John Musser SSC: Training Law Enforcement and Firefighters Parts 1&2

[Mark Rippetoe]

Training Law Enforcement and Firefighters | John F Musser

[blandrick]

Some good shit here, as well as some good lessons applicable to everyday life, well beyond simply training first responders. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the presentation.

[George Christiansen]

This was quite good even if you never become or train police or firefighters.

[Warren M]

I really enjoyed that. Reminded me of my favourite high school science teacher as well as one of my tradeschool instructors. I consider these men educators that assist you in thinking critically for yourself.
Thank you.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Good stuff. Especially the mental and emotional toll being a cop levies on you he talked about near the end of part 1. It's corrosive to good relations with others and even keeping a good grip on yourself.

He may talk about this later in upcoming parts, but one thing he left out of the training environment cops are subject to are the political pressures brought to bear on how they do what they do. The choke hold is the best example that comes to mind. This technique has been rendered verboten as a result of SJW and community organizers in the big coastal cities. LAPD was pressured by community organizers to drop the choke hold because of some pretty specious "studies" that, it was asserted, had a disparate impact on deaths among people of color.

His 1.5 mile run as a metric of fitness for the job was great. Of course he prefaced it at the beginning with humor when he said he knew of just ONE cop who ever chased someone that far. My own admittedly anecdotal experience and witnessing of foot chases had 400 yards as the outlier limit of such pursuits. The bad guys were too unfit, too drunk, or too clumsy to get further than that before they puked, tripped, ran into a clothesline, or just collapsed and gave up with their lungs on fire.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Training Law Enforcement and Firefighters, Part 2 | John F Musser

[Mark E. Hurling]

Another tour de force.

It's seems pretty clear Mr. Musser has seen academies at their worst in some elements of their teaching. I was lucky, the Illinois Police Training Institute was 6 weeks long in the 70's and was more about classroom with some digressions with really cursory (largely useless) firearms and baton training. No PT whatsoever. I have also seen the program taught at the Rio Hondo Regional Police Academy, a regional institution in SoCal which serves many of the medium to smaller agencies during some required POST training. All the instructors had USMC bumper stickers on their vehicles, so guess what? Lots of calisthenics. Same with a brief training stint at the LASO Academy as well. It appears from his presentation that nothing has changed since the 80's in LE circles.

That said, he really has a hard on for small joint manipulation as the magic bullet of control that cures whatever ails the populace. I suspect because he had to listen to instructors who were thinly disguised MA people who disdain strength and regard technique as king. Then in turn, they over sell their shit with a little too much hyperbole. Law enforcement has been adopting magic bullets since back when I first came on the job in the early 70's when mace (CS) was the shit hot ticket. Which only worked erratically. PR 24's were the next thing and later still, tasers and pepper spray. Small join manipulation, I can guarantee you, got popular for the same reason the choke hold got dropped. Political pressure, because strikes and arm bars looked too mean. Even so, the techniques (IMO) have their place for some adversaries in low intensity engagements when control holds can be more easily applied and achieved.

Same with the stances he mocked rather effectively. I never once took a "fighting stance" during a pending fight as a cop. The John L. Sullivan dukes up or the Bruce Lee deadly mantis stance and posture was just foolish to get into. You wait with your hands ready to go and react as events devolve. Although it is (again IMO) a good idea to stand at a 45 degree angle off line from someone with one leg a little forward to protect you at least a little from a kick at the balls and your gun a little less out of their reach. Maybe that's just me though.

As for his thoughts on fire folk, I think the differences between the two public safety fields boil down to the nature of the threats being controlled and the problems being solved. The fire folk I interacted with always regarded most of what they did as a technical problem with technical tools to overcome that problem. Cops, much less so. The LE environment is far more dynamic and less predictable than what fire folk deal with. They also don't have public advocacy pulling on a rubber glove at every turn second guessing the victimization of the target of their focus, fire. So they seem to tend to be more analytical and metrics driven in their approaches since they have fewer variables to deal with. That is no criticism of them or what they do, just an opinion formed from observation and semi-sober off-watch chats with them.

Good stuff. I hope he manages to promulgate this more widely in the LE community.

[John F Musser]

Thank you very much for taking the time to watch the presentation and to provide comments.

Blandrick, George, and Warren M,
Thank you for the kind words; I realize how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to contribute.

Mark,
Thanks for the thoughtful review and providing context based on your experience. The martial artists involved in defensive tactics were sometimes good, sometimes not. As always, it depended on who the instructor was. Based on my observations the least effective instructors were easy to spot. Assuming there were no grown ups standing in front of them; concealing there tiny little, wanna be bully, delighted to be in charge weak selves.

There were some exceptions, of course, but not many.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

Excellent.

[leotrainer]

As a career LEO and LEO trainer in fitness and control tactics, Musser's presentation was absolutely spot-on. This was my full-time job for 17 years until I retired last May (12 years as a road cop before that). All the issues he spoke of as to all the silly B.S. that is typical of an academy training program are 100% correct, and pretty much universal across the board no matter where it is. It is VERY difficult to change the culture of these types of programs (and that is exactly what it is - ingrained and incestuous), with the typical "that's the way we've always done it around here" logic and mentality. It can be a slow and painful process, because as we say in LE, "we're always one major disaster away from policy change." I was in a position to train the fitness and control instructors across the state, and always tried to make the case for the importance of strength above all else - I like to believe that I made at least a small dent.....time will tell.