June 2007
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
HOCK'S Web Log
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
27 June, 2007: How Much Wood CAN He Chuck, Anyway?
How much wood can a wood chuck, chuck? If a wood chuck would chuck wood? It is more than an old speech test and nursery rhyme. Its also about how long does it take for a woodchuck (groundhog) animal, to learn how to chuck wood?
The answer to the mysterious question in life is? Nobody really knows. We can guess. We can assume? We rationalize and estimate. We can actually come up with some pretty good "guesstimates." But in the end, it depends on the wood chuck!
Years ago, as the sports sciences came into their own, there were many such generalizations put forth. If an athlete did one thousand repetitions of a certain move, then this move would seep into a reflexive-like, "muscle memory." Then if you nosed around in the research you heard some saying an average of 2,000 reps. Once I even heard a sport psychologist say 6,000 repetitions. That's a lot of work for the old wood chuck.
Maybe you could well assume that by 6,000 reps, almost all wood chucks knew how to do the job naturally. The problem lies in that our common sense would tell us there would be some slackers. And common sense would tell us that some wood chucks caught on right after the very first 15 chuckings.
The problem with training in combatives and using these principles of repetition and muscle memory is generalization - in thinking people are too smart or too stupid, or that their bodies are too slow to learn or too fast. The doctrine of a good training system finds a reasonable medium road, but must allow plans for all these whippersnapper and dullard chucks.
The answer to the nursery rhyme in the Children's Nursery Rhyme book? Seems like the kiddos had the answer.
Line 1. "A woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood"
Line 2."As much wood as a woodchuck would if a woodchuck could chuck wood."
Now, good night boys and girls, and sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite.
(hmmmmm...how many bites could a bed bug bite if...)
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23 June 2007: Bio-Mechanics of Hand, Stick, Knife, Gun Fights. Where Were the Experts?
As many know I am big on my motto and business mission statement that reads,
"Bridging the gap between the police. the military, the martial artist and the "aware citizenry.
Each group knows things about fighting that the other doesn't."
That motto of mine is about 13 years old now. And at times I feel the need to explain how aware citizen link is important. Usually there are two "aware civilian" sources. Crime victims tell us a lot about criminals. And PHDs. Medical and psychological experts, through proper clinical studies and experience tell us a lot about ourselves and our enemies.
I have to make an observation here before I forget. Three months back I attended another week-long, professional symposium by leading mental and clinical psychologists, medical doctors and experts in bio-mechanics and physical performance. Not at all my first. These symposiums are expensive, over $1,000-plus. They cover new discoveries on things like adrenaline, shooting and fighting responses, mental prep, tactics, law, medicine, science, excited delirium, etc. There are well attending by other medical experts, police and government officials. But, not trainers? Most times in a hotel convention-sized room of 600 to 1,000 people, I am the only full-time trainer there.
Missing trainers? Let me be very blunt and really frank here. I don't usually name names and dig this kind of dirt around. But, this symposium and all the other ones I have been too? None have been attended at all by the so-called, martial arts magazine, world defined-and-advertised, "renown," experts. By this I mean, no one from any kind of Krav Maga, WW II people, the endless DefenOs and DefendU's and ee's and Us-es, street gutter fighters, Wagner, Blaur, Demtrious,CDTs, LRTs and all the endless list of acronyms and cute-catch phrases, all the dozens of martial artists that pass themselves off as the latest and greatest in the ever-redundant term - "reality-based fighting." They are absent for the role-call. AWOL.
Near-beer? Remember that? Beer that's not beer. You also have magazines that are Near-Magazines, and are just thinly disguised catalogs posing as magazines. Where too, were all the "chosen/elite" gun trainers you read about in the gun, "near-magazines"? Plus, the near-martial-arts-magazines and their editors? They are not there. Zero. Nada. Zip. None. Just hundreds of cops, soldiers, doctors and me. And by the way, by soldiers I mean high ranking officers, and by cops I mean police chiefs and high end, decision-makers, Homeland Security people and so forth, key people in key training and admin positions. All the typical, ex-military and ex-cop trainers you read about in the near-magazines are never at any of these symposiums either. I too, am just one of these lowly, veteran-only, entries and I fully declare that this experience alone is not enough! I need PHD education from the clinical experts.
Now, this disturbs me on two levels. One is they don't come, or chose not to come? After-all it may cost $2,000 after tuition, airfare and hotel. That's a trip to Hawaii! But I rather, sadly, think it is much more on the second level of my concern. That is, that these "renown" people are not even on a simple, contact-mailing list to even know such symposiums, PHDs and research institutions even exist! And that my friends, scares me. Some of these instructors are still parading around with the crippling, stifling, "KISS-method" speeches. Some of these folks are still even spouting off the 1950's version of Hick's Law as if it were still gospel. http://www.hockscqc.com/articles/hickslaw.htm.
Did you know that one famous/infamous oft-quoted, study was actually done by a cop with a cheap stopwatch and six guys? How's that for precision, clinical work? Yet this study has been re-quoted by hundreds of teachers unaware of this non-clinical, uncontrolled, unprofessional, sloppy guidelines? It becomes quickly clear that many of these missing people are relying on 1950s to 1980-ish modules of information. Stewing in old and poorly researched adrenaline issues, many have confusions and some misinterpretations on things like the infamous "startle," reflex, the "finch," and have really screwed up the heart rate continuums, and well, I cannot list all the new research here and now, It is exploding with new technology. Exploding on a monthly basis.
It has been a trend for years now for down-line "karate" and wannabe reality schools to find and just regurgitate this stale 1950s through 1980s information in lectures and outlines to their students, and some even write articles for magazines. Then you read them. You regurgitate it next. Well, if even the editors of MA magazines do not know about these new discoveries, how can they save you from whatever dead, wrong, misrepresented, incomplete and misunderstood information within? Its a vicious cycle of ignorance.
Where were your teachers? Do they not even know about this higher, researched level of new information? The breaking new discoveries in mental and physical performance and bio-mechanics? Are they in these classrooms? Or, out on the parking lot? Or worse, have they ever seen the building? Do they know these research centers and PHDs even exist?
Are they instructors? Or, are they near-instructors? Are you becoming "near-students?"
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20 June 2007: "Don't Even Think About It!"
For two days we hunted the killer.
Bum steer leads.
One boot step behind.
Late tips and informant flips.
“Ohhh man! You just missed him!”
Bad karma.
That voodoo that he do.
“Come back again tomorrow! Bout' this time.”
