Training Day #2 A Pathway To Nowhere

Hoo boy. Day #2 down. Spent half the day in a classroom in which a very interesting man taught a very boring subject. "Pathways To Change". Apparently it teaches offenders what types of personalities they have and how they can stop and think about their actions, if they wanted to. It assigns color coding to the different personality types and is supposed to help you understand how different people think.

I can just imagine the conversation in my head... "See, this guy's coming at me with a shank in his meathook and he's acting awfully orange at this point. If I can just tone down my green-ness and be more blue to him withut going gold....... aw fug it. I'll just kick his butt instead. Turn all that angry orange to black and blue."

They said we had to take the class so we did. Your tax dollars at work!

The second part of the day was the beginning of Defensive Tactics (hereafter to be referred to as "DT"). It's where we review basic holds and breakaway techiniques and the "physical" part of the job that creates so much paperwork.

I'm so horrible at this stuff. I can remember it long enough to get through the class and that's it. In the classroom when a DT instructor says "Someone's got ahold of you this way, what do you do?" I can explain step by step how to break the hold and put the offender on the ground and keep hold of him once I get him there. Once inside the fence that sort of thing goes on autopilot and sometimes after a donnybrook I have to ask somebody how I did something. Like the last one where I hurt my finger. One moment I was behind the restraint bench and the next I was on the other side taking the offender to the ground. How the hell did I get there? I think I may have leapt over it. Nobody else was watching so I guess I'll never be sure. My goal in a use of force is to get control of the offender as quickly as possible before somebody gets hurt. Seriously hurt, anyway. And I do whatever it takes to do that. And as far as I can recall, I have never employed any of the stuff they teach us in DT. The scenarios they teach us have just never come up. My mind rejects those options and goes on to other things. I've learned bit and pieces of almost every martial art in the world and while I am horrible at them when I have to stop and think, I'm fairly good in a crisis situation. I'm not bragging about it, it's just the way this plum pudding of a brain I have works.

On the plus side, we got to see a three hundred pound C.O. come this [] close to taking out the christmas tree in the training room. The guy stumbled on the mat and just about carried the whole thing out the back door of the building. Notice: No Corrections Officers or Christmas Trees were harmed in the typing of this blog! T'was a near thing, tho.

Well, I'm a bit sore and tired. Going to rest up for the remainder of DT tomorrow.