November,2008

SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE

"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"

30 November 2008: Losing It - Mad Enough to Kill | Part 8

Looking at the business end of my .45, Joe froze. Suddenly we both realized just how completely out of breath we were. Getting my handcuffs on this big bastard was my next plan. How would that go? There was a greater commotion outside, and suddenly Joe's section chief, a respected, well-liked warrant officer appeared in the doorway with another N.C.O. I later learned the duo had been drinking in the Ventura Club and were summoned to the scene by the frantic locals.

"J. W., what are you doing?" the warrant officer asked, looking at the two of us. Him with a poker. Me with a pistol.

It was as though, Ducks suddenly snapped back into sanity. "Man, oh man." Joe said, shaking his head. He sat on a nearby chair's arm, sucking air. He laid the poker on the chair. I holstered my gun. My vibes told me the struggle was over. Wrong again, Sherlock.

The Korean, whose hootch we wreaked, yelled for us to get out. Sorry, we Americans are occupying this foreign soil a little longer. You will return to your card game when we're good and ready. And worse now, the girl and sister were there. Plus some older folks that appeared to be their relatives.

Joe started talking some gibberish about the Korean girl. Pointing at her. I saw that her clothing was torn. Her face was bleeding. Even the protective sister was banged up. I slowly began to realize that I had probably interrupted a rape. The warrant officer stood beside Ducks, almost coddling him, rubber his shoulder, saying "come on J.W. Come on. Let's go back to the base, J. W. Come on ... come on." The officer knew to get Ducks off the scene before the Korean police got there. Notoriously inept and slow, this was not a usual problem, but a problem in such a case as a rape.

Joe pulled away from these good intentions and the officer's friendly hand. The sister began shouting. The man who owned the hootch continued his broken English chant for us to leave. The family shouted in Korean, shaking their fists at Ducks.

The angry, staccato chorus of voices ticked him off again. He shot up to his feet.

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" He shouted back.

The wide, bugged-out eyes were back. The back spread wide again. The raised arms. The demon eyes. He shoved the warrant officer off. He shoved away the NCO. He charged at the original girl, yet again!

You know, sometimes I try to recall exactly what kind of instinctive, chemical "burn" I felt at that moment. What is it? Where does it come from? This raw emotion of murder? Of Death? I know my face must have contorted. I lost all notice of my body, my thoughts. I was going to kill Joe Ducks. And in my gut, I knew deep down, my gun just wouldn't do. Wouldn't do it justice. It wouldn't be satisfying enough. These are not thoughts, just emotions that took over my head and chest. At this point, Ducks was just seven or eight feet from me, but I bolted for him, like I was starting a 100 yard footrace. Joe became my demon quarterback and he was going to hell. Not even, Siberia wasn't far enough away.

I crashed into his side at a hundred miles an hour. We went airborne into some furniture, then he landed chest down on the hard stone floor, with me square on top of him. He tried to get up, but I aimed and belted him about five hard shots in the side of his face, his head bounced off the stone floor. Hitting him anywhere else was padded. His neck was smothered in clothes. Killing Joe Ducks was all about the head now. Somehow, somewhere in this roughhouse struggle, I lost both my gloves off my hands. I buried both my hands deep into his thick afro.I somehow remember this feel on my fingers. I began lifting and banging his skull on the stone floor. Oh, I figured 30 or 40 good smashes might do it up real good. Everlasting good.

The spark of resistance left him. Suddenly I was yanked off Ducks. Airborne! The warrant officer had one of my arms, the NCO the other. Hell, I think even the little Korean homeowner had a piece of me. I was airlifted across the room. Ducks was out cold, Drooling. Bleeding. I craned my neck to see his carcass, to see him dead. You have to see….

“Hock! Hock, he is out cold,” the warrant officer's voice began to metastasize in my brain. I calmed myself down. With this release of tension, they let go of me. I walked back across the room, lifted his limp arms behind him and cuffed them. The warrant officer and I pulled Ducks into a chair. Looked him over. His spark was coming back, as he mubbled. We each grabbed and arm. He barely resisted us as we pulled him from the hootch, down the courtyard, and down the long dirt road through the village. Then, after several stops to collect his balance, we hauled him back to the base. At this point, I was so maddened and determined, I could have dragged him all the way back to the states.

It was our practice to put detainees in the lobby of the headquarters building. You see, we were so far away from major posts that we had no official jail, no holding facilities. We had to requisition a police jeep from Kempo, wait for it and take him in. It was not uncommon for everyday, disruptors, assaulters, drunk and problem children to be “sent to their room,” so to speak, in the barracks upon some commander imposed watch or control. Then to his fate was left for the company captain in the morning. More than often, news of these events never reached battalion headquarters at Camp Red Cloud, and no small scale, non-court martial, punishment was doled out. It was handled “in house.” But, not this time. As we passed our M.P. office, I shouted in for an order of a MP vehicle to come and pick Ducks up.

The officer said, "No, no, Hock, we can handle this here."

I ignored him. A police jeep was going to carry J. W. Ducks away to jail, or I was. We continued across the grounds and into the HQ building. I sat him in a chair in the orderly room. Ducks sat, head hung low. The room stayed quiet. An MP sergeant joined us. Twenty or minutes later, the transport jeep arrived. I filled out some brief paperwork with charges on disorderly conduct and aggravated assault. Something like that, I can't remember. They carted a quiet, solemn, J. W. Ducks away. I stepped outside and watched them go down the dirt road, then turn right on the paved streets of the downtown village.

Back inside HQ, I went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror. Dried blood on my face. I could almost chip it off at this point. My cold face was just swollen and numb. I found my ear was still where it was supposed to be, just a different color. The swelling in some of my fingers ached. Motion was limited. Where in hell were my gloves?

That sure was ugly. Having to fight a friend. The broken furniture, kimchi jars, stoves, pipes, hot coals, pokers, guns, flips, punches, kicks, a damsel in distress, yup, that was one fight to remember, I thought, as I hit the dirt road on foot. The Siberian cold front was just now, really blowing in. I tell ya' it seemed like the wind chill could freeze the water in your eyes. I still had to collect some witness names down in village. That poor girl's name, for sure. And, I still had another hour or two before the shift ended...still time one more turn through town.