Missed mojo.
Where is he!?
Texas is a big place.
We hunted for two days, but the manhunt began only after it took a full two months for Jeff Wawro and I to even get the killer's name. We were the two detectives back in 1993 tagged with a "15-felonies-and-counting," gang war and a hit man killing. It was about 60 days of a wheels-off, ride in the middle of drive-bys, drug raids, angry girlfriends, death threats, shootings, beatings, cuts and murder that stretched from central Oklahoma to north Texas. On any given day of these 60, Jeff and I could be found raiding houses in southwestern Oklahoma with a state drug task force or cornering uncooperative witnesses who stood on their porches, shuffling their feet, their reluctant faces framed by machine gun bullet holes peppered and splintered across the front of their houses.
One significant day, about day 36, we put a minor, drive-by shooter in jail. We then hit the streets again looking for more leads, but Jeff Wawro took afternoon breaks and hounded the incarcerated shooter daily for a confession. Daily. This guy knew names and trigger pullers. We knew he knew.
“What's he say today?” I'd ask.
“Nothing new,” Jeff said. Still he went back. He went back. He went back. Jeff went back.
Then, smack in the middle of all of this, Jeff was routinely “on rotation call” for the week and was tagged with a wire-hanger, strangulation murder. Female found dead in her apartment. We call it a mystery murder. They suck. Usually you know very quickly who the killer is. Often you catch him right there at the scene. Often, the heat of the crime leaves a burning trail that's so easy to follow. But, then you have these mystery murders. They suck.
“I got the case,” Jeff told me.
“Nahhh! NO!” I said. “Don't they know how busy we are? How close we are to making arrests?”
“No,” he said with a horizontal head shake.
They never know how busy we are. Jeff and were very tight and there was no way I was going to let him get bogged down in yet another murder, while we had this hit-man case and all these organized crime cases ticking like time bombs. So we tackled it. Hard and fast. In two days we arrested that killer. Meanwhile, Jeff continued to visit and visit and visit our jailed shooter.
“What's he say today?” I'd ask.
“Nothing new,” Jeff said
I drove by one of the gang houses, a rented, residential four-bedroom spread. Upper middle class. Pretty much a homeowners association nightmare, huh? On a sheer whim, I stopped. I got out and rang the door bell. Eight dudes let me in. They literally had mattresses on the floor and long guns stacked in the corner, like a scene out of the Godfather movie, but these guys were probably shooting for the Scarface look. I tried to talk turkey with them, explain that the revenge and shootings had to stop, but I think they just pegged me for jive turkey. I left. We raided that house within two weeks.
Then, after all Jeff's trips to the jail, all these conversations and cajolings, one afternoon, this jailbird broke. Broke! Confessed. Named names. The hit-man was a ex-con, karate expert. A crack and heroin dealer, and a shooter for hire. Another one of our detectives, Benny Parkey, had arrested him before. You might say they had a bit of a personal vendetta. Benny had a file on this miscreant. The three of us went to work to hunt him down. We looked for two days.
Finally, finally! Late one morning of the third day, Benny got a call from an informant that our hit man was visiting a certain house. We raced to it. It was a large and rambling older home.
We split up and I walked into the front door, pulling my .45 and kept it down at my side. The new range boys now have a cool, techo-jargan name for this position, but I call it? “Down at my side.” The living room was empty and I could barely hear Benny talking to the residents in the kitchen. His distant voice was muffled and garbled but I knew what he was saying, the usual...“We got a good tip. We gotta' look.”
I walked quietly down the hall and saw a bathroom door, just open an inch. I stepped up and peered in. I saw something. I pushed the door open and there stood our man. I leveled my pistol near my ribs, back and away from his reach, and pointed it at his throat. His eyes darted around the room, like…like he was looking to escape, like he was looking for a weapon. His hand touched the corner of his open jacket, like…
“Don't even think about it.” I told him.
I didn't know what he was thinking, but whatever it was, it wasn't good and that line seemed to cover all the bases. I gave him the evil eye. I shouted out to Benny and Jeff, but the house was too big. Oh well, once again, alone. If you're in a fair fight? You didn't prepare well enough. My gun was up, out and with a bead on his Adam's Apple. His wasn't. They use to call it the "getting the drop" on someone.
“Turn around, put your hands behind your back,” I told him.
I'd a killed him if he flinched. I really think he knew. After all it was just him and me. Him a killer. Me a cop. Me have big gun. Up and out. He smiled and turned. He put his hands behind his back. With my left hand, I took the handcuffs looped over my tooled, western belt in the small of my back, and cuffed his wrists. Then I hooked his arm, tucked the gun back in my belt line, and walked him through the house to find Jeff and Benny.
After this big break? Jeff and I pretty well cracked all these cases. I filed 12 organized crime cases. Jeff filed the hit man murder. He deserved it because he broke the hit man case wide open with his persistent, dogged interrogations. Together we filed many various local, state felonies on residual players to clear all the cases up.
My whole life I have used that line, "don't even think about it.” I am not too sure exactly where it comes from. An old western, maybe? Did John Wayne say it? Richard Boone? Randoph Scott? Was it a Willie Nelson song? I don't know, but it has worked for me. It came natural and feels natural. Means a lot of things. Used it my whole life, even on me. yes, I even whispered it to own fool self as I stood on the low ledges and big cliffs.. And, I wished I had listened to my own damn warning a time or two. Or, three…
This blog is often really about my whole life. Don't you dare turn it off just yet!
“Hey, Don't you even think about it!”
Podnah? I've been a bouncer, a bodyguard, a military patrolman, an Army investigator, a street cop, a detective, and a private eye in Oklahoma, South Korea, Texas and all the lands such work makes one travel. There are some great stories in here and you'll regret it if you do! Gripping irony. Compelling history. Sick humor. Gasping tragedy. Shock. Great people and leaders in policing and in life. And then, the gutter opposite. Crime. Lost love. Lost faith. Death. Prejudice. Worst people you'll ever meet. My life is like a mine field. Serial killers. Robbers, Pedofiles. Child killers. Con men. Scumbags. Cheats and scoundrels. Fools for bosses. I've known them all. You'll find em' all here. Hell, you'll even dodge a bullet or two.
So come on! Whoa! Watch out now, and don't step in that pool of blood right there...
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19 June 2007: The Clicking Crack
Fathers Day was last weekend. I am a little late...as I was, and have been...
