October,2009
SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE
"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"
27 October 2009 When the Brain Doctor Becomes the Foot Doctor
The title just sounds crazy doesn’t it? What chief administrator would turn a hospital staff completely upside down...just to turn the staff...well...completely upside down? The foot doctor becomes the ear doctor. The optometrist works knee surgeries. This case of “Upside-Down-Itis” sounds really crazy, but it does happen frequently in police departments all over the world. An old friend and co-worker contacted me awhile back to report he was now a midnight shift patrol supervisor. What? He had been a very successful detective leutenant for years and doing a very good job at it, according to my other friends who worked with him and for him. It probably took him 16 years of experience to get to this precise, mature point. Then the germ of “Upside-Down-Itis” spread through the agency. The germ of the problem? Why it is usually a new police chief. I wonder why so many police chiefs feel the need to turn everything and everybody upside-down and inside-out?
Think about the training gone haywire when this happens. I am an example of this. By the mid 1990s I has been a detective for some 15-plus years. I had seen several pandemics of “Upside-Down-Itis” go through my department and I somehow managed not to get infected. But so many did catch the virus. Some of my friends who loved midnight shift patrol for years, were assigned daytime, desk jobs. Some seasoned, detective supervisors were shifted into their patrol places.
Infection! Through the years, I had attended numerous investigator schools (many I paid for myself) and attended the big annual Violent Assault and Death Symposiums every year, taught by major medical examiners from around the country. At that point one might say that the department had invested a great deal of time and training in me, not to mention my experience. My life, goals and ambitions were completely invested in being a police detective. I would often work 50 or 60 hours a week, uncompensated, to work cases. It was an old school work ethic I’d learned from dedicated vets, many of whom I might add, were transferred out against their will.
Years later in February I’d filed twelve organized crime cases and caught a hit man murderer. In April? Suddenly, I was writing parking tickets on midnight shift in uniform, in patrol. You see, I’d gotten caught in the latest flu that blew through in March. A couple of admin idiots decided to
“shake things up,” “move things around,” “make a new unit,” “give other people a chance,”
you know...what ever their clever, catch phrases were. I was essentially sent from the Army to the Navy. A divisional change. I stayed a few more years in patrol feeling utterly wasted compared to what I had been accomplishing as a detective. Thanks a lot, Chief! But never mind me. Think of all the people involved in such arbitrary, organizational changes. Change for the sake of change. Think of all the child-care and spousal jobs structured to be together, second jobs, college...the list can go on and on, well beyond the discussion of wasted training. Just like my old friend’s professional and family life changed dramatically with his switch. He too, just like me, was emotional attached to being an investigator.
I know that my friend, nor I, were brain surgeons and that investigations or patrol, or training is not like brain surgery. I know we are all expendable pawns. The Army taught me that long ago. I just wish the next, new police chief would not flip over the barrel and play Russian Roullette with the careers, lives and families of their employees, just because...they can. I also have been around enough administrators to know that often these changes are implemented to make the “old hands” feel as uncomfortable and unstable as the new chief feels, thus allowing the new boss to make other changes without the customary roadblocks. And dare we mention political vendettas?
Maybe the new police chief needs to become a janitor for awhile, you know...”just to shake things up.” and leave the successful, established, seasoned veteran people alone to do what they do quite well. Leave my friends alone!
Adios Amigos
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24 October 2009: Understanding Public Perception to Weapon Quick Draws
You have drawn your weapon. You have done this to create a command presence to stop violence before it happens, or to stop violence while it is happening. You draw your weapon to:
Reason to Draw 1: Stop violence before it happens
Reason to Draw 2: Stop violence while it is happening
People around you will be witnesses either for or against your actions, all viewing the events through their prejudices and memories. Many legal experts say that while in action you should proclaim things like: “Stop!” "Quit!"
“Stop! Do not make me hurt you.”
“I do not want to hurt you.”
If you are a true, mature student of modern, survival strategies, then you must recognize all the post-action challenges that arise. You must survive both the fight and its aftermath legally, emotional and physically. All your actions must be appropriate legal, moral, ethical use of force considerations of the situation.
