#40 - From Domestic Disputes to Firearms Mastery: Raul’s Unique Policing Journey with Raul Garcia

Raul shares his journey of over 30 years in law enforcement, highlighting the lessons learned, challenges faced, and the importance of community support. As a retired officer turned firearms instructor, Raul emphasizes the significance of responsible gun ownership and the value of quality training.

• Providing a personal background of his family's influence 
• Detailing the evolution of law enforcement hiring processes 
• Sharing impactful stories from early experiences on the job 
• Discussing community perceptions and support for law enforcement 
• Transitioning to the role of a firearms instructor 
• Emphasizing the importance of ongoing training and education 
• Offering various training programs for civilians and law enforcement 
• Announcing upcoming events and specialized training opportunities

Chapters

• 0:09 Law Enforcement Legacy
• 6:26 Law Enforcement Experience and Profiling
• 18:09 Community Support for Law Enforcement
• 30:22 Police Training and Accountability
• 43:01 Firearms Instructor Training Evolution
• 53:07 Firearms Training for Beginners
• 1:01:31 Choosing a Firearms Instructor
• 1:08:31 Firearms Training Courses and Competitions
• 1:20:23 Firearms Training Class Communication

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

ready, rock and roll. You got us. You got a good sound check, can you?

Speaker 2: 0:14

hear me.

Speaker 1: 0:14

Okay, perfect. Well, raul, welcome back man yeah, I, uh, I'm really excited for this one again because we uh, we had you on originally, got your whole life story. Then I put the post out to help out any law enforcement or veterans that have businesses or anything that I could help with, and you reach right out again.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Um, yeah, it was a good time episode 29.

Speaker 1: 0:34

I believe you were yeah, it's been.

Speaker 2: 0:37

What maybe a year ago. Now close, yeah, you're in, you're in the early days and so, um, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:42

So I want to recap your law enforcement experience and, in just a little background, before we jump into what you're doing now for the, obviously the law enforcement community and just the community in general as far as firearms training, weapons training and all that good stuff. So I guess we could start with the homemade. Oh, first loaf of bread from the sourbee. So the girls cook every guest. That looks really good you get to go home.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Yeah, it's our chocolate lovers, so it's it'll be hard to eat and talk at the same time yeah, I know right, I wish we we've actually thought about it, but I feel like the whole half the episode would just be us eating bread. And then we got the uh war machine, which he's a marine, and he got out. He actually became a cop, got shot in the line of duty and so he he started, uh, platoon cigars. So I don't know, if you're a cigar guy, we'll send you home a cigar. Then obviously you get a wild chaos.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Hat as long as everybody goes.

Speaker 1: 1:26

So yeah, a little bit has changed since the last time he came on. But, dude Raul, welcome back and I guess let's jump right into it. What the hell made you want to be a cop and start this path?

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yeah, well, I started because my dad was in law enforcement and I can't remember if I told the story last time I was on here.

Speaker 1: 1:43

We got a lot of new listeners and a lot of growth. So I mean, feel free to recap anything, and if you already told it, let's do it again.

Speaker 2: 1:49

All right. Well, my parents are both from Mexico. My mom and dad came here. They were farm workers, working fields and so forth. Eventually my dad started working at JR Simplot down there in the Burley area. But my dad had some friends that were in law enforcement and he thought, man, these guys are really cool. He's like they don't beat you up and steal your money like in other countries, right? So my dad found out that they had a reserve program. So he goes down to apply for this police reserve position and they tell him we can't hire you, you're not a US citizen. My dad was here on work visas and so forth, but, um, so he decided to go to school, you know, and uh, take his night classes and so forth, so that he could get his citizenship and eventually got his citizenship, went back, got hired how long did that take, do you know, because I hear some sometimes it can take years.

Speaker 2: 2:40

Yeah, I think it was probably easier back then. Okay, I mean, this was we're talking back in the 70s, yeah, so I think things were a little bit different back then and then. But yeah, he got on as a police reserve and so a lot of his friends were, you know, police officers, some reserve, some full time, and that just kind of piqued my interest from, you know, being a young kid. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 3:00

It's got to be pretty cool to watch your parents, I mean literally live the American dream, coming here, starting out working you know you said Burley area and then for him to be able to be connected, get in the community, see what those guys were doing as far as the volunteer side of things, get his citizenship and then he ends up, you know, getting brought on. Yeah, I mean that's literally from start to finish of I mean what everybody comes. Yeah, it's an American dream. It is the American dream.

Speaker 2: 3:26

My mom. I don't want to leave my mom out of it, but my mom became you know, she was doing farm labor work too, and she's just like I want to do something better and she went on to become a registered nurse. Really, yeah, she ended up having to go back to high school because she didn't have a high school diploma. She nurse. Really, yeah, she ended up having to go back to high school because she didn't have a high school diploma.

Speaker 1: 3:48

She went to high school. She was like in her 20s. She was like the oldest high school student, because you weren't doing anything online, so she literally went back to high school. Yeah, she went back to high school. Good for her.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Got her high school diploma, went on to college and became a registered nurse, and retired doing that.

Speaker 1: 3:58

you know how many siblings do you?

Speaker 2: 3:59

have? I have two. I'm right in the middle. I've got a younger brother and an older brother.

Speaker 1: 4:03

So they all watched all this. Yep, that's pretty awesome. I mean, what an example for your parents.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 4:08

To be able to leave a legacy like that in the show. You guys are like, hey, if you want it, let's just go get it, yep.

Speaker 2: 4:13

And then I went into law enforcement when I went to college for a couple years, yeah, and said that's enough for me. But yeah, school wasn't. Where'd you go to college? I went to Ricks College, over it used to be, which is now BYU-Idaho. Oh okay, it was Ricks College in Eastern Idaho and then went there for a short time and then started my law enforcement career down in the Burley area and continued down at CSI College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls there.

Speaker 1: 4:45

So when you started. What was the process back then too? I mean, that's little town living out there.

Speaker 2: 4:48

So is it pretty simple? I don't think it's changed too much. Um, they still, you know, typically come in and do an, you know, fill out your application, do a quick interview just to kind of see if you fit with with the culture of the agency. Okay, they have you do a usually written test where it's just basic math, english stuff, and then they do polygraph test, background, they do a financial background, check your credit history, that kind of stuff. So there's no academy out there. There was an academy they sent me once.

Speaker 2: 5:18

I mean, that was the hiring process Once you get hired you get hired on and at the time I think it's still the same. In Idaho you can work as a police officer up to a year before you go to the police academy. So they kind of do in-house training Really. Some of the small agencies can't afford to just send you until they try to figure out their work schedule. They just don't have the people to do it.

Speaker 1: 5:41

No kidding.

Speaker 2: 5:43

So at the time I got put with a full-time police officer for probably just a couple of weeks. Oh, before you went to the academy they sent me out to the police academy.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Where'd you go Down here?

Speaker 2: 5:53

Yeah, they send everybody here to Meridian Police Academy. I would say the majority of police officers in the state all come here for the academy. What's the academy like? Back then it was only like six weeks. What's it now? It's like 18 or something. Yeah, I'm not sure. I think 16 or 18 weeks. What the hell? You said six weeks? Yeah, it was like six weeks. And then you come back and then they put you through an on-the-job training program with another full-time officer where you respond to calls for service and you're basically just on-the-job training.

Speaker 1: 6:20

So you're a full-blown cop in six weeks. Back then I feel like that is like crash course.

Speaker 2: 6:26

It's crazy, just learning the basics, it's crazy, and especially when you're like I think I was 22 years old when I first started and you just have no life experience. You go to a family fight and you're trying to talk to a couple who's in their 40s or 50s. You're a child.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:43

About a domestic dispute dispute. You're trying to resolve a situation. You don't even have any life experience. You know I was like I barely had two girlfriends, you know I never thought of it like that I mean you see some of these cops now.

Speaker 1: 6:56

I I just got pulled over recently and the guy that walked up to my window I looked at him was like I want to be like god damn, how old are you? You know, but that's probably not the way to start the conversation. He was a super cool guy. Especially being a motorcycle cop, I feel like you're 100% getting a ticket every time, but he was super cool. But yeah, I looked at him and I was like God damn, you didn't even have a beard yet. You look like a child.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, I look back going, man, I was pretty mature. It's really you give people advice when you don't have any life experience.

Speaker 1: 7:22

We're trying to put your authority out there. There's probably these old-timers and down there you run into some old, drunk ranchers.

Speaker 2: 7:30

Oh some ranchers yeah, sometimes those were the tough ones, and if you had a water dispute man, those were. I remember they were telling me I remember being told early on it's like be careful when you go to to water dispute, because people get killed over water disputes. You know, here in idaho you got ranchers fighting over water and stuff like that I've never even considered that.

Speaker 1: 7:51

I mean, I know it's a thing, I mean it's a big, yeah, it's a big ordeal, but I didn't really even realize, from a law enforcement side of things, that you instead of domestic you. You're worried about going to a water dispute that's hilarious. Did you ever deal with any guys that were?

Speaker 2: 8:05

pretty, yeah, we did. Yeah, um yeah, early on because we worked, you know, down the burley area. It's pretty rural a lot more than the voice area. But even here, when I started, you know, working for ada county, uh, we still had a lot of rural areas that we respond to and we'd have some water disputes with uh neighboring ranchers. Somebody would shut off a gate up, you know know, down up the canal somewhere and this guy's not getting his water, and you know.

Speaker 1: 8:28

I mean, you're right, people will definitely get shot over that.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Well, yeah, it's their livelihood. Yeah, it's their livelihood there's, you know, they have to feed water to their, to their farms and their ranches, and so forth.

Speaker 1: 8:37

So yeah, water's life for those guys. Yeah, do you remember your first call on your?

