Action Fighting Arts : Knife Defense : Ground Fighting : Defensive Tactics

The authorized Newsletter of Action Fighting Arts

INAUGURAL EDITION
NOVEMBER, 2004

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INTRODUCING “THE FIGHTING FIREBIRD”
BY HARRY A. WIGDER, PRESIDENT ACTION FIGHTING ARTS

The newsletter is a natural, I think, for my web site. What better way for the warriors who visit the site to get to know me and the concepts and techniques I teach? It is my hope that this will be the place where warrior-instructors, instructor candidates and others can visit to learn valuable training tips and time-proven drills and exercises to maximize training effectiveness.

But when I thought of this newsletter several years ago, I had other reasons: I wanted to provide a place where we could all learn what is going on in law enforcement around the world. A site where the controversies and driving issues of the day can be discussed. A location where officers, instructors, students and others can share information about what Bad Guys are doing to thwart arrest attempts, weapons and other tools they are using to successfully resist our attempts to control them, new and devious “tricks” Bad Guys are using to harm officers and citizens.

Professionalism and ultimately safety begins with good training. So the primary purpose of The Firebird will be to address almost every crucial issue, concept, technique and noteworthy event as it relates to training. It makes sense to me since it is what I have done most and best over the last 18 or so years(of the more than 33 I spent with The Board) , the last four for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, for whom I coordinated and ran the integrated use of force training program. I think our training program, which included comprehensive, intensive and well-researched courses that covered every element of the Use of Force Continuum (Resistance Control Continuum), including Verbal Judo, PPCT Defensive Tactics (DT), Spontaneous Knife Defense (SKD), Weapon Retention & Disarming, Impact Weapons and, of course, firearms training, was one of the elite use of force training programs in the state. It is the experience and knowledge gained from those years of training that I hope to bring to this newsletter.

• Articles About Action Fighting Arts’ Training Courses: The Firebird will do a brief feature about every course, including a class photo, names of students and course highlights.

• Training Tip of the Month: Each newsletter will feature one helpful training tip designed to make your trainings more effective, entertaining and professional.

• Training Calendar: Relevant, upcoming enforcement and Subject Control trainings. Where, when, what & how you can make contact.

• Instructor Of The Month: A feature article about an Action Fighting Arts trained (and certified) instructor.

• Successful Field Experiences: A key to motivating students to practice and therefore excel at subject control, self defense and/or use of force trainings are a combination of many elements, including but not limited to creating a need to learn the skill, ensuring that students will believe that they will have a positive training experience quickly, making sure students have a positive learning experience quickly, and, the students having a positive field experience. Your trainees will be naturally suspicious when you try to teach a new survival skills and, often, relating a story of how the techniques(s) worked on the street, in a real situation by you or another trainer or officer will be a motivational factor. The Firebird, therefore, will include stories submitted by instructors, officers, and others noting how concepts & techniques learned during trainings aided subject control in real life situations.

• Train-The-Trainer: Of course, techniques learned in the classroom, range or gym don’t always work, especially when the officer’s heart rate spikes from a resting heart rate of 75BPM to over 220BPM under combat stress. Happens a lot. I always say, “do it 100% right in the training room, so you can do it 50% right on the street, under combat stress---“ Log in to The Firebird when things don’t quite work like you thought they would. I will respond with advise on how to train-out the problem.

• Course Outline, Lesson Plans, etc: This is an AFA Web Site service for anyone who has completed a PPCT Instruction course through AFA. Advise and documentation on how many hours ideal for teaching a course, plus, on request, a Lesson Plan. When applicable, I will refer the subscriber to the appropriate PPCT Instructor Manual.

• Trainer’s Corner: Instructors are asked to submit articles for publication in the newsletter. Any subject that deals with training, especially when it promotes excellence and professionalism in use of force training. Articles focusing on law enforcement are also encouraged.

“TOO MUCH INFORMATION” ABOUT ACTION FIGHTING ARTS
Harry A. Wigder, Founder & President, AFA

Since you are reading this, you are, more likely than not, a graduate of one of my PPCT Use of Force Instructor Certification Programs, a prospective student, and/or an enlightened law enforcement officer or citizen interested not only in maximizing your safety and effectiveness in performing your job in a world becoming increasingly perilous, but in hard-wiring your commitment to teaching others in your (and other) field(s) to increase their chances of going home to loved ones every night.
Simply put, teaching others what they need to know and do so they can go home at night – in one piece – has been at the heart of my research and training for almost 20-years. That simple one-piece goal has kept me going forward past all the administrators, supervisors and officers who not only repeatedly said and always believed that resistance, injury and death is not going to happen to them. This venue is not the place for going into specifics about theories, concepts and techniques, save to say that I have long known that denial leads to arrogance and arrogance leads to carelessness and carelessness always engenders surprise when an officer is spontaneously attacked. The equation becomes even more deadly when you understand that Action Always Beats Reaction and a startled officer, who is un-prepared is already 1 ½ to 2 ½ seconds behind the Bad Guy, who, most likely, has been planning the attack for days and has already laid out an attack strategy. Just read the FBI study of Why Officers Die and you get a stark insight into the results of trying to do the work of a law enforcement officer without respecting and following the tenets of The 4 A’s:

1. Be Aware
2. Assess the Situation, the Environment, the Bad Guy, Yourself
3. Anticipate, and
4. Act!

More on that paradigm in another article. For now, let me briefly introduce myself and say something about Action Fighting Arts:

I am a former Marine with a Masters in Criminal Justice from West Chester University (outside Philadelphia, Pa.) After two years with the Department of Social Services (Yes. You heard right. Social Services), working the streets of some of the worst sections of Brooklyn as a Welfare Investigator, I hooked up with the Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole, Allentown District, as a parole agent. I worked 15 years before advancing to the Board’s Training Division, where I became a Staff Development Specialist. In the next 18 years – with a brief stop here and there as a parole supervisor, I researched, designed and conducted over 50 different types of training programs. In the late 80’s I became a PPCT Defensive Tactics Instructor and in the mid-90’s, I was recommended by PPCT Staff Instructor Jack Leonard of Pittsburgh for IT School and,now, almost 10 years later, I am proud to be an Instructor Trainer in:

• Pressure Points;

• Defensive Tactics;

• Collapsible Baton;

• Straight Baton;

• Weapon Retention & Disarming;

• Inmate Control;

• Spontaneous Knife Defense(SKD);

• Violent Patient Management (VPM);

• Disruptive Student Management (DSM);

• Ground Avoidance & Ground Escapes (GAGE);

• Dynamic Simulations

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Before retiring this past May after 33-years, I developed and coordinated all the integrated Use of Force training for a new unit (the Staff Safety Training Unit) and became an Advanced Verbal Judo Instructor and a Board Firearms Instructor. The SSTU provided every training relevant to the PPCT Resistance Control Continuum, including all basic and advanced (tactical and night fire) firearms trainings; Verbal Judo; Survival Fitness; Advanced Arrest & Prisoner Transportation; Basic Arrest & Subject Control, and, of course, all PPCT Instructor Certification Trainings in Defensive Tactics; Collapsible Baton; Weapon Retention & Disarming; Spontaneous Knife Defense; GAGE (Ground Fighting) and SHARP (Sexual Harassment Assault & Rape Prevention).
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Action Fighting Arts is a PPCT-based Subject Control, self defense and use of force training enterprise, concentrating the great majority of its services on certifying excellent instructors. More information can be gleaned on each of the above programs by going to www.ActionFightingArts.com, and subsequent Firebirds will amplify on the instructor courses available, but, for the purpose of this inaugural newsletter, I would like to say a few words about PPCT:

Years ago, I chose PPCT as the training program for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole (PBPP), which theretofore had a schizoid training philosophy. Our Basic Training DT Program swerved from one philosophy to another from academy to academy. We would switch between a martial artist one week to a “Fighting Specialist” the next, to a trainer who would read to the class from a book to a “trainer” who would teach TaiKwonDo. Going to PPCT(Jack Leonard was our first instructor) crystallized our training into a program that was simple, consistent, relevant, and, for the first time, repeatable the next day. Retainable. Imagine that! Techniques that were simple, based on gross motor skills, which meant that almost everyone in the class, no matter their physical gifts or lack of them, could successfully perform each technique and – the next day – after Jack Leonard had returned home, everyone remembered and was able to handcuff, pressure point the “bad guy” and perform a takedown. Exactly what I was looking for.

Now, almost 20 years later, I swear by PPCT even more. I say with confidence that all, or, at least a great majority of the thousand of so officers I have trained and/or certified, would tell you that PPCT works in the classroom, but, more importantly, on the street and under pressure. This is no accident. PPCT, founded by ex-law enforcement officer Bruce Siddle in the early-80’s, is easily the most extensively researched subject control and self defense (instructor certification) training program in the world today. All techniques have been painstakingly researched and refined so each will work under combat stress (Tactical research) with a minimal chance of injury (medical research) and have the highest quotient of court defensibility (legal research).

EPHRATA BORO PD HOSTS AFA’S FIRST DT INSTRUCTOR SEMINAR
Ephrata, Pa., September 13 to 17, 2004

Sergeant Tom Shumaker of the Ephrata Boro Police Department hosted the first of what is hoped to be many PPCT Defensive Tactics Instructor Certification Seminars at the Ephrata Recreation Center in this placid central Pennsylvania town. Twelve law enforcement officers from 10 different agencies took part in a challenging week of classes featuring lectures, videos and demonstrations teaching the tactical, medical and legal aspects of Defensive Tactics as well as physically demanding classes in PPCT Subject Control techniques.

Over the course of five days, PPCT Instructor Trainer Harry Wigder led the officers through innovative drills and exercises in crucial survival motor skills in Pressure Point Control; Tactical Handcuffing; Body Search techniques; Joint Lock Manipulations and Takedowns; Defensive Countermeasures(PPCT Blocking System/Brachial Stuns/Palm Heel Strike and Straight Punch and Leg Strikes); Impact Weapon Techniques; Weapon Retention and Disarming; the Shoulder Pin and several others.

The eleven graduating officers included:

• Dawn Redensky, Lebanon County Adult Probation Officer;

• Craig “Ice” Cook, Lebanon County Adult Probation Officer;

• Erika McNany, Butler County Adult Probation Officer;

• Kevin Stoltzfus, Assistant Director of Public Safety, Franklin and Marshall College;

• Michael Hayes, Schuylkill County Adult Probation Officer;

• Richard Rhinier, Warwick Twp. Police Officer;

• Joshua Kilgore, Warwick Twp. Police Officer;

• Graeme Quinn, Ephrata Boro Police Officer;

• Dale Ebersole, West Earl Twp. Police Officer;

• Timothy Ebersole, Ephrata Boro Police Officer; and

• Chris McKim, Ephrata Boro Police Officer

Officer McKim earned a free PPCT Instructor Shirt thanks to his near-perfect written test score and his absolutely perfect practical test performance. Officers Tim Ebersole and Michael Hayes also merited free instructor shirts with second-highest test scores. A graduation class photograph can be found on www.ActionFightingArts.com (Pictures).

Instructor Trainer Wigder assisted PPCT Instructor Trainer Daniel Solla (Philadelphia area) in conducting Pennsylvania’s first GAGE (Ground Avoidance and Ground Escapes) Training at the Bucks County Police Training Center in Doylestown, Pa. on October 16 & 17, 2004. Solla and Wigder presented a challenging and provocative two-day self-defense and survival training and all 14 officers from as far away as New England graduated, including Warwick Twp. Police Officer Josh Kilgore, who had recently successfully completed DT Instructor School provided by Action Fighting Arts (on 9/17/04).

“I have long believed in the value of a course like GAGE. It’s been my experience, in the Marines, on the street as a parole agent, even in my personal life, that whenever I was faced by an aggressor, whether he was just trying to avoid being retrieved, you know, taken into custody, or trying to flat out destroy me, inevitably it started with the bad guy bum-rushing me, trying to take me off my feet. This training, I believe, is the perfect answer and should be a must for all law enforcement personnel,” IT Wigder stated recently.

Solla, a Deputy District Director with the Pa. State Parole Board and one of the most respected law enforcement trainers in the country, praised the officers who participated and graduated from this intense ground fighting instructor course. “The officers who took this course far exceeded my most optimistic expectations. I am proud to have led this class of warriors.”

Besides Kilgore, the GAGE graduates included: Jeffrey Hilt, already a PPCT DT Instructor; David Lamagna, a current PPCT DT Instructor; Richard Gray, also a PPCT DT Instructor; Michael Milligan and Thomas Wittig, who already owned certifications as DT and SKD Instructors prior to this course; Shea Creamer (DT Instructor); Kevin Cross (DT Instructor) and Chris Vegvary, an SKD Instructor.

Every newsletter will feature at least one major training tip. The Fighting Firebird is a training-focused publication and there will be articles promoting excellence in teaching use of force & subject control techniques to citizens and law enforcement personnel in every newsletter. Our staff is reaching out to its readers & enthusiastically welcomes any training tips, exercises or drills designed to make use of force training more effective. Anything to make teaching the often-elusive skills of survival and safety more effective, easier. Anything that will promote critical skills that will enable our officers and students to go home at the end of every day. Anything----

I’ve seen it too many times. An officer will confront a seated suspect & order him to stand, turn around, put his hands behind his back for handcuffing. The thing is, too many times, the suspect will follow the officer’s commands – with a convenient twist – and will put his hands behind his back, liberate a weapon hidden in the small of his back, and spring forward, quicker than the officer can react, with unfortunate results. It happened in Norristown, Pa. and one of our officers was shot by a parolee. Had that officer taken an Advanced Arrest Techniques or the STAR (Survival Tactics Against Resistance) that PPCT IT Dan Solla and I had taught for years, we believe that officer would not have been shot, or, for that matter, even threatened. That officer would have learned the following procedure for confronting and handcuffing seated subjects:

The officer should always keep the suspect at a lower (inferior) level, which, in this case, dictates keeping him/her seated. He is unable to mobilize, cannot use his legs and the officer has all the advantages. If he has a weapon, he has little chance to get to it. Tell the suspect he is under arrest, and, “for your safety and mine,” remain seated. Next, command the suspect to stretch his feet out, touching his heels to the floor, lean forward and place his hands behind him, palms up(. By doing so, the officer has built a threat signal into the procedure. The Bad Guy must slide his feet beneath him and move his hands when he tries to resist, stand up or go for a weapon. If the threat signal occurs, the officer can ground the subject or take other appropriate action). Once the subject has both hands behind his back, the officer and/or his partners can easily cuff the suspect with little chance of resistance. Remember to top load the handcuffs to make cuffing in a high backed chair easier
If the suspect’s chair is against the wall, follow the above procedure, move to position two (2), direct him to look away from you and direct him to bring his right hand toward you, thumb down.. Cuff (chain coming out of top of wrist), rotate the hand & cuff & direct him to turn his body in the chair & present his uncuffed hand. Cuff the second hand and only then direct him to stand. Officer can now safely perform a body search.