Adios Amigos
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21 October 2009: The Eyes Have it!
Now...for starters, I do not know who the people are in this photo. I do not know what the lesson of the article was. I was sent this picture by a friend. I mean no ill-will towards these guys and have no idea what their point was. Its just a handy photo.
The reason I am using the sample here is two-fold. One is to discuss the infamous scarf-hold, which the top-side guy is doing, known also as Kasa-Gatame (spelling varies). In the picture, Mr. Bottom is shoving his left foreman into the neck of the Mr. Top. The top-guy's right arm is wrapped around the bottom's guys neck- ergo the word "scarf." Everyone should be familiar with this position because in close quarter grappling situations, folks often fall and/or are thrown into this very position on accident or on purpose.
As the top-side guy, you might not like it? As I don't. The top-side scarf man always has trouble with the bottom-side guy's inside arm, as shown in the above photo. Look at the the bottom guy's left arm. Its free! But, like the scarf hold or not, you might well find yourself right there in it!
When I was heavy into the JKD Concepts world in the late 80s, early 90s, I was involved in their shoot-fighting program and we spent much time in this position. We had to memorize a series of tricks from the bottom-side, as well as from the top side. None involved eye attacks. Not cricket! These were mostly all sports responses and therefore as a cop, I was greatly disinterested in most of the wrestling related moves. Generally there are about 35 steps and points for the top and bottom Scarf. I did memorize them and did them all for testing, (blindfolded) but I was really looking for the faster, easier and real-world, way. I filtered it down to several moves and teach those in seminars. The loose/free, inside arm of Mr. Bottom (the left arm in the photo) has many sport issues and counters and only a few real-world counters.
Here, for the purpose of our study - as in the photo - you are Mr. Bottom. Mr. Top also happens to be Mr. KNIFE! So...we probably need to kill this mother-fucker. This is a lethal force situation. Which leads us to our second point here - the eye attack. If we can kill him? We can blind him. Shoving one's forearm against the throat as shown is a fool's waste of time compared to sticking one's fingers DEEPLY in the eyeballs of the armed enemy. An eye attack is the quickest, appropriate counter right here.
Mr. Sport-guy, otherwise known as Mr Rules-guy, whether bottom or top, remains unaware off this however because the eye attack is off-limits in sport training and sport competition. His muscle memory is void of the move, as one might guess with the bottom-side guy in the above photo because he is shoving on the throat.
Without facing a weapon, without an obvious lethal force situation, an eye rake or push attack, NOT a full, blinding official "commando" gouge may be done gaining good distraction and results to Mr Top Side. It may well move Mr. Top right off and out of the scarf hold. In the proverbial empty hand street fight, all top-side people must fear the eye attack because they cannot capture that inside arm. Mr. Top might quickly beat the face of Mr Bottom, short-circuiting the possible eye-attack. Ground and pound is good! And thank goodness it is popular again. So, Mr. Top better be aware of this eye-attack weakness inherent in the scarf hold.
In Summary:
1) People often wind up in the Scarf Hold. Know about it. Visit there in your practice. With and without weapons.
2) The bottom-side guy must remember to use a quick eye attack to varying degrees as needed, with his free arm. Against the knife attacker? Maim, blind and if need be - kill.
Adios Amigos
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16 October 2009: My New Paladin Press DVD Has Been Released 
Tim Llacuna and I worked hard for three, long days under the lights at the Paladin Studios to capture approximately 35 different stick takedowns from head, neck, torso, arms, legs on down to the ankle. Total package. This is a way advanced version of the multiple sets of my SDMS Pull, Pull and Turn Takedown series. As others have said, "No one has put this package together like this!" I am proud of the material and class act production that Paladin amassed.
Paladin says-
"In this hard-hitting video, military veteran, former cop, and world renowned self-defense expert W. Hock Hochheim takes decades of street experience, strips away the theory, and brings you a stick takedowns program you can use as a civilian, law enforcement officer, or military professional. The point isn't to create a so-called "stick fighter," but a street warrior capable of handling almost any violent encounter using a stick, baseball bat, or any other like blunt weapon, including less-lethal use of the rifle or shotgun. Hochheim first teaches..."