My dad died about 17 years ago. He chain-smoked Camel cigarettes. His whole adult life. His last morning, he got up at about 6 am, coughing. Horribly. He thought he'd had the flu for about a week, and he just couldn't breath, but he was dying. Gasping for breath, he turned on the kitchen light and sat at the table, his rattling, mucus rolling over and over in his lungs like thick oil.
When the phlegm seemed to have settled down, he found some respite. He sat perfectly still. Then he reached for his Camels and lit his first morning cigarette. But, it…was his last. As he inhaled, he keeled over and died. Hit the kitchen floor. Was it lung cancer? Emphyzema? We'll never know.
At the funeral, my Uncle Vinny told me that “they don't make men like your father anymore.” And they don't. He was a World War II vet, He marched into Berlin with Patton and then stumbled, shocked, all over the Holocaust rubble. That human rubble. He never spoke of it. They don't make men like Vinny anymore either. I just don't know what kind of men we are anymore, but we aren't like them.
I have very few memories of my father, who worked in sweat-shop, factories almost all the time. I have just a few. One of them is the odd, clicking, cracking sound in his right ankle. Sometimes when my father walked, his right ankle “cracked.” At times, resoundingly. Not always, but sometimes. And, curiously, genetically, my right ankle has this exact same cracking sound. Sometimes. Not always.
One afternoon in the early 1960s, my dad was leaving for work. Every day, he climbed the steep, urban hills of the west side of the “Palisades Cliffs,” to catch the Kennedy Blvd. bus for his Jersey City, job. For some reason, I wanted to walk with him. I have only done that once or twice. As we walked in silence up the 81st street hill, his right ankle started that cracking sound. And soon, suddenly, my right ankle cranked too. Must have been the angle of the hill?
For about 200 feet we walked, our right ankles clicking in unison. We never spoke about it. We just clicked on. And since our ankles only crack some of the time? They suddenly stopped. We waited in silence for his bus. It came. He left. There was just a partial wave goodbye. I walked down the hill, alone.
I wonder about many things now. So many things. Life. Love. Destiny. Meaning. And I sometimes wonder too…about that clicking, crack.
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17 June 2007: The Odd Case of the Collector and the Midget Policeman
In the 1960s (before my time) and 1970s our Texas police department had a permanent, midnight shift fixture. No, it wasn't the night light globe on the P.D. parking lot. It was a creepy midnight shift dispatcher that would have easily inspired a great Stephen King horror plot. But, I'm here first to tell this tale! Our dispatcher, Roland Hairs, (a pseudonym) was the permanent midnight shift dispatcher. For many of us, Roland had “always been there,” hired back in an Andy Griffith /Mayberry era of our agency's rural, country past, before our city was enveloped into a huge metroplex. A fixture. And, as we all cycled though the monthly, rotating shifts of the patrol division, we also had to cycle though the life and times and weird habits of this quirky oddball on midnight shift.
55-ish year-old, Roland Hairs was a huge, waddling, obese, unmarried man with bad teeth, well…weird guy actually, with a size 50 waistline on seemingly the same, cheap brown pair of pants day-after-day. He wore mandated orthopedic shoes and those suckers were not spiffy back in the day. They all looked like black cinder blocks and this guy looked and dressed like the poster boy for the next Johnny Knoxville movie.
Week, after week, year after year, one could not help buy learn small unwanted bits of information about this very odd man. First off, everyone knew that everything ailed Roland. All his bones. He was on tons of medication for blood pressure, heart, joint aches, etc. Everyone knew this because he never ceased with daily reports. And we all knew that of he dieted, all this would go away.
But…there were other things. Roland Hairs was also a collector. Not just any kind. He was a collector in a neurotic sort of way. Stamps. Coins. Magazines. Odd and ends. Figurines. Then there were the record albums. The old 45s and 33s. Country music mostly. Despite all his physical agonies he was an avid, working member of various C&W fan clubs and collection clubs. He collected other things too, in fact, odd things. I have never seen his apartment, which of course, he shared with… his sickly mother! Story is that his apartment was an utter trash house of stacks of things he simple had to hoard. Hoard being the key word here. One did not have to graduate Harvard Head Shrink School to know he suffered from Hoarding Syndrome. In Brain Juice 101 they label it part of an obsessive/compulsive disorder.
Roland may have been a permanent fixture for years on our midnight shift, but he was not such a permanent fixture embedded into his mashed-in chair and actual manning the police radio desk. In the 1970s we had only one dispatcher per shift who sat in a half-glass room before a Larry King microphone. The dispatcher ran one NCIC machine/telex/computer. He was surrounded by boxes of alphabetized, index cards of various subjects of local information. Worn clipboards hung off of everything, all stuffed with tattered and torn-edge forms and fact sheets. Rolled up city maps leaned in corners. The local, phone book was still the main source of information. Electric box fans whipped all this paper into a fluttering frenzy. An am radio reported the news every 30 minutes. In the case of a Russian attack? One switches on one's AM radio in hopes that Dallas was not hit in the first wave .I wondered what it would be like if the Ruskies did drop the Big One on us back then. I imagined Roland Hairs, with his slobbering style of his voice announcing:
“Calling all cars! Calling all cars! Duck and cover. I repeat. Duck and cover. Over.”
That my friends, was our emergency, contingency plan. Our squad cars came with AM radios only. Some of us hand-carried small, laptop-sized, battery-eating, "picnic" radios into our cars to listen to the FM stations. Many of us listened to rock. Funny thing, over half the FM stations today still play the exact same music and call it classic rock. I guess nothing new is made anymore, other than dufus, no singing, mumbling, rap-crap, and even then rappers often steal and insert bits of the classic rock melodies into their babbling, rap crap.
Our actual police radios? Standard, 3-switch/duals.They were the size of shoe box with an on-and-off switch, a 5 or so channel-changer switch. A lights and siren switch. Three switches on a metal shoebox. Fancy ones had one more, loudspeaker switch to talk into a mike and yell angry stuff at people. Get up!" "Get down!" Sit still! Don't even think about it!" Stuff like that. OH, and to yell, "Duck and cover!" Today police cars look the flight deck on the Starship Enterprise. Computers on two and three "tiers." I shudder to think what an accident in one of these would cost to repair.
We would receive our marching orders from Roland, through this hi-tec com, shoe-box system. …if Roland was actually there in the room to dispatch orders! Roland was often up and around…doing stuff. You would be out on a felony traffic stop and Roland had waddled off to the bigger, “citizen, ”hallway bathroom (lets not even go there) out in the lobby. He was often up doing things like loading the soda and candy machines throughout the police wing and the city hall building. This odd, little self-imposed chore was not even on his job description. Somewhere back in the age of antiquity, Roland Hairs just started loading the machines and collecting the money for the desk officer. Off he would go, performing this manual labor of carting around boxes of cans and candy.