This arrest? It was screw-up on my part. That encounter lasted too long, so much longer than it should because I had violated the impersonal, “get-it-over-quick” rule. Since I knew Ducks? I let the fight last too long. I also belive he felt the same toward me. This delay was and is an unprofessional, screw-up, which resulted in more injuries, more damage and even worse, my own personal descent into madness. Temporary insanity you might say. Losing it. That was the first time in my life, as well as the last time, that I felt that exact, extreme primitive, animalistic feeling.

I have taught in my classes and seminars for many years now, the idea that inside each of us is a Wolf-man, a Dr. Jekyll to your Mister or Missus Hyde – a beast we may need someday to call upon to stay alive and survive. It's biological. He is that growl in your chest. Locate it and feed it just enough to keep it alive. It will keep you alive. And in the meantime, better learn how to keep it in its damn cage.

Oh, did Joe fly home to Alabama a few weeks later? Yes, he did. The Army has a certain was of handling these things.

Adios, Amigos

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26 November, 2008: Losing It - Mad Enough to Kill | Part 7

The one Army, am radio station reported another Siberian Cold Front blowing in, which always frosted the mind into experiencing a cold front like no other. Siberia was once the Gulag, the purgatory, the solitary confinement camp-land for all bad Russians. Now it is capital of Russia's oil and gas industry. Oil rig or slave camp, cold is cold, and if you whistle while you work too long up there, you imagine a long, thin, pencil of ice quickly appearing before your lips. Johnny Carson once said that far north Bangor, Maine was so cold…”how cold was it?”…. “I once saw a dog frozen to a fire hydrant.”

But there was no Carson Tonight Show, no dogs or even fire hydrants as I walking a beat down through the village just south of the DMZ and northeast of Incheon bay. The dogs here were served medium rare for dinner, Gaegogi - they called it, and there were no underground pipes for any water except the paved parts of main street, downtown. Nothing but the threat of that cold front looming from the great Red, commie north. At times like these I thought about the Korean War, the sheer winter of all it, and what a miserable experience it must have been to slug it out in this weather.

Our foot patrols were usually kept just to the main areas that GIs either lived, shopped or frequented, which was a turf redefined and renigged at times by the local Korean village police. Many times we were even barred! Local politics! But, we were always supposed to patrol the "general" grounds all around the base for a variety of security reasons. I guess thats what they now call "force protection." Once, my MP, K-9 buddies found a hidden North Korean weapon's cache buried on the hillside for a future "re-load/re-arm" attack. A dog smelled it all!

Here's some of the semi-paved streets and trails I walked.

The one paved main, downtown, village street. And to the right, a typical village cop we dealt with, problem-solving the comings and goings of soldiers living and visiting the local population. For the most part, I always liked these guys. The girl with me? Don't even ask....

Ordinarily? Hardly, nothing much at all happened. Pretty boring things. But, on this dark and frozen night, I made a turn down a courtyard of small apartments – what the indigs call “hootches” and wandered through the maze of alleys behind the infamous “Ventura Club.” Ventura was one of the many hangouts and bars in the village where a troop could sit and listen to KC and the Sunshine Band, drink opium-laced wine, buy raw street drugs, feel up floozies and get rolled by local “slickie-boy” thugs on the walk back to base. Fun night. The walkways and hallways of the hootch min-complexes were cement and/or cinder block walls with dwelling doors every eight feet or so. Once in awhile the walkways would open to some courtyards that housed small chicken pens, outdoor bathrooms, or hand, well-water pumps. All kinds of people lived here. A Captain kept a prized hooker here. So did a corporal, “pussy” sometimes being the great equalizer. Amongst them were factory workers, farmers and families.

I heard something funny down one alleyway, a whimpering of some kind, and took a turn to find the shadowy source. Two people. One big. One small. The sounds came from a small Korean girl. But, she couldn't make too much noise because J. W. Ducks had his huge hands on her neck and was choking the life out of her!

“JOE!” I shouted and sprinted to them. Fresh off the “let's save Joe Ducks” parade, I was incredulous and confused. I latched onto one of Ducks' arms, and yanked it free of the teenager. He leered at me with the bug-eyed face of a wild lunatic. The girl was still powerless under Joe's one hand.

I yelled his name again and punched the inside of his arm knocking his last grip away. The girl gagged and bolted from us, but fell clutching her throat, remaining at the turn of the alley.

Joe pretended I wasn't there, "Come here, you fucking bitch!" he yelled to her. When I got in his path, he tried to shove me aside, and the old football-style, grappling that we had done in practice ironically returned to us. We struggled, all the while with me telling him, "Quit, man quit! Quit!" I was still in reasoning mode.

Joe finally reasoned that I was there to stay. Unlike the offensive lineman he'd blasted past before, He was grabbing, gripping and clawing at me, and I battered it aside. Then he stepped back. "O.K. you mother fucker, O.K.!" he growled, swelling up his chest, winging out his arms wide, all the usual animal-about-to-fight signs. Something commonly done "for show," “Look at how big I am,” message. It's a biological thing.

Well sir, we had us a fight right there. We hit like Sumo wrestlers do and bashed into the wall sideways, Joe still trying mostly to get around me. He bounced off the wall lunging for the girl, who crawled off and screamed. I clasped onto his leg and scaled up his back until he lost his balance and we crashed again into the opposite wall. I got up and tried to talk more sense to him, getting between him and the girl. We stared at each other for a second, and I felt that in the dark recesses of his whiskey-ized brain, and he stunk of it, he recognized me as his friend. And I still didn't want to really hurt ol' Joe.

And for exactly that reason, this became my longest, and worst fight I have ever had. Just a few years before, I was a student of Kenpo Karate. I was taught and had decided all my future confrontations, were all going to be fast and effective. None of this wrestling-around-crap! Just serious, quick business. But in that alley, I made the mistake of not wanting to be too "serious" with Joe. And so, it lingered on into this mess...