Speaker 2: 8:42

own. I remember one of my first domestic disputes. How was that I had to make an arrest? I was working down in Habern, which is right next to Burley, a small little town there. I remember the chief reached out. He'd reach out to the sheriff's deputies and say, hey, garcia's working by himself tonight, because sometimes I'd be the only one working. He's like hey, if he gets a call, make sure you guys go help him. And then a friend of mine was a state trooper. He'd show up to help me on stuff. But I went to a domestic dispute and had to arrest this guy and the guy's just sitting in his chair. He's probably a 45-year-old guy just sitting in his chair. 40, 45-year-old guy just sitting in his chair told him he's under arrest. He's like, nope, I'm not going. And he's sitting just like I am here, just sitting back.

Speaker 1: 9:27

And you're 22, 23? Yeah, I'm like 22.

Speaker 2: 9:29

And I'm like looking at the other guys. I was like what am I? Supposed to do. They were like all right, here you go. They're like they just kind of keep pointing you know, go, go, go, get him. He's in arrest. So I remember grabbing him by his wrist and he pulled back and ended up pulling my mace out and macing him in a small little confined area.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Nobody wins.

Speaker 2: 9:50

It was not a good thing because then all of us got it. But we ended up going down to the ground. The other guys jumped in to help out and we finally got him cuffed up and off to jail. But yeah, I look back and I was I was like, wow, that was a lot of inexperience on my part.

Speaker 1: 10:06

You know well, now, looking back, you're like god, I did everything wrong or could have done it so much differently I probably could have talked to the guy a little bit more, you know.

Speaker 2: 10:14

But who knows? You know it's always that guy's choice for sure when we tell give somebody a lawful order, it's up to that person. You know we respond based on their response for sure. So if so, if we tell somebody, hey, you're under arrest, turn around, put your hands behind your back, and they don't do it, well, then we've got to try something else. You know you can only talk to the guy so long it's still their choice.

Speaker 1: 10:33

Yeah, how was the tempo then in 2000? I mean, obviously compared to now.

Speaker 2: 10:40

You know it's just kind of roller coaster. Some days there was not much going on and you know it would be a few traffic stops here and there. Or you know you're profiling cars, looking to see if you can find somebody to arrest, see if they got warrants for their arrest, that kind of thing, or you're just going to domestic dispute or there's nothing going on. So it just kind of some weeks you're just slammed and other weeks there's nothing going on.

Speaker 1: 11:10

So so as a cop and let's say you're just staged in your parks, you're just watching traffic, what are you looking for to pick out, like like profiling? Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're, you're, you're 100 profiling, right? I mean there's, there's times where I've driven on like that those dudes got drugs for sure. As a law enforcement officer, when you guys are sitting and just profiling and watching, what are you looking for in a vehicle? The people, the interaction, like what are you trying to pick up on?

Speaker 2: 11:31

Well, first you got to have an actual violation to stop somebody. You got to have probable cause, right. So you're looking for anything simple, things like no front plate turn signal, it's broken, or not using a turn signal when they turn, not coming to a complete stop at the stop sign, just little things that, hey, now I have a reason to make contact with that person. But obviously you can go to a four-way stop sign and stop, like 90% of the cars that pull up there, right For sure. Because you look at the tires you're like, oh, those tires are still moving. They might not be moving very fast but they're still moving. So that's not a complete stop. So you pull that person over, right.

Speaker 2: 12:07

But sometimes it's their behavior. I got, I know, a guy who works for Ada County and he's really good at profiling cars. He goes out on the interstate and he stopped people. He's found out they're wanted for murder, the dead bodies in the trunk, that kind of stuff, and it's all a lot of behavior, right. So maybe somebody's driving down the road and there's a police officer there.

Speaker 2: 12:29

People, for whatever reason, a lot of times they'll, they turn, they switch lanes, they'll turn the signal, switch lanes or a normal person usually looks over at the police officer and you know, just kind of glances over these people just like look straight ahead, like oh, I didn't see him.

Speaker 1: 12:44

Ten and two, yeah, ten and two, yep, they don't see anything.

Speaker 2: 12:46

So a lot of it's just, you know, little behavior cues like that, you know, not looking, or looking Looking too much, yeah, yeah. So just little things like that.

Speaker 1: 12:57

And so that's where you start picking up on it.

Speaker 2: 12:59

Then you start, make a stop and you go up and then now you're again starting to look at their behavior, their answers. Sometimes you ask somebody a question, they repeat the question right, because they're trying to come up with an answer they're trying to give themselves a little bit more time, so forth, so really on a I I feel watching you know obviously cops.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Growing up as a kid I I still feel like that was one of the greatest shows ever. The the majority of stops, lead to more. How often like so when you see somebody that triggers like they meet all the checks for you, how often are you finding or escalating violations? I should say, I mean, what's the percentage of that? Or how often does that happen? Or is it just a hey, cool, have a nice day type of deal?

Speaker 2: 13:43

Yeah, I would say it just depends on the person. I would say I had friends of mine that I worked with that were way better at that than I was. Yeah and um. But for example, I remember stopping the car for, uh, like a tell light out, there's four people in the car. I ended up resting all four people because they all had warrants for their rest.

Speaker 1: 14:00

Really all four of them, four people, yeah, oh so driver front passenger, rear passengers.

Speaker 2: 14:02

Everybody went to jail just based on warrants. Because their arrest Really All four of them. Four people, yeah, driver, front passenger, rear passengers everybody went to jail just based on warrants. Because I stopped somebody for a tail light out, and that's it. You remember the Oklahoma City bomber, timothy McVeigh, when he got arrested? I remember reading on that incident and he got stopped for a license plate violation. That easy, yeah. I can't remember if it was a trooper or a deputy who stopped him, but because they stopped him for that, they started asking questions. Oh, this guy seems kind of nervous, and so they started looking into it and that's how he ended up getting arrested.

Speaker 1: 14:36

When you pull somebody over and I just have to ask I've always wondered this and let's say you get all four guys in in that vehicle, a part of me would feel okay, awesome, I just nailed four dudes. But then at the same time you're like damn, I have a lot of paperwork to do now. Did you ever like, does that ever bother you? Or did you ever come across a situation where like, ah, just a little weed, like all right, get the hell out of here, it's like the worst thing ever that's why I ask, because especially somebody like me didn't like school.

Speaker 2: 15:03

We have some guys, man, they got master's degrees and communication and that kind of stuff. So these guys are just awesome at writing reports. They read like a book. But yeah, for me I was just like, yeah, the paperwork is the worst thing. But for warrants, you know, warrants, paperwork is pretty simple. It's pretty simple. So most of us, if we were going to make an arrest, the warrants were the funnest because they were the easiest to do paper-wise. Really, why is that? It's simple.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah, it's just simple Warrant. I mean, just the requirement was just pretty simple. No, you're basically saying hey, you just showed your probable cause and this is why I stopped the person you know ran his name and the dispatcher said he had a warrant for his arrest, transported him to the jail without incident.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Got it Okay, and then do you just do your little report on that. What's a nightmare one that you have to deal with? Is it like DUIs or domestic?

Speaker 2: 15:56

Those are pretty standard, are they? I would say for me? I did not like domestic disputes. I got tired To me. I just got tired of listening to people. Sometimes I'm like you know and it's probably bad to say because you know they always one of the things I was always taught is you got to remember. This is these people's first incident. It might be your hundredth.

Speaker 2: 16:18

So you're just kind of like rolling your eyes going to this next call, but you got to remember it's this person's first call that they've had to deal with law enforcement or whatever. Yeah, so it's a big deal to them. It may not be a big deal to you, because you've been to a lot of them and you got to remember that when you go. And so that's why you got to show some empathy and for sure you know, make sure you're doing a good job for people, and I can see that.

Speaker 1: 16:39

You know you say it's their first and maybe your hundredth. That could be your 10th call of the day and they had some. They get in a fight. But I mean is it's what's the scariest situation that you find yourself in as a law enforcement officer, like as far as domestic gang related traffic stops? What is the one thing that every time you're just, I don't think there's any one thing I feel like.

Speaker 2: 17:05

For me I always felt like if I got called to a bicycle theft report, in the back of my mind I was thinking is this where I'm going to get ambushed? So to me it was every call every time I got out of the car that was just always in the back of my mind. I mean, you've got to be able to do that without being overly paranoid, but that always has to be in back of your mind because it's like I've had fights with people at domestic disputes on traffic stops. You know pretty much every call at some point can turn to where you end up in a fight of some sort have you been in a full, full-blown fist fights before?

Speaker 1: 17:37

how was that? How okay and I want you to be on how scary is it? Because I just watched a video the other day of there was the court case of a cop. You could hear him pleading before the guy shot the cop and then got his gun and you could hear the fear in his voice of him fighting for his life. So when a guy, when a suspect or any drunk puts their hands on you, how fast and how scary do you have to react to that situation? When you're in a full-blown fist fight, because it's not just two dudes fighting.

Speaker 1: 18:05

I mean you're now, I mean you got weapons on you. If he gets the upper hand, I mean you're done.

Speaker 2: 18:09

I can't remember of any like one fight where it was just me and another guy. It was typically always me and a partner, Okay. So typically I was pretty good about like, hey, I'm going to a call, you know, you know at this point nobody's dying, so I'm waiting for my backup to get here, and so I was always pretty good about that. We like to do what we call contact and cover. So one guy's making the contact, asking the questions, running driver's license, while the other guy is just going okay, I'm waiting for him to do something dumb?

Speaker 2: 18:36

Yeah Right, um, and so we always were pretty good about having contact and cover, so pretty much most of the I can't remember of any knockdown drag out fight that I was in where I didn't have backup with me.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Ah, I feel like you know that's very fortunate to have Cause you. I mean especially some of these rural areas when they don't. Yeah, backup could be 30 minutes away. Yeah, I feel like that's so scary as a cop to be out there. You know, nowadays, with cops and the reputation and everything, the whole, defund the police bullshit, everything, the whole defund the police bullshit. I mean it, the, I feel a huge part of the community just got turned against law enforcement officers for the agenda.