Or if in the room, he was sometimes sitting there, but busy. Busy doing other things. You would be getting your ass whipped in an alleyway and he was on the phone talking. Ignoring your calls. He would soon come back on the air, and declare for everyone listening in the northern half of Texas,
“I'm back. I was just on long distance with New Orleans, LA,” or,
“I'm back. I was just on long distance with Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
Whatever. I needed to know that, as I was getting my face pulverized and screaming for help. Thanks much, Roland.
Roland did not drive a car, so the patrol cars had to pick him up and take him to and fro work every shift. The Roland Run. And we also had to cart his non-deodorized ass to a Denny's restaurant EVERY night at 3am sharp. On these runs, Roland had spots set aside all over town to retrieve the freshly thrown Dallas Morning News every night. He would tell the escorting officer, (sometimes me) “pull over here,” in front of this-or-that business doorstep. He stepped out and with a Rector scale groan, lean over and pick up the newspaper. We all thought he and the P.D. had deals with these businesses? To me, and to the newer officers he would mumble an initiation, yet illogical explanation about how on Tuesdays, Ray's Cleaners lets him AND the police department have the paper. Thursdays it was Wagon Smokehouse. It was ever changing and no sergeants or lieutenants seem to care. Huh? What? We were subliminally use to this guy telling us where to do and what to do!
But his need for transportation and penchant for collecting connected him with even weirder people. One of his acquaintances with a handy car was a dwarf. Or, what? A Little Person. Jeez. Midget? Look, I apologize right here in advance about not knowing what I should call this guy. Sorry. And he seemed to be a nice enough guy. He had jet-black hair and moustache, a really deep voice and…he was about 3 ½ feet tall. Pretty sharp guy. I'll call him Raymond here, but sadly I cannot remember his real name. Raymond had a sedan with special extensions so he could operate the gas and break pedals, and steer.
Raymond wanted so, so much to be a police officer, but you know…he was 3 ½ feet tall! He actually applied all over but there was no way a department would hire him. He couldn't pass the PT tests or the height requirements. He became a dispatcher at the county sheriff's office. His "6 foot," baritone voice boomed all over our large county networks, but few knew he needed a stepping stool to get into the chair. God bless em'. And he still thirsted for the real world, street work of an LEO, but the best he could do was become a reserve police officer in one of the smaller towns surrounding our city. So very quickly, he became a county radio dispatcher AND a small-town, unpaid, reserve officer. His gun was bigger than his leg! And man I do not want to pick on the guy. I liked Raymond. Here is how I first met Raymond…
I had made a few felony arrests one summer night and collected some evidence. Lots of paperwork. I got off work at 11 pm and at 11:30 pm I had a HOT date I simply could NOT miss. This girl lived up north a ways on a horse ranch and well –the candles were lit – and I jumped on my Harley and headed north for the 30 minute or so ride through the countryside. Wide open spaces. Farms. Horse and cattle ranches on slightly, rolling hills. On the way up, I had to zip through a small town I'll dub here as “Oaten.” Oaten is “one-horse” town, as we would call it back then. City hall was the post office and a feed store. Oaten's downtown was a bit of a speed trap, so I did slow down a bit, but still…red flashing lights behind me!
I looked in the mirror and saw the one Oaten police car behind me, a big four-door sedan about the size of condo. It was obviously after yours-truly, because Oaten at this hour was graveyard dead. I pulled over. Keep in mind I am still in uniform, gun, badge, etc. I took off my helmet and in my right mirror I saw the police car, passenger door open. Two tiny feet below the open door popped into view and well…landed…sort of like someone making a big jump from a ledge. And there was no body, no torso visible above the door! What? Then in my left mirror I saw the driver's door open and a giant, obese man appeared. The Oaten police chief was considerably overweight I had heard, but had yet to meet him. Now, I saw this monument of a man.
I swung a leg off my bike for a better look. The chief slowly walked up to me in a lumbering, painstaking gate, and his frame just an enormous silhouette from the squad's headlights. Then…what? Then to his right a tiny silhouette! A little man with his own peculiar, “one-leg-longer-than-the-other” shuffle approached me. I saw the shadow of a gun on his hip, er, leg and…knee…calf. What?
“Okay, I am now in the fucking Twilight Zone,” I remember thinking to myself. Before I could start looking for an escape portal, I heard,
“Hock?” the big man said.” Are you Hock Hochheim?”
“Yes.”
“Your Lieutenant called us and said you would be heading this way. They need you back at the station. Something to do with the arrests you made tonight.”
“Ohhh, okay. Thanks!”
“Chief Riggenbottom,” he said in an introduction, shaking my hand. “Officer Raymond,” he said, wagging a thumb over and down to Raymond.”
“Well, nice to met you boys.” What is the etiquette for me, 6'4” to shake Raymond's hand? Is it insulting for me to drop to a knee and shake his hand? I'm serious! I don't know. What would you do? Since the Chief's thumb was already up? I aped his style and stuck my thumb in the air as a pseudo-greeting, shaking it once at the chief, once at Raymond.
The two limped back to their car. The chief plopped in. The little guy leapt in. Off they went and off I went.
The next day, when I related this experience to the hoots and hollers of some of the guys, they told me that I had met Raymond, the new Oaten Reserve Police officer. And, that booming new voice on the S.O. radio, was that of the same Raymond! Now when you think about it, you have to hand to Raymond, huh? He never worked alone and was always a ride-along. But it does bring new meaning to really needing a two-handed grip to shoot.
Raymond became a frequent visitor to our P.D. Only a grass field separated the County Sheriff's Office from our city hall and police department back then, and dispatcher Raymond quickly met dispatcher Roland Hairs. Like the big Oaten chief and Raymond, big Roland Hair and Raymond made quite a visual impression. They attended concerts together and Raymond would visit Roland at our station some nights. Even took Roland to Denny's a time or two. Frankly, on visits, Raymond will fill in on the air sometimes in empty moments when Roland went to the bathroom. He was always welcome and he "hold court" at our PD, telling us of his misadventures as a reserve and even in his love life. He would often go on blind dates and never tell the woman he was 3 1/2 feet tall! . (I have a few more great Raymond stories but back to this storyline!)