He rushed me, swinging his fists and I caught several glancing blows, one to my face, but I caught his left arm above his elbow, forcing him across the alley to an already familiar wall. He hit face first. I pulled down hard on the arm, struggling for a behind-the-back, arm hold. But Joe was a bull. With his free hand he grabbed my belt. We grappled along the wall, exchanging wild punches until he fell into several large, empty kimchi jars, with me falling on top of him. By this time, some of the hootches were showing signs of life. Lights coming on. Doors were opening. The locals chattering.

Joe and I wrestled around in the smashed rubble. His fingernails had slit my gum and I was bleeding from my mouth and nose. My breath was short and I was hot. Joe's fingers were in my eyes as he pushed my face away. My "good ol' Joe" attitude was slowly leaving. I punched him in the face a real, brain-shaking one. I stood up, feeling confident I could shove him down if he tried to stand amongst the shattered jar pieces.

“Stay down!” I ordered. I still had my .45 in flap holster on my belt but was not going to pull it. I just knew not to "gun-bluff" Joe as it would work at him, and I did not want to shoot ol' Joe Ducks! Plus, I could just predict we would start fighting over that gun. I wore gloves and had several layers of clothes on under my flight jacket and all this cement and cinder block crashing and scraping has not reached skin level yet. Other than a little blood and swelling, some pain, I was…doing okay so far. But so was Joe-Joe under his many layers.

He collected his senses, ignored my commands and started climbing out of the clutter. The athletic bastard took my all shoves and still came up to his feet, thrashing his arms at mine. His head was about my stomach high and he charged. Even with my back-peddling to try a head shot...somehting... he tackled me right down, damn near running right over the top of me, those heavy, old army boots coming down hard. He essentially ran right over me like a freight train. Even stepping right on my head and really twisting the hell out of my ear!

He was back and bound for the girl, who was at this time accompanied by her sister who must have responded to the shouting. Joe got to both of them. I was almost flat out, wondering if my ear was still attached to his boot sole, or was it relocated to the top of my head ... or maybe in orbit as I felt like I was in orbit. The girls screamed. He was hurting both of them.

Ducks had the girl by the throat again and was thrashing away at her sister. I guess, he was dead set on strangling this girl to death? The sister screeched Korean curses. I reluctantly staggered to my feet, limped over, reached out and grabbed the back of Joe's jacket collar, then kicked down very, very hard on the back of his right calf.

A textbook move. Why is it textbook? It works. I pulled back as hard as I could and Joe was going down, but pulling the girl with him. He also reached out and hung onto my sleeve on the way down and we all three ended up in a tangled pile. She crawled away and Joe and I wound up wrestling and punching at each other, with most of the blows landing on multiple layers of clothes.

We actually used our own forward momentum against each other to get back up on our feet. I'd thought I'd belted in some really good head shots. I had practiced and worked out for years at this point, but they were just not working. My gloves? His drugs and drink? I just couldn't get to his jaw and neck because of his big winter jacket and flannel shirt and sweatshirt – whatever the hell else he was wearing. It was like we were both fighting each other in football uniforms.

We crashed into and knocked open an hootch door, falling right on top of two Korean couples playing cards on their floor. They shrieked, and deservedly so as to giant Americans exploded in. Ducks started beating down on my head and shoulders, as they scrambled free from the fracas. My boots were slipping on the linoleum and just couldn't get a base to escape. Their neighbors outside, and now some Americans, rushed to the doorway to see the rest of the show.

There was a small stove in the middle of the floor with a metal tube chimney that ran up to the ceiling, then to a window. We slipped, skidded and scrambled near to the stove and with a knee up and pivot, I threw Ducks into the whole, hot thing and he demolished the entire rig. A huge round piece of bright, glowing red coal, the size of a coffee can, hit the floor, black smoke hit the air as the chimney collapsed over us, and well - the whole room was a freaken' mess. “Sorry folks, just Americans passing through!”

Joe seemed stunned and tried to get up in slow motion, so I reached back and swung at his face, but missed, as in an off-balance second, he fell again. His arm landing on the coal. The Korean who lived there had a fire-poker of some kind and tried to retrieve the rolling, red-hot coal from the floor, but Joe snatched the poker from his hands and sneered at me. He got to knee, and I could tell by his face he was ready to whip me good with that metal poker. OK, this is new ball game. Football is over, my friend. That old flap on my holster did not slow me down. I pulled my .45 out, as Joe reared back that poker.

...The next part comes very soon...

Adios, Amigos

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23 November, 2008: Losing It - Mad Enough To Kill |Part 6

J. W. Ducks ripped the car door right off the taxi cab. J. W. was mad. Madman mad! We were surprised when we heard about it. Well, I wasn't too surprised about the strength part, because I knew J. W. could rip a door off. Ducks and I had been defensive linemen on our army football team. He and I had chased quarterbacks together. No, this wasn't Army/Navy-like college level football. It was more like the football in the original MASH movie. Each company in the battalion had a team and it was all taken very seriously. Ducks was a big, tough guy, and though he was fast on the grid iron? He was a tad slow...upstairs, inside the helmet. If you get my drift.

Ducks was a bit, stout, black guy from Alabama, the head mail clerk of the army unit I was attached to as a Military Policeman. We were all stationed in the village of Kempo Op, South Korea, way up north, in a country place where Americans crossed each day off a calendar, much like an prison inmate, in hopes of doing their tour and returning back to the promised land of American women, bottled beer - not cans - and football games that didn't come six days later on some kind of old-school, video tape/film. Some call it "Asia 1970s."

Joseph W. Ducks was “X-ing” off the days in a calendar in his mailroom, and going back home soon! His days were numbered. He was "short" on Korea, as they say. And just when he should have started packing things up, whistling and smiling, he started messing up. Now, J. W. always hit the bottle hard ... whiskey. Everybody liked Ducks. Who doesn't like the main, "Santa Claus-boss," mail call guy? They liked him unless...he'd badly bruised his brain with a bottle of whiskey. Whiskey made him testy. And I had been able to talk him down a few times when he got confrontational out in the village or on the base. So had others. But this cab door thing was a surprise as he'd grown testy enough to start dismantling a taxi with his bare hands? As the cab driver screamed, J.W.'s friends pulled him away from the cab and hauled him back to his room.

