My incident..kinda long sorry =(

[g21sf]

Well it all started one night at approx 10:30pm. I live in an upstairs apartment and my neighbor across the balcony was gone and the lady underneath me was gone. I had just plopped down on my bed after flipping through the channels on tv and find an interesting show on tv. My fiance came in and sat beside me and for some reason i got the feeling that i needed to look out of the window(the head of my bead is right in front of the window). So i lean out and look out the window and see a black male walking on the sidewalk past my stairs glaring at my window. knowing that you can see shadows easily from outside into a lit up house i duck my head down so im not seen. i immediatly know this guy is up to no good...not to mention ive had my car broke into twice over the last 6 months that ive lived there and havnt caught the guy doing it. so i grab my gun and put in my pocket. i throw some shoes on and casually walk outside and see if the guy is messing with mine or my fiances car. as i get down stairs and begin looking i dont see anyone. so i go back upstairs and grab my holster and belt, in the process my fiance looks out the window and notices the guy walking up the stairs...thoughts are racing through my mind at this point and i begin to think why this guy would be making a special trip upstairs to my apartment knowing my neighbors have been gone for the last hour at least. So i throw my holster down and cock my gun and tell my fiance to just watch tv and dont turn around and look out the window or the guy will see you. i ran around the corner and begin looking out the peep hole of my door to see what this guy was up to. (the peep hole looks right at my neighbors door and also right at my bedroom window.) the guy slowly sneaks up the stairs being as quiet as possible...not knowing im staring right at him with a loaded .45. He slowly begins to walk past my window then stops...kneels down...and starts staring at my fiance through the window. At this point i am irritated that this guy would come upstairs at 1030 at night just to look at my woman! So after about 45 seconds of this guy staring at my fiance i guess he gets tired and starts to slowly stand up..I have no clue if he is about to stand up and try to open the door and do harm to me or my fiance so i swing open the door and say...what in the bleed bleep bleep are you doing you bleeping son of a bleep!?!...(at this point i have the gun behind my back) the guy states he is just tieing his shoe and i confront him on why the heck he came allll the way upstairs to tie his shoe at 1030 at night...so then he changes his story to he came to see his friend(my neighbor) that lives next door...so i tell him that he has been gone to work for at least an hour now that i know of. As i begin to get more irritated the gun slowly starts to come out from behind my back and rests at my side. mind you i am still standing inside my house yelling and calling this guy every name in the book. the guy glances down at my gun and his eyes get wider and begins to say repeatedly that he dosnt want any trouble and he didnt have a reason as to why he was staring at my fiance through the window. so as he begins to walk away i call the police and they stop by and get a description of the guy. they state they will come back when they make contact with the man, so the cop speeds off and i then call my friend that lives a few apartments over which happens to be an off duty PD officer and the apartment security guard. So he grabs his gun and comes over and we begin to help search for the guy (probably not the smartest thing to do but oh well... i was still steaming mad). about 5 minutes into searching we spot the guy coming out of the woods of the apartment by the highway...so i call dispatch (being a firefighter has its benefits and have PD come back to the location... they catch the guy about 100 yards down the road and have him pulled over. About 10 minutes later the lights turn off and 2 cops drive past me...come to find out the guy matched my description, had a no tresspassing warrant for my apartment complex already, had a pair of black gloves and a knife...And i bet you will never guess what happened next....they let the guy go.

[hankintexas]

Seems to me, you should have kept him under observation while calling the police instead of confronting him. I'm not saying you did anything wrong, but if he did not know you were watching him you may have been able to get the drop on him while he was in the act of committing a crime. Or, the LEO's could have caught him in the act.

Just my opinion.....

[sivart-dod]

I would have done the same thing! Couldnt the cops have gotten him for trespassing? or did they have to catch him in the act?

They should have known that he was up to no good with the knife and gloves, but i dont know how the law works with that type of situation.

Well atleast you didnt have to shoot him!