Years pass. One midnight shift, I wandered into the P.D. in the early a.m. hours to stretch my legs and get some quick coffee. Lt. Russell Trapp was absent from the front desk. My key opened the lobby door and I entered into the police wing. Sgt. Dotson was seated at the radio mike. The Lt.'s office door was open and I saw a very grim Trapp leaning over his desk and talking sternly to Roland Hairs. Dotson saw me look down the hall and he just shook his head at me with a grimace. Something was up all right. I got my coffee and “cutachogied” (Korean for got the hell out of there).
Something was indeed up. Within the hour, this long-time, multi-decade fixture…was fired. A car was dispatched to the station to drive Roland Hairs home for the last time. About 6 am I walked back into the station and caught a sullen Lt. Trapp leaned back in his chair, boots propped up on the front desk. He looked at me and shook his head.
“All these years,” he muttered. “Roland has been stealing and I caught him tonight.”
Our police department was modernizing and becoming a more efficient operation. He explained to me that civilian day shift personnel were actually doing better book work and accounting, and discovered some discrepancies. The Chief alerted some of the supervisors. Trapp was one of them.
“Roland has been stealing coins from soda and candy machine for years. And stealing stamps. And supplies around here. Cleaning supplies. Even fucking toilet paper. I set up a trap and he had marked coins and stamps on him. He confessed. He apologized. I had to fire him.”
In the next few days, we learned through the grapevine that the Chief and some detectives became involved the very next day. They recovered stolen property from Hair's apartment, but no charges were ever filed. I never saw Roland Hairs again. But it became clear to me that someone who obsessively collected stamps and coins and such, or obsessively collects anything is a potential thief in many cases. In the end it all seemed to fit. Of course he was doing all this extra chores. He knew they threw the money in a canvass sack. The sack was dropped to admin and then just submitted into a general bulk fund. No comparisons were ever made with intake and out take of soda, supplies, stamps, supplies, candy and so forth. The thief finds the crack.
And of course, all those years of getting those “deal” newspapers? Years! Were lies. He was stealing them and bluffing the new officers to drive him on his little thefts. There was even one time Roland actually dispatched a new officer to an address to get the newspaper, over the air, because the delivery driver had been late in tossing it. Had to collect!
As bookkeeping practices improved, all kinds of little scandals popped up. Other stories. But, strange people and problems like this are not at all uncommon in the annuals of police departments or any organizations really. Look around you.
It was not long after this, that Roland's mother died. Then he died. Then sadly, even good ol' Raymond died a few years later from some natural causes associated with his malady. Raymond never had anything to do with all this thievery. He was just a little guy with big dream and with a heart of gold. While Roland Hairs was the opposite, a big guy with little sick obsessions for dreams, and he turned out to be tin can trinket. He was kicked on down the road.
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13 June 2007: Dress Code of the West - Take the Test!
It was not all that long ago that if Navy SEALs, especially retired ones, saw a man walking across a mall while wearing a Navy SEAL t-shirt, that poor s.o.b. would be surrounded and most severely questioned. May even leave naked above the waist. But that frontal assault has tempered down now. With the advent of SEAL-run webpages and SEAL-run museums and the subsequent sale of officially sponsored SEAL t-shirts, the bearers of such wardrobes are no longer accosted.
Still, I shan't ever be wearing a Navy SEAL t-shirt. I thought about this recently as I was killing time in the Reagan Airport in Washington DC waiting for a flight. There were all kinds of t-shirts for sale in the shops and one of the shirts was a US Army Special Forces t-shirt. “I'll never wear that!” I said to myself. What non-SF nimrod would? Comfortably? I am not even sure I should be looking at the damn thing on a hanger! This set me to thinking about the rules of the t-shirt road, the “Dress Code of the West,” if you will. When is it alright to wear an organization/group's t-shirt and when are you a ignorant wannabe or just a plan stupid, Dress Code of the West violator?
For me, I have three basic rules. Be one or teach them or a joke. Then we have some smaller rules and issues. Now before I begin, I will first eliminate the sports fan factor. Obviously there are skillions of people running around wearing their favorite university or sports team shirts. That is a fan. We in decent society have come to understand that when Big Louie wears a Yankee shirt and is tossing down beers in the local pub until he starts to drool suds down his "Roger is Great" shirt, he is not pretending to be a Bronx Bomber.
Dress Code of the West: Being One. I have to have been one or have been significantly connected to an organization. I will always wear US Army hats and shirts. The Army is my alma mater, my college if you will. I will wear Army, military police garb. I will wear some generic, police t-shirts, but I won't wear NYPD or FBI shirts. Wasn't one. If you wear them I will look down upon you. I will wear the shirts of schools I have attended and police organizations I am a member of. They sold/gave me these shirts in the legal expectation I would wear them. The club.
Dress Code of the West Two: Being With One – Significantly. I have taught various police and military units. For some examples, I have taught the Honolulu Hawaii SWAT team. I have one of their shirts. But, I don't wear it much because it takes an odd explanation. I usually pass I look like a wannabe. I was given a Belfast, Ireland Police shirt by their training commander, and this qualifies. So, if a teaching gig is significantly associated with a group, and the group gives you a shirt, Dress Code of the West allows you to wear said shirt.
I have been given the Black Belt, US Marine Martial Arts Course, t-shirt by Sgt. Cardo Urso while teaching at Quantico. I was not a Marine, but I do feel comfortable wearing this shirt in certain places based on this legit connection. Prior to 911 I have taught at Pendleton, Quantico, 29 Palms and was scheduled for Camp Legume but got the flu. Multiple trips to these places. Good solid, connection. The shirt does not say I am Marine, or MEU SOC. It just advertises a connection with their martial arts course. These are hair-splitting details, huh? It is not easy being a clothes horse.
Dress Code of the West Three: A Serious Disconnect Joke. There are times when an organization/group's t-shirt may be worn in a blatant joke. When there is zero doubt the bearer has any connection with the shirt. Like when Michael Moore wears a President of the United States Seal shirt. Or Michael Moore wears a SEAL shirt. Or AL Gore wears a "I live in an expensive, energy hog mansion" t-shirt- oh wait, that is true.
So, the Dress Code of the West demands that in order to wear an organization's shirt, you must either be from that group, or very strongly connected to said group. Or be blatantly, humorlessly disconnected. The connection or disconnection must be logical and satisfy a reasonable and prudent person.