Speaker 1: 19:09

You know, obviously there's a bad apple in every bunch and it's, you know, with body cams and cell phones. Now, you see, you don't see the good. You know, and I compare it to when we were overseas. I mean, we were helping build school houses and playgrounds and bring kids to school. Then you see one marine do something stupid and you're just like and that was, that's all it was focused on, and so it's like, you know, one guy can ruin a lot of work that the other guys have done right and especially when you see good cops, you know and they're out there working in the community and they know the people's names and the cop in the community knows that law enforcement officer.

Speaker 1: 19:42

I mean I grew up in a small town. I mean we knew all three cops by name and they'd pull you over and ask you how the game's going to go Friday night, and things like that. And that's kind of the community I grew up in, but obviously not a lot of people, it's the opposite. And these cops were out here trying to just do their best and to protect and serve. And you have these communities that are just so against them even being there, but they're the first ones that people call. That's what's wild to me.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Yeah, and I'm lucky working here in Idaho, even during a lot of that stuff, I feel like we still had a lot of support from the community. I mean, I'd go out to go get a soda, or you go get dinner or whatever, and often I'd go up to pay and they're like, oh, your meal's been paid for. And I'm like, well, who did it? They're like, oh, some citizen, you wouldn't even know Somebody that was eating at the same restaurant you were and people would buy your dinner.

Speaker 1: 20:33

That's good. So, yeah, how often were you running into and this is even though Boise has blown up quite a bit when did I mean? You probably were out before all of the the crazy craziness, but how often would you run into somebody in these small communities that you've arrested, chased, anything like that? Did it ever happen?

Speaker 2: 20:52

yeah, really yeah, it would happen. I wouldn't say it was often, but you know, on occasion you'd run into somebody, or sometimes you just see somebody in the store and they'd kind of you'd make eye contact and look at you like oh I think I know guy, and then you turn and you just go the opposite direction.

Speaker 2: 21:06

But I never had anybody when I worked down in the Burley area. It was a little smaller and I remember my wife at the time she was a nurse and she was working at the hospital and she was taking care of some people and they, for whatever reason, I guess, recognized or knew that I was married to her and they remember they said something oh, we know who your husband is and we know where you live, like in a threatening way oh really, did you go look for him?

Speaker 2: 21:34

Yeah, I didn't even know who they were at the time, but I was just like, whatever you know, if it happens, it happens. Yeah, I remember one time I was involved in a critical incident with our SWAT team where we had to shoot and kill a suspect and that evening we had our detectives calling us saying, hey, the guy was part of a gang and other gang members. The word on the street was now they were looking for because they put our names in the paper before, in the news, before we even got home that night.

Speaker 1: 22:06

Really.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Yeah, and so at the time it was the philosophy of the agency. It's like, hey, we need to be transparent, we need to tell everybody everything and tell them who was involved, and they put our names out there. But we were told, hey, now these gang members are trying to find all you officers who were involved in the incident.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Can we go into that whole incident? Can you talk about that? Can sure so. Okay, let's start from the beginning. I mean, what led to this incident of a gang member getting shot?

Speaker 2: 22:31

So what happened?

Speaker 2: 22:33

Back up, even before our incident, we had a Boise SWAT was looking for a suspect who was wanted for shooting some people and doing a carjacking, and this guy had been on the run for a while and one of their off-duty detectives had seen the suspect like at a stoplight.

Speaker 2: 22:48

And so he gets on the phone and calls for officers and they try to make a traffic stop on him. The guy goes into a subdivision and then takes off on foot and so they put up a perimeter and they're searching for this guy and the SWAT team gets called out and they're doing a yard-to-yard search for this guy and SWAT team gets called out and they're doing a yard to yard search and eventually, when they get to the last house, they end up finding the suspect, ended up end up getting a shootout with the suspect. Uh, the suspect shoots two of their officers and, uh, one of their and one of their canines. Oh, really, ultimately the dog ends up dying. One of the officers, um, ends up being paralyzed from the from the shooting and the other one is in the hospital and released later. But the suspect was shot and killed and he was also part of this gang.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Can you name the gang or you don't want to.

Speaker 2: 23:32

No, I won't name them, but they're a local gang and later, a couple months later, this guy who was shot and killed, this gang member who was shot and killed by the SWAT team one of his buddies was saying, hey, I'm going to get revenge on the cops. And he was telling people he had grenades and supposedly some confidential informants were telling some of our detectives that they'd seen the grenades in his hand, in his possession.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Really yeah, here in Idaho. Yeah, did they ever catch him with any of them?

Speaker 2: 24:04

No, not at the time. So then my understanding is this guy that had the grenades was supposed to go over to CUNA and he was going to pick up some meth that was being delivered from some drug cartels. And detectives had been watching him, hadn't seen him there, and so then they tell some of our patrol guys, hey, this guy's supposed to go to this house pick up some meth. If you guys see him, put a traffic stop on him, see if you can arrest him. One of our patrol deputies, like at three, four in the morning, is watching the house and sees this guy come and go, put the traffic stop on him and the guy pulls over and then takes off again and and during the pursuit the guy sticks a gun out the window and fires like 10 shots at one of our deputies really he pulls into a subdivision and so they lock down the subdivision.

Speaker 2: 24:52

I think there was like three entrances so they lock it down. You know, set up a perimeter and they call it our SWAT team, which I was on at the time, and we respond. And it was a similar incident, kind of like the previous one. It was outdoor area search. We're searching yard to yard, you know, front yard, backyard, and we have teams on both sides of the street just kind of searching. It was wintertime, fresh snow.

Speaker 2: 25:13

We finally get to a certain location where one of the guys looks over back fence and says, hey, there's fresh tracks and there's a clue. So we thought they follow these tracks and they finally lead up to a house, to the back door of a house. So I knock on the front door, a gentleman comes to the door with these two little kids and we're like, hey, we just want to make sure you're okay. He goes yeah, I'm watching this on the news because the news had been out and he goes. My wife left to work and she saw the cops and he goes.

Speaker 2: 25:49

So I've been just watching this on the news so I know what's going on. Like, well, we have tracks that lead up to your back door. So we want to make sure you guys are okay, want to make sure you're not being taken hostage, and that was one of our concerns because it was cold out. It was I believe it was january, february, something like that, okay, but it was really cold, fresh snow, and so we were afraid if this guy's cold, maybe he's out looking for um you know somewhere to get warm, because we actually, and previous to this, when we first arrived on scene, we got in our armored vehicle and we're driving around and found his vehicle unoccupied.

Speaker 2: 26:14

So we knew he was out on foot somewhere, okay. But then I ended up knocking on this door after we'd been searching for, I believe, three or four hours at the time and the guy goes. No, he goes, I'm fine, there's nobody in our home. He goes, we haven't seen anything suspicious. So I let him close the door and I get on the radio and tell one of the guys in the back I go. Hey, this guy says there's nobody in the house and the officer in the back goes hey, he's in the house. He goes, unless a UFO. He goes. Pick this guy up, he goes, he's in the house, he goes those tracks go right to the back door.

Speaker 1: 26:49

So this father with his two kids had no idea this.

Speaker 2: 26:51

I guess fugitive at the time, or whatever you want to call him is in his own home, yeah, so then I'm still standing at the front door, so I knock on the door again. I go, hey, we need you to come out of the house. He goes because I go, we need to search your house. He's like, well, there's nobody in here, and so, but he reluctantly left, and so we had a perimeter, we had an armored vehicle in the back, one in the front, and so I had propped the front door open so that it wouldn't close.

Speaker 2: 27:17

Yeah, and we put a robot in and kind of went in looking with the camera on this robot and couldn't find anybody in there. Because we didn't want to just rush in there, right, because he's supposed to have grenades for sure. And uh, the only room he couldn't get in, this robot couldn't get into, was the garage, you know, from the living room or from the inside of the house to the garage. And so we're like, well, we're not going to go in, we're going to have our explosive breachers. Uh, you know, reach the garage door, because we're not going to go up there if he's got grenades. So we had to wait on our explosive breachers to how long does that take to get?

Speaker 2: 27:51

a team like that together. Well, typically at the time our explosive breaching program was fairly new, and so they had to actually run back to the magazine to get it Okay. But now they carry all that stuff with them. They don't If. If they, if they get called out for something, it's brought with it really comes now yeah and so, but at times.

Speaker 2: 28:12

so we ended up just setting up a perimeter in the back and I'm sitting in the back of the armored vehicle and our guys has a little robot and he has a little tv screen right on his remote and he's like there he is, and I think he said there is, he's got a gun or something like that. So I jump up. I was actually laying on my back because I was like man, my back hurts. I've been searching for four and a half hours with all my gear on. I was trying to stretch out. So I jump up, I look around the armored vehicle and I see the guy looking out. And we had a plan. One of my friends was the driver and we had a plan. We said, hey, if the guy tries to take off in a vehicle like he steals their car, he's like we're going to ram him. And so all of a sudden we see the garage door coming up. Oh really yeah. And you could hear the guy starts up these people's vehicle. He's going to steal their vehicle.

Speaker 1: 29:03

No kidding. Brand new car? No kidding.

Speaker 2: 29:06

And you could hear the engine revving up and sound like he just put his foot to the floor with it, like in park or neutral, and he slams it into reverse and he comes out of their armored vehicle, rams him and the vehicle flips around you know, spins around like this towards us and starts coming, coming at us. So we ended up shooting him. Really, yeah, okay, yeah, multiple officers fired and shot the guy.

Speaker 1: 29:30

So was that your first involved shooting at that point?

Speaker 2: 29:33

yeah, where I actually had to fire, I'd been shot at before, but not where I had returned fire.

Speaker 1: 29:39

Yeah, usually I was just ducking where and I mean, with all this going down, is that father and his kids out of there, or are they? Kind of like still they're just watching this guy and you guys just pop his garage door and blow that off the hinges we actually didn't breach the door.