The next morning, our M.P. office received a complaint from the driver. I stepped outside to see the irate driver with his four-door sedan – now with three doors, parked outside the main gate. He was yelling and waving his hands in the air as a KATUSA translator explained the problem to us. Several MP NCOs and unit artillery officers converged. A donation was immediately collected and we all orchestrated a repair of the cab, just so there wouldn't be any legal problems delaying Ducks' departure. But back in the MP office we all concluded that Ducks didn't want to go back to his Sweet Home Alabama. The Xs on his calendar were not heading toward his bliss, but his depression. A pact was made by all of us to try and keep Ducks out of trouble and back homeward bound sans a trip to the Korean or Federal jail. Just three weeks! SON! Did I eventually blow that!

...The next part comes very soon...

Adios, Amigos

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19 November 2008: Losing It | Part 5 - The Fickle Finger of Fate

Cops scare people. They’re supposed to. Scare the high holy hell outta’ people. You never really hear about this officially at the police academy - the need, the science or the high psychological art of scaring people. We’re actually supposed to scare people like Hell scares people. We paddle that boat on the River Styx of Hades to Dante’s Inferno - prison. Oh, we get the whispers of that subtle "fear" message. SWAT talk. Riot control talk. Command presence talk. How we yell, “freeze!” Or shout, “get down on the ground!”

“Say it with authority!” they tell us.

“Use command presence!” they advise.

No one ever comes right out and says that we’re scaring the snot out of people to do as they are told. Its all couched in politically correct lingo. We've all been exposed to the tough ol’ cowboy sheriff in the old west, or even the more modern Dirty Harry. But the citizens’ commissions do away with them as quickly as possible. No, you won’t get a three hour block of instruction at the academy on “Projecting Fear in Law Enforcement,” even though it will save your life, help protect and serve. But, like with anger, if you don’t talk openly and professionally about that ugly saber tooth? It just causes untold problems a little further down the line.

The common intellectuals (many call them liberal Democrats these days) squirm when they hear about military shock and awe, while higher intellects and dispassionate students of history see how sweeping, overpowering militant shock and awe makes the good guys win, and the bad guys buckle. Everything from a bug, to a squirrel and a mountain wolf, an angry mother to a Pittsburgh Steelers fan has a “war face.” Its biological. And that face tries to invoke fear to control the enemy. War is chock full of the projected fear from angry enemies and their barbaric and fierce reputations. As Miyamoto Musashi, the Japanese sword master once said,

"The mightiest warrior never has to use his sword.”

THAT...is “projected fear,” bubba. You may never rape and pillage? But if they think you will? When you draw near? They are packing their chandeliers on ox carts and getting out of Dodge - to play fast with an ol’ Russian Revolution phrase. Fact is that angry people scare people and cause fear, and in many ways, fear and anger management are connected in the professional missions of war and peace.

Fear, anger and pain management are three shelves in the war chest. How you manage the Big 3 has two parts, you and him. You feel it and then you project it onto him. It means not just controlling your inner demons as so many counselors and psychs like tell us is the key - and, they usually end the discussion right there as it is the politically correct place to stop. But this management is more. Its also how much do you project and inflict on the enemy. A true professional understands, relegates and delegates fear, anger and pain to..."win and influence people.” Relegates theirs. Projects onto those. You. Him. Two-prong management.

Learn to control your anger,

fear and pain that falls upon yourself and others.

In police work we cannot drops tons of missiles and then clean up the streets with boots on the ground. In police work we have a more delicate mission and we tiptoe about our territories surgically interfering or removing small renegade cells of problems. We...behave. We smile and bake Christmas cookies. The war face is is a rubber mask in the locker, the ones that the city mayor, the county commissioners and police management hide away. But fear and anger management is an invisible foundation of civilized society, even in the politics of the smallest and biggest businesses on the planet. The fear of anger and power. Lets pow-wow more about it right here.

Now, completely losing your temper is not anger management, it is the complete loss of it. And as a public service I continue to reveal some of the times I went...nutter, as my British friends would say. This offers a glimpse of the problem for police cadets and citizens even.

As the years past from my last episodes, I now fast forward to the early 1990s now as “sauteed and seasoned” detective. I was westbound in my plain sedan on Eagle Drive, listening to Rush Limbaugh on the AM radio. The world seemed sort of fine to me, or at least normal. Doing about 40 miles and hour, I past an apartment complex with a wide open driveway to my left. Within a second I saw a car and driver stopped on the parking lot entrance. The driver was talking to two men standing by the driver’s side door. Get the picture? Pretty normal, huh? It seems somehow that all three saw me and my obvious, hubcap-less detective car going by. Then in a split second, one of the standers flashed me...the “fuck you” finger. He had a bit of that arrogant face while doing so. I think...it was the face that got me, most . Arrogant, obnoxious, bully. A stupid face.

I hit the brakes. 40 MPH to zero. Now imagine this on a fairly busy city avenue. If I glanced in the rear view mirror, and Lord knows I hope I did? I don’t know. I slammed on the brakes. I slammed the car into reverse. I slammed on the gas pedal. I peeled rubber backwards on eagle Drive. I slammed into forward, I slammed the down on the gas. I peeled rubber with a left turn. I screeched to a halt by their car. In record NASCAR time. From when the nail of the middle finger first saw daylight? To the time I was beside them? Mere seconds.

I was salivating. I jumped from the car and marched up to them and could only growl, something like,

“you have something to tell me?”

I scanned all of them. Their eyes, their hands, every bit. I was the freaking Hulk. Fucking invincible. And they were not going to like me when I was angry.

The driver remained in his car. The two outside stood aghast. Jaws dropped. Hands at their sides. White-faced.

“You flash me the finger?” I barked at the finger-flasher.

“Ahhhh...NO!” he said with a puppy face.

“I saw you flash me the finger at me, you piece of shit-face. The next time you flash the finger at someone you might get your little, punk-ass kicked. Remember that!”

A few beats past as I stared at these human statues. I got back in my car and left. Within a few seconds I felt like an idiot. A blooming idiot. The whole episode probably took about 30 seconds? Could someone lose their cool and their mind in 30 seconds like that? Of course the answer would be yes. I hadn’t lost my control like that in years. Years! Weird thing was I’d been flashed the finger dozens of times through these years. I laughed the others off. Smiled at the flashers. Put them in context. Why now? Why did I suddenly become like that Vietnam vet, MP that hook-punched the young soldier back in South Korea?

