of paper that says they can keep driving around at work
with a dog in their car.
We should ask more of ourselves. In the interest of our
safety and our tactics, we need to demand it.
The Anti-Tactic
Let’s discuss “tactics” for a moment. Tactical: the mere word
gets the attention of most aggressive officers — the “
five-percenters.” A man I still train with occasionally taught me
to hate the word tactical because it’s a useless word for which
we already have a term: common sense.
Of course, common sense doesn’t sound as macho as the
word tactical, and no one will purchase a common-sense
T-shirt from a common-sense seminar, but we’ve gone a bit
overboard in the use of the T-word. We’ve had tactical
helmets, vests, battle dress uniforms (BDUs), boots, and
knives — along with a plethora of other tactical products at
our fingertips for years. Now we also have tactical pens,
socks, sunglasses, and gloves, as well as some things that I’ve
probably never heard of. I would be willing to bet that we
could make just about anything out of black nylon, call it a
“tactical widget,” and get cops to buy a ton of them. So in
order to best understand the true meaning of the term
tactical, let’s use it under the definition of what it truly is:
There is a lethal adversary that frequents all jurisdictions,
regardless of location, size, or demographics. Its name is
Complacency. I call it the Anti-Tactic, because it can lead
an officer to defy everything his tactical mind is telling him.
In other words, it will cause us to not use our common
sense. No one can say whether Complacency was there the
night Josh was killed (and understand I’m not saying it
was), but we can take steps to reduce the chance that it will
show up on our next call.
Following is a checklist of things we, as handlers, need to
pay attention to on the training field. On the trainer’s end,
we need to be watchful that the teams we are working with
address these concerns as well. Because the Anti-Tactic,
Complacency, can happen to any of us.
• Don’t train only in exercises you excel in. Far too often, K- 9
handlers do not confront their problems head on by working on them. Isn’t that what training days are for? If your
dog is rocking in narcotics work but faring poorly in his
tracking, why would you not spend more time on tracking
than on narcotics work, rather than vice versa? Opt to fail
in training, where you can likely implement a fix, rather
than failing on the street, where you might find yourself
hurt — or worse.
