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The lessons are more pertinent after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the instructor and participants say.
By JAMIE JONES
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 22, 2001
BROOKSVILLE -- Items tumbled to the ground as Lt. Craig Baxley emptied a large canvas bag onto the floor. Binoculars, gloves, a medical kit and a change of clothes scattered.
Eight deputies sitting quietly behind desks glanced at Baxley's bag, puzzled.
"We all have a bag," Baxley explained, wearing black Army boots as he stood in a training room at the Hernando County Sheriff's Office last week. "We have physical and mental bags where we store the tools we need to do our jobs. When you leave here today, you'll have something to take back and put in your bag."
One tool in particular Baxley wanted to provide deputies: skills to win a knife or gun battle with a terrorist.
Baxley, who has worked at the Sheriff's Office for 14 years, teaches the department's defensive tactics course, a program begun this year that is required for all 200 deputies. Baxley said he changed the course completely after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., to focus more on knife attacks and to mentally prepare deputies for fighting terrorists.
"When Sept. 11 happened, I couldn't stand it," Baxley said. "The fact that someone could take over a plane with box cutters destroyed me. I had to do something."
Baxley, 43, said he changed the course to focus less on handcuffing techniques and more on minor combat strategies and weapon takeaways. Baxley also is a special agent with the U.S. Department of State and is on its antiterrorist unit.
"Who knows what's going to come through Hernando County," he said. "We need to be able to step up and take care of it."
Techniques deputies learned are obviously applicable to other suspects, not just terrorists.
To Baxley, they are the same. He uses the word "terrorist" interchangebly with "suspect" and "defendant."
In a large room filled with exercise mats, Baxley taught deputies, some of whom said they had had only one self-defense course at the Sheriff's Office in almost a decade, that if someone stabs them in the abdominal area, they should turn their muscles from the attacker, move in and take the knife.
Deputies traditionally are trained to gain distance and take hold of their weapons. Baxley was focusing on closer encounters in which deputies cannot get away.
He also taught them different strategies for fending off multiple attackers with knives. The deputies, ranging in experience from two to 11 years, used red rubber knives and guns to practice.
He told deputies the skills were practical and should be used only when compassion fails.
"I can't get up here and teach you some fandangled, martial arts, Bruce Lee gimmick, because it's not going to help when you're in the moment," he said. "If someone wants a piece of your butt, you can't go up there and jump around and do fancy moves. You simply have to know how to defend yourself."
Baxley said the relative calm in the country allowed the terrorist attacks to come as a surprise, and deputies need to always be on high alert.
He said that typically, deputies have some time to process what actions they will take. But with terrorists, who act decisively with no regard for life, deputies must be prepared to act quickly, he said.
"There may be people we are now dealing with that deputies cannot take time," he said. "They have to be able to identify those people and their intentions and do something about it. They have to get past the shock, and that's what we're doing here."
Standard training, such as handcuffing and subduing suspects, also was discussed during the session on Wednesday.
Even if terrorists never attack Hernando County, all of the skills will be applicable to dangerous situations for deputies, Baxley said.
The Sheriff's Office provides officers one week of training a year to meet department and state requirements, Lt. Joe Paez said. The department offers an elective each year, and this year it is defensive tactics.
Detective Elizabeth Clifton, who took Baxley's class three weeks ago, said she learned "a lot of tricks," such as how to better disarm someone with a knife or gun.
"Sept. 11 made me think that stuff can happen at the drop of a hat," said Clifton, who has been with the Sheriff's Office for 11 years. "You've got to be on your toes 24/7."
She said that despite the training, she likely will never be fully prepared.
"I'm a little more enlightened, and a little more aware," she said. "But no one is ever prepared."
-- Staff writer Jamie Jones covers law enforcement and courts in Hernando County. She can be reached at 754-6114 or by e-mail at jjones@sptimes.com.