Tactical Tangents

There are over 18,000 police Chiefs and Sheriffs in the United States, and every one of them has their own version of what right and wrong looks like. But unless they plan on showing up at every traffic stop, they are going to have to trust that their Officers and Deputies on the front lines are doing the best they can. Empowering law enforcement officers with discretion to use their best judgment...

Erica is the founder of TacMobility, a wellness training company and online resource with a ton of free material for public safety. TacMobility is implementing a blend of mobility training and mental health support by working its way past the tough "sheepdog" exterior. Through eye-opening surveys, TacMobility highlights the not-so-funny truths about depression and the dusty corners where wellness...

Here's the thing about plane crashes: We all die at the same time. Inefficient and ambiguous communication has serious tactical implications when managing a crisis as a team. Sometimes, we water down what we need to say because we don't want to step on toes or piss anyone off, especially when talking to authority figures. This is called mitigated speech, and it is something leaders and team member...

For some reason there are a lot of people out there who still feel like putting an optic on your pistol isn't reliable or practical, and our handsome hand model in the photo John Correia calls those people the Gun Amish. We agree with that title, because it's 2024 and pistol mounted optics are a game changer. Mike and Jim talk about some of the challenges switching to a red dot sight on a handgun...

There is an art and science to learning a new skill. Whether you are picking up new hobbies and trying to improve performance at essential job tasks, there are some tricks and concepts to understand to break plateaus and keep training fun. We cover crawl walk run, the balance between simple and technical, developing a growth mindset, and embracing the suck.    Find us on social media (Facebook/Twi...

We say that we should put Service before Self, but it's more than just a mantra. Where the rubber meets the road is all in how we develop implicit trust among teammates so that we know where each other is going to be and what they are going to do when the going gets tough. We can accomplish this with the intentional application of Standards, Contracts, and good Debriefs.  It's one thing that we al...

Wellness isn't just a soft and fuzzy term bandied about in the Human Resources department. Healthier, happier employees perform better, and in professions where the rubber meets the road, wellness is tactical. The trite concept of Work/Life balance isn't so trite when lives are on the line. How do you keep yourself all happy and centered and still put in the grind to do the work? Listen to this ep...

When drafting players for your fantasy sportsball team, stats provide an easy benchmark. Just pick the ones with the most home runs, passing yards, and the highest free-throw percentage. It's a little harder selecting people for your real-life tactical team, but having a similar checklist in mind helps. In this episode Jim and Mike talk about what to look for.   Having a good selection procedure i...

No team in law enforcement is composed of robotic textbook-following automatons, nor would we want it to be, if we've ever found ourselves at 2MPH over the limit. But when a worst-case incident unfolds, we want every first responder to make the right decision at the speed of life, because in those incidents seconds often equal victims. How can we raise the lowest common denominator, so our people...

The downsides of sleep deprivation are legion: irritability, poor judgment, even lowered testosterone. Yet the duties of the .mil and LE career fields are well known for demanding odd and/or long hours that can make it hard to get good sleep. Mike talks with Dr. Paul Sargent of O2X, a specialist in human performances and sleep factors, in how to get the good shut-eye. Dr. Sargent retired from a 25...

  In the spring of 2018, the city of Austin, Texas was rocked by a string of package bombs, five in all, that killed two and injured five. The story of how local and federal agencies tracked down the perpetrator is almost all open source and a great illustration of how these investigations proceed. Listen to Jim and Mike tell the tale in this episode!   Find us on social media (Facebook/Twitter/In...

Do you know what every great slugger in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown had in common? They all had hitting coaches. Today we have an abundance of riches in the form of internet videos to teach almost any skill, but at some point most everyone will benefit from the feedback of a skilled coach. In this episode Mike and Jim explore the value of coaching in skill building and team leadership...

