within 10 feet of him. I shot him when he went for his gun.”
They all started telling me their horror stories about being thrown around, being killed with their own guns, having to fight that monster of man for several minutes…
Wow. All it took was some simple thinking, that brute force non-sense should be left at home.
Time was up, we headed over to the Range for some shooting drills.
The 14 of us were paired up into groups of two by the instructor, who walked down the line assigning us numbers, “You’re 1, You’re 2, You’re 1, You’re 2” and so forth, and told to stand at the 7 yard line.
The Instructor said, “When I say Go, I want the 1’s to run back to the 50 yard line, give me 10 pushups and run back to the 15 yard line. Then, we’re going to walk forward while engaging the target in front of you. Every time I say FIRE, I want you to shoot a round. Number 2’s, hold your partners back and look right. I want to see ALL of the 1’s in formation as they go, evenly.”
… this could get ugly.
He yelled GO! and I ran my heart to 50 yard line, immediately dropping into the ‘Front leaning Rest position’, IE: Pushup position.
Down up! Down up!…. 10 pushups done in unison between all of the 1’s and then we ran to the 15 yard line.
My heart was pumping and my brain was telling my lungs that Oxygen wasn’t as important as hitting that target. I calmed myself down a lot in the 2 seconds it took for the Instructor to yell, FORWARD!
We started walking forward slowly, not allowed to stop and shoot, we had to keep walking forward.
FIRE! ………. FIRE!………… FIRE!…………. FIRE!………. FIRE!…… STOP!
I placed all 5 rounds center mass. I thought to myself, Too easy.
I thought way to soon.
We did that RUN 4 more times, including the pushups. By the 5th time my heart was pumping so hard that it took all I had in me to keep my gun on point.
At the last cycle I was able to see my work. I had every single round in the peanut. Holy crap.
The instructors in the back started whispering my name around. Apparently I was the only one to keep the bullets in the peanut and grouped, even under the heavy physical stress.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. My strong point is shooting. I may not be the best fighter, the best runner or the best report writer but when it comes to making the rounds go where I want them, that’s my role.
The 2’s then did the same rapid action drills and then we moved on to a timed course of fire.
The instructors set up 3 targets next to each other. He said, “When you hear the buzzer go off, draw you weapon, shoot two rounds into each target, right to left. Then do a magazine exchange and fire left to right, two rounds into each target. The course record is 11.54, all hits in the peanut.”
I was 2nd in line. The first guy took 19 seconds and missed 3 rounds.
I was up now, I took my shooting stance and focuses on the right targets middle.
BUZZ!
My quickdraw didn’t fail me, I was tossing the lead down range right to left hitting center mass with each round. My reload took at most a second and I went back firing left to right. I holstered and the instructor yelled TIME!
9.13 seconds.
The RID LT and Sarge were there and gave me that look. I didn’t smile. I simply looked at them, nodded and went to the back of the line.
The average was 15 seconds with 2 misses.
Did I mention I love shooting?
We went back to the class after everyone finished and they told us what to expect tomorrow.
Then of course we did the ‘voluntary’ 45 minutes of PT (Physical Training) after our 8 hours was up.
All in all, not a bad day and I got to display some of my better skills.
I can tell you for sure though, push-ups aren’t one of them. I was absolutely dying to complete 20 of them out of the 100 or so we did at the end. My flutter kicks were more like bicycle peddles and my jumping jacks were a mix of arm flailing and momentum. I’m not in bad shape mind you, just after such a hard workout through the course of training, my body isn’t in great shape. I’m sore, bruised, cut up and I hurt in places that I’ve never hurt in before.
The motto of the day was, “Too easy!”
Motivation was key to keeping the instructors off of our backs and with every exercise we hustled.
Time to hit the sack.
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