Speaker 2: 29:58

The bad guy just hit the garage door and tried to escape. Oh, my god this guy's just watching and we were like, hey, if this guy has grenades, you know he's threatening the police. He's threatened that he has grenades and we were told the CIs had seen them. And so we're like we cannot allow somebody with grenades to be running around the neighborhood, so we can't allow him to leave, for sure.

Speaker 1: 30:22

After. How was that? I mean, obviously you know multiple officers fired but you're involved in that. How do you? How does that? And the reason I ask these questions is it's different from dudes being overseas right Like we're fighting a war on their territory. I mean, you guys are home and get to go home every night. How does that affect you? Or how does that affect other officers that you've worked with? When you guys get involved shootings, I mean into a shooting, you know justified, used clear gun guy makes a threat, whatever, and it's a completely different world for law enforcement officers. I mean, how is that going home at the end of the night after you just got into a shootout?

Speaker 2: 31:02

Well, home, like emotionally at home, you mean, yeah, I think it's different for everybody but, um, at least for me, the way I looked at it, you know, and there's different career paths that people take within law enforcement. Right, just like, probably in the military, you can be a comms guy, you can be a firearms guy, you can be whatever. Right, there's all. There's a hundred different types of things to do like in law enforcement. You can be a detective, a narcotics detective, gang unit, you can be a property crimes detective or a patrol guy. I kind of chose to do the SWAT and firearms thing, even though I was patrol, but my collateral duties were firearms instructor and SWAT, and so for me, I always tried to, I was always studying that stuff, right, I was always studying armed confrontations, officer-involved shootings, and so I think a lot of it has to do with just your mindset going into it.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Have you prepared? I always tell people you can prepare yourself physically, but get stronger and faster by going to the gym, go to the shooting range and prepare yourself to be a better shooter, a faster shooter, but mentally you have to prepare your mind too. Like I always tell people, you've got to be a student of violence, right, if that's what you're going to do and when you're in SWAT, that's basically what you're training for to go confront armed people, yep. And so if you don't, it's not. Sometimes I wonder why people even do the job right, because they probably shouldn't be doing it. But you need to prepare yourself mentally by being a student of violence. You know, watching body cam videos, reading about armed confrontations, talking to other guys who've been involved in confrontations, I remember going to conferences where people would debrief their shootings and I would go there just because I wanted to learn about it. And so I feel like guys who say I was so shocked or I was surprised that I was involved in the shooting, I never thought that would happen to me. I'm like well, your first clue is you put on body armor and a gun and you go to work. That should be your first clue. So it should never be a surprise that it happened to you. You should be expecting that that's going to happen. You know the?

Speaker 2: 33:07

I read a book called Terror in Beslan one time. It's about a terrorist incident over in Russia where Chechen terrorists took over a school and one of the things the author in there says he goes, you know, in other countries. Whether it's a terrorist incident, a hostage situation or anything smaller, he goes. The people who respond over there are usually like their special forces. They're equivalent of Delta. They're equivalent of Navy SEALs In the United States. If there's a terrorist incident at one of your local schools, you are Delta for the day. Delta force doesn't come and respond to those kind of things in our country. So you have to prepare yourself mentally to be able to respond to those things and you have to have the physical skills to go with it.

Speaker 1: 33:44

I mean it's a prime example. Respond to those things and you have to have the physical skills to go with it. I mean it's a prime example. We've seen these incidences where there is a school shooting and I mean it takes the cops an hour and a half to get ready to breach a door.

Speaker 1: 33:52

Yeah, I mean that's, that is an eternity, especially if it's happened to some little Texas town. These guys have never dealt with anything like that in their life. I mean it's crazy to think that you have to be Delta for a day and half these cops probably couldn't even pass a PFT test if they needed to.

Speaker 2: 34:08

Yeah, and that's the sad thing is, sometimes when I see incidents like I'm sure probably one of the ones you're talking about happened down in Texas. Right, they are on a shoestring budget, they get very little training, but when something happens they're expected to respond like they're a tier one unit like Delta or SEALs or something like that. That's what the public expects, but leading up to it, they don't want to. You know, the cities or the counties don't want to spend the money to give the officers that amount of training, right?

Speaker 2: 34:41

You see a football player walking down the street, an NFL football player, and there's like there's $10 million walking down the road right because of all the training that they put into him. You know, you see a Delta guy or a Navy SEAL same thing. You see a cop oh, there's $100 going by right.

Speaker 1: 34:58

His pistol and body armor are the most expensive investment that that guy probably had put into him.

Speaker 1: 35:03

It's sad to think like that, though, and I feel a majority of this country that's how, besides the big cities with budgets, I feel that's a lot of departments that just don't have the funding, and that's what blew my mind with this whole defund. The police thing. It was like, if anything, if you're trying to crack down and want cops to be better, less incidences, know their job more, know how to de-escalate, why would you not fund it more? The less training you have, the more quality, the less qualified they are to do that job that's why it never made sense to me.

Speaker 1: 35:33

It was like if I'm gonna bitch about something and I want to, they don't know what they're doing. They need murder training and all the reasons that we that not we, but the, the media and the left through at law enforcement officers. It's like, okay, how do you fix it? You fund it. Then you make it so a law enforcement officer doesn't have an excuse. They've gone through all the intense training on de-escalating and weapons training and handling and all of that stuff. So when something does happen and it is the wrong choice, then they're held at a higher level. Because if you had a Delta team running around out there and they were making those mistakes, those guys would be crucified. I mean they'd be done. I mean, so it's. That was. That was an interesting period for me, watching all that. It never made any sense to me. It's like, well, if you want to get rid of them, they're not going anywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:26

I think you know having those high standards, like when I worked for the Department of Energy, we had, if you were in a shoot, house training, if you missed a target you were off the team. Really, yeah, we had the. They have a CQB school. They send everybody to.

Speaker 2: 36:35

I can't remember, I think it's either four or six weeks, but you're in a shoot house pretty much 10 hours a day for you know that much time. And the class right before me had a guy run of the day. They're like, hey guys, last run of the day and they all be graduated right. And there was a. There's one run where you, um, you come out of a room, you pop out into the hallway and you got a 15 yard shot. Well, the number one guy pops out in the hallway, take that 15 yard shotyard shot. Number two guy bumps him and he missed and he was done Just like that. So he had to go through the whole program all over again. And so I think if we had more accountability on things like that, right, and obviously in law enforcement there's a lot more to the job than just shooting. For sure, just like military, the shooting part's just like the 1%, but you've got to be really good at it when it happens.

Speaker 1: 37:28

Mm-hmm when you have to use it and ready.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 37:30

Which I don't think a lot of guys are yeah. Because, it just comes down to basic training.

Speaker 2: 37:34

Yeah, you know, and I've had people say, hell, you put too much into the shooting aspect of it because you only use your gun, you know, one percent, ten percent of the time and you do everything else like 90 plus percent of the time. But if you think about, like the shootings, one bad shooting can bankrupt the city for sure. It can cause riots, all kinds of issues right. So I think that's why you have to be really good at combatives. Uh, you got to be really good. You know combatives when talking about the physical aspects of it, like arrest techniques, the physical fighting, that kind of stuff, and then the shooting part, because those things can bankrupt, those things are what cause lawsuits.

Speaker 1: 38:14

I mean, I probably already know this answer, but does it just come down to funding and helping with these departments?

Speaker 2: 38:18

Yeah, a lot of it's just funding and also priorities. You know, I was never, you know, and I I say that, but not ever being in an administrative position, but I do have a basic understanding of you know budgets and budgets can be tight and there's more to. You know, like, especially at Sheriff's Department, they got to fund the jail, they got they fund courts, they found, you know, patrol, we got medical units in the jail. I mean there's just a lot of things that have to be funded.

Speaker 1: 38:54

But I think guys who have a high degree of shooting ability and combatives ability. They have the confidence to me to not overreact, which is a huge portion of that of your job field is not overreacting.

Speaker 2: 39:03

Yeah, because otherwise you see guys that you know. Some of these shootings that I've seen are guys who are like that cornered cat right, they get cornered in a position and they don't have that confidence so sometimes they overreact. But those are on some of the bad shootings. But overall I would say most police officers don't shoot when they should. Really, I think there's a lot more of underreaction, but that also comes from not having the confidence to do what you've got to do.

Speaker 1: 39:30

What do you mean by underreaction, like waiting too long?

Speaker 2: 39:32

Waiting too long. A lot of times you'll see police officers. They draw their gun on a bad guy because he has a gun and they're like drop the gun, drop the gun, drop the gun. And they sound like this broken record and they're there for like for a long time. Another guy will roll up and going how come nobody shot this guy?

Speaker 1: 39:46

and they end up shooting the guy, right do you think a lot of that has to do with just fear of being crucified and losing your job and ending up in prison because of it. I mean, now I be personally, I mean I, I feel like I mean I'm coming home at the end of the day no matter what, yeah, but now everything with the cameras and everything's recorded and you're it's being a cop to me is probably the worst job on the planet, personally. Nowadays you make you have a split second to if you're going to engage somebody or not. You don't know if it's a gun, a knife, even a weapon. It could be a phone, a phone, because they're this guy wants to record you, and then you do. You think a lot of that plays into that. Hesitation of taking that shot ends up costing guys their life, or is it just lack of training?

Speaker 2: 40:37

I think a lot of it's just lack of confidence. Okay, because I'm not having maybe enough training got it. You know, I'm not sure what. I know bigger cities, cities you know that they fund the police, the BLM stuff. It's affected them a lot more than it has us here in Idaho, okay, but it still had some, some effect. But I still think it comes down to you, the individual officer, having the confidence to do your job correctly. If you, if you don't feel confident in your own abilities, you're probably going to hesitate to try to implement something.

Speaker 1: 41:10

I just watched a video a couple days ago. This guy had a woman at a knife point in the house and the cop's going in the door and the cop just busts the window open.

