Verbal commands: what do you say?

[Sylvain]

I always yell commands when I draw my weapon.
"Gimmie all your money!"
"Take off your watch!"
"Get out of the car, leave your keys!"
"You gotta purdy mouff!"

Thanks for the post, I was not looking for those kinds of commands but I guess if someone is trying to rob me I may as well take is watch and wallet to teach him a lesson.
That's kinda legal if I rob him in self defense right?

"YOU want my watch?" *draws guns* "What about YOU give me your wallet and run away punk?" "Run faster!"

 

[VUPDblue]

We are drilled to shout verbal commands when we draw..."Police!!! Get Down!!!, or Police!!! Drop Your Weapon." ect ect. So much so that when a Pitbull was charging me, I drew and shouted those same commands .

So Denny, did the Pitbull obey your commands?

 

[CombatVet]

I say the same thing as I was taught in Basic.

Halt!
Drop your weapon. (If applicable)
Identify yourself.

 

[rambone]

YOU'VE JUST BEEN ERASED!!

 

[indyjoe]

STOP!!!!!

Because even when stressed I can remember to yell STOP! and it's better than the neighbors hearing "DIE MOTHER F...........!" followed by gunshots.

Yep. That is my thinking too. I train with stop. You will say something. Make sure it doesn't get you in more trouble.

Officer: "So what did you see?"

Witness: "Well, that guy started backing up and yelled stop. Then he started shooting at the guy when the guy wouldn't stop coming at him."

vs

Witness: "I'm not sure. That guy pulled a gun and yelled 'Die motherf...." and started firing into the other guy."

 

[Tinman]

I wrote the article below a few years back for a local training group I work with. I think it covered this topic pretty well, I hope you guys can get something out of it.

One point to add to this is that the majority of your verbaige should occur prefight. Once the fight starts, it's time to fight.

Just my ,

Tinman....


Be Careful what you say, you just might get it.

In a recent internet thread, a law enforcement instructor was discussing some observations he made during a recent FATS training session. Here are his comments:

The scenario began with the officer responding to a disturbance at a medical office. A secretary at the scene informs the officer that a man is in the waiting room, advised he had a gun, and requested the secretary to kill him. She provides a detailed description. The scenario advances to have the officer enter the waiting room and confront the man who is sitting on a couch, facing him, with both hands in the front pocket of a hooded sweatshirt.

All but one officer gave the "suspect" the exact same order, "Show me your hands!" I had the suspect just sit there a few seconds and all the officers repeated the same order pretty much verbatim, "Show me your hands!"

Wisely, most officers had drawn their pistols as soon as they heard about the gun and 100% had a pistol in their hand, if not aimed in at the man, by this point.

I then had the man respond by drawing a pistol from the pocket and firing at the officers.

The results were mixed. A good percentage missed initially. All eventually hit the man. Only one actually beat him to the shot even with pistols at the ready.

The lesson I drew from it: Every officer issued the same order: "Show me your hands" Why? Because that is what they were taught. I asked them, "Did the subject comply with your order?" Most "got it" and said that yes, he complied but not exactly as intended. He did, indeed, show them his hands. The problem was that he showed them a muzzle at the same time.

All these officers (except one) made the same mistake. They set themselves up in a position where they would not know the difference between compliance and deadly threat until it was too late.

This is a very clear law enforcement example of what can happen if we use the wrong verbiage. The issue applies as a civilian, even more so. No, we won’t be responding to a man with a gun call, but when we come out to the dark parking lot at 10:00pm, we’re not going to have our gun in hand either. I think it bears repeating, even with gun in hand and often pointed at the subject, only 1 officer beat the bad guy to a shot. It takes time for our brain to realize that the subject may be complying, but is still a threat. What do you think that first shot hit percentage would have done if they had to go from a concealed draw? The other verbiage that I hear often is “what do you want”, or “can I help you.” Although polite, it invites interaction from a person with unknown intentions. It also does nothing help to maintain distance from the unknown. In fact, it invites them to continue closing the distance to interact.

This also begs the question, do we really owe any politeness to someone we don’t know who is attempting to get close to us? I think the answer is and big NO. This doesn’t give us justification to pounce on everyone who closes distance with a big “F*%^ off”, but it does indicate that we need to develop some verbiage that is possibly a bit standoffish without being provocative. Remember, we may not have a legal obligation to retreat, but we do have a responsibility not to escalate the situation.

Many years ago, I took a class that covered the pre-fight dynamic quite heavily. During the course of this class, the instructor presented a theory of escalating verbiage. Much like the use of force continuum where we start at a low level of force and escalate as needed to control the situation, this instructor presented a method for doing the same thing using our voice.

This was a three tiered response, Ask, Advise, and Order. Sorry, no cool acronyms for this one. A phrase such as “Hey buddy would you hold there for a minute” or “Hold up there man” allows someone to comply with your request, which isn’t rendered rudely. If they stop advancing, then you can decide if you want to ask them what they want. Often times, if it really is an innocuous contact the person will back up realizing they have encroached too far. If you have asked him to stop and he doesn’t what then?

