Monday Morning Quarterbacking is important for Next Week’s game!

A few moments ago I found myself cringing as I watched live news footage of law enforcement personnel dealing with an Active Shooter situation in St. Louis. I was cringing because the officers were exposed to danger, seemed to have no plan of action and it looked all too familiar. As an instructor who embraces learning from failure, I realize that no one likes to have failure pointed out, even towards the positive end of improvement. Once start looking for those learning points, however, they do tend to jump out.

It is one thing to look for and even point out failure in a training environment, it is quite another to do it as a live dangerous event is playing out on international television. In a shoot-house, when a soldier runs by an open door or takes his eyes of his area of responsibility, you make a mental note for the debrief. If it is a force on force drill, you might get a sense of anticipation as your prepare to see the OpFor take advantage of the mistake and shoot some paint cartridges. But during a live event, that intellectual moment is much more emotional. Behaviorally, it is very similar to watching a quarterback throw a pass into heavy coverage and just knowing that there is going to be an interception. In this case, of course, the result isn’t a few points in a made up game… it could be a life and death mistake that you are watching play out.

The reason I wanted to write this blog was not to purge my guilty feelings over having critical thoughts in regard to the performance of guys who are out there doing brave and noble deeds. It was to remind everyone interested in personal defense, professional development or tactical training in general that we need to think critically about the actions we see in these videos. In this way, these real life mistakes are exactly the same as the training mistakes. If we don’t, we run the risk of accepting the mistakes and repeating them. We run the risk of doing a great disservice to our students, our communities and ourselves. Especially in the case of these high emotion events, our intuitive response is to ignore the mistakes and celebrate the positives.

I am confident in, and comfortable with, the fact that if anyone watched videos of me when I was performing law enforcement duties they would be able to identify failures and mistakes. If the goal of the person watching was to run to the internet and say “Rob Pincus is an assclown”, I’d be disappointed, but we know that people like that exist. On the other hand, if the goal was to help me improve and allow others to learn from my mistakes, then that person is performing a noble act.

To avoid voicing criticism and instead offer faint praise and cliched declarations of appreciation is to encourage complacency and miss opportunities to learn and develop. The professional instructor and teacher must be a gadfly to the community. News footage, dash camera videos, the ubiquitous surveillance cameras and video capable phones provide us with more data than any one person could ever sift through. Examining, commenting, sharing and discussing what we all see individually is the only way to try to keep up. It is too early to make judgements about a situation that is still developing and we all know that news coverage doesn’t often tell the whole story… but when you see one officer with a rifle pointed towards a doorway standing next to two other officers with no firearms in their hands and standing exposed to that doorway, it sure looks like someone’s doing the wrong thing. What matters is that through watching that video clip, all three officers might think and act in a safer or more appropriate manner next time.

Of course, I am glad that the officers appear to be dealing with the situation in St. Louis and have been able to do so without suffering any casualties and I hope that continues. Of course, they are brave men who are doing their job probably for less pay, with worse equipment and with under different conditions than they would prefer and that we would recommend. Of course, it is sad that innocent people were injured by another armed predator who took action in an environment where he knew he’d find unarmed victims. One way to take a positive from a tragic incident is to learn from it. The next time you find yourself Monday Morning Quarterbacking, make sure that you’re keeping you eye on the NEXT game.

-RJP