Speaker 1: 41:18

I don't know if you've seen this. They get in the house and the guy's on the bed and the cop just puts one right in the dude's face. I was like that's, that was impressive, that's, I feel, how it should have been. I mean, you got a victim, you got a hostage situation. There's no put the knife down. I mean I think they screamed it a couple times as they went in the room, but that cop went right in there and almost point blank that dude right in the dome and it was like okay.

Speaker 2: 41:42

Yeah, you know, and you've got to be willing to. You know, you hear all the time officer safety, officer safety. Well, if you're always worried about your own safety, you're not going to do things like that, right? It's all about public safety, not officer safety. For sure, public safety should be first. Officer safety is down at the bottom of the list.

Speaker 1: 41:58

Yep, I mean that's why you're there. Yeah, so with all this training and I don't know if there's any other topics you want to cover before we roll into what you're doing now I mean you seem like you took it really serious as far as knowledge studying weapons, weapons handling training, doing it on your own and that helped you roll into the civilian world of what you're doing now. I mean you have 30 years correct of law enforcement correct me if I'm wrong on that from swat to gang units to patrol, so you've you've covered a lot of the checks when it comes to different departments and different, I guess, avenues you can take in the law enforcement world. Taking that now to the civilian world and what you're doing, and so I guess we could jump into that and how you even decided to. I mean, obviously you got out after 30 years of law enforcement, which thank you for your service. That's a law, that is a commitment. And then to now giving back to the law enforcement community by training in the civilian world.

Speaker 2: 43:01

Yeah, so when I was early on in my career I worked with a guy who's still a good friend of mine. His name is Jeff Sklar and I was a new cop. I think I'd only been on for like eight months or something when our agency hired him and he'd recently out of the Marine Corps and he was on a. I was never in the military, so I don't know all the terminology and stuff, but I know he was with a unit called Fast Company. I don't know all the terminology and stuff, but I know he was with a unit called Fast Company.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Okay, and he was really really good. He was really big into shooting and tactics and that kind of stuff and so he talked to me about that stuff. I was like man, that's amazing, I would love to do that kind of stuff. And he was telling me about how they'd go to all these civilian shooting schools all over the country and so we'd go out to the range and train and he'd try to teach me some of the shooting stuff and that just really piqued my interest and so kind of blame him for all the money I've spent on shooting and training.

Speaker 1: 43:52

It is not a cheap sport, not a cheap sport.

Speaker 2: 43:56

Yeah, so, anyway. So I started doing that for a while and then I saw that he got into instructing and teaching and so I was like man, he's kind of a mentor, so I kind of wanted to do some of the things that he was doing. So I got into the teaching aspect of it, teaching within my own department, because most of the police departments they all kind of self-train themselves to a certain degree. They'll send somebody to like a firearms instructor school.

Speaker 1: 44:23

You go and learn how to be a firearms instructor, firearms instructor.

Speaker 2: 44:25

Then you come back and you teach your own department on the things that you learned. It'll be everything from. They'll have a little bit of case law and use of force, you know knowing the law, so you know when you can use force, when you can't. And they go into the physical aspect of how to how to hold a gun, how to shoot and that kind of thing and qualification scores and all that kind of stuff. But looking back, you, you know, I look at some of the when I meet some young instructors and I look back to how I was teaching.

Speaker 2: 44:52

I'm not sure I really knew what I was doing, right, okay, because I was pretty much just repeating what was in the manual, right, but knowing how to actually shoot and diagnose, that's what's really important. How? So? Because you know you can take somebody up out, take them shooting, and they're shooting, you know, maybe they're missing. They're shooting low left, they're shooting high right, whatever. And you're just like, okay, well, grip it, grip the gun tighter. Or hey, one of the things I remember is some guys are like stop jerking the trigger. I'm like, well, what does that mean? Right, how does somebody fix that? You need to be able to diagnose that and understand why people are shooting low left, why are people missing, you know, look at their gun and diagnose exactly what they're doing, instead of just basically repeating something word for word that's out of the manual.

Speaker 2: 45:41

And that's what a lot of what I see in law enforcement. That's what a lot of the guys do, especially when they're younger. You know, as they get older and they start shooting more, start to understand it. So I think you as an individual need to be shooting at a higher level so that you understand how to diagnose people. You've got to diagnose yourself first.

Speaker 1: 45:59

For sure. I feel like that should be the standard, I mean, if you're equal to the people you're instructing. I mean, how are you going to take? Everybody to the next level.

Speaker 2: 46:08

Yeah, so back then I think we had to go to an instructor development class.

Speaker 2: 46:16

So it had nothing to do with firearms. It was all about learning how to teach and put lesson plans together. And so you'd go to this class. They would assign you something, a topic whatever, and then you'd have to write up a lesson plan back at your hotel room or back at home. Then you'd show up the next day, you'd show your lesson plan on paper and they would look at it. It was like your, your lesson plan on paper, and they would look at it like yeah, lesson plan. You know, this is like going to school.

Speaker 2: 46:41

they put red check marks on it's like hey, you need to change this this and this to make it, to make it look nice, and then you'd stand up and you know, have this presentation.

Speaker 2: 46:47

Okay, yeah, they would sit back and grade you on your presentation, how you spoke and all that kind of stuff. And then later then you go to like a 40-hour firearms instructor school where they talk about the mechanics of shooting and maybe a little bit of use of force and so forth, and then you come back and you're an instructor but not knowing or not having a lot of experience is just basically one week of training with firearms plus another 30, 40 hours of instructor development. I think it's good, but at the time, you know, when I look back, I was pretty much just repeating exactly what was in the manual and what year was this man? This was back in like 1997. So a lot has changed since. A lot has changed. Yeah, now I believe the Fire and Instructure School is 80 hours and that's after they do a 40-hour instructor development course on how to teach.

Speaker 1: 47:34

And I could just imagine tactics. Everything is probably completely different now that you've evolved. I mean you, you got to watch that transition, obviously coming through all the years of being, you know, from back in the 90s to now. I mean, I mean I'm sure it's yeah day.

Speaker 2: 47:53

Yeah, I think things have changed quite a bit, but I think things have slowly changed and now everything was really slow changing and then all of a sudden, I think with social media and instructors all of a sudden started traveling around the country we would bring instructors here and all of a sudden people are starting to change a lot. Things are changing a lot faster for the better. But I think having somebody that's going to be an instructor, if you want to be a really good instructor, I think you have to master the skills first, absolutely, because I know a lot of people they pretty much like even the Teach Concealed Weapons courses. I know a lot of people they just go to like a weekend-long firearms instructor school by the NRA or USCCA, right, and then they're a firearms instructor school by the nra or uscca, right, and then they're a firearms instructor. So just that in itself to me doesn't make you a good instructor. That might be that you're certified on paper, yeah, but does that make you a good instructor?

Speaker 2: 48:49

Um, I see the biggest problem I see is the instructors themselves haven't mastered. And I don't say you have to be a professional shooter or anything like that, but you should be a fairly high level shooter to where, when you're out on the shooting range, you explain something right, then you physically demonstrate it. If I want all my students to shoot a certain drill, like, say, you know, two shots to the body, one to the upper A zone, I'm going to shoot, I'm going to stand up, I'm going to demonstrate it, maybe dry fire, I'll do a slow live fire and then do a fast live fire so that people can see what they can achieve right and sometimes, when you get to a certain level, even doing it slow. Sometimes it's kind of hard because you're used to going a faster speed, but I think a good instructor can break it down so that other people can see what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 49:34

Absolutely. I've been fortunate enough to go to you know a few schools over the years and we have our PBL program where we have instructors that go and travel to law enforcement officers and help those guys and everything. But you can tell, like if you've been around shooting and you know weapons handling, and it's funny because I'll show up sometimes and just watch and go to these classes or whatever and it's just like I I'm like, oh god, here, like you know, it's more of the the instagram influencer instructor, versus real, you know, a guy that's done real world training, real real world scenarios. Because it's it's a completely different mindset. I feel like when I'm taking, you know, instructions from a guy that's actually done it, you know, instead of just doing and wanting these his class to just go through these crazy fun TikTok drills, and it's like, okay, you know and you could, there's a major difference in that, yeah, I say, some guys will just stand there and they'll tell you, tell their students how to do a specific drill, but they won't stand up and actually demonstrate it.

Speaker 2: 50:36

And so I think if you have an instructor who's not demonstrating live fire what he's asking you to do, there might be an issue there.

Speaker 1: 50:42

It's something I've always thought funny is when they do do it and then it's like a turkey shoot. You see this instructor and then you're like you know, when you're shooting tighter groups and the guy's demonstrating, I'm like you know, I always found that pretty funny to do it.

Speaker 1: 50:53

So you know, I always found that pretty funny to do it. So you know it is what it is Teach their own. But I mean, I guess you know what you're looking for is somebody that has mastered a skill. I mean, I feel like if you're going to be an instructor of anything, you should know what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 51:06

Yeah, my son went through a police academy and he said he's like I'm on the shooting range, he goes in my mind. I'm just saying, okay, just keep your mouth shut, say nothing, just do what the instructors tell you to do. Because my son, when he was younger, we used to shoot competitively. We were three-gun competitors, okay. And when he was like 14, 15, 16, I sent him to Fort Benning, georgia, because they had a three-gun program for kids. Really yeah and Really yeah. And so my son went there and he had some of the best instructors in the country. It was all the guys from the Army Marksmanship Unit and so he'd shot a lot of competition when he was younger.

Speaker 2: 51:43

And then he gets into the police academy and he's a pretty good shooter and he ended up being the top shooter. But he said he had some instructors go by and they'd look at the students' targets and they'd say things like stop jerking the trigger and then just move on and not stop to actually help the student. My son said that he had guys going. Hey, what does that mean? What does that mean exactly? And so he was trying not to get in trouble, right, he's just like, but that was a good example of guys not really being a good instructor by not explaining like you can give terminology. But that terminology, if you've never heard it before, it means nothing to you.