Probably many reasons. Looking back. My second marriage was in shambles. My detective case load of felonies was bursting at the seams. A major murder trail was pending. My crazy, off-duty lifestyle (I won’t go into those details here in fear Baptists might start a 24/7 prayer group) was off the charts. No drugs, but I drank and I caroused. I ran a demanding, growing martial arts business taking more and more precious time that conflicted with everything. Still, the thing that mattered most to me back then was working cases as a detective. Priorities out of balance? Some might say I was a classic case, huh? A classic case of what? I didn’t exactly know.

It is a pressure cooker we create for ourselves. All of these things contribute to your potential, sudden loss of control. You think you are in control, but maybe not? They use to call it “burn-out,” too, or whatever, and you can be burned out in any profession. But like a cop or a soldier, my life was in the extreme end of the macho continuum. We carry bullets and guns, in case you haven’t noticed. A patch just blew off the ol’ pressure cooker. And I was about to smear the street with the carcasses of three young men. With my hands! Who needs a damn gun with this much bad-ass, gamma ray, mojo! Explode! Flash ME the finger, will ya! Of course, they might well have kicked my ass too (sure, ahhh, but I don’t think so).

“I’ve got to get a grip. Get a grip!” I told myself westbound again on Eagle drive, within a minute. But how?

...The next part, where I almost kill someone, comes next...

Adios, Amigos

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15 November 2008: Losing It |Part 4 - the Pen

I have no memories of losing it at the end of a typical foot or car chase or a catch. You know what I mean, like how you see on the TV news? When a traffic helicopter films a car chase and records the officers catching the bad guy, then the cops utterly lose it and beat and kick the holy snot of him. I would like to say for the record that if I have, it was rare and I am not perfect, I just can't remember it. Remind me? And, I won't deny it. Might cuss myself and apologize. But, I don't think so. Did I enjoy a little tussle and scrap at the end of a hunt? Enjoy the revenge “free pass” involved? Yes. But I did not lose complete control. I knew what I was doing the whole time. Pissed? Sure. Revved? Yeah. Wild? Not that lost.

For me, wild-man, losing it was usually a complete surprise. Sudden. Shocking. Inexplicable. Like this time. I was a young detective, working overtime back in uniform, one night at a big university concert/dance in the 1970s at the County Fairgrounds. It was full of college kids and I wasn't that much older than them. It was boring with a capital “B,” with the exception of the massive numbers of college girls to look at and salivate over. I wandered near the front desk, ticket counters and talked to some other officers and college organizers. Ho-the-fuck-hum.

In the ho-humdom, near me was loud, obnoxious drunk talking with another guy. I have seen thousands of loud, obnoxious dunks worldwide. Arrested hundreds of them at that point. Nothing special. I looked over the crowd and barely paid attention to these two.

“Call me, yeah call me....you need to call me...” this drunk roared. “My number...my number is...”

He reached for a college flyer on the tables. He patted his chest. No pen. He looked at me with a sneering face and outstretched hand. I just didn't like the look of his face. Chemicals in my body began cooking.

“PEN!” he ordered with an outstretched hand, snapping his fingers about one foot from my face. Maddening? Sure, but I was a professional. A candidate for adulthood! I was also shocked. How far could this idiot go? I reached into my chest pocket and handed him my pen.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said to his friend, “call me,” while bending over and writing his number. He handed the paper over to his buddy and slammed my pen on the table. He looked back at me, almost eye contact - almost - and muttered,

“fucking.....fhfufm...” something.

Something. Was it “chump?” Loser? “Pig” was popular back then. Was it pig? He walked quickly away. I was standing by the table in a flood of anger. I lost my cool, my train of thought. Gone. I picked up my pen. Gasped. Stutter-stepped a bit. I spied his curly, black-haired head bobbing away.

Blast-off. Boom. Rockets engaged. Gone! I'm gone. I was off. Thought disintegrated into cave man dismemberment phase. I fast-stepped though the crowded hall. Mr. Pen was headed for one of the series of bathrooms down a metal corrugated hallway. And, I caught him then and there. I grabbed both his shoulders from behind and spun him around, which included a sudden shove.

“You want to tell me something?” I growled. My fingers felt invincible, like I could tear through his chest. Just ONE smart-ass remark from him and we'd be calling the funeral home.

This guy completely melted away. Puppy dog face. Puppy dog voice. Confused. Like he had no earthy idea who I was or what in the world I wanted. He could barely babble, “what? Huh? I...wha...” in an octave just above Shirley Temple. I glared at him. He moved inches away, eyes wide. Pale-faced. People past by in the hallway looking at us. The prior, Mister Smart-Mouth was reduced to a tissue paper, puppet before my angry eyes.

I got a grip. I got a handle on it. Still speechless though. I turned and strutted out of the hallway, out of the building and into the cool, night air. I felt like I was just teetering on the end of high diving board. About to jump. It would have been a shallow pond and a big splat. Hard to find my badge in all that bloody mess. Outside were more college kids, Affable. Laughing. Couples. Older people related to the college. I walked through the lines of hundreds of parked cars.

“Howdy! Nice night,” a college kid said to me in passing, with a smile.

I nodded. He probably thought I was protecting his and all the other cars with a diligent foot patrol. I was really downloading from a personal Def Com 3, that I couldn't understand.

I thought back about years ago in South Korea, I was on a foot patrol with a veteran military policeman. Vietnam vet. We walked past a barracks and some off-duty soldiers sat in wide hallway through a large, open doors. As we past on the sidewalk, one of them remarked, “pig!” Now, as a "hippy child of the 60s," I heard this before and thought it was best ignored by a mature officer. A professional would just take the disrespect. Sticks and stones. But, my senior partner? Oh no. He stopped, turned in a whirlwind and marched into the hall. Me, in an ignorant pursuit.