Now, “what are these side issues, O' great clothing guru?” you might ask. Well, I'd like to know more about where you are wearing these t-shirts. I reserve wearing my shirts only when teaching, or maybe if I go to the range, or something like that. On multi-day seminars, after I have worn my SFC shirts, I will often wear one of these extra ones. I will not wear them in the mall or in restaurants or bars. Which leads to my next tenant…
If you are wearing a group t-shirt with even the smallest, remote idea that you might trick a stranger into thinking you are what you wear? Noooo! This is bottom-feeder thinking. You need a session in the Dress Code of the West, Re-Initiation Camp. Fail this camp? Next it's the Relocation Camp for you. This way you can officially wear the Siberia t-shirt, wherest thou shall be dispatched. T-shirt hell!
Some major violators for examples? Non-Harley People in Harley Davidson shirts. I was in a medical waiting room once and I saw a HUGE, dirty woman come in, wearing a stretched, stained Harley Davidson t-shirt. With her? A small child, barefoot, a food-stained face, FAT kid wearing – you guessed it – a kid-sized, Harley shirt. This alone swore me off the Harley legacy. I know its not Harley's fault, but if you don't own a Harley? You ain't supposed to be wearing a Harley shirt. You poser! You…you Dress Code of the West criminal!
And now boys and girls, a test. True or false
You were in the Army. You may wear an Army shirt. - T or F
You never went to college. You may wear a Vanderbilt shirt.- T or F
You belong to the Teamsters. You may wear a Teamster's shirt. - T or F
You were never a SEAL. You may wear a Navy SEAL shirt. - T or F
You are contracted to teach the 82 nd Airborne. Their Captain gives you a unit shirt. You may wear it. -
T or F
You are a Dallas Cowboy fan. You may wear a Cowboy shirt. - T or F
You don't own a Honda motorcycle. You may wear a Honda shirt. - T or F
You attend a Modern Arnis seminar. You buy and may wear a Modern Arnis shirt. - T or F
You buy a Korean War veteran shirt. You are not. You can wear it. - T or F
Whew! Tough test. And that's all for today folks, enough of shaping and molding the minds of the global village. This essay now qualifies me to wear a Dress Code of the West Judge, Jury and Executioner t-shirt.
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11 June 2007: The Elephant in the Room
We already know about the "seen the elephant" phrase, but another one of the main reasons I have chosen the angry elephant as the symbol for CQC Group is that is represents the old expression, the "Elephant in the room." The big elephant in the room is symbolic of the unspoken truth that so many know but so few dare to talk about. In one definition, the room is the martial arts room, or dojo if you well, and the unspoken truth is that common martial arts are abstract renderings of realistic fighting in a mixed weapon world.
Another point is the unspoken and missed aspect of the room itself. Where IS the "room" you are fighting in? You cannot properly train for a fight unless you know where the fight will actually be.
Missing in the dojo is the real context of the fight. What will be the real, chaotic situation that the fight will actually occur in? There is an elephant in the room when it comes to traditional martial arts.
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8 June 2007: Secrets of the Phantom
In the early 1940s, the Nazis invaded and occupied Norway and set about their plans of psychological warfare. One of the psy ops plans was to seal off and control all information from the outside world, filtering it to suit their needs. One major theme they organized and pushed was that the United States had been utterly destroyed, in hopes of demoralizing and then further subjugating the populace. The Nazis took over the radio, movies and newspapers. But they missed one point! A superhero!
Before there were Batman and so many others comic strip heroes, there was first, Lee Falk's masked and mysterious The Phantom - the Ghost Who walks - and it was one of the most popular, unique newspaper dailies in much of the world of that day. The Nazis allowed the Norwegian newspapers to have many normal, features like crossword, horoscope, puzzles, local ads and...the funnies. The funnies included the daily cartoon strip of the Phantom. But unbeknownst to the Nazis was that in Norway many knew that the Phantom was created, drawn and wired from the United States and routed through Europe. This knowledge secretly spread. Every day Norwegians looked to the newspapers to see if the new Phantom strip was in the local papers and every day his appearance gave them hope that the USA was still around, and for that matter, was still intact enough to have citizens with the spare time to draw comics. The rest is history.
Phantom Strip fighting actual Nazis.
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5 June 2007: Lydell the Cable Guy and his Amazing Technicolor Death Staff : Part 2
We knew the name of the apartment complex where Lydell lived, as he told us that much when we first met. I had a break so I called Lydells' apartment complex manager. She immediately told me everything on Lydell's lease. Date of birth, Drivers license. Everything. Today this information would be as protected as Fort Knox, but not back then. You see, people cooperated with the police once, not fearing a civil suit if a sneeze blew the wrong way.
I ran some criminal histories one afternoon and included Lydell's in the list. Sure enough he had a history of drugs, fraud and theft in Kansas. Completed his probation. In case we needed it for a future line-up, I ordered a photograph of said knucklehead. In these stone-age days, this is how such a process ran. You called that agencies record's room. Someone named “Laverne” (or similar) answered. You spoke to a real person and you spoke as charming and needy as possibly. You convinced them they needed to find the negative of the Lydell Scotch mugshot, spend their budget money and have them make you a copy of it for you at the neighborhood Kodak shop. A drive in a car. Then, in around their work schedules, lunch times and breaks, maybe soap operas and sick time, they would get this picture, stick it in an envelope (pay for the stamp) and land mail you the picture. Five to seven or eight days later, you would get a mugshot, hoping there were no holidays in between. You were always at the mercy of the professionalism and work ethic of any agency you called on for help. On fast breaking murder cases we were known to drive cities and even states away to get the picture for a photo line- up, ipso facto. Faxes just didn't cut it in a big league murder case. Long-story-short, I eventually got a Kansas mugshot of our cable guy. I placed it neatly in a new file called “Cable Guy,” along with active files my Lieutenant and Captain were screaming about.
Then, Roger the cable company guy called me. “We heard from a woman. She said that a guy with curly hair knocked on her door and asked if she wanted her cable turned on. Then he asked her if she wanted some…afternoon delight.”
“Delightful,” said I.
“She's plenty mad. She complained to us that our workman propositioned her. I told her this idiot was no workman of ours. I've got her name, address and phone number.”
“As I too shall have…” I scrambled for a pen and paper, “…in a moment. What is it?”
I called her. This woman came right in and gave me a written statement. She identified Lydell in a photo line-up. Asking for afternoon delight was not an offense, certainly not in the state of Texas. If he had actually completed the hook-up (ahhh, wrong choice of words) I mean turned-on (ahhh, damn!) gave her a quick, pole freebie (I give up!) connected the cable at the ultity pole, well, it would have been a better case. The act was not consumated. (jeez!)