Speaker 1: 52:18

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 52:20

So it would be better for that instructor to go over and go hey, looks like you're jerking the trigger, and this is what I mean by it. Hey, maybe get your gun out and have him look, watch your trigger finger actually pulling the trigger so he can see how to do it properly. Yeah, but actually demonstrate and don't just throw verbiage out there that new people don't know what what they mean oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 52:44

I mean, and you see it now, and there's so many different new terms and you see all these new. I'll watch a video every now and then I'm like what the hell is this dude talking? I've never even heard this in my life. It's all new verbiage, or they try to come up with some cool acronym or something like that. It's just like I feel, especially for beginners, you know, for some mom and daughter that are looking to get some training. I mean, they just it's just starting with the absolute basics. How often are you doing?

Speaker 2: 53:08

you know civilian classes, so I do um, I say, now that I retired, I still teach. I still do some classes for law enforcement, do some law enforcement courses, but I do probably more civilian courses than I do law enforcement and I do probably 10 to 12 classes a year. I teach everything from the enhanced concealed carry class, which seems to be the class that's the most requested by people Really and then I'll do just like a pistol 101, you know, pistol 102, basically just like an intermediate and a more advanced level course, everything from pistol. I do that with carbines, you know with an AR-15. Do some shotgun classes as well, and they're all you know. The shotgun class is not like skeet shooting, it's more defensive-oriented type of a class.

Speaker 1: 53:53

Really how so Like what's in a shotgun class.

Speaker 2: 54:02

What's involved, um you know what's funny is shotgun class is a lot of loading because, right, you shoot one, load one, shoot two, load two. And it's about learning how to load the shotgun, learning, uh, how to pattern a shotgun. You know what distance is buckshot good for. You know, is it good at 50 yards, is it good at 20 yards, so forth? And at what point should you be using slugs versus buckshot or birdshot?

Speaker 1: 54:19

so it's okay. So, as an instructor, but say, we live out in the country and I travel a lot, I'm I'm leaving it up to the wife and kids. What is your go-to home defense in that situation? Is it a shotgun? Is that more of a point down the hallway and let it rip? Or you, what would be your go-to for if you had a wife? Not and she's not a tactical woman, she's just your everyday wife. What's your go-to weapon if you were going to teach a husband or a wife and your kids to?

Speaker 2: 54:49

I would say just a pistol, because it's easy. Easy to maneuver, okay, it's um, you can if you have a gun, a handgun, in your hand. You can open doors, close doors, you can move down the hallway around corners.

Speaker 1: 55:00

It's just much easier to maneuver around inside of a, inside of a home as far as beginner shooters for a pistol, what would you recommend for a beginner to pick up? What's your gun of choice for somebody that's getting into it? They want to learn, they want to be able to defend themselves. What's your go-to?

Speaker 2: 55:18

pistol you mean like brand, or just caliber, wise a nine millimeter. Okay, I like nine millimeter because it doesn't recoil too much and the high capacity I'm with you on that, I'm not 15 to 21 rounds in a magazine. What you know with the pistol? Yep, and you know there's a lot of good brands out there, everything from glock to sigs to smith and wessons. There's a lot of good brands out there, everything from Glock to SIGs to Smith and Wessons. There's a lot of good brands.

Speaker 2: 55:39

Main thing is I tell people if you're going to buy a gun by and if it's something that like, say, 90% of the time it's just going to be a house gun, you're going to keep it at home, it's nothing you're going to carry with you, just get a full size gun, because full size guns are easier to shoot. One of the things I see a lot ladies come to my class or new shooters come to a class and their spouse or whoever will buy them a new gun to bring to class. And it's this little itty bitty, you know nine millimeter, and they have a hard time racking the slide because the springs are so tough on them. They shoot, you know, 40 to 50 rounds and their hands are tired because the gun recoils so much because it's so lightweight. And so if you have a full size gun that has a little bit more weight to it, that helps dampen the recoil and so the smaller guns are usually more difficult to shoot.

Speaker 1: 56:28

I've never considered that. I mean obviously being. I've never thought that. I mean I feel like that's the first thing a guy would do, is like I'm going to give my wife a compact pistol.

Speaker 2: 56:37

Yeah, that's usually what I see Really A compact pistol, and it's usually got it you know, pink or blue, or you know something, Tiffany blue or whatever.

Speaker 1: 56:47

I've seen a lot of those, yep.

Speaker 2: 56:53

But a lot of people think that you know, oh, I'm going to buy my wife this cute little gun. Or the lady's like, oh, I like that gun, that's cute. I should be able to shoot that pretty easily because it's nice and small. But a lot of times they'll have the most difficult time.

Speaker 1: 57:01

So glock 19 I mean I'm a glock guy carried it overseas I carry it here.

Speaker 2: 57:05

It's a perfect size glock 19 or glock 17s, yep and that's.

Speaker 1: 57:09

There's just an easy all around. I feel it's just a point and squeeze and you're ready.

Speaker 2: 57:13

The only problem I've seen with Glocks is sometimes the grip's a little bit big for a lot of people with smaller hands and women.

Speaker 1: 57:19

So what would you suggest then? I mean what has a smaller grip.

Speaker 2: 57:23

You know Smith Wessons seem to have a more ergonomic grip. Canik's pretty good. Like I say a lot of it, I tell people, go find yourself a full-size gun or at least a mid-size, like a Glock 19 to Glock 17 size, and go to the store, pick it up and see what feels good in your hand.

Speaker 1: 57:42

Now, if somebody signs up for one of your courses, do you offer different pistols for them to try, or do they have to have that figured out by time?

Speaker 2: 57:47

People don't have to have their own. I do provide them for them, at no cost, to use it. They just have to bring their own ammo. But I provide. I don't have a lot of different guns. People think that because I'm a gun guy I have, like you know, hundreds of guns. But I really don't have that many guns. But the guns I do have I will provide for people. I'll let them shoot. So if they do want to try something different, you have Glocks and a couple of Smith and Wessons or Smith and Wesson like 22.

Speaker 1: 58:19

I got some SIG 9mm that people can shoot For your beginners where do they start? Well, first, you've got to find a good instructor.

Speaker 2: 58:24

What are they looking for?

Speaker 1: 58:29

I mean, if I'm brand new, I just moved here from California. I'm sure there's a lot of those that you're getting Just moved here. They now live in Idaho. You can carry a gun. Where do I even start as far as finding an instructor and going, about it.

Speaker 2: 58:42

You know that's that's pretty tough, but, um, I think some of the best things you can do is probably go to a gun store, and I'm not talking about like shields, which I'm sure they have their own program stuff but I think it's better to go to some of these local gun stores, more like mom-and-pop gun stores. I call them, you know, like there's Hawk Tech Arms, you've got Idle Arms and Ammo, some of these smaller stores even, you know, I think Boise, black Rifle People that kind of have gotten to know people in the community. Okay, because I think by word of mouth is usually the best, because people, hey, I've gone to this class and I recommend you should go to it, and a lot of those instructors will hang around some of these smaller stores or they know people who've gone to their classes.

Speaker 1: 59:29

That makes sense, and those are recommendations.

Speaker 2: 59:30

Okay, because otherwise you're just looking at a name on a website and going well, it says he's certified, so he must be good because he's certified. A website and going well, it says he's certified, so he must be good because he's certified. You know, nowadays you get a lot of people that you know even myself put some of your shooting stuff on Instagram so people can see what you do. I know a lot of a handful of fire instructors here, even locally. They have these Instagram posts and they might show themselves working out, but I never or posing with a gun, but I don't ever see them shooting. I think that's a clue If these people are firearm instructors and they do a little bit of marketing and you don't see them actually shooting. They're just standing there with a gun or posing with a gun or doing a workout or something that's not really gun-related. That should be a clue. Maybe their skills are not up to what they're supposed to be.

Speaker 1: 1:00:14

So you're looking for instructors that are actually running drills. Yeah, you know you're able to. If you're going the social media route, look for an instructor that's running drills.

Speaker 2: 1:00:22

Yeah, because you want to be able to see their own skill they should be confident in their own skill and go okay, well, maybe he got to a certain point because he had proper instruction and then went out and practiced on his own.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

And you want an instructor who's not just going to run you through this class, but you want an instructor who can diagnose your shooting and then going to send you home with some homework, because these classes are about, you know, because you're only going to get so much better in a one-day class, right For sure.

Speaker 2: 1:00:49

So you need to be able to go to this class as a student and go okay, I'm going to go there so that I can learn how to train myself, so next time I go to the shooting range, I can apply some of the things I learned from that last class. And I think that's the biggest mistake that you know, even myself going to a class and you think, oh, this class is going to make me better. And then you go to another class and it's going to make me better, and you keep going to these classes and a year later you're still not that much better because you don't, you're not doing the homework in between yeah, right, so you need to take some notes when you go to these classes and make sure you take that with you and think of it as homework on things that you can practice on your own so that you can get actually get better so once I find the instructor, I go to a mall.

Speaker 1: 1:01:31

a small, small mom, paul, I mean, you said hawk tech. I've bought and done a lot of things through Hawk Tech. That's great, those are a great company. But say you, go there, they recommend you. What am I looking for? My wife and kids? I'm just going to use wife and kids as my scenario when I'm calling an instructor. What am I going to be asking for and what am I looking to put my wife and kids in so they can protect themselves? What are the basics? The beginner classes, yeah protect themselves.

Speaker 2: 1:01:56

Like, what are the basics that the beginner classes? Yeah, I mean to find out. Hey, are you just teaching an advanced level class? Do you teach basic classes? You know, heck, do you do you even teach kids? Like, some people don't teach, won't teach kids, so you got to kind of what is it that that you want out of it? You know, ask the instructor hey, what is it that you provide? Do you, like you said, do you provide the guns for them? Do you provide ammo? What kind of equipment do we need? And you know, maybe ask them about his curriculum. Do you actually have a curriculum that you've written up? Do you have a curriculum that I can look at? What kind of techniques? And maybe ask them what their background is? You know, ask the instructor where did you get your certification? How long you've been shooting, are you?

