Training Day

          Today was our monthly training day for detectives and the Gang squad.  Specifically, we had firearms and defensive tactics training.  I’m sure that most of you will understand “firearms,” however “defensive tactics” may be a bit obscure.  Defensive tactics is, quite frankly, fighting.  It does seem much kinder and gentler to say, “I’m going to defensive tactics training,” rather than, “I’m going to learn how to beat the crap out of criminals.”  When you are at court defending yourself for having had to break, say, someone’s ribs because they took a swing at you, you just look at the jury with big, doe eyes and say apologetically, “I had to use defensive tactics,” i.e. the other guy used offensive tactics.  Granted, DT is fighting in such a way as to lessen the chance of injury to a suspect or yourself. 

          Anyway, I first went to the firearms portion.  Our range is actually on a nearby military base; it is pretty desolate there and today it was hot (97 F was the high).  I did say it was desolate, but there was still some interesting wildlife that wandered in.  Krycky!  Would you look at the size of this ripper!

Then Firearms Instructor, Officer Mike, showed us the specific drill we were going to shoot today.  We call Mike "The Troll", because he is only about 4 feet tall, eats rocks, and lives under a bridge.  Right now I think he is aiming at my kneecaps.

Here we have Officer Miller (aka Paris Hilton) taking a few pointers from the Range Master, Rod "Josie Wales" Y. 

The Gang Squad posed for a photo.  Gang Squad... isn't that a syntactical redundancy?  Sort of like, "Group Club" or "Attorney Misconduct." 

Here is detective Bru; wearing some hat he bought down in Mexico on a drunken binge.  He has been hammered with a bunch of embezzlement cases this month; he is getting so tired of the embezzlers, I think he is passing around an initiative to subject them to the death penalty.

By the way, all that Diet Pepsi I drink on the range made my teeth float, got to run to the military-style latrine quansit hut. 

Well... maybe I could hold it till I got back to the next course of instruction. I think that was a dead mouse in all that, er, well... liquid. 

So- after firearms, we all went off to a boxing club in town.  There we met up (after a trip to the restroom) with DT instructor Sgt Chad.  Here is Chad being comforted by Detective Mendoza.  I think Chad just learned that there we be no goulash for dinner; that's right, Chad is one of those Nordic guys who like to compete in various competitions like, how many Volkswagons can you lift and toss through 3rd story windows, or who is fastest at removing the opponents organs while smashing in their face in a cage match.  During lunch Chad asked if he could show me this "Reallly cool medicine ball workout".  15 minutes later my triceps were both crying for mommy.  Lesson learned: Don't think you can out-workout a guy who takes voice lessons to actually sound like Governer Arnold.

Who says cops are not sensitive? 

Finally, here are Officers Paris and Lee wrestling on the ground in a blatant violation of the department's sexual harassment policy. 

Hey Remo... she's got that left elbow a bit low for the LVNR, eh?  Lee seems to like it, though.

See you all later; thanks for looking.

Dave