I'm Certified!!!

This past week was one of the hardest weeks of the four. It was 5 days of just straight power points and lectures. I wasn't sure that it was ever going to end. We had to learn so much information, plus we had to review for the final exam. There were so many things this final week that I was afraid I was gonna forget because we had such a short time to retain it. I have never been a person that does a lot of studying. This was no different. There was only one night out of the entire 4 weeks that I came home and studied. Is that something to brag about? No. But, it just goes to show, paying attention in class makes a huge difference. It seemed everyone else was there to make friends, be buddies, have a lunch pal, etc. Me, I went there to learn and that's what I did. There were two women in the class that aggravated me more than most of the inmates I deal with. They were both older and just plain B$#@es. Is that mean to say? Of course it is but the truth hurts. They were the ones that pretended to know everything about everything the entire four weeks. They hated me. Which is fine. I didn't like either of them either. The other day the oldest one asked me something and I gave her an answer. She then asked me what unit I work at and my response to her was, "the it ain't none of your business unit." She got ticked off and said that was rude. Really? I thought it was the sweetest comment I could say. Either way, neither of them liked the fact that I never studied, yet I was always answering questions. So when it came time for testing I was sure they were both gonna make higher than I did because of all the studying they did. The testing session came and went and I was the 4th one done out of 21. Is that a good thing? Not necessarily. But I was pretty confident that I passed. After it was all said and done, we lost 2 people who didn't pass the test. I ended up getting an 86. The highest score was a 92. I definitely gave myself a pat on the back for that one. After the test was completed we had to have graduation. Since I wasn't sure whether I was gonna pass or not, I didn't invite anyone to the ceremony lol. My Sgt. told me that he was gonna come. That meant a great deal to me cause I have never worked for someone that cared about the employees like the 2 Sgt's I work for. They have been supportive in everything that has gone on and even with the things I'm trying to accomplish outside the DOC. There were also 2 other Administrative people from Nash that came to the graduation. It really meant a lot to me to see them showing support for the officers that complete training. Now that training is over I have a full week off. I don't go back in to work till next Friday. I'm gonna make the best of it and just try and make up for some of that lost sleep. But I can now walk back in that facility next Friday and hold my head high and say that I am now a North Carolina Department of Corrections, Certified Correctional Officer.

Week 3 complete

Week 3 has come and gone. It wasn't anything special really. Most of the week was spent in the classroom except for Wednesday we had to qualify with the standard shotgun used by the DOC which is the Remington 870 pump action 12 guage. Since I really had no experience shooting a shotgun before I was kinda worried I wasnt gonna qualify since everything was timed. But in the end it wasn't that bad at all. We received 7 rounds for the shotgun. Each round is a 12 gauge 2 3/4 inch 00 buckshot with 9 pellets in each. To qualify, you have to get atleast 36 holes in the target. You have a potential to get 63 so you wouldn't think it would be too hard. Well for some people, it was. We were shooting at distances of 25, 40 and 50 yards. For someone who has never shot a shotgun before it was rather easy. At the end of the day, I came out in 2nd place of our class of 21. I had 58/63 and the guy who beat me had 60/63. That's not too bad if you ask me. If you feel you can do better while being timed, you let me know and I'll be happy to let you prove it. At the end of the day we had low/limited light training. They let us fire the handguns again as well as a few more rounds with the shotgun. I did pretty well on those too. We finally got outta there at 8pm. It was a long day for sure, and picking up brass on the range with flashlights wasn't fun at all.

To the right is the shotgun Target from last week. I picked a white guy this time cause someone mentioned I had shot all block guys prior to this one. Now I am a racially indifferent shooter :)

CRDT in the books!!

Well this past week we had CRDT training and expandable Monadnock baton training. I have to say that this was some of the most intense yet fun training I have ever went through. There were so many things we had to learn. It took up the entire second week but I'm sure we could have spent much more time on it.

The first part of CRDT or Control, Restraints and Defensive Techniques, we spent learning the nerve points on the body that we can use most effectively. The nerves that we learned to use were the suprascapular, common peronial, femoral, superficial, brachial plexis, radial nerve, mandibular angle and the jugular notch. A lot to remember right? I personally don't care about learning the names till it's time for me to write a statement about a use of force where I used one of them and I need to know the name. The main thing I wanna know is how to use them. With the training we got in that short week I can control almost any type of inmate or even a person on the street that's being aggressive. There is a little bit of something for everyone. And not only did we learn all those types of techniques, but we learned multiple ways to administer them. That's where the fun part comes in.