Speaker 2: 1:02:36

And a lot of times also, some of the things I see is some guys will say, oh well, I was in the military, I was in law enforcement, so you should come to me, right, and they use that as their marketing. And. But I always tell people it doesn't matter what you did 10 years ago, what can you do today? Right? So you know, when I'm not teaching. One of my jobs is I work security for a private school and, uh, I hire other people to help me at times and I've had guys come to me and go, hey, I was in law enforcement, I was in the military, I can, I can help you out if you need to help. And I'm like, okay, well, what's your shooting skill like? And we'll go to the range and I'm like, well, your shooting skill is really not up to par, you know it's like, especially for that environment yeah, I'm like I don't care if you were, you know, delta or seal 10 years ago, but what can you do today?

Speaker 2: 1:03:20

where's your skills at today? So find out where that instructor skills are at is. Is he just using the title of oh, I was in law enforcement or I was in the military 10 years ago.

Speaker 1: 1:03:29

So come to me because I know what I'm doing, because just we both know that that in itself doesn't mean that you know what you're doing, which is funny because a lot of people think, because you're in the military, you're just this incredible shooter. And I mean there's some. I've gone to the range before where I've seen people that couldn't even qualify and you're just like what the hell you know, and I've also. I was in that when I went to Afghan we had a lot of law enforcement that ended up getting dropped from the course because of their basic weapons handling skills Flagging dudes. We had a couple that had NDs on the range and they were all law enforcement cops and I was blown away Like holy shit, like you just think, because you're a cop, you know how to handle a weapon, or you're. Oh, this guy's a Marine. What the fuck did he do in the Marines?

Speaker 1: 1:04:13

You know, I've had guys be like, oh, what do you think of this gun? And I'm like I've never heard of it. Like, well, you were a marine, right. I'm like, yeah, I got a shitty ass beretta, an m4 with iron sights and I was having machine gunner like that, that's it. They think, because you're in the military, that you're shooting all. You're some youtuber that has experience with every single firearm out there and that's far from I mean, and most guys don't even get that.

Speaker 2: 1:04:36

It's just yeah, they don't realize that. Hey, you shoot what was issued to you, not necessarily what you wanted.

Speaker 1: 1:04:40

A couple of times a year, if they're lucky. I mean, it could be some marine admin that goes to the range once a year to qualify just to get promoted, and that's it. You know, and so it's. Yeah, you definitely can't take someone's background or their their previous job qualifications and automatically make you a firearms instructor or anything. Really, I've seen that quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 1:04:59

Yeah, so it is kind of hard, you know, because you can look on, you know, the Ada County Sheriff's website. They have a concealed weapons page where you can look and see what instructors that they have kind of certified or they have approved to teach concealed weapons courses. And I remember when I first started doing that 15, 20 years ago I think, there was like three of us or something, and now it's been a while since I looked on there but it seemed like there was like 100 people on there last time I looked.

Speaker 2: 1:05:26

So I don't know what all these people's backgrounds are. I know a few other instructors that not necessarily teach concealed weapons permits, but they teach firearms training, that are good instructors, and some of them are law enforcement. Some of them are not. Some guys are competitive shooters. There's a guy that teaches Combat Absolutes the name of his company who's a police officer out of California and he teaches out here now. I went through one of his classes. People are like oh, why are you in this class, aren't you an instructor? I was like well, I want to continue to learn, for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:06:00

That's what you want. Is you want an instructor who's going to continue to learn and you can't just go? Okay, I'm an instructor level, so I don't have to learn anything anymore. Right, everything is continual learning. So if your instructor is not one who you know, maybe ask him hey, when's the last time you went to a class other than your instructor certification? Do you do continuing education for yourself? Yeah, I think that's a good question to ask.

Speaker 1: 1:06:22

That's a huge one. Because I mean I feel shooting especially is one of those things. You don't use it, you lose it. Long gun I mean. Well, I shoot obviously a lot more long guns, so I don't ever really get out of that cycle.

Speaker 1: 1:06:42

But with pistol, there's times I'll go with the girls and be like god you know, yeah, pistol is the most difficult out of all the weapons to shoot, right, I feel, carbine, long gun. It's just that I've spent, so that's ingrained in my dna of who I am as a shooter. But pistol is one of those things I I'll go a while without shooting it and I go to pick up and run a drone like oh shit, okay, I gotta knock the dust off a little bit. Then I'm slow everything down. Okay, like let's go back to the basics. Squeeze, you know, I run my drill in my head like my process and it takes me a little bit to get back into it sometimes. And I feel like as an instructor it could be the exact same thing, especially if you're running course after course after course and you're not on the range or you're not going to other clinics instruct other, visiting other instructors.

Speaker 2: 1:07:20

I mean you can be find yourself probably not much often in the students you're teaching yeah, yeah, I remember, uh, when I first started teaching you know law enforcement a lot of guys like oh you just want to be in a firearm stretcher so you can shoot. All the time I was like man, I shoot less now because you have to get there early. You got to set up the range right, then you're teaching, then you get done, then you got to put stuff away, that kind of stuff, and so some of that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:41

All that takes away from your own training and then when the off time, the last thing you just go do it again, because you've been doing it all week. Yeah, you want to go back to the range? So I can definitely. Yeah, so you have to have the discipline to push yourself to.

Speaker 2: 1:07:52

Hey, I got to make time to go out and shoot and train on my own. But yeah, going back to what you were asking, you know what kind of things should I ask as a new shooter? You know, as far as finding a good instructor, I think, trying to find somebody who's been to that class, go to some of these stores and say, hey, you know, if they recommend an instructor, say hey, do you have any references? Do you have any other people that have been to your class? I think that's the best thing, but it's kind of hard when you're new. You move here from California, don't know a lot of new people, a lot of new friends. But I think that's probably one of the best things you can do is go out and ask for references and find out, find other people who've been to that person's class, and then find out.

Speaker 2: 1:08:31

Like I said, when you talk to an instructor, let him know what it is you're looking for. Are you looking for intermediate, advanced level course? Are you looking for a defensive course, a competition course, or like, hey, I need an instructor who can teach someone who's never shot a gun before. They need to be taught how to hold the gun. They need to know how to aim, how to pull the trigger. They need to know the basics from the ground up, and you teach those kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 1:09:00

How long should that class be? I mean, from a basic, I feel a one day class isn't enough. If I was teaching my wife and kids and we're going to go shoot, I mean it's obviously it's going to be a day by day thing. But I mean, if somebody is like, oh, I can get you spun up in a day, is that a red flag or is that something that you're confident?

Speaker 2: 1:09:12

No, I think a one day course and a lot of it too is like I've done eight hour courses okay, that we end up cutting at six and a half hours because people's attention span, especially if you're outside in the weather all my classes are outside, so you're either really cold or you're really hot, right, and so sometimes you start to see people's attention span start to, you know, drop a little bit and, for safety wise, then you're like, okay, we're gonna have to stop the class just because we don't want anybody shot on the range, right, because people are new to the gun handling, stuff like that. You're talking about people flagging or pointing their gun accidentally. Other people we can't, we just can't have that on the range. So, um, but that's why it's important to go to these classes. I would say most of my classes are one day courses, okay, but that's why it's important to go there and go.

Speaker 2: 1:09:55

Hey, I'm going to learn as much as I can, I need to take notes or I need the instructor to help me, to send me home with some homework yeah, right, because you need to be able to, and then maybe come back at another time. But I do think that, yeah, one day is not enough. Just taking a the enhanced concealed carry course is not enough and unfortunately most people think that it is um trying to get people to come back to other courses. I would say, out of the you know, let's say out of everybody who comes through an enhanced concealed carry course, people who return for more advanced level training, is probably maybe 20 percent really, yeah, so a lot of it has to do with people. You gotta have, you gotta you gotta want it right for sure, um, but there's a lot of people you know in the gun world who have a really high interest but low commitment level to training. Right, those are the guys who are like, yeah, they're collectors but not shooters okay, right there's definitely a difference.

Speaker 2: 1:10:50

yeah, there's a difference between someone who actually shoots a lot you know, I shoot competitively a little bit and some of the guys I shoot with. And there's right here in idaho we have some of the best shooters in the country and you know USPSA United States Practical Shooting Association I'll go down and shoot a few matches a year. I try to shoot 10 or 12 matches a year so that I can supplement my you know concealed carry training and that's basically why I started shooting competitively. I think guys who shoot competitively are your higher-level shooters because it's their hobby, right? Instead of going golfing, these guys are going to the range to shoot on the weekends and I know some of these guys here locally are shooting 50-plus thousand rounds a year, going to 20, 30, 40, 50 matches a year.

Speaker 1: 1:11:31

And I feel like some of those guys most of them are just civilians and they will outshoot anybody.

Speaker 2: 1:11:35

I've ever known in my life.

Speaker 1: 1:11:36

Some guys most of them are just civilians and they will out shoot anybody. I've ever known in my life, some of the best shooters I've ever met in my life. Zero military, zero law enforcement experience. They're just that. That's their hobby, that's their world. I've gone out and been like holy, like the gear, the knowledge, just listening to them on if they load their own rounds.

Speaker 2: 1:11:53

You know everything that these guys do and they're and that goes from pistol shooting right to the long range shooters, the guys who do the long range shooting. You know those guys are phenomenal. It's usually just civilian shooters, you know, say I was never in the military but even in law enforcement we would hire comparative shooters to come in and train some of our guys like SWAT team, like we've had JJ Ricasa down I love JJ.

Speaker 1: 1:12:13

JJ is one of our instructors for our PBL program. I've known JJ for probably a decade, yeah, I had him out here three years in a row.