See a flim clip! Read more! Buy it here Click here!
Adios Amigos
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12 October 2009: My First Brush With the “Da' Mob” or "The Italian Stick Shift Job"
In one of my jobs as a teen-ager, I worked in a long-established, family-owned, department store. It was a downtown staple and a four-story landmark in a city near Manhattan, New York. As I worked, I scraped together some money and at the age of 17 bought my first car, a used 1965 Chevy Nova II for a whopping $300.
I could barely drive as it was, but I had a car! It had an automatic transmission (this is important later) and the Nova was supposed to be a sporty two-door car, a “chick magnet” - I believe the timely vernacular would declare. I soon realized I needed to take it into the "magnet shop" to have an overall magnetization and get that chick-attraction thing going. THAT would be expensive and involved a haircut, new suede boots and a newfangled, FM radio!
Meanwhile rumor-control, gossip-central had it that the department store was in financial straits and pulling all kinds of tricks and deals to keep the big store open and afloat. After several failures, suddenly one Monday, in walked a new admin supervisor, called a “comptroller” or a money controller. He was overweight, loud, brassy and obnoxious. His black hair was slicked back and before long it became apparent he was...connected. Connected as with the mob, the mafia. That is where the new money came from. It offered them a chance for money laundering and all the kinds of things you read about and saw (correctly, by the way) in the Sopranos TV show. Well, more specifically, not the Soprano era, not the Marlon Brando era, but the Al Pacino era. The guy’s name was actually “Tony.”
Tony was scary. Especially scary to me, a young 17 year-old. You didn’t grow up in the lower middle class in these neighborhoods without knowing about the mob. Our city mayor was killed in his house just down the street from I lived. My bosses were afraid of Tony, hated to even see him walking around. This fear fell on down to me. I barely had any contact with him. But one afternoon, the phone rang, I answered and a secretary told me to report to Tony’s office. Ahhhh what?
“What for?”
“I don’t know.” I got on the elevator and told the operator in the velvet suit, “fourth floor.” He turned the handle on the big brass crank and skyward we went.
“Fourth floor,” he bellowed. He opened the cage door and I crossed the admin floor to the office of Big Tony.
“Heeeyy, Hock. How are you? Listen. Do me a favor will ya? Dey’ called and told me my car was done. Can ya’ run over dere’ and pick it up fa’ me?”
“Sure can.”
“Mitchell will drop you off. Its at the Botchakaloop Brothers on Tonalli Ave,” he told me.
“OK.”
“Don’t hurt her now,” Tony said with a serious leer, and I wondered if I would soon be buried in the Jersey swamps. But how hard could this be? I learned to drive in a 4-door, Ford Galaxie 500. Tony must have a Caddy or a Lincoln. I can do this.
Mitchell drove me down the hills to Botchakaloops. A mechanic tossed me a set of keys and pointed to the car on the front lot. On my God! It was like...like some kind of Italian sports car. Top down convertible. I didn’t know shit-from-shinola about sports cars, but this looked like a million dollars. Goldfinger has one! Hugh Hefner! If I bang this baby up? Its two slugs to the back of the head and I’m dumped off the Palaski Skyway!
I got behind the wheel and looked at the dash trying to figure out where to stick the ignition key. Then I saw my doom for certain. It was not an automatic transmission. It had a gear shift and I am now totally screwed. I had never driven a stick in my short life. Least of all a mafia car, stick shift. I broke out in a cold sweat.
My friend Dave had a red hot Camaro and I tried to remember how he shifted. One up, two off, where’s reverse? And all that clutch and gas pedal thing. You have to understand that this catastrophe occurred in and around the Palisades Cliffs. HUGE, steep hills with red lights. All that starting and stopping at damn near 40 degree angles. Some worse. I started the engine with a power roar. I stepped on the clutch and picked a gear, fishing for reverse. Nope, ROAR. Nope. Stutter. Stall.
