Tactical Tangents

Offices come in a variety of shapes and guises, from a room with desks and whiteboards to the front seat of a squad car. In this solo episode, Jim sounds off on his favorite topic: Management is not a dirty word, to be shunned in favor of "leadership". Rather, management is part of leadership. It's the art & science of allocating and coordinating resources to meet a goal.     Jim wants to share wi...

Sometimes bad training passes down information that might once have been good, but garbles it. Take "Shooting to Stop the Threat"…please. This episode sees Mike and Jim discuss the nuances of using lethal force to reasonably end the capacity of an assailant to harm you. What exactly is incapacitation? What's the difference between "shoot to kill" and to "stop"? Is intent magical? Listen to find ou...

For a person in a first responder line of work, being caught with an inadequate skill toolset in a critical incident can lead to the sort of feelings of helplessness that are a greased rail to PTSD-land. In this short episode, Mike talks through some ways to preemptively head off those bad feelings with good preparation.  Unlike the fixed mindset in which you're dropped onto the planet as either S...

In a short episode inspired by a listener question, Mike dives into the art of noticing abnormalities. An EMT instructs his trainees to put every patient on the EKG, whether the complaint is cardiac related or not. Why? So that the trainee will develop a baseline of what normal cardiac activity looks like and will be able to spot the abnormal more easily in the future.  Humans are excellent at pat...

What is a professional? The dictionary says, at its simplest, that it's someone paid to perform a task, as opposed to an amateur. But there's more to it than a paycheck. In this episode, Jim and Mike examine the characteristics of what we know as professional ism , and how they apply in the world of the tactical…well, professions. Professionals don't choke when the chips are down.     There's a hi...

Can you weaponize a positive mental outlook? In this short episode, Jim talks about positivity and optimism and how they can be cultivated and employed by leaders. When your job is basically to foresee and plan for worst-case scenarios, this can be a factor that is easy to overlook. Optimism can go beyond simplistic hooah moto slogans!    Positivity isn't magic. You can't optimism your way through...

In this short episode, Jim talks about the benefits he finds in taking the time to get outdoors. If you're listening to these podcasts, you're probably a pretty outdoorsy person, but take the time to think of the benefits of outdoor recreation: Exercise, a chance to unwind the mind from the job, and yes, even just getting into the sunshine and absorbing some of that Vitamin D love from above.    W...

While gear is expensive and important, humans are even more so. When you've found the people with the right aptitudes and trained them with the right skills, how do you keep them achieving up to their capabilities? Mike and Jim discuss thishugely important part of the leadership role. Talent management is more than just a buzzword, it's a skill! P Picking the human talent for your team and careful...

For the first episode of the New Year, Mike and Jim tap one of the podcast's most important resources: You, the listeners! We asked the members of the Tactical Tangents Facebook Discussion Group for a list of questions, with the promise of podcast swag for the best one. (If you're not in the group, get in there and join!) What's the best training for unsworn personnel to seek out to best enhance t...

The A-Team couldn't have pulled off a caper with four B.A. Baracuses , U2 never would have been a hit with four Bonos, and nine Legolases couldn't have gotten the One Ring to Mordor. Putting together a good team is about more than just a mix of skills, though, and in this episode Jim and Mike talk about balancing personality types to build a team of winners. Some people are daring and some are ris...

In this episode, Mike sits down for a discussion with Ross Hick. In addition to his career supervising violent felons as a Probation Surveillance Officer, Ross works as a trainer with Citizens Defense Research. One of his specialties is the psychology of critical incidents. There's a lot of material out there on preparing for the fight, but Ross and Mike go on a deep dive about preparing for the a...

Nobody wants to put on a show that's all war stories. It sounds like you're trying to fluff your resume and can bore others who've also been there and done that. Plus you don't want to talk out of school. At the same time, there's a lot of hard-won institutional knowledge that can come from those stories, especially the ones where Jim almost died. In this episode, Mike and Jim relax and let Jim sh...