For each one of the moves that we learned throughout the week, we had to partner up with another officer to practice on. They wanted us to make sure we understood how to do each technique effectively. Me and one officer worked together for the first couple days. Both of us felt the same way. We wanted to make sure we did the moves hard enough so that the person receiving it felt the pain on a smaller scale than the inmate, but still enough so as to leave a lasting impression. The brachial plexis and the radial nerve are the two that stand out the most on lasting pain. These two regions hurt for several days after we did them just because he and I were doing it at about 50%. When I say it hurt...there were times where we took each other to the knees in pain. Not only did we want to know what it felt like, but we wanted to make sure we were doing it properly. Whats the point of learning something if your just gonna pretend to hit the other person and not know if its effective or not. You haven't learned anything at all.

The femoral nerve and the common peronial nerve one the ones that had a lasting impression as well. Obviously the femoral nerve runs along the inside of your thigh. The common peronial runs along the outside of your leg about 2 inches above the knee. When hit properly, the pain is excruciating. That is not an understatement. One guy managed to get hit in his manhood one good time. What was funny about it was he had just said an hour before how he never wanted kids and that people who had kids were selfish. Well guess what...a couple more shots like that and you won't have to worry about having any kids. For each one of these nerves there were several ways to administer them. We learned and practiced them all...the most effective in my opinion was the knee spear. It hurt like a b*%$@!! Especially when the person hit you harder than they were trying to.

The mandibular angle is one that I couldn't resist trying on my nephew when I got home that day. These are the nerves right behind the ear at the base of it. There is a little indention there and you just have to press your fingertip in there and it will almost make a grown man cry. I know for a fact that it's not something I want someone to do to me again anytime soon.

We learned several blocks and other defensive moves. One of which was the arm bar take down. By the end of the day I felt like I needed a new shoulder. If you have never had it done to you before, try to avoid it. Bouncing off of those mats when you get taken down for an hour was a serious workout and made my entire body hurt. Not to mention the guy I was having to take down was like 6 inches taller than me and 90 more pounds than I am. It was definitely fun to learn though.

One of the last things we learned in CRDT was how to perform the guard in and guard out technique. This was by far my favorite because we performed it to its full potential.I ended up partnering with a 5'3" 200lb officer. We practiced all the different holds and learned them. Each one we had to perform it almost 10 times to make sure we could do it and it be effective. Finally the did role playing and told one officer to be the inmate and have the officer in the guard. I happened to be the officer that was in the guard. We were directed to utilize all the techniques we had learned that week to get out of the guard. We took this task very seriously. He had me locked in and I was literally fighting for my life. To understand the difficulty of this you have to understand the positioning. The person performing the guard is on their back with the other person locked in between there legs in a type of headlock. The guy that had me in the guard was all muscle. He was doing everything in his power to keep me locked in. I was trying all the pressure points and nerves to get loose and nothing was working. I even grabbed skin on the side of him and twisted and pinched trying to break his grip. Nothing worked. He had me so tight that i was within a few breaths of passing out. I actually lost hearing completely because he had cut off the blood flow and oxygen. I was so close to passing out. Finally the instructors came up and hit me and tried to boost my confidence. Out of nowhere my adrenaline kicked in even more. I managed to get an immense amount of strength and pick this guy completely up off the ground and slam him back on the mat to loosen his grip. I did a few more nerve techniques and finally I broke loose of the hold and stumbled away ready to pass out again. By then, we had gotten the attention of the entire class because we were taking it to the highest end of the realism spectrum. We were both completely physically exhausted after that for almost half an hour. Looking back I'm so glad we did that because it showed me just what I was capable of when put under a stressful situation such as do or die. It don't get much closer than that.

The training we got in CRDT is immeasurable. There are so many things that we learned that we can take with us and use every day if the need arose. Im so thankful that I had the chance to do all of those things.

C-R-D-T...We LOVE CRDT!

Well this week we started CRDT (control, restrain, defensive tactics). It has been so awesome so far. I have learned so many new things that before this week I never thought about. The insructors told us last week that we were gonna be feeling pretty sore by the end of this week. So far I've been able to handle it pretty well. Its been a lot more high impact things tha anything else.

