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In Afghanistan, people with Ranger tabs, or have SEAL training, have all been through 'cool guy' schools. school like Air Assault School, or Airborne, or SERE, or Sniper School, or K9 Handler, or EOD, or whatever.
Well here is a list of 'cool guy' schools for the civilians and future 'spooks' that I'm working on. If you know of any, I'll add them to the list.

http://www.scginternational.com/training_overview.html
http://www.vohneliche.com/joomla/index.php
http://www.teex.com/teex.cfm?pageid=tra ... rse=UXO200
http://www.matmondial.com/
http://www.stormmountain.com/
http://www.esi-lifeforce.com/?gclid=CM6 ... 3wodyEerSA
http://www.boss-inc.com/
http://www.bactec.com/training.htm
http://www.gunsite.com/main/
http://www.mcmillanusa.com/mcmillan-ema ... aining.php
http://www.academi.com/pages/train/train-overview
http://www.torresco.com/Services/Traini ... ining.aspx
http://www.critraining.com/
http://www.sniperschool.com/
http://www.outwardbound.org/

There definitely is come interesting training available to civilians out there.
Off the top of my head there's also:
http://www.thunderranchinc.com/
http://www.frontsight.com/
http://www.swansontactical.org/

If you have a few thousand bucks burning a hole in your pocket, in many states you can also self-sponsor and attend the police academy even if you haven't been hired as a police officer. It won't give you police powers, but if you have a clean criminal record you can pay the tuition yourself to get the police training.

I did a 2 week PSD course at HDSOC before it got corporate only .

thats what i did. now, not only do i know the law and how the good guys catch the bad guys, but its a resume builder and a good back up plan. there are so many doors it opens without having to actually be a cop. best 2.5k ill ever spend. especially for 6 months of training.




whats HDSOC? what did you think about it?

Close Quarter Combat-aka CQC could be some useful skills that a person might actually use- http://www.hockscqc.com/staff/unitedstates-new.htm

yeh, very usable, if your in aleppo or damascus, but unlikely to come up much this far north of Coahuila where narcterrorism is now the law. www.borderlandbeat.com close quarter combat is waiting for the bus on a crack corner in minneapolis, but its mostly about making an impression on the oposition until the bus comes.

Really? I've never heard of this. Hmm, this piques my interest quite a bit. Have you ever heard of anyone successfully doing this?

Happens all the time, I've run across dozens, if not hundreds of guys who have done this in my area.

Many who self-sponsor are wannabee cops who have applied repeatedly to local agencies and keep getting rejected. They have aspirations of becoming a police officer so they self-sponsor in the hopes it'll make them a more marketable commodity when they apply the next time.

This is because under Civil Service regulations (which many agencies voluntarily follow in their hiring process) you automatically get a few "preference points" if you are already a graduate of the police academy. Just like you can get points for being a college graduate, speak a foreign language, are a resident of the jurisdiction where you're applying, etc.

That's not to say all guys who self-sponsor fall into that category, but in fairness, you ought to be warned that many people will assume that is the case if you self-sponsor. These cadets tend to be subtly looked down upon in the academy, at least until people get to know you and can see you're not a butt-head.

Whether or not people are allowed to self-sponsor just depends on the laws in each particular state. I'm located in Utah and the agency responsible for police training here is POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training). It should be easy to find out what the name of the agency is in your state and you can just call and ask them directly, or see if they have application information on their website. There can be some small costs involved, such as for fingerprinting, photos (passport type), and often a background check to show you have a clean criminal history. Or at least, clean enough. Certain minor offenses are usually allowable.

Admission to the academy here is allocated on a first come-first served basis for police agencies who have new-hires whom they need to have trained and certified. POST then also maintains a separate waiting list of people who want to self-sponsor. Around here the classes tend to be booked solid but sometimes agencies have last minute cancellations. When that happens POST sends notifications to the first people on the waiting list so see if they still want to attend.

I believe they only do that a week or two before the class starts, so basically you have that long to quit your job (because the police academy is a full time thing and about 13 or 14 weeks long), cough up tuition money (I think it's around $6,000 if I remember right), buy your gear, cadet uniforms and whatnot. And even then, there is a chance you could get bumped from the class if an agency comes in at the last minute with a new-hire and they need that class spot. As I recall, as a self sponsored candidate your seat in the class was not guaranteed until the first day that your training session starts, then you were locked in and couldn't be bumped.

Anyways, that's what I can recall about the process. At least for Utah. If you wanted a short answer... oh well.

I train with a Denver bus driver, he has told me some crazy stories, people getting taken off the bus at gun point, drivers getting ambushed because they asked for the fare, people getting on covered in blood. Never know with public transpo, lol

Tactical Locksmithing

Hi guys,

Still new on the forum and came accross this thread. Thought I'd offer my thoughts.

I've done a handful of "cool guy" schools in the Army including U.S. Army Sniper and SFAUC. I also did a condensed urban combat course with the FBI firearms training team, several LE agencies, etc. I was an FFL and trained folks for a while...blah, blah...

But before I did any of that, I did USPSA practical pistol competition. That was where I really learned to shoot (made Master in Limited at 15 years old). My experience has shown me the following: USPSA shooting, and now 3-gun, are hands down the best way to learn to shoot fast accurate shots on humanoid targets at close range...period. I've shot many matches with "high speed" military buddies, and they are always kinda bummed when they get smoked at a local match by overweight civilians. It really happens more than you'd think. Obviously, the military guy's skillset goes well beyond the shooting, and many ARE great shooters, but most of us don't need to know how to make water impulse charges. If you want to learn to shoot fast and accurately, I would forgo the $3,000 trip to FrontSight and join USPSA. Shoot pistol first for a while, then try 3-gun. Spend your money on primers and powder (if you load) or bullets. Get some decent intro training (or get the Jerry Barnhart Burner Series which breaks shooting down to a level you wouldn't think possible), and then shoot matches. You'll be 1 second out of a holster and be able to deliver fast accurate shots at a variety of ranges against the stress of the clock. Seriously, can't beat it. I've seen both sides, and the tactical guru types get shredded by competition shooters. They defend themselves by saying the competition shooter doesn't know "tactics" how to "slice the pie," etc. Lame defense. That stuff is really easy. The hard part is doing a magazine change in 1.5 sec and shooting .15 splits at 10 yards.

Haha CPT1911 don't worry about being new, I am new as well and we all start as new
Thanks for sharing