The Gas Block Incident

Sometimes when you try to do the right thing it blows up in your face.

I was excited to be back on a SWAT team. After leaving my first department to go work for a larger agency, I had to wait until my probation period was over before I could try out. With the selection process behind me it was time to go through yet another transition period of having to prove myself.

Myths, Legends, and Liability

With just over a year at my new job, barely anyone knew me and it felt like an ever revolving door of showing people I wasn’t a complete idiot. If you think police departments are a hard place to earn trust just wait until you get on a SWAT team. That’s an entirely different protein-eating, extra-medium-t-shirt-wearing, animal.

There is, however, one SWAT myth that I will debunk right now. And that is SWAT teams have all the latest and greatest equipment and a bottomless money bin out of which they can shovel cash to fund their gear addiction. No, they don’t. They may buy a lot of useless crap because it comes in black, but funds are always limited and part of the financial burden of having decent gear falls on the individual operator.

Apart from my body armor (which weighed as much as a 5th grader) my rifle was probably the most important piece of kit that I was issued. It was also the best piece of kit I was issued — and I loved it — except for one thing. It only had factory mounted iron sights. How, I wondered, was I supposed to aim that thing in the dark during the 99% of our predawn operations? It seemed reasonable to me that my department would want me to know where I was pointing my rifle — you know, liability and all.

Gear Envy

At training I looked around at the other guy’s rifles, and saw a smorgasbord of sights and optics. They were all as varied as what their moms packed in their tactical sticker-laden lunch boxes. The reason for that, I soon learned, was they bought their own sweet tactical gear, including optics. Dang.

Being the non-independently-wealthy-single-income-married-father-of-three kind of guy that I was, I needed a less expensive option. As much as I wanted the Cadillac of optics, I could only afford the 1996 Chevy Cavalier with a salvage title. So, I bought me some iron night sights. It wasn’t a red dot but at least I could see them in the dark. The only problem was, I would need an armorer to install them since the front sight was part of the gas impingement system, which also meant I would have to buy a gas block. So I did — and this is the part where things went sideways.

Permission Granted

Police departments are paramilitary organizations with a chain of command. The first link in that chain was a sergeant, and that’s who I went to. Before changing out the gas block on my rifle — which again, would need to be done by an armorer so that it was done properly to not ruin a department-issued piece of equipment — I sought permission. I met with one of the sergeants on the SWAT team, told him what I wanted to do, and he gave me the green light.

However, I learned that our department did not have a certified armorer, or at least a competent one, so I reached out to my old PD who did. A former coworker of mine, affectionately known as Tackleberry (named after the gun-loving cop in the movie Police Academy) said no problem, he’d take care of it. Little did I know that by going outside my new agency I was stepping on some egotistical toes — among other, more sensitive appendages.

Honeymoon Over

Soon after, my rifle had a new gas block, iron sights that glowed in the dark, and a happy little operator known as me. Several months passed like this until all of the sudden the honeymoon was officially over. With little more than a Hey you! I found myself behind closed doors getting yelled at by the SWAT team’s administrative sergeant (not the one I got permission from). The harangue began with, Do you want to be part of a team or do you want to do your own thing!?

As much I enjoyed being ambushed, I decided to wait for the vein in his forehead to subside before I responded. Recalling a quote from the great stoic philosopher, Dave the Minion, I replied with a drawn out, confused, high-pitched, Whaaaaaaaaat!?

Assumptions

After explaining the problem that I had with my rifle, the permission I had received from a supervisor, and that I had used a certified armorer to do the work, I could see a change come over the sergeant’s face and felt some oxygen return to the room. It’s amazing what a little logic can do.

It turned out that one of the training officers had noticed the new gas block and front sight on my rifle during a day at the range, said nothing to me, immediately made an assumption, and then promptly brought that assumption to the attention of the SWAT team’s command staff. The said assumption then gathered size and momentum as it rolled downhill where it crashed into me as I sat unsuspectingly in a small office deep within the bowels of the police station. What. The. Heck.

Inside Joke

Two positive things came out of all that aggravation. One, I got to keep my rifle. And two, I acquired the iconic nickname Maverick which began the urban legend that I did what I wanted and modified anything and everything that I could get my hands on. But really, it was more of an inside joke than a nickname that paid homage to the dysfunctional way things are handled within police departments, and even more so, within SWAT teams.

Life can be like that. You can try to do the right thing and people can still assume the worst and come to conclusions without any actual facts. This is part of the human condition, although knowing that doesn’t make those experiences any more enjoyable.

Don’t let the mouth breathers and knuckle draggers get you down. Fight the good fight. Keep the faith. Modify everything.

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• What’s your experience with leadership?
• Have you been on the receiving end of an assumption?
• How did you handle it?
• What will you do different next time?

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