For The Want Of A Horseshoe Nail

Okay, so I didn’t actually need a horseshoe nail, but I did need a flashlight battery, which is pretty much the same thing.

One of the things about police work that I’ve both loved and hated was that I never knew what would happen at any given moment on any given shift. What I liked about it was that there was always something different, something I hadn’t seen before. But what I hated was having to be prepared for anything and never feeling prepared.

Cold weather, hot weather, rain, getting stuck on a perimeter, a long canine track, working in the woods or in the center city, fatigue, hunger, thirst, long hours on my feet or stuck in a cruiser, double shifts, crime scenes, and myriad other scenarios could be on the docket for my shift and I wouldn’t know until after the short straws had been handed out.

Like Christmas

Canine handlers are funny. Some will track about 12 feet and then declare that the suspect must have gotten into a vehicle or been abducted by aliens, while others will track for miles and miles and not quit until they are stopped by either the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean — whichever is furthest. After a track or two, you get to know the handlers, how they operate and what to expect. But when you have to ask for mutual aid and get one from another town, well, it’s just going to be a big surprise — like opening a Christmas present, only less nostalgic.

And that’s where I found myself as a high-speed SWAT operator working midnight Patrol, partnered with a canine cop from another town. Because of my amazing tactics, superior firepower, and stunning good looks I drew the short straw and was designated to go on the track to serve as the cover officer. Paired up with a strange canine handler, we galloped off into the night in search of an evil bad guy. I don’t remember who the suspect was or what he did, I just remember a few highlights from the marathon event. Please note the usage of the word marathon.

Marathon of Darkness

This track went down streets, across streams, through woods, over fences, between houses, and through yards. After an hour I figured we must be chasing after an Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist and I was ready to call it off two miles ago. The only thing that died before I did was my flashlight. This was my first all-nighter canine track and had yet to be faced with a scenario that lasted longer than my batteries.

As the cover officer it was my job to constantly scan the area around us, looking for threats. The handler’s job is to watch the dog whose job is to follow the scent, which can move and drift and simply isn’t a beeline to the bad guy like in the movies. Peering into the dark with one eye on where the handler was going and the other looking for danger, and both obscured by the darkness, I failed to watch where I was going.

Failure to Watch

With no light to show me the way I stayed as close as I could to the canine handler without getting bit and let my eyes adjust to the moonlight. My rifle felt like a boat anchor around my neck and the sling was rubbing my skin raw. At one point we came out of the wood line and emerged along the backside of a row of suburban houses. Moments later is when it happened.

Suddenly and out of nowhere, I took an uppercut to the chin in mid stride which lifted me up onto my toes and almost entirely off my feet. But it wasn’t someone’s fist that had delivered the blow, it was the butt of my rifle. Because my rifle was slung and hung in front of me as I jogged behind the canine officer, and because my flashlight was dead and I was essentially using The Force to navigate, I had run right up on the stump of a tree. My momentum had jammed the muzzle of my rifle into the top of the stump which in turn drove the butt stock of my rifle directly up under my chin, acting like a lever or a pole vault, striking and lifting me up off my feet. And man, did that hurt!

Seeing Stars, Needing Batteries

The stars were no longer in the sky, they were now spinning around my head, like in the cartoons. It took me a second to understand what had just happened to me because I never saw it coming. After my feet returned to terra firma, I backpedaled, staggered to the left and around the stump, and carried on, using the darkness to hide my tears. And all for the want of a flashlight battery.

You know the old tactical adage, One is none, two is one. Well, about 250 years ago Ben Franklin said almost the same thing, just in an old fashioned way, and taking it to it’s logical conclusion. It’s what happens when you don’t take care of the small and seemingly insignificant things and don’t account for contingencies. He wrote:

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.

Now, I didn’t lose a war and the butt stock to the chin was the worst thing that resulted from my lack of preparation by not carrying spare batteries, but it certainly paints the picture of how things can go wrong and the snowball effect they can have on the mission and on the officers around us.

Elemental

A flashlight is one of the most elemental pieces of equipment because we can’t identify what we can’t see and we can’t shoot what we can’t identify. I was essentially running around blind out there with my fingers crossed hoping for the best. What if we came up on someone and I had to determine if they were a threat or not? What if I failed to identify a threat and put us in danger, or worse, shot an innocent person? Those were all possibilities and all for the want of a flashlight battery.

How you care for your gear and how you prepare for contingencies matters. It is our responsibility to be prepared for situational and environmental possibilities, at least the more predictable ones. Batteries die, hands and feet get cold, we get dehydrated, we lose a contact lens, it’s going to rain, it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer, dirty guns don’t work well. All of these are examples of things we should anticipate, can predict, and can prepare for. Don’t be the weak link like I was because you didn’t sweat the small stuff.

__________________________

• Do you live by, One is none and two is one?
• Do you carry a spare flashlight or spare batteries?
• Have you failed to properly prepare in the past?
• How did that scenario play out?
• What could you have done differently?

__________________________

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