In Self Defense – Episode 103: Craig Douglas Trial Pt. 2

In part two of this three part series ShivWorks founder Craig Douglass joins the podcast to discuss how being confident about your ability with tactics such as default cover, defensive display, and retention shooting can help you avoid using deadly force or make you successful when deadly force is necessary.

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Managing Unknown Contacts with Craig Douglas

Shawn Vincent:

Shawn Vincent:

Hey, everybody. This is Shawn Vincent. Thanks for listening in to the podcast. Today, we’re giving you part two of our interview with Craig Douglas. If you’ve been involved in the firearms training industry at all, you probably know Craig’s name. He’s the founder of ShivWorks. And last time on our podcast, we talked a lot about developing soft skills, about verbal Jiu-Jitsu. And today our podcast is going to feature more of a discussion about what happens when your soft skills haven’t succeeded in either avoiding or diffusing a potential confrontation with a suspicious contact and your verbal literacy, as Craig Douglas likes to put it, hasn’t prevented what might be an inevitable physical confrontation. So today in our conversation, one of the things we touch on is how being confident in your physical skills is one thing that’s going to help you avoid confrontations. And when it comes right down to it, if things have gone wrong, and you’re the victim of, say, a sucker-punch – knowing how to take a punch is going to be a critical part of your self-defense toolkit.

Shawn Vincent:

We also have a conversation about defensive displays. That’s not brandishing, but that’s using your firearm in a way where it’s not pointed at the threat, but the display of it is meant to ward off a potential attacker when that’s justified. Craig says that a defensive display should be like tapping the brakes on a conflict that might be headed towards deadly violence. And then one thing that Craig’s real big on is disambiguating complicated confrontations. And one thing that he makes a point about is knowing the difference between someone who is expressively violent versus somebody who is immediately assaultive. And we’ve covered lots of cases where someone’s visibly aggressive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to become physically aggressive, and being able to distinguish between one or the other can save an armed defender from, what might otherwise be considered an unjustified self-defense shooting.

Shawn Vincent:

And then Steve Moses has done a lot of studying with Craig Douglas. It’s our own Steve Moses, whose friendship with Craig brought him to our podcast today. And one thing Steve learned from Craig is the value of being a competent shooter from a retention position. A lot of times, these self-defense scenarios involve an attacker who’s gotten very close and you need to be able to maintain control of your weapon and deploy it successfully if you’re going to survive a situation like that. So thanks for listening in. Stay tuned. We’ll be joined by Don West today, as always. Steve Moses, of course. And our friend Craig Douglas.

Shawn Vincent:

One thing Steve tells us about a lot when it comes to managing contacts is being situationally aware. You mentioned, Craig, at the beginning, all this assumes that you didn’t have your nose buried in your cell phone and that you were paying attention to what’s around you. And Steve tells us that’s the first clue to a potential attacker that you’re not an easy mark because you’re paying attention and you’re connecting, you’re acknowledging that they’re there. And then once someone’s gotten within that circle, now what I’m hearing you tell us, we’ve got ways to, without escalating it, start dealing with that person, and this is why I think the authenticity part of your conversation comes in. We’re demonstrating that we’re in control and we’re not panicked or afraid. If someone is trying to mark us, we’re starting to communicate to them now that we’re prepared to deal with what’s coming. Am I right there?

Craig Douglas:

You’re absolutely correct, but there are two ways for you to do that, okay? Number one, you actually have to be in control. If you don’t want to sound panicked, then you can’t be panicked and you actually have to be in control. And generally, the only way to connote that is if it’s real, and it’s only going to be real if you’ve prepared yourself.

Craig Douglas:

I’m not worried about a gunfight. I’m not worried about a fistfight. I’m not worried about it. I’ve had enough violence in my life to where I don’t sweat a confrontation. I don’t. It doesn’t raise my blood pressure. I have had violence meted out on me badly, almost lethally. And I most surely meted said violence out on other people. I know what it looks like. It’s not something that keeps me up at night. I don’t worry about getting mugged or carjacked or anything else.

Craig Douglas:

So if that’s your reality, that’s your reality. And that confidence will most assuredly come across. If it’s not, then you have to sell it and you have to sell it well. Now I’ve sold myself as being things I’m not, well. I was a professional liar for two years of undercover work. And I’ve made a lot of good cases. So it’s one of two things, right? You’re going to have to sell it. That’s the only way to do it.

Shawn Vincent:

What I’m picking up there is knowing how to take a punch goes a long way.

Craig Douglas:

Sure does. You know, just being punched once in the face, does that justify shooting someone? If somebody pops you in the face, jars you.

Shawn Vincent:

It is funny. Here’s where we get to that ambiguity and the armed defender’s dilemma when dealing with this because we know that certain people are capable of inflicting great bodily injury or death with their bare fists, but also one punch to the face, without the other context, there is not going to be a justifiable self-defense shooting. And Steve, you showed us some training that you had done with Craig about how to take a punch.

Steve Moses:

Well, in terms of taking a punch, it actually means putting yourself into a position, so a punch cannot land solidly on you in such a manner – that is, Craig think I first heard him say – is knocks you out or knocks you down. And so basically it’