A Botchakaloop looked out at me. I gave him a thumbs up and a smile. He shook his head.
Start. Stutter. Shift....reverse. REVERSE! I found it. I’ll have to remember where that is! I toyed with the gas and clutch and backed out on busy street, causing an angry traffic delay when I landed there. Second gear, no first, stutter....jerked off, tires squealing.
I turned right, battling with the gears, grinding them out, hoping that true Italian masters had constructed the transmission to battle tank specs. Ahead of me? A giant, long, long hill. If I got stuck at a red light? Could I balance the clutch and gas and hold that car still on a such a hill? On green, could I then move without rolling backwards hitting any car waiting behind me. I envisioned telling Tony I wrecked his dream car. What kind of pistol or stilletto was Tony packen' today?
I gassed it. Big time, whining out the gears. The light was still green. Faster. FASTER. I hit fourth gear and this car was hyper-jumping, Star Trek, warp speed.
YELLOW light! No! NOOoooooo! I floored it. Just as the light turned red at the intersection I blasted through it but had to make a sudden, serious right turn. This car about left the ground as I barely controlled the steering wheel. Everyone looked at me like I was a madman. Another hill and another distant traffic light. Clear ahead. Go-go-go-gogogogogogo.
The light went yellow then red. No way I could bust through it. I slowed down and grinded each poor gear into where I thought first gear was. Like a juggler with the gas and clutch I crept toward the stop. Rolling...don't make me stop! Come on! A damn car pulled right up behind me.
Turn light. Turn light. Turn! It didn’t turn. I was forced into a full stop at the top of the steep hill. The carb burped and coughed. Not a stall no! NO! Can’t roll back. That idiot was inches behind me.
Green light. I thought I was in first gear. I seesawed the pedals. Come on. The guy behind me pounded on his horn. I did something! The sports car jolted forward like a rocket, whiplashing my head back. But I was now on level ground. No more hills between me and the store parking lot.
Still unsteady, still grinding out the gears, I made the last few turns and pulled into the Comptroller’s reserved, parking space. God! Neutral. I pulled the parking brake. I looked around and after tugging and twisting on everything in the interior, it took me a full ten minutes to figure out how to close the rooftop. I circled the car and sniffed the air to see if I set the damn thing on fire. Burned a belt, a shaft, a gear? No aroma of abuse.
“Fourth floor!” bellowed the elevator man. I exited and returned to Tony’s office. He wasn’t in to see the sweat stains in my armpits. I put his car keys in the center of his desk and told the secretary where they were. I felt like a hit man that flubbed a hit. One broken gear? One broken knee cap? What’s the retribution for a stripped gear? With interest? The vig?
I got out off the fourth floor. Took the stairs in case Tony was on the elevator. For the next few days I never saw Tony in the store. One day he passed me, busy talking with some sales manager. He barely nodded at me. Maybe that damn car was built like a tank after all! And his car was fine. What a way to start shifting gears. On a Mafia sports car.
Eventually, Tony was gone is some kind of payoff to him for the emergency "loan," as other financing was obtained. But within a year or two the store folded.
Meanwhile, I started paying more attention in my friends’ cars and their shifting. Once in awhile I had to move theirs around and got in a little practice. I later traded my Nova in for a motorcycle and came to a peaceful co-existence with gears and shifting, even if the peace treaty was written with a cycle.
Then a few years later, I found myself shifting an Army jeep’s gears through a dirt road, obstacle course to obtain my military driver’s license. No problem. But I was surprised to see in that course how many people never learned to shift gears and they had to endure remedial, after-hours training just to pass that simple test.
To this day, decades later, I still can’t understand why people want cars with standard transmissions. The auto transmission is one of mankind's greatest inventions! Constantly, shifting gears? Don’t they have coffee they need to drink while driving?
And I often wonder, if I had cracked up Big Tony’s super car back in the 1960s in a stupid accident, would I be limping today? Would my bones be "sleeping with fishes" off the Skyway? Alongside "Three Fingers Louey"?