Speaker 2: 1:12:19

Oh really yeah, and he did some training for us. But you know, talking to guys who are you know, tier one guys, they say, yeah, we bring in these civilian guys like JJ. They bring in you know a lot of guys like him to come in and train them.

Speaker 1: 1:12:35

He's so easy to work with too. I mean, he's just. Yeah, he's so mellow. He's incredible, he speaks the language. It's very easy to follow along, yet he's. He's a great guy, but he's a civilian guy. Yeah, he's one of the top shooters in the world yeah, those are the guys.

Speaker 2: 1:12:49

Like I said, we got guys are maybe not as famous as him, but we got some guys that are pretty high level shooters. Like he is locally and I like to go train with these guys. So I always tell people people ask me how do I become a better shooter? I tell people go out and compete. You don't have to make it every single weekend, but if you go out and compete two, three, four times a year, that really shows you at what level you're at. And that's why I go, so that I can supplement my defensive carry, concealed carry.

Speaker 1: 1:13:15

What are some of the competitions then? What are some of the? Because there's leagues. What do you call? Are they leagues? Yeah, they're just leagues. So, what would you start as a beginner if I wanted to get my kids into it?

Speaker 2: 1:13:25

Yeah, the best thing is just show up and shoot.

Speaker 1: 1:13:27

Which ones I mean there's several different ones right To me.

Speaker 2: 1:13:30

My favorite, and I think the one that's most applicable to concealed carry, is USPSA United States Practical Shooting Association, and that's you know. You'll get online, you can look that up and you'll see some courses of fire. Basically, you know you shoot one person at a time goes up and they'll have a course of fire where you run from point A to point B to point C. You know you might shoot anywhere from six to 12, 14 targets, depending on the course of fire. Is it majority pistol? Well, that is USPSA, and you can also shoot what they call PCC pistol caliber carbine and so guys will be shooting like an AR-15 that shoots a 9mm and you're doing a lot of the same course of fire and you get to see real quick where you're standing with it.

Speaker 2: 1:14:11

Yeah, you get to see you know, you sit there and talk about how good of a shooter you are. Well, let's go out and prove it.

Speaker 1: 1:14:17

Yeah, you know but there is, you know, there's more than just being a good shooter.

Speaker 2: 1:14:22

You can be a really extremely good shooter and still not place at the top. Because you got to know the game part of it right, Like they call a reading, a stage, Like you stand there and go okay, because they tell you basically where to start and then after that you can go right, you can go left, you can start in the center. It's up to you to kind of strategize and make a plan in what order you're going to shoot the targets in and which is going to be the fastest. Because what they do is they don't just look at your accuracy, they look at your speed as well. So it's basically the winner is whoever can score the most points the fastest. So you're getting judged on two different calibers.

Speaker 2: 1:14:54

Yeah, you're getting judged on two different calibers. Yeah, you're getting judged on two things, which is speed and accuracy, and you can't have one without the other or you're not going to win.

Speaker 1: 1:15:04

How do you feel about the tactical games? What are your thoughts on that type of training?

Speaker 2: 1:15:09

I've never done it. I've just seen it and I've always kind of wanted to try it, but it seems like I'm always injured somehow. But I think it's good, I think it's it's good, I think it's a you know, it just kind of shows your overall physical fitness, along with sure the shooting from what I've seen, seems a little bit different. Seems like more like bullseye type shooting, where you're shooting groups and stuff, not so much a run and gun like USPSA or three gun.

Speaker 1: 1:15:31

I went out to that one this summer up by Rupert or Burley, and I didn't compete in it. Those days are gone with me, right. But uh, I was watching those men and women compete and it was fuck that they had these. They had these guys dragging, you know, dragging these plates with sandbags piled on them, and I mean it wasn't like oh, 20, 30 yards, I mean, it was like 150 yards down, turn around, drag this thing back, then run a, run a stage, and then the other partner had to drag it while another dude's carrying this giant.

Speaker 1: 1:16:06

I was watching these guys. I'm like god I would have thrown up a hundred times by now. I mean, in my peak days I think they would have been in the most fun shit ever to do. But yeah, then you watch them I. I mean you want to talk about knowing where your physical level is and then being able to shoot that exhaust. That is a whole other level than standing stationary and running a station. But yeah, it was pretty fascinating. I mean, those competitors are on a different level for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:16:35

Yeah, I think you definitely have to have a different skill set, as in you got to be able to shoot bullseye type shooting. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. They want you to be able to stack rounds on top of each other where you're not. It's not necessarily a run and gun course of fire, it's like you do a bunch of physical fitness, run up to a certain position, take a few deep breaths and, slow, fire some shots. At least that's from what I've seen.

Speaker 1: 1:16:56

Yeah yeah, it's pretty demanding, Well. So people are trying to get ahold of you or the you know, with the masses that are moving here and need a good instructor. How do we find you? What's the name of your company? Let's make sure we get all that out there. So if anybody is interested.

Speaker 2: 1:17:10

I have a website. I'm not up my website, but it's idaho1032.com. So go to idaho1032.com and you can see the different courses that I have scheduled. And if you look on the calendar you're like oh, there's no courses this month or whatever. People can just get ahold of me and say hey, I got five or six people, family members or friends, we want such and such class. When can we do it?

Speaker 1: 1:17:37

and we just set up a date and do it.

Speaker 2: 1:17:40

That would say that's the majority of my classes. I get a lot of people just call, and so that's why sometimes my calendar looks empty, but it's because it's full right. Yeah, so sometimes I'm not. People are just calling me and setting up courses.

Speaker 1: 1:17:52

You know courses for them and families and so we'll just set something up so you can do one-on-ones, like with families that want to just come and do have the range with you.

Speaker 2: 1:17:59

I do private one-on-one or private group classes for families or for companies. I've had some small companies that have like 10, 12 employees set up a class for them.

Speaker 2: 1:18:12

I've done everything from like 20, 30 law enforcement guys to just one individual person who wants to learn how to use a gun. Got it and so go to idot1032.com. You can see the courses of fire or if you see something on there going hey, I wonder if he offers this call and ask me I'm you know, we can probably set something up. I do a lot of custom courses.

Speaker 2: 1:18:32

Um, one of the bigger things I have coming up as far as law enforcement-wise, I'm doing a small law enforcement conference come May 20th, 29th. We're going to be doing that at the Double Tap Range and it's for law enforcement only. We're going to invite vendors out. But we're going to have three classes. We're going to have a mechanical breaching and a ballistic breaching class where people are breaching doors with shotguns, using battering rams, hooligan tools, and then we're going to have a handgun class that's being taught by Yong Lee, who's a five-time grandmaster and a former SWAT guy, really. And then Benny Cooley, who's going to be teaching a rifle class you know, carbine AR-15 type class, and he's a former DOE SWAT guy and won like 15 world championships in shooting sports.

Speaker 1: 1:19:20

Really. So you've got some heavy hitters out there.

Speaker 2: 1:19:22

Yeah, and Corey Feldman is one of our Ada County SWAT guys and so he's going to be doing the breaching part Cool and guys will have to sign up for it's going to be just two days, so guys will have to sign up for like breaching and handgun or carbine pistol, so they'll just pick two of those classes to go to. Then hopefully, um, on the end of day one I'm going to try to have an evening where guys just come in and debrief some of the shootings they've been involved in.

Speaker 1: 1:19:46

so that's actually pretty cool. Is this the first time doing it? Oh nice, I'm doing that, yeah, nice.

Speaker 2: 1:19:50

So that one's going to be law enforcement only. Like I say, most of my, most of my business is, uh, civilian classes, yeah, and so I'm going to try to hopefully, the next couple weeks I'll have some classes up on my website. At least once a month I'll be holding some type of class, either enhanced, concealed carry, intermediate pistol or carbine class. Oh and then on instagram, I have an instagram page where I just kind of I'll post some of the competitions I go to, some drills that I'm shooting at the range, or on occasion you'll see a class posted there.

Speaker 1: 1:20:20

What's your Instagram handle there?

Speaker 2: 1:20:22

1032 firearms training.

Speaker 1: 1:20:23

Okay, it's 1032.

Speaker 2: 1:20:25

Underscore firearms training. Underscore training. What's?

Speaker 1: 1:20:28

1032?

Speaker 2: 1:20:29

That's cop code, yeah 1032 is old cop code. It means a man with a gun. Okay, so it's something that we don't really even use anymore. That's creative, I like that. Yeah, so I was just trying to find, well, what's something that's not just shooting training, you know. So 1032. So people go hey, I went to a 1032 class. That's a man with a gun class. So that's cool, that's, that's, that's creative, I like that. Is there anything we're website? And if they see a class on there that they want request it. Or if there's something on there that they don't see, reach out and request it as well.

Speaker 1: 1:21:05

Cool, we'll make sure everything's tagged and on all the YouTube and all the MySpace and all that good stuff these days.

Speaker 2: 1:21:13

I had one of those MySpaces.

Speaker 1: 1:21:15

I joke around with her every now and then or you know, I'll have somebody come along and be like where do I find you? I'm like, well, you could, here's my MySpace. And they look at you like I had this woman not too long ago. I said that too and she's like it's back. I'm like, oh man, it's better than ever. And she was like, oh, my God, I used to use but yeah, no. Well, thanks, dude, I appreciate you coming on and spreading the word and what to look for as an instructor and and you know as far as beginners and everything, and just thank you for your service in the community. I know 30 years is a long time to commit, yeah, especially here right in your old hometown and home state. So thank you for everything you've done for us and keeping the streets safe I appreciate it always, man, thank you again.

Speaker 1: 1:21:56

Thanks, there we go, man. Well, I hope that turned out okay. I think it's gonna be great safe. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:21:58

Always, man, thank you again Thanks, there we go man Well.

Speaker 1: 1:21:59

I hope that turned out okay, I think it's going to be great.