“PIG?” he repeated to them, scanning the small group. He apparently knew who said it. Without hesitation, he stepped up and hook punched one of them right in the jaw. This was a massive, full body hook while on the run up to the kid. This young man, once seated, flew right out of the chair onto the tile floor. The chair went spinning. The others got up or sat aghast. No one spoke or made another move. I too was aghast. The MP stood there and sneered at them all. “Pig?” he repeated.

We left! We got a few feet away and the MP, still steaming, said, “I'll bet he won't call a cop a pig anymore.” We soon went to the mess hall and ate. I was waiting for more trouble. Some complaint. Some supervisor calling us in. Me being put in that ugly position of being a witness against a comrade. Hell, maybe I should report him myself? Instead, I just sat there and ate my sorry Army excuse for spaghetti.

That was years ago! Was I now becoming like that impatient, impulsive veteran MP? Ordinarily, I really was an easy-going, good-natured person. Fancied myself as always looking for ironic humor, a student of life and irony. But then in one second - one second - over something like a stupid pen, I could be on the high dive to hell.

I smiled at a couple on the lot who smiled back at me.

At least I didn't hook punch anybody! Yet! But, was I really becoming...all that? A short fuse? A ticking time bomb?

Adios, Amigos,

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11 November 2008: Losing it! Mad Enough to Kill | Part Three.

This cop thing. 1970s. I wasn’t interested in changing the world. Making it safe. Helping people. I wasn’t religious. Not optimistic. Not a crusader. Not in a popularity contest to be most liked. Community service? Bah! Humbug! Justice? What is justice? Sadly, admittedly, deep down I am still very much like this. But, back in the 1970s, I was all these things and worse, just a youngster in a cop job that wasn’t supposed to be boring. I didn’t sign on for boring.

But, Let me tell you that police work can be very boring. Even cops patrolling in what seems to be the busiest districts and beats on the planet, can be very bored at times. I have had New York and L. A. Cops tell me this, even Johannesburg, South Africa cops tell me this. Even as a detective, I was always swamped with work, drowning in cases even, but most of them were boring. Busy, but bored. I really stayed in the game like a gambler hoping for a lucky roll. Seven! But I don't go to casinos and I didn’t sign on...for boring.

In the 1970s I was even more shallow and short-sighted. Probably really selfish, but many of us are at 25 years old. Some weren’t, sure. But, I was not put that well together. It was Saturday night and I went to work, like I did every night back then, motivated. "To get into some shit.” Stir things up, make arrests. Chase. Shoot. Agitate. Whatever. The shift started at 3 pm and it was nearly 9 pm and for a Saturday? Nothing was going on. Dull as a dead stump. I recall that I was exceptionally frustrated at the lack of activity. I was working a southwest side district which included one of the major universities in the whole state of Texas, with related bars and hangouts and surely, surely somebody was fucking up somewhere and all I had to do was find them. Hunt. Hunt. And hunt.

I turned down a street with a row of clubs and there was a popular hot spot of hard rock and druggees down the way. The door of this outfit suddenly burst open and four bouncers were fighting with one guy in the middle, in a cluster-ruckus. Delight! I floored the gas pedal down the street, jammed on the brakes of the car with screech and bailed. The ejected patron was a white male in the middle and I leapt over the two bouncers on my side of the melee and flat-out attacked the guy.

But I really screwed up. By the time I opened the car door, the fight? It was really over, but I was already well on my way. The four bouncers quickly ignored the patron and essentially rescued this customer...from me. Imagine that karma.

“Hock! Hock!” they yelled to me, trying to calm me down. We all knew each other from many prior, disturbance calls. They shouted for me to stop. “Its over.” They shouted. Things like that. Eight hands and arms gripped me and hauled me back. With their grips, I finally got a grip on myself. The once rowdy customer, his pale, white jaw dropped low and eyes wide, backed away, then he turned and scuttered down a side street.

“Damn!” they muttered at the scene I’d created. I looked them over. They were no angels themselves. Redneck bouncers in a hippy bar and if you know your Texas history that's like matter and anti-matter in the same hot tub. That's one ugly, primordial ooze. They each had their share of over-kill in bar enforcement. They just didn’t like wrestling with the cops too.

I didn’t say anything to any of them. I was wrong and should have been plain embarrassed. I straightened out my uniform, and ran my hands back through my thick, long Johnny Cash hairdo. There, good as new! But, the slobber from my mouth and my racing pulse could not be so thusly organized with a few magic hand passes. Orderly on the outside, but all kinds of disorderly on the inside.

I returned to the squad car and drove off without a word. WHAT had just happened? I lost it, man, that's what. I tried to catch my breath, snorting in the car. I knew that fight was well over before I charged them, yet I was there to fight. I was going to to fight the guy, fight the bouncers. The fight switch was thrown. I pulled over on a corner parking lot and sat mind-knumb, watching the traffic on a major avenue run by.

This was not what I was supposed to do. This was not right. What was I? I understood my immature frustration. I understood the wrong. I really did want to be...that professional. That modern professional in uniform. The better side of me ordered that this could not happen again! But it did happen again. Worse and even more dangerous. But I will never forget that night 30 years ago. I grew up a bit that night. Just a notch. Just not enough yet.

The next part coming soon...

Adios, Amigos,

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8 November 2008: Losing it! Mad Enough to Kill | Part Two Tactical Breathing

Before we get into some torrid tales of me screwing up, let me stake out some educational tips about the Three Managements” of fear, anger and pain. I have performed best in my life, when I have been slightly or somewhat adrenalized. Some experts might call this, “riding the flow,” or “in the zone” of some sorts. I say “some sorts” because behavioral and sports experts have some highly refined definitions. I think the zone and the flow are mostly about half-adrenalized states. Just enough juice to function on all cylinders. Looking back in my past, some of my worst performances as a cop have been when I have lost this overall control, let adrenaline run amok. And let me tell you a good ambush can snap the sense right out of you. A car going zero-to-sixty in a second becomes difficult to control. Unless its a race car.

Looking back further in my past, mental and physical distracting problems like the lack of sleep, hangovers, family problems, constipation, you name it, have interfered with my job performance in many ways, but one way was these problems interfered with my ability to control adrenaline. In later years, martial arts injuries had a major effect on what I could and could not do. What I dare try. Yup, every good man knows his limitations.