I called Roger back. “The case is so weak. We need to find someone who actually paid him to turn the cable on. Listen, He was running his con on Houston Place. Can you spare a guy for one morning to check the pole switches with your billing records on Houston Place and see if anyone is getting cable illegally?”
“Will do!” Roger said and Roger did. In a few hours the next morning their cable guy discovered three houses with full cable, sports, movies, sex channels and CNN for life. I went to all three, squeezed them with imprisonment threats of life. FCC and all that. Granted them immunity. They cooperated and confessed. They identified Lydell as the culprit. I drew up the warrants. I filed a few other cases and packaged them all up in one trip to the district attorney's office. Judge Rosy Erwin signed the warrants. Lydell the cable Guy's among them.
Meanwhile, all this is going on and I am getting new cases every day, swimming in old cases and you might say I and Dan had much, much bigger and better things to do. But still, one afternoon, “Mister Hochheims and Mister McCormicks” (we were actually, often refereed to by those titles in certain quarters – with the added "s" on the end.) gathered ourselves up and drove over to Lydell's apartment to arrest said, street entrepreneur.
We approached the door. Listened. Then knocked. No response. No response because Lydell was not at home. He pulled up in his work truck on the parking lot at that very moment.
“Heeeyyyy!” he said emerging from his truck. “Que Paso!”
Que Paso, huh? We don't much like Kansas boys talking Tex-Mex too soon after moving down here, but we smiled for the cause. Spider-to-the-fly cause.
“We need to talk,” Danny told him. Not the favorite expression for a husband, or a criminal to hear.
“Yeah, okay,” he said and opened his front door. “Come on in. Let me drop off this belt,” he said. He walked past us with a big calm smile. We entered the apartment and he half-entered into his bedroom, undoing his cable-guy, tool belt. It looked like he was leaning in the room just to drop his belt on the floor. Which he did drop, but he did not only do that! He grabbed something!
I watched as he pulled a long, black, thick pole from the corner behind the door. It was a cable actually. Well, the black was black rubber surrounding hundreds and hundreds of thin pieces of metal, but it was as stout as long pole. How can I describe the one end? The black rubber was removed for a foot or so. This knucklehead had separated each single wire and spread them from the straight staff. Each wire was now curled and splayed out until about one foot of the end and the hard cable looked like a Medusa's head of sharp-ended wires. A sharp ball of hundreds of pieces of metal. The ball end was as big as a basketball.
“Look at this!” he yelled. “Like this? I made this!”
Dan and I looked at each other. Wha?
“Ya! Yaaaah!” he shouted. His eyes were wide and wild. He held the staff in a riot stick position and shoved it forward…at me. I remember hearing the loose wires shake. “Yaaaaa!”
I stepped back. Hey, this was no joke!
“Yaaa! YAAAAAH!
This knucklehead was after me with this damn, weird thing. Dan stepped forward.
“Yaaaahh!” he swung for Dan and jabbed several times at his face!
“Yaaahhhh!”
Well, this was becoming crazy serious, as we danced around the small living room, and all in three or four seconds. Lydell swung back at me and Dan made a move for his arms. Got one. He swung back at Dan. I swear Dan was actually startled giggling. He has a muffled kind of chuckle. Which started me to giggle. I grabbed an arm…
Well…we had to beat him up a bit and took his death staff away. The goofy bastard! We cuffed and arrested him, laying him face down on the floor. I took a good look at this improvised weapon. The ends of each metal strand were quite sharp to the touch of my fingertips. No telling how long it took to fabricate this thing.
“Lydell, are you nuts or what?” I asked.
“You don't understand what I am trying to do here!” he said.
“Yeah,” McCormick said, “I understand. You are trying to cut us open with this cable stick …ahhh… ball… ahhh... thing!” He was still chuckling.
“You like that? You like that? I can make those for ya!” Lydell said, his face crushed into the shag carpet.
“Well you are under arrest bubba, for stealing from the cable company. Turning people's cable on.” I said.
“Now wait. Wait! Just a minute," he yelled. "I was acting as their representative. At the end of the month I was going to go down there and record all the services I turned on. I was acting as their agent! I…”
“Ohhh, fuck you.” I mumbled as I went to work tossing the apartment, then Dan searched the truck outside. We were looking for fruits of the crime. Any crime. Burglaries. Theft. Drugs. Etc. HEY! This was the early 80s and searches "incidental to arrest” were a bit more "broad" back then. Today, you damn near have to apply to the United Nations to get a search warrant.
“What you say? France rejected our warrant? Damn!”
Times have changed, Dan and I changed with them for sure, year-by-year, but back then, we just did what was common practice for our times. Dan McCormick is still coping with this legal world in digital flux.
Me, I'm out. I am just a simple, unfrozen, caveman...(actually the hairdo was similar).
We saw not a hint of any other crimes which was the real reason we bothered with this schmoe, to clear up a bunch of burglaries, track down drug dealers and so forth. But instead the road came to a dead end and we booked Lydell in for three counts of...cable theft. We never bothered with his silly assault by way of the amazing, Si-Fi, Techno Staff. Goofy bastard. We never saw or heard another word from Lydell, or about him again. Probably went back to Kansas with…Dorothy and Toto.
What happened to the Death Star, Spear Weapon? Don't ask. It is however not bio-degradable and may be found by evil hands and used again and again, until the next pending Ice Age comes. Or is it Global Warming? I am just an unfrozen caveman, I don't understand your complicated weather patterns...
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2 June, 2007: Lydell the Cable Guy and His Amazing Technicolor Death Staff. Part 1
Before there was Larry the “Git er' Done” Cable Guy, there was Lydell the Cable Guy. He, among other things, invented his Amazing Technicolor Death Staff and attacked me and Dan McCormick with it. And we lived to tell this tale!
My friend and long-time co-detective Benny Parkey was duly elected Sheriff of my old Texas county back in 2004 - a point of which I cannot adequately express my happiness over. Benny is good man. We have chased and caught killers together and I know him well. I did what I could to help him get elected, but he finessed that all by himself. But in the beginning, Benny could quote ol' Kinky Friedman,
"I dont know how many supporters I have out there, but I do know all of them carry guns."
On election eve my wife and I attended the big vote countdown election party at a Mexican restaurant and the outfit was filled with probably fifty or so, ol' friends and faces from my thrilling days of yesteryear. And as with the Kinkster, must of us were indeed toten'.