For all its chaos, the stereotypical active shooter situation is fairly straightforward: There's a bad guy killing people, and the good guys need to close with him and stop him as quickly as possible. The events of November 2008 in the Indian city of Mumbai, however, showed us another, complex, kind of active shooter event and Mike takes a look at the takeaways from those fateful days. The Mumbai...

There are people who believe that inserting the police in a situation makes things worse. Are they right? In this solo episode from Mike, he looks at the perils of the "fear biter" and the negative effects of an unmanaged fight or flight response on decision making skills. Stress management is important, and it can't be learned in a PowerPoint class. The most notorious manifestation of this phenom...

America's largest mass killer attack revisited by retired LVMPD Lt. Will Huddler and Sgt. Ashton Packe, who share their accounts of the Route 91 Country Music Festival shooting with audio and video from the event. Lessons learned for first responders, patrol officers, tactical operators, and public safety commanders and leadership. VIDEO: https://youtu.be/mVfirxD7XYY This bonus episode is brought...

Whether it's a former significant other who just won't accept the end of a relationship, or a semi-stranger from the internet who imagines a relationship where there never was one, dealing with a stalker can be a complex, stressful, and even dangerous problem. In this episode Jim and Mike take a deep dive into recognizing, countering, and ultimately prevailing against a problem stalker. Stalking i...

In a crossover episode of Tactical Tangents, Mike sits down with Danimal of The Thin Brewed Line to talk about setting up a training program to keep officers alive on the streets…and in the training environment. In a dangerous profession, the danger shouldn't be coming from inside the program! Inspired by a tragic story of another preventable training fatality, Mike and Dan go over what's needed t...

What are we doing here and why are we doing it? With an assist from Mike, Jim lays out the secret; the keys to the whole mission of Tactical Tangents. These are the key concepts to helping the Doers do things better in the tactical world, whether military, law enforcement, or general personal defense. There are recurring concepts here at Tactical Tangents that are core to our mission, and this epi...

It's easy to find yourself thrust into a position where others regard you as an "expert", but what really constitutes expertise? Do you have it? Can it be acquired? When will you feel like you have it? (And why feeling like an expert should be a warning sign…) What makes an expert? Are you one? Do your friends or your employer consider you one? How does one go about seeking expertise? Relatedly, i...

A lone gunman killed 5 Dallas police officers and wounded several others in this 2016 attack following a series of contested officer involved shootings throughout the country. Lessons include ambush and counter-ambush tactics, the militarization of law enforcement, and a use of a bomb robot rigged with explosives to subdue the attacker.  Link: Fire and movement among the pillars YouTube video   Li...

In this short episode, Jim introduces the idea of layering safety and security to "trap errors" and mitigate the risk of human error. We want to help you do dangerous jobs safely.   Like what we're doing?  Head over to  Patreon  and give us a buck for each new episode. You can also make a one-time contribution at  GoFundMe .   Intro music credit Bensound.com Photo Credit :   BenAveling  

School Shootings seem to be on the rise, is gun control the answer? How many red flags does someone have to show before you intervene? Let's look at the evidence and learn from the recent cases like Parkland and Uvalde. Links: A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the US ALERRT Active Attack Data Why Meadow Died by Andrew Pollack and Max Eden   Like what we're doing?  Head over...

Mike and Jim break down how tactical commanders accelerate decision-making in dynamic, high-risk environments by clearly framing the problem, establishing commander's intent, and defining acceptable risk. They discuss how clarity of purpose and trust in subordinates reduce friction, enable decentralized execution, and allow decisions to be made at the speed of the problem rather than the speed of...

Mike has a quick rant about when someone says "Be safe tonight!" What does that even mean? Link: The "X" defined Like what we're doing?  Head over to  Patreon  and give us a buck for each new episode. You can also make a one-time contribution at  GoFundMe .   Intro music credit Bensound.com

People who have worked together long enough can almost read each other's minds, and that sense of shared consciousness and implicit communication is the secret sauce to taking a team dynamic to the next level. Mike and Jim discuss group dynamics and ways to develop the bonds to take teamwork to the next level. Links: Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War By Robert Coram The Starfish a...