Monday we learned the basic principles of a defensive stance and ways of moving defensively around an aggressor. They taught us things where to bring our hands when we begin to defend ourselves. We learned the different zones around a person and which ones to stay out of. The most physically challenging part was the break falls. Learning how to fall properly so you dont get hurt is actually harder than you think. And when your falling on concrete, you want to make sure your doing it properly. At first I watched the instructors do it and thought no way is that gonna work. Step by step they showed us how to fall backwards and not bust our "coconut" and and make it explode like a "watermelon" on the floor, and little by little it became evident that it works. Those were the words that the instructors chose to represent our heads. By the end of the day my butt was killing me from doing close to 100 falls backwards. Even though they teach you the proper way to roll when going back, that initial impact is what gets ya. But, I'd rather my butt hurt a little than my head hurt a lot.


Today we got a little further into the training. We learned some basic first aid which I knew fairly well from my last job. After that we were back in the workout room beating ourselves up. We learned how to break a fall while falling forward today. It goes against basic instincts to let yourself fall forward. At first it was difficult to make myself do it. For those in the class that are large and in charge....I can't even imagine what they were thinking. After several attempts and a slight headache later, I was able to, break my fall correctly while falling forward and felt comfortable doing it.

The next thing we learned were the proper blocking techniques that should be used when someone is attacking. Prior to this class I had never really thought about things like this. I thought when your in a fight, you are just supposed to fight and that's it (yeah I haven't been any fights...call me lucky I guess). Who knew there were that many blocks and ways of avoiding your opponent. Now that I ;earned them though I'm gonna make sure that I don't forget them.
Lastly we learned a few ways of making someone comply with only minimal force. The first way is whats called the mandibular angle. Let me just tell you... if done right, it hurts like hell! It will bring a grown man to his knees in a split second. It wouldn't take me but half a second of that pain before I did anything someone asked of me. The second one we learned which was for a more aggressive person actually had no effect at all on me. The Jugular Notch as it is called had no effect. There is a ittle hole above your breastbone and if you use sudden pressure on that spot while pulling the aggressors head down its excruciating pain....for me it just felt like a little pressure. Me and one other guy were the only two that it didn't effect. Seeing how everyone else dropped to their knees immediately, I'm kinda glad it didn't work.

Its been a great week so far. Hopefully the week will continue to be the same way until Friday when we have baton training.

Week 1 in the books

First week of training has come and gone. I learned so much more in the first week than I thought I would. There is so much more information associated thank what i have learned in the last 10 months of working at the prison. I'm learning why certain policies are in place, what rights the inmates have and just gobs of more info. Before this week, I had no idea why inmates had certain rights, or even what those rights are. It makes you look at things in a completely different way. Even though we lost a lot of people who failed to qualify with the firearms, I'm still making plenty of friends with the officers that are remaining. There is only one that I try and stay away from. I guess you have one like that at any job. I know there is definitely one in the Unit I'm already working at, so being able to ignore comes naturally. I can understand someone being a know it all at a young age. But to be a know it all in a job where your a new hire is completely different. They think just because they worked at a prison up north that they know everything. Wrong! If you knew it all, move back up there. I'm going through this training with a completely open mind in trying to learn all these things from scratch and trying to forget some of the things I know.

I've decided that once I get back to the unit after training, I'm gonna apply to be on the P.E.R.T team. It won't be for any extra pay, but its one more thing I can put on my resume. The PERT team travels all over the eastern part of the state doing shakedowns, searches, track down of escapees, etc. The more experience I can get while I'm at the DOC the better off I will be and the better chances I will have in advancement.

Range Day with the Smith and Wesson MP .40

Today was range day. We got to the range around 9am this morning and didn't leave till 7pm tonight. Yeah, that's what you call a long day filled with gunpowder, lead, mosquitoes, gnats, flies, humidity and smelly people. Factor all that in together and it makes for a long day...trust me. When we got to the range today there were still 30 people in our training class. For several of the people, this was there second time coming through the training cause they failed the handgun qualification the first time through training and they were sent home. Not much changed this time around. By the end of the day, there were only 17 of us left in the class. One person was sent home within 15 minutes, one was injured and 11 others failed to qualify after 3 attempts.