If you have range, which we understand is directly proportional to our awareness, we can ramp up our verbiage from a request to an instruction. So if we start at “Hey buddy would you hold there?” next we’ll tell them what we want “STOP!” we should accompany this with a raised tone of voice. Not quite yelling yet, just a firm loud voice. What if he still doesn’t stop or say he begins to verbalize himself and keeps advancing?

Once again, assuming we have the distance, we step our verbiage up to the next level with a command. The thing to keep in mind is that we no longer want him to hold his ground, now we want him to give us back our reactionary gap distance, so maybe we step it up to “BACK UP!” Again, raising our tone to a loud commanding voice. We must sound confident and in control.

Accompanying this verbiage, we want to use our Fence. The Fence is a term coined by Geoff Thompson who spent many years as a UK doorman (bouncer). It’s based on the old adage of good fences make good neighbors. It does three things, first it gets your hands up and in play before the assault starts. This is critical when talking about a response to a spontaneous assault. Second, it provides a good platform for preemptive strikes should they be warranted. Finally, a palms outward fence in particular reinforces the verbal message to not come any closer. Just like a police officer giving the stop command when directing traffic.

In short, we all need to spend a little time evaluating what we typically say during training. After all, we will fight as we have trained. One last thing, spend some time thinking and practicing your own verbiage, the response needs to be immediate and rehearsed. If you have to stop and think about what too say as the bad guy is closing distance, that is that much brain capacity you can’t use to evaluate what the bad guy is doing. It should be rehearsed to be automatic just like one of your mechanical skills.

“Hold up there man”
“Sorry I can’t help you.”
“STOP!”
“No I don’t need any help.”
“BACK UP!”
“I don’t need any more friends, go away.”
“Turn around and go away.”

Of course, a lot of that goes out the window when you’re in a foreign country and they don’t understand English, but then again, that’s where sign language comes in, and that’s a whole different topic.

Hope you all enjoyed this, special thanks to Southnarc, and John Farnam, the two instructors who have influenced a lot of what you read here. Remember, be careful what you say, you just might get it.

 

[Lucas156]

Check out F.A.S.T defense. I think it would be better to shout commands with your hand on your weapon.

 

[christman]

"You gonna skin that smoke wagon er just stand there and bleed?" "No? I didn't think so."

 

[dross]

"DIE YOU SCUM SUCKING DOG!!!"

 

[whoismunky]

We are drilled to shout verbal commands when we draw..."Police!!! Get Down!!!, or Police!!! Drop Your Weapon." ect ect. So much so that when a Pitbull was charging me, I drew and shouted those same commands ..

Haha, that's crazy. Definitely says something about the validity of repetition

 

[jeremy]

I say the same thing as I was taught in Basic.

Halt!
Drop your weapon. (If applicable)
Identify yourself.

That was a couple of days ago wasn't it...

We do not really do that anymore...

 

[CombatVet]

That was a couple of days ago wasn't it...

We do not really do that anymore...

Yeah, it's been a minute ... or 10 years.

Damn, I finished basic over 10 years ago, I'm getting OLD!

 

[randyb]

If I feel the need to draw then I am pretty certain that the talking is over.

 

[jsharmon7]

I bet this would work pretty well:

NSFW: Language

YouTube - war face

 

[Sylvain]

If I feel the need to draw then I am pretty certain that the talking is over.

I dont agree on that thought of only draw to shoot.
You dont need to draw your gun just to shoot and you dont need to shoot because you drew your gun.
Some people just understand that you mean business when say see a gun in your hand and that may be enough in most of the cases to stop any violent attack.
People who will attack you in the street are cowards, if their "victim" is armed they will think twice about getting any closer to get what they want.
Police officers draw their weapons often without having to fire a shot just to make the suspect complain or just to be ready in case they need to open fire.
That's only when I start shooting that the talking is over, not just after I drew the gun.

 

[aetucker1]

Go Ahead, skin it!, skin that smoke-wagon and see what happens.

--tombstone....best movie of all time.

 

[U.S. Patriot]

I will make one important suggestion when using verbal commands. First, tell the BG what you want him to do. For example, you have a BG welding a knife and he/she keeps walking toward you, and is making verbal threats. Next, give him the same command and give him/her an ultimatum. IE, stop or I'll shoot. Lastly, follow through with your ultimatum. If you just continue to give the same commands over and over. Typically the BG will not take your commands seriously. "JUST REMEMBER TOO ONLY USE DEADLY FORCE WHEN YOU YOURSELF ARE THREATENED WITH DEADLY FORCE". I just wanted to give you an example. One reason I'm thankful for my Military training. Obviousaly, there may be a situations that do not allow for the use of verbal commands.

 

[dross]

Yeah, it's been a minute ... or 10 years.

Damn, I finished basic over 10 years ago, I'm getting OLD!

I finished basic over 28 years ago. You only get older, and believe me, you get older faster as time goes on.

 

[Denny347]

So Denny, did the Pitbull obey your commands?

They moved too fast to shoot them safely. Grabbed the OC and ruined their day with that. There were 2 of them and man they were mean. I yelled those commands then looked around laughing at myself and seeing if anyone else was watching my goofiness .

 

[Expat]

So I should start yelling, "I am in fear for my life and feel no other option is available but to put a bullet in your empty head, dipstick".