Great and good friend of the blog RoadRich is taking the CPA class with me. Actually, the whole thing was his idea, so now you know who to blame for the blog posts.
And as far as blaming people for blog posts, he also sent a thoughtful reply to the use of force post. I liked it enough that I asked him for permission to use it here, which he granted. What follows after the jump are his comments, with a few personal asides edited out.
I was most impressed during that lecture by the lecturer’s clarity on how the real world defies being contained in lists, spreadsheets, charts, circles, triangles in 2D space and of course the pyranid in 3D space.
The third chart, which looked like an orange flavored gradient fill wedge, actually started to make sense now that I had a chance to stare at it without being distracted by taking notes. It’s lousy in the field I’m sure but it seems to attempt to teach that you can err on either side – not just excessive use of force risking injury to the suspect, but ineffective use, putting the officer at risk.
I think no one ever really tried to apply the ‘stepped linear progression’ approach in the field. The point I think Butler was trying to make is that any notion of putting that theory into practice was just a pipe dream. There’s some great line about a wonderful theory being unable to survive the harsh light of practice, which I cannot remember at this late hour. [“No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder – DB]
Suffice to say that anyone who thinks an officer has the time to refer to such an un-memorizable chart, must never have stood toe to toe with someone who only wants to complete their agenda of rage or escapeeism, not on anyone’s schedule save for their own. +1 on being willing to skip all the intermediate steps to popping caps, if my future assailant is also skipping all the preliminaries with his eye toward the goal of being the one left standing. I mean, if my perp isn’t using his matching chart after all, that’s a gracious precedent for me to drop mine.
And if I have someone willing to go to lengths to make it look like he’s drawing a gun and then find out it’s a phone, I will need counseling but only for becoming someone else’s weapon of choice in their suicide. Not for making a wrong decision, because the decision was made by the other party.
I still see the Recycle symbol in the DRRM image – and hear our lecturer quip, “because APD is a green Deparment”!
I agree with your assessment of the underlying meaning of the concept of “Preparatory Resistant” (oh, there’s a typo there by the way). [Since fixed, I hope – DB] This includes, if I understood correctly, the passively resistant perp who begins to escalate verbally by telling the officer that he’d “better be let go or it’s on.”