  In the world of ugly warrant execution, there are a lot of bad scenarios that have happened with lessons to be learned for people on both sides of the door. In this episode, Mike & Jim break down a notorious recent incident: The 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor during a narcotics warrant service in Louisville, Kentucky. While it's about the Breonna Taylor incident, we're focusing on the tactical...

If you're a habitual firearms toter, how do you carry to and from places where you can't carry? Do you? What if it's someplace where there's no provision for securing it at your destination? Whether going to and from the neighborhood BJJ gym or visiting a military base, this can be a real dilemma for the carrier. In this episode, Jim and Mike take a hard look at solutions. One of our favorite topi...

In the pop-culture tactical world today it's common to see Col. Boyd's Decision Cycle, the famed "OODA Loop", applied to individuals and their actions, but indeed it has its origins as an institutional concept. If you need to solve problems as a team, or even an institution, it's important to know how it applies to group tactics and operations. In this episode Mike and Jim dive into just that.    ...

In any organization it's almost a tradition to turn and look at the people coming up through the ranks behind you and bemoan how much better things were in the Good Old Days. Of course, things were better then because the people who had come up through the ranks before you helped mentor you into effective operators. In this episode, Jim and Mike talk about how you can pass that mentoring on.   It'...

Mike reminds us that "Responsibility to the Community" is not just a slogan on a squad car door in this episode, where he and Jim talk about the necessity of keeping the public informed in a manner that is both helpful to the public and not harmful to ongoing investigations. "Public Affairs" is more than just a job title, and requires keeping in mind the emotions that surround complex situations....

In dangerous career fields like the military or law enforcement, there's an unavoidable tension of priorities between the mission and the safety of the people on the team who need to accomplish it. It's one thing to say you put your people first, but if it was a safe job, they wouldn't issue body armor. In today's episode, Mike and Jim demonstrate the ways this can be a false dichotomy and how to...

Bombs are scary. You can't shoot back at an explosion or talk it into surrendering or leaving you alone. But you can learn ways to spot the bad guy's device before it does its thing. In today's episode, Jim and Mike delve into some basics of the hows, whys, and wheres of improvised explosive devices to help you develop a risk picture based on likelihood and severity. Just like there are certain we...

High-stress jobs, such as those in the military or law enforcement fields, tend to attract mission-oriented people, dedicated to the team and the public, who thrive on stress. Well, plants thrive on water, too, but you can still wind up drowning them with too much of it. In today's episode, Jim and Mike look at job-related burnout, its negative effects on the team, and how to mitigate or avoid it....

Part of our mission here at Tactical Tangents is to overcome the "tactical fantasy", and in this episode, Mike and Jim talk about avoiding one of the most pernicious ones. It's easy in a world full of tacticool training classes to get focused on the sort of threats to ourselves and loved ones that jump out of the bushes and can be thwarted with kinetic skills when the truth is you probably already...

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may be over (for now) but that doesn't leave us in a world without conflict. While we were hip-deep in the Global War on Terror, major great power competitors have been nursing grievances and feeling rising ambitions and opportunities. In this episode, Jim takes a detailed look at the state of play with respect to Russia and China, and how that could affect the US...

In both the military and law enforcement universes, there's often an understandable amount of friction between the people out where the action is and those who help them get there and support them in their work. In this episode, Jim and Mike discuss ways to smooth cooperation between the people behind the scenes and the officer on the street or the pilot in the seat. When you really think about it...

In a cool tactical podcast, everybody wants to talk about a gunfight and nobody wants to talk about getting t-boned in an intersection on the way to the gunfight. This episode features Mike & Jim, who've bent enough fenders between them to have some advice to offer, talking about the realities of driving. Whether you're driving the government's vehicle or your own private citizen chariot, realisti...

The only thing more frightening than being shot at by your own team is finding out you just shot up your own team. The very idea of fratricide…aka "Blue-on-Blue" incidents…is scary, but being a professional means you can't just be scared, you have to work on your skills and knowledge to counter the possibility of it happening to you or because of you. In this episode, Jim and Mike discuss just tha...