[XDpackinBob]

Time to arm the fiancé and train her in its use if she is not already. Man was that a skin crawling event..

Install a good security cam on that peep in the door (it can be mounted / made to slide over the peep and focused to look through it like you do and can be slid out of its mounts so you can look or left in place and watched on a security DVR monitor combo and you would have then had photo proof he was there and what he was doing. The police would have then had reason to arrest him. But being they found him off the property, there hands were tied with out proof he was in violation of the trespass order.


The main thing is your fiancé and you are OK and he left the area (your doorway), if not just for a while.

I have had my trucks broke into 3 time when My wife and I lived in an apartment, then We built our home across town on 1/3 acre and have had people walk up here off the street and break into both the truck and car, I caught him ( to be fair, a white guy ) in the car at 3:00 am. We had the car and truck nosed up to the front of the house under a large window in the kitchen, I had got up to get a drink and noticed the dome light on in the car through the blinds I had yet to turn on the kitchen light, I walked over to the window and looked down through the blinds right on top of the guy checking out the radio in the car.

I beat on the wall next to the window and yelled at the BEEP he had better run, he could not see me but the look on his face was priceless LOL as he looked up from the radio and then banged his head getting out. I ran and got the hall sweeper (12 ga, 18 1/4 inch, 00buck and slug, pistol grip shotgun) and took a defensive stance incase he was sick on dope and acted a fool, but he was smart and fled the area. I heard him start his car and piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piffpiffpiffpiff , his way down the street.

Beating on the wall let him know he was caught and I still had the drop on him from the dark and cover even as he drove away. Police confirmed some body was here 20 minutes later when they got here . (Not the officers fault there under staffed).

Again, glad y'all are OK...

[Excaliber]

Seems to me, you should have kept him under observation while calling the police instead of confronting him. I'm not saying you did anything wrong, but if he did not know you were watching him you may have been able to get the drop on him while he was in the act of committing a crime. Or, the LEO's could have caught him in the act.

Just my opinion.....

It sounds like this was a real bad guy about to do something he would have gone to jail for and g21sf was in the perfect position to help him get there. Unfortunately, he gave up his biggest advantage and a rare opportunity (being able to observe a developing crime in progress without his presence being known) and confronted the BG before he had done anything overt that he could be arrested for. When the police eventually stopped him, although he was carrying a knife and gloves, these items are not against the law. The only thing they might have held him on was the trespass order, but he wasn't in violation of that either when they found him.

Confronting people with gun in hand in a public area while unleashing a string of testosterone fueled profanities is inadvisable at best, and not in the best interests of the good guy. It sets up a situation that can get really messy in a hurry, and all that trash talk can make the homeowner look a lot less like a hero and a lot more like an aggressor or a mutual combatant to witnesses (they manage to pop up in the darnedest places, even when you think there aren't any). That's not advantageous when the police arrive. It also generally looks a lot worse by the time it gets to the grand jury.

Folks who lawfully possess firearms need to develop the habits of restraint, self control, thinking before action, and controlling their speech so they always act in a manner consistent with what a reasonable person who is not looking for a fight would do under the circumstances. Doing otherwise risks turning minor confrontations into major ones, and creating situations where the innocence and lawfulness of the would be good guy can readily be brought into question. Acting in this manner may not be as immediately satisfying as chest thumping, name calling tactics, but it brings better results in the long run and has a much better chance of keeping one from hearing the jail cell door clanging closed behind him. The calm demeanor of a strong man who knows what he's doing also usually leaves a better impression on significant others than does cursing and screaming.

The best response here would have been to call 911 and stay on the line while continuing to observe the subject and relay changes in the situation as they occurred. G21sf was already prepared to deal effectively with the possibility that the BG could have attempted a forcible entry before police arrived. The ending would likely have been much more satisfactory and would have been achieved with a great deal less risk to himself.

[texasag93]

+1 to Excaliber.