How to get this somewhat or half-adrenalized state? Get into that flowing zone? Its a connection into your personal calm. There are tons of training programs about this, mostly for civilians and unfortunately with a lot of voodoo, buzz words. The core steps can be packaged in science, or religion or the science fiction of Luke Skywalker “using the force.” Strip all of this out for the biological truth. The generic core. All medical and psychological experts agree that there is one common thread to counter and contain some of the anguish of anger, pain and fear. No matter who the experts are, from the toughest, scarred tattooed, war vet to the armchair PHD, or robe-wrapped, yogi guru, or the collared Catholic, all agree that deep and slower breathing can really help control and stabilize the body under stress. You don’t have to seek a monk in China, pray to a god, or contemplate your navel in front of incense and a pink candle. This universal, raw method truly bridges the gap between the police, the military, the martial artist and the citizen.

In today's mental health industry, Stress Management is a major challenge as well as a very prosperous business. For them, the majority of problems are marital, jobs, rush hour traffic, raising children, and the like. Civilian problems. Dr. Beth Greenberg says,

“Stress. Unless you live on a cloud, you deal with it every day. Can you count the number of times you’ve heard or said, ‘I’m completely stressed out!’ in the past week? Unlikely. It’s probably become routine. And routine, in fact, is what it is. Research has shown that over 70 percent of all doctors’ visits are stress-related, and in a city the size of Boston, an average citizen has 60 fight-or-flight responses to stress every day!”

We all have sudden and slow burning stress problems that involve distorting our bodily chemistry and functions. We all have “before, during and after” stress problems. But, a training and treatment doctrine that includes routine violence and combat is far more complex than for a citizen in Massachusetts or London, England. Citizens, in “everyday life,” and soldiers and police have different kinds of stress. In everyday life, this “during stress” might be a tough business meeting, or haggling over a plumber’s fee. This “during stress” situation for a soldier or a cop may be a butcher knife plummeting down at his face. The first group deals with stress, the second group deals with proper response to sudden and planned combat AND stress. Response. Even in most planned and prepared combat, you turn a corner? And you are in sudden-combat inside the planned combat.

What do all these people feel in their bodies when they feel anxious or threatened? Rapid heartbeat, shallow, rapid breathing. Tense muscles. Physiological changes take place in the body. The brain warns the central nervous system. The adrenal glands produce hormones (adrenaline and noradrenalin). The heart beats faster. Breathing become more rapid. Fast breathing. The person's body is getting ready to do one of two things, confrontation or departation.

Back to this very critical term of “fast breathing,” because breathing is the key to this study. A normal breathing rate for an adult at rest is 8 to 16 breaths/minute. Most people are not really conscious about the way they breath, but generally there are two types of breathing patterns.

1: Shallow Thoracic (chest) short breathing
2: Deep or Diaphragmatic (abdominal) breathing.

The stressed body needs air and we need to pump air to the performing muscles. Slow twitch fibers affect muscle endurance provided enough oxygen is delivered to them. Fast twitch fibers, which affect muscle strength develop peak tension, quickly and fatigue easily. That is one reason why slower, nasal-breathing, not fast, mouth-breathing often works better. Nasal breathing runs by the vagal nerve which sends calming messages to the brain. Breathing through the mouth bypasses a large portion of the nasal cavity process of warming, moisturizing and particle elimination from the air before it reaches the respiratory system. Breathing through the mouth also further triggers the fight or flight response! Sort of a double whammy, if you will.

Lots of people call wrestling with all this breathing under stress, a “Combat Breathing.” Combat breathing to me should cover just a specific study in the “During Stress/while-its-happening category,” the actual engaged combat. Instead, I like the overall term, “Tactical Breathing” title for the before, during and after. This allows us refined categories and outlines for each. Combat Breathing should be a sub-category under Tactical Breathing (remember, good training programs are all about doctrine, doctrine. Doctrine! The proper skeleton allows for the proper fleshing out).

Because Combat breathing means breathing WHILE in combat, it means more than just simple calming and regulating the body before combat. To many real performance experts, combat breathing is in the “act of doing.” Doing what needs doing with what you have on hand to do with. Human Kinetics say that combat breathing techniques bring the mind and body together to produce some amazing feats on the sports field. Feats well beyond the subject of simple calming. Power! Athletes must learn to apply the laws of pneumatics - the science of pressurized air in this case, as a power source, by absorbing and transmitting energy in a variety of sports situations. Most commonly we know about the exhale when you push up in a bench press. Exhale, if you can (as sometimes you can’t) when you punch. Combat shooters constantly worry about breathing during their trigger pull, but in combat, sometimes like a punch, you have to shoot when you have to shoot. Combat breathing is a case-by-case study and is way more than simply calming yourself down. Use my core equation of the "Combat Ws and H" "Who, What. Where, When, How and Why" and define what performance skills you will need to learn and enhance.

Tactical breathing goes like this. Breathe in through the nose for four counts or more counts. Deep into the lower lung, and upper “belly” should expand, unlike a shallow breath. Hold for four or more counts, exhale through the mouth for four or more counts. So simple, so respected. So proven, from Lamaze to Basra. it works.

Sloooow breathing. The only problem is...remembering to do it. It seems that fast breathing is a dirty trick in the biology of survival, doesn’t it? She makes us do it even though we shouldn’t. It is easy to forget to breath when the knife is dropping onto your face. But you must try. For an example of pre-conflict breathing, when I taught regularly in police academies I would suggest connecting this type of breathing with every time you turned on your police car siren. Hot call equals calming breath. Then you would have to remember to do this before every troubling situation, sans the siren. What SWAT officer, or military mission team, while being transported to a mission, shouldn’t make this breath-in-transport a mandatory habit? If you can't maintain the pattern throughout, then breath deep on breaks in between segments of action. Then, as quickly as possible afterwards. (drink copious amounts of fluids afterward also, to help flush out the adrenaline chemicals quickly).