Leaning at the bar, right where I thought I would find him, was Dan McCormick. Dan is currently the head of a major crime task force in another Texas county. Dan was and is a driven, hungry, hungry cop. He possesses a certain competitive edge that makes him excel above others. He had "excelled" over hundreds of serious criminals. By now, probably thousands. I hadn't seen him in at least 6 years. He looked up, smiled, shook my hand and said,
“You know I was thinking the other day. We should be dead.”
My wife's eyebrows shot up. Jane and I had not met until 1993, but she already knew I should be dead, so this line was no big shocker to her, just another affirmation. I smiled the smile of big secrets at Mac because I knew exactly what he was talking about. We worked and caroused together as detectives countless, countless times for many years, and I will never tell you some of the ways we almost died. Or, for that matter how we lived through it all. But either way, we also had a million laughs and this set me to thinking in the days that followed the election party, about some of times Dan and I were almost killed AND we laughed. Now, I will never reveal in writing some of these misadventures, even if the statue of limitations are up is some cases! But I can reveal here some that are "ok" by my better judgment.
I sometimes chuckle about one of the weirdest attacks on Dan's and my life. It was back in 1984 or so, by a science fiction-looking weapon. The Cable Death Staff. It all started, as my misadventures often do, with a phone call from the front desk at the police department.
“There's a guy in the lobby who wants to become a drug informant,” the front desk officer told me on the phone.
“Oh?” says I. Danny Mac was sitting at my desk. He and I were about to go out and run down some leads and I told him about this visitor. He and I were always on the prowl for a good drug intel or a case. He shrugged his shoulders as if, “what the hell?”
“OK,” I said into the phone, “send him on up.” I met the guy half way up the stairs.
“Lydell Scotch,” he introduced himself. He was tall, stout guy and proud of it, dressed in a tank top to display impressive arm and chest muscles. He had a bandanna to hold back a full head of curly red hair. His jeans and work boots were over-shadowed by his tan leather tool belt.
“I am a cable guy. Just moved in town from Kansas,” he said as he sat at my desk, shoveling his belt tools aside.
Cable guy. So…for you younger boys and girls in the audience…there once was time in our world when there was no cable TV. Back prior to the mid-1980s, your mammies and pappies had to wrestle with these wire-hanger looking, metal devices, much in the same ways that cavemen wrestled with leaves and twigs and sparks to create the first camp fires. They grunted and howled as each turn or twist would better intercept one of the four or five local channels. We would often cheat! Sections of tin foil would sometimes be added. Voodoo even. There were viewing times that Uncle Roy would have to remain seated on the left side of the couch, right leg crossed to create the perfect reception-able aura in the room as to receive ground breaking new shows like Bonanza, or Tarzan. And in color, I might add!
Cable guy! So…when one meets one of these scientists, these great cable guys, mapping the globe, they were warmly welcomed. After all, Al Gore was still very young and living in his father's massive mansion made on the blackened coal industry, and our greatest fear back then was the warnings of global…cooling. Yes, tons of experts told us that pollution was cooling the planet off and a new Ice Age was indeed forthcoming. We needed to go out in style, in a snowsuit, partying in front of warm cable TV.
Cable guy! There was a time that thousands of traveling, contract cable men covered the terrain of America, laying down the hard lines that brought early cable to the masses. People waited impatiently as their neighborhood or street was scheduled for cable laying, months off. Some godforsaken, remote, rural areas would never be touched by this network. Then God invented the satellite dish! Those giant…well, lets not get too far off track here.
“What can we do for you, Lydell?” I asked.
“I hate drugs. Drugs ruined my family and my friends. I like to help the police wherever I go and I would like to work as undercover agent, while I am with the local cable company.” He continued a saga of virtue.
“Okay,” Dan McCormick said with a nod, adding a pinch of Skoal chewing tobacco into his mouth. We have heard the likes of this speech before and it hardly worked out. These folks had their own agendas, way more than virtue. More than once, we police have met such a volunteer only to find the guy eventually arrested in a drug deal or in possession of drugs. Then the shackled man declared,
“ Hey, I am working undercover for Hock Hochheim! Ask him! Call him!”
We both immediately knew Lydell was, in a word…weird. (We coppers use to use the word “hinky” back then, but I shall spare you that official usage here.) We gave Lydell our business cards and told him that should he ever hear anything, to give either of us a call. He left. We left.
Over the course of the next six months or so, we got the occasional phone call from Lydell, I think just to let us know he was still alive. The information was worthless. But then our CID started getting some disturbing, casual intel from the streets. Seems a “cable guy” was going door-to-door and telling residents that for a “one time, lifetime, $100 fee,” he would shimmy up the utility pole and turn on the cable TV for them. Give them a box too (stolen cable boxes were a HOT commodity back then).Full channels. No monthly bills.
“Hmmmm,” said I to Mister McCormick. “Lydell the cable guy?”
Lydell may be linked to other felonies? So, on some free time, I walked into into the one and only cable company in our city and questioned their personnel manager. Guy by the name of Roger McMillen. This firm was the only show in town and was running ALL the massive cable line construction. Roger hand searched his employment files (remember, computers were on Star Trek back then) had told me they never hired Lydell. In fact, he said the service was receiving all kinds of stories about cable TV theft, stolen and altered boxes and rumors of a red-headed cable-man turning on the switch atop the pole box for a small, lifetime fee.
"Well, if you get anything solid," I told him, "let me know." I passed him one of my "Have Lead-Will Travel" business cards.
So, Lydell it appeared to us, was really working “cable,” but on his own. Couple o' hundred bucks. Three, four hundred bucks a day? Not bad for those times. And where was he getting those cable boxes? They were the centerpiece of so many residential burglaries! Real soon, Danny and I simply had to go pay him an official visit.
And, it was here on a visit that we discovered just how hinky…er, I mean weird…Lydell the Cable Guy really was…
See Part 2 Coming Soon - Attack of the Death Staff!
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1 June 2007: Some Up and Coming CQC Group Camps and Seminars
Wayne, New Jersey 30 June, 1 July
http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product271.html
Laurel, Maryland 8, 9 September
http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product267.html
Romeoville, IL 29, 30 September
http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product265.html
Big 5 June 22, 23, 24
Independence, MO (Near Kansas City)
http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product262.html
Gent, Belgium, Dec. 7, 8, 9, 10 2007
Sacramento, CA. USA, January 24, 25, 26, 27 2008
(all seminars build the ranks for the CQC Group AND
the SFC Hand, Stick, Knife, Un and PAC courses.)
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