Adios Amigos
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8 October 2009: Grabbing the Gun When Its Going Off
Grabbing the enemy's gun is an essential, life-saving skill. Hanging on to it through the presentation and even its firing is an important part. U.K. war vet Alan Cain gave me these photos from some of his recent British Army training conducted by an American Green Beret. The purpose of the session was to see if the soldiers could develop the fortitude to hold onto a pistol through firing - the explosion and to examine the damage that might occur. 
As you can see, the teams used both revolvers and semi-autos. If you are new to then gun “bidness” you may not know that the explosion inside a revolver discharge escapes a great deal more, via the frame openings, than does the more enclosed, semi-auto pistol. (That's Cain holding the pistol top)
You can see the long stripped burns on the palms come from the revolver. Smaller black burns come from the ejection port of the semi auto. Keep in mind the troops were not wrestling with these guns in these test, which might actually move the slide of a semi-auto and stop a bullet from firing. They were just holding on.
Also you can see some cuts from where the semi-auto slide move cut the flesh. You may also suffer some "erupted skin."
If a revolver's cylinder is gripped very tightly, the gripper’s five fingers usually have more strength than the shooter’s one finger pulling the trigger and trying to turn the cylinder. (The trigger finger must turn the cylinder in a double action trigger pull.) The gripper’s five may prevent the cylinder from turning and the revolver from firing.
Anyway, I thought you'd like to see these Alan Cain pictures. I have written before about one event when I push-pulled a revolver from a guy's hand in a struggle. He fired it. the right side of my head received a reddish-"sunburn" but it popped blood vessel into smal star-like patterns around my eye and cheekbone. My hand? Nothing! But, I am not sure where my hand was at the exact flashpoint. I eventually grabbed the cylinder and frame with my left hand.
Adios Amigos
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3 October 2009: Proof Positive! Old movie posters are better than the new ones!
Check out this 1960s movie poster. They don't make them, or book covers, like they use to. (Nor do they make the stars like they use, at least not in America. The Brits and Australians have all kinds of macho stars. In America we have...Leonardo De Capria. Bruce Willis maybe, he can pull a good trigger and looks old school. Will Smith.)
Adios Amigos +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 October 2009: Tina the Cannibal Emu – by Buffalo Nickels
I heard from an old salt the other day that an emu was shot "down under" by a Marine. I thought at first it was another name for a sheik, emir, iyak, shesskabob ... some kind of turban head what got nailed in the balls. But no...it's an ostrich, and it got nailed in Australia - THAT "down under." I don't know the difference between an emu and ostrich. Don't tell me. I don't wanna' know. Don't care. But the teletype communique ran something like this :
"Military officials are investigating the death of an emu killed during a May 8 live fire training exercise in Australia. The death of the large ostrich-like bird forced the suspension of Exercise Tandem Thrust, a joint operation held every four years in Australia with 27,000 troops from both countries participating. Americans and Australian officers are tasked with the investigation. All marines in the area will undergo a refresher course on how to protect plants and animals during training. The Marine Corps promises swift action against these offenders."
As I read this, I thought to myself, maybe that emu needed killing! And I'll tell ya' why...I'll tell you the frighteningly true story of Tina the Cannibal Big Bird.
I had a First Sergeant we'll call Lefty who retired from the Army back in the '80s and sat around for a year or so afterward doing absolutely nothing. He has since died of cancer, but back then he got bored and so he decided he would use some perfectly good farm property for a real "cash cow," I mean cash critter...the emu.
Their eyeballs, you see, can be transplanted for human eyes. The meat is fat free and tastes better than chicken. Their glorious feathers adorn fashionable clothing. Their necks, once hollowed out, can be used for fire hoses. Their legs and feet, once petrified, make excellent back scratchers. In short, every part of this damn critter can be cashed in for moola. Gettis. Even emu poop makes good fertilizer.
All Lefty thought he needed was a momma and pappa emu. Once he had the two lovebirds settled in beautiful upstate New York they would fuck and create platoons of potential organs, steaks, hoses and back scratchers. He sent off for them (and they were expensive!) and waited excitedly for them to arrive. Once the newlyweds arrived, he quickly settled them on the family farm near the Finger Lakes. His wife named them Ike and Tina, after the infamous Turners. Perhaps this was a mistake? Or fate?