Another trick I noticed was no matter what great shape I was in as a younger man, often when I dashed up a flight of stairs, I would sometimes become winded. I could run a 6 minute mile, but a short dash up the stairs, at times, would bother me. It is a classic “zero-to-sixty” situation. I swore that I would slow/deep breath every time I climbed any stairwell, any where. Every time I looked at a stair step! I made it a personal habit. This turned into a major survival tip as we chase and fight on stairs frequently. Climb any stairs, anywhere? Deep breathe.

Also, for many years I ran a local martial arts class. Often I would have to spar/kickbox every student in the class. This was demanding, however I discovered a calm zone of performance where I could think, coach, and kick box everyone, rather tirelessly. I recorded this...this calm, spot in my physiology. This zone. Whatever. I could often find this very spot under police stress and confrontations. In ways, some might call this a biofeedback.

In the course of practicing combat scenarios, if you can attach combat breathing and this air force of pneumatics to the physical steps of the scenario, you may be front-loading your muscle memory for survival.

Extended and serious exercise usually starts demanding fast lung work and we find ourselves falling into shallow, mouth-breathing mode. But, the better shape we are in, the more we push back that mode. How about some real Before/Pre breath control practice? Wind sprints are another way to introduce your body to, and get in touch with, your physiology while it grapples with rising and failing heart rates. Know where you are and how you feel and think about breathing while wind sprinting. Long-term breath control? Exercise. I repeat and re-shape the above line for it is a most important point...

The better shape we're in, the more we push back that falling apart, disaster crash.

Get up and get out and do something. It helps in so many more ways that simple slow breathing cannot alone. If you are having a heart attack while fighting off a criminal or a jihadist, slow breathing ain't gonna' help you much. Develop both heart and lung capacity.

Once in combat, you have a lot going on and your body wants to immediately breathe a certain way. You make it breathe your way. The best way you can. Good instincts. Good training. Good coaching. Good mental tricks. Good luck. A car going zero-to-sixty in a second becomes difficult to control. Unless its a race car. Become a race car.

In fact, I have many personal, survival tricks such as these tips, that are too long to mention here and may also teeter off the breathing subject. In summary, Tactical Breathing is before, during and post combat. Combat breathing should be just during the combat and involves more than just relaxing. As with my examples, the methods you use may be very personal discoveries. Generic in concept. Personal in enlightenment and execution.

In the end, my friend? I want you to breathe the best breath of all, that sigh of relief when its all really over, and you are in one piece and in one peace.

Okay, my promised screw-ups in this regard to follow soon...

Adios, Amigos,

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3 November 2008: Losing it! Mad Enough to Kill | Part One

Ever been suddenly, spontaneously mad enough to kill somebody? I mean really mad. Many people have. I guess that's why God invented murder? I have. And almost did kill someone once, bare-handed in this kind of blind rage, but was seized and hauled back. I was spitting blood and banging his face onto a cement floor till death do us part. I have also gone through several layers of mad, madder, Maddest. Mad can be a good thing. But mad is one thing, what about completely losing it? Really, really losing it is another thing. Sudden mad is crazy. It's a crazy mad.

I have worked hundreds of violent investigations motivated by extreme and sudden anger, and I have reported many of them to you right here. Taking a patrol police report on a “sudden passion” crime is one thing, but living with the case as a detective from call-out to conviction, is something more. It gives you a lot of personal, emotional insight on madness from slow-burn to insanity.

But, it's often a sudden madness that is very dangerous one. A sudden flame. It might make no sense in the context of the situation. Like road rage. The eruption is sudden but the lava has been cooking off. I would like to report here to you, and at loss of respect in your eyes by the way; a few times I have utterly, suddenly lost it. Lost my marbles. I do this as an anecdotal study for you morbid, curiosity seekers out there, but mostly for young police officers and recruits. I hope they read about my emotional mistakes here and learn from them. Prepare for the common missteps and pratfalls. This is material they don't teach at police academies but really need too. As Willie Nelson once said, “Just a country boy who's learning that the pitfalls of the city are extremely real.”

It would irritate me as I passed though the martial arts schools in my past and do seminars in schools now and see posters and mottos advertising the complete loss of fear, of pain or anger. One needs these things to survive. “Fear no man.” “Free yourself of anger.” That kind of thing. You know, that karate, monk thing. Ultimate Aikido mind. I read yesterday that a ten-year old girl was raped this month in Somalia, Africa by three adult males. She reported the crime to the authorities and SHE was stoned to death for...adultry. Fuck a bunch of "Aikido mind," bubba, there are some sons a bitches that need killing on our planet and somebody has to get pissed off and go do it. If you don't get angry, you sit cross-legged and chant and while the world falls apart around you.

When I instruct survival courses, I have always emphasized what I call, The Three Managements. Pain management – learning to cope with various aspects of physical and mental pain. Fear Management – learning to control various aspects of fight fears, and finally this subject of Anger Management. I can do whole lectures on these subjects based on research and experience. In the context of fighting survival, we need those human elements and we need to utilize and manage them with the help of mental professionals skilled in exactly this subject. Not just pain but pain and violence. Not just fear but fear and violence. Not just anger but…you get the picture. Dr. Phil the family psych will have a few ideas, but he is not really what you are looking for as a worthy resource.

The Three Managements

Pain

Anger

Fear

Anger. I do not want to fight alongside a comrade who has rid himself of anger as the monk poster prescribes. Instead, I want to fight alongside someone who will get pissed off and kills the enemy. Who do you want to be in the trench alongside? Audey Murphey or the Dali Lama? I'll go with Audie. At the same time I do not want my comrade to get mad, stand up and rush into the enemy machines guns! That's crazy mad. That's what this chapter is about, and that's where this combat, anger management comes in. Use it, don't lose it.

So, coming next? A few times I didn't use it. I lost it! Warning! You might not like me in the morning.

Adios, Amigos,

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1 November 2008:

Al Gore says the world is a burnen' up! There's a financial crisis on every street corner between here and Hong Kong.

The entire galaxy is in a painful price fix. Everything ain't what it was and ain't gonna' be what its supposed to be.

The USA election looks like a poor choice and I smell higher taxes in air.

Good God man, Click here!

So every dang DVD and book is on major sale, starting now until we dodge that bullet.

Good God man, Click here!

Adios, Amigos,

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Email Hock at Hock.Hochheim@sbcglobal.net

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