I am glad that I do not live in an apartment anymore. There seems to be too much excitement going on in them.

texasag

[dihappy]

so i grab my gun and put in my pocket. i throw some shoes on and casually walk outside and see if the guy is messing with mine or my fiances car

Ill repeat what most others already know and have said before:

If you wouldnt have gone outside without your gun, then you shouldnt go outside WITH your gun.

Too often, people fall into the illusion that a gun makes them superman.

[pedalman]

Folks who lawfully possess firearms need to develop the habits of restraint, self control, thinking before action, and controlling their speech so they always act in a manner consistent with what a reasonable person who is not looking for a fight would do under the circumstances. Doing otherwise risks turning minor confrontations into major ones, and creating situations where the innocence and lawfulness of the would be good guy can readily be brought into question. Acting in this manner may not be as immediately satisfying as chest thumping, name calling tactics, but it brings better results in the long run and has a much better chance of keeping one from hearing the jail cell door clanging closed behind him. The calm demeanor of a strong man who knows what he's doing also usually leaves a better impression on significant others than does cursing and screaming.

We would probably help ourselves not to resort to this by not watching so many movies and TV shows that depict the good guy as a testosterone-filled gunslinger. In my opinion, this is how the mindset is instilled in us. The boob tube turns out to be a nonstop training video, and we don't even realize it.

Ever since I received my CHL, I constantly remind myself that the real world is not what Hollywood says it is. I am not Dirty Harry, and the truth is that good guys are NOT to be of that mold. Particularly, legally-armed civilians. I have a huge responsibility riding on my hip or in my pocket, and I must be mindful of that at all times.

The reason I like this forum is that I always get a healthy dose of reality that keeps me grounded. Thanks, guys. Especially to Exacalibur and Steve Rothstein.

[Excaliber]

We would probably help ourselves not to resort to this by not watching so many movies and TV shows that depict the good guy as a testosterone-filled gunslinger. In my opinion, this is how the mindset is instilled in us. The boob tube turns out to be a nonstop training video, and we don't even realize it.

Ever since I received my CHL, I constantly remind myself that the real world is not what Hollywood says it is. I am not Dirty Harry, and the truth is that good guys are NOT to be of that mold. Particularly, legally-armed civilians. I have a huge responsibility riding on my hip or in my pocket, and I must be mindful of that at all times.

Excellent points, pedalman.

Law enforcement officers receive extensive classroom and field training on how to manage violent incidents, and they get to practice and critique their techniques in real crises many times each year. The learning curve to acceptable competence is steep but relatively short, especially in the more active jurisdictions.

On the other hand, the only places most civilians get to see confrontations between good guys and bad guys is on either the big screen or the little screen. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that, except for security camera clips, these are not real incidents and are staged for dramatic effect, not for training value. What you see in the movies and in TV shows is most definitely not what will bring you home safely from a real incident. The effect of movie gunshots on actors bears not even a distant relationship to the effect of real world gunshots on bad guys. The language and tactics shown will get you only arrested if you're lucky, and killed if you're not. However, since they're the only behavior patterns most folks have been exposed to, they are what folks who have not been trained otherwise may well default to without realizing it, and this may well be a factor in how the OP managed the incident he described.

Violent incident management is not learned through TV, instinct, or osmosis. Those who truly want to learn how to act responsibly and effectively will make the effort to read and take training from authors and teachers who have been there and have done their homework to deliver high quality information to their students. Massad Ayoob, Jeff Cooper (now deceased), Clint Smith, Louis Awerbuck, and others of their caliber are the folks to seek out for reliable literature and training on how to protect yourself and yours and conduct yourself responsibly while armed.

[Rokyudai]

Well said once again Excal....as 'Shooting To Live' (Fairbairn & Sykes) sits on my coffee table and the other authors you mentioned sit on my bookshelf.

Rok

[CHLSteve]

Sounds like it's time to invest in some good curtains...