This is my qualifying target for today...------------------------------------>>>>>>

All week so far the instructors have harped on safety, safety, safety. The #1 priority on the firing range or anywhere a weapon is present is safety. One person must not have gotten that memo. When we, the first group of 10 had our weapon and ammunition (50 rounds), we were told to stand at a certain spot, take the magazine from the pouch, insert it into the weapon and chamber a round. The most important thing they told us, which is common sense, is to never have your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot at the target. Well this particular individual forgot to keep their finger outside the trigger guard while loading the gun. When they loaded the magazine into the weapon, the released the slide to chamber a round, they had their finger on the trigger. When the slide slammed forward inserting a round, they flinched, pulling the trigger and discharging a unexpected round. Needless to say, there were several of us who had to check our pants...including the instructors. She was removed from the firing line immediately and sent home. They were not exaggerating at all when it comes to how serious they take safety on the range.

After all that got cleared up we got to fire our 50 familiarization rounds. After this I was somewhat disappointed because several of my rounds were not going where I was aiming...at all! I knew was I was doing, I just had to correct it during qualifying. So after that 50 rounds was wasted into the hill, we got 50 more to qualify with. Qualifying was a little stressful cause it was all timed. After the first magazine of 12 rounds was empty and we were reloading, I was counting the holes and somehow or another I lost a bullet. Either it went through another hole perfectly or it went so wide it didn't hit the paper. Either way I'm not sure. I finished up the qualifying and ended up with a 94/100. For the second time ever shooting a handgun, I'd say I did pretty well. After everyone had gone their first time, I had the highest score out of the entire group, minus the unsafe person. Several people (11) had to shoot a second and a third time to try and qualify. All of them ended up still not being able to qualify. Out of 4 of us from NCI, I'll be the only one continuing on. I hate it, but that's how it goes.

At the end of the day, almost 4000 rounds of ammunition was fired. Which meant that we had to walk the firing range and pick up all the brass that was left behind. That too 30 minutes on its own. All in all it was a great day. I'm way more confident in my shooting ability, and I know who NOT to stand beside at the firing range. On to the next day of training.

Handcuffing amd Firearms

Today was day #2 of the training. By far it was WAY better than day #1. Today we started out with the handcuffing techniques and proper ways to escort the inmates while they are handcuffed if they are not being compliant. We all partnered up and performed each one on each other. Since Jones and I started at NCI in the same class together, we decided we would team up and tackle this together. So far we learned four types of handcuffing techniques....all of them are very effective in, A: nearly breaking your wrist if your not careful and B: bringing a grown man to his knees no matter how big he is. It was fun to go over it though and be familiar with the cuffs since all we had done prior was just tell the inmate to out their hands behind their backs and put the cuffs on. Along with the techniques we of course had to learn more policy. Policy that tells us why we have to have certain hands here or there to prevent this or that. It was actually very interesting.

According to the instructors, the NCDOC is gonna start incorporating a physical fitness agility test prior to them hiring you. Which after looking at the size of some of the men and the women...I can see why. There are numerous people that have no business in the DOC because they cant perform their job duties efficiently. I have seen it so many times already. It aggravates me to know that if I need backup, and I have to depend on them, they will either pass out on the way there, stop 50 times to catch their breath, or stop when they get there and be so out of breath they are useless. Is this mean of me to say? Sure it is. But its the truth. Fat/unhealthy/out of shape people do not belong in the DOC. Yesterday was a prime example. While working with the firearms, one of the officers went down on one knee to practice shooting and couldn't get back up, then proceeded to fall over. Sorry but in my opinion, they should have never passed the physical.

The firearms functionality test we had was pretty simple yet very informative. The instructors are very serious about safety as they should be when it comes to firearms. A handgun is not meant to be babied, yet so many of the officers felt the need to ride the slide back ad forward cause they thought they were gonna hurt the gun. Nope, definitely wrong.Your not gonna hurt it. I mean there were people that were jamming the gun when you do the slap, rack, ready. How is that possible? I have very little experience with handguns and even i ADD to the max Kevin, was able to follow instructions. We also learned all the basic parts and actions of it. Tomorrow were gonna spend the entire day at the range. It should be fun. Were supposed to have a couple hours to practice then we have to qualify. After that were supposed to do our low/limited light or night fire. Yeah that means were gonna be there till 10om if all goes accordingly. Oh well. It should be fun.