What’s in Your Tool Box?

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Jerry Staton. Jerry is the owner of ARTT: Affordable Realistic Tactical Training. After reading Keeping Your Police Tools Sharp and Ready, Jerry sent us this article which he had written several years back. I felt this article was more descriptive on some points than mine and would be useful to readers.

Last year my wife’s grandfather passed. After an appropriate time her father had the unpleasant task of cleaning out his dad’s accumulation of tools. Grandpa was quite the handy man having worked with his hands all of his life. This skill was not passed along to his son. While helping my father-in-law with a project recently, I requested a pair of wire cutters. I could have gone to my shop and located any one of several different kind of wire cutters blind folded (I also work with my hands frequently) but that was a couple hundred yards away. The ensuing search for said tool took us to three different tool boxes, each one more cluttered than the last. After emptying the contents of each box, my father-in-law finally concluded he did not possess the tool we were looking for. Whether he actually had wire cutters in one of the boxes we will never know. What struck me as important was he had many tools he never used and was unable to retrieve the right one when needed.

So what does that have to do with our world? How many of you put a tool in your box because it looks new and shinny or is the latest gimmick on the market? Did you work with it to learn what it is capable of and what the weak points are or just “buy” it and put it in your box? Is it something you are really going to use or is it going to make finding the right tool more difficult at a critical time? We use the phrase “tool box” all the time when referring to skills we wish to have available for a critical incident. How many classes have you attended where the instructor says, “put this in your tool box” so it will be there when you need it? Well, just putting it in the box does not ensure it will be available when you need it most.

The state of Texas through the Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) requires each certified law enforcement officer to take out certain tools once a year and show proficiency. These are physical tools such as sidearm, night stick, O.C. spray, TASER®, etc. There is no requirement for officers to show proficiency with the wide variety of techniques or physical skills they have accumulated. It is up to the individual officer to practice these skills and we all know the results of depending on individual officer to practice.

To those of you who understand this concept and practice your skills once in a while, keep up the good work. For the rest it is time to wake up. I keep hearing from different community leaders how crime is on the decline. I for one don’t buy into that idea. Numbers can be manipulated to say just about anything. Anyone still working the street on a regular basis will tell you today’s work load is higher than it has been in a long time. Add that to the increased propensity for violence (the uniform no longer commands respect) and the need to be razor sharp has never been greater.

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