By Scott Reitz

Police need a sense of humor otherwise they’d lose their minds. You only come across the bad stuff and this requires a degree of infused humor which helps one cope with ugly things. One aspect of this is a ‘handle.’ This is a name or nickname to be clear, which is bestowed upon an Officer due to some obscure rationale which sums up the Officer’s overall character or just who, precisely, he either is or isn’t. As an example, ‘Moose’ in SWAT was actually much smaller in stature than his ‘handle’ implied. ‘Whacko’ was another member of SWAT who was as sedate as they come. ‘Darvon Don’ was another sedate individual who was in fact, as calm as a cup of Darvon. One individual who arrived into Metro’s ‘B’ Platoon promptly stood up on ‘day-one’ in Metro roll call and declared that since his last name was Davidson, he would not ever-ever, in any way shape or form, tolerate being called ‘Kick-start’ or ‘Harley.’ Bad call cupcake. Needless to say that’s all he was ever called. ‘Yassar-o-so-fat’ was an individual in ‘D’ Platoon who was all of 10 pounds overweight. ‘Weenie Fingers’ simply had…well…digit appendages which resembled a pack of Kosher hot dogs.

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P.T. Barnum said it best, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

This article is for the interested but unknowing firearms student who’s seeking training. This is a good person, might be someone who just wants to try something new, might be someone who wants to learn how to protect their loved ones or possibly go into a career in law enforcement. I hope to shed some light on the troublesome topic that can turn an eager new student away from firearms for good, or even worse, cause a loss of life.

When a school tells you that in a beginning level class you’ll be doing live fire room entries in just 4 hours with others as equally inexperienced, you might want to think twice. When a beginning level class, or any class for that matter, is conducting live fire ‘peel back’ spinning rifle drills shooting over, around and from behind you, it should set off warning bells, sirens and klaxons among those with any common sense. When students are allowed to cavalierly and in a completely unsupervised manner, handle weapons throughout the day while behind the line, loading and unloading and manipulating weapons with the muzzles pointed at others… leave immediately!

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In 1977 as a probationary Officer I was assigned to Wilshire Division. My partner was Tom Garvin, a 17 year plus, LAPD veteran. Tom was African-American and he had been a USMC drill instructor (harder than Woodpecker lips) which tells you a bit about the amount of slack he cut me during my probationary status which was essentially, well, none! Wilshire was predominantly an African-American community. There was a prevalent theme which ran throughout the community during the 4th of July. Many of the blocks had barbeque ‘cook-off’s.’ The entire block would be essentially turned into a block party. Now some might think of barbeque ribs, chicken and tri-tip as a mildly interesting evolution. Not so the case in Wilshire Division.

Usually the barbeque itself was a split, 50 gallon steel drum customized to the Nth degree. It had everything on it including mud flaps and whip antennas. Each barbeque ‘chef’ took great pride in the top clearance, double secret probation, eyes only, secret squirrel handshake, Area 51 recipe he had concocted. Tom and I would cruise down the block and…

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