But Ike and Tina didn't fuck. They fought. Tina pecked, kicked and clawed at Ike, day and night until one day, Ike just turned up his toes and died. Lefty drove up with the daily emu feed and found Tina feasting on Ike's fat free meat! Gone cannibal! When Lefty tried to shoo Tina away, she came after him! Now Lefty saw combat in Vietnam, but the 6 ft., 6 inch bird quickly proved too much for him.
With crazy, kicking legs and a huge, thrusting, bulbous body, she clawed and scratched him in places he didn't even know he had. In the blink of an eye, he turned tail and ran for his truck. The giant bird creature sprinted after him. Ike's bloody tendons flapped like wet, red strings from her mouth as she made hot pursuit. Lefty claimed she made frightening dinosaur screeches as she ran.
Tina covered considerable ground on him before he jumped into the truck, Lefty gained entrance without an inch to spare. As he slammed the door, Tina began banging her beak against the window so hard, he thought she might break the glass. "She started jumping up and down," Lefty told me,"her body butting up against the truck. The bird went berserk" Then the feet started in kicking and scratching the truck, as she bleated savagely. It was Big Bird gone mad. On LSD. On PCP. And a cannibal.
"I thought I can't just drive away. I still have to get out and open the gate. Then close it. And what if she attacks somebody else?" Lefty told me.
Resolved to take action, Lefty popped his glove box and pulled out his .357 Smith and Wesson revolver. He told me later he stuck the barrel at her face behind the glass and yelled at her. (He later admitted he felt foolish for doing this since being an emu from Australia, she had certainly never seen a gun). Tina kept on screeching and clucking and banging the driver's door.
He slid over to the passenger door and got out. The nightmare bird dashed around the hood of the truck in hot pursuit. Lefty scrambled to jump into the truck bed, but before he could escape entirely Tina's head lunged out like a giant rattler and bit the right cheek of his ass. Yelping in pain, he pulled free and, staggering back into the bed, he fired a magnum round at the bird's fuzzy head.
Clipped her! Tina's head swung back, and she began to swoon like some sort of drunk puppet.
"Gotcha ya, ya skank bastid!" he yelled with glee. He felt of his bleeding ass and wondered how bad she had wounded him. For a brief moment Tina seemed to recover, and her head snapped forward again. Lefty tumbled back, falling into seed bags and loose tools, the hydra head striking at him here and there. He saw it leaping up and down as if it were going to hop into the bed with him!
Fired again. Missed. Fired again. Missed. Fired again! Got her.
Tina lurched back. Lefty crawled onto one knee and fell forward where he says he hung himself over the side of the truck, took aim and emptied the gun into Tina's fat torso. It wriggled. It spun. It made a croaking noise and fell.
"I had a chunk of my life savings tied up in those two birds. One of them almost killed me," Lefty told me. "There they lay, dead on the ground."
Years later, I knew a lot of emu owners who wished they too had just up and shot those expensive, worthless birds, or shot the con men that sold them in the Great Emu Rush of the 1980s.
I laughed like hell when Lefty told me this, but you know ... when I see ostriches, or emus, in the zoo, I feel damn glad there's a fence between us. They are huge, and they are ugly. I have heard stories about them pecking off the tips of people's noses, fingers, stomping and scratching up people with their giant chicken feet that look like alien claws. They are ugly and dangerous, and I don't like them. And, personally, I don't care if they wander onto a training field and get nailed. Do you?
Anyway, as I said before, I think if the truth were known, those Marines probably acted in self-defense.
Bye-Bye 
(This was the work of Buffalo Nickels, former SF soldier and madman. We do not usually agree with his comments. Nor should you. Please do not visit the Buffalo Nickels page. It may offend you. Click here - The Buff )
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Yes, the book, years in the making, is finished. 300 pages. Over 1700 how-to photographs. This is not the razor-thin, large-print, knife books you have seen by others in the past.
Even I am impressed and I am my own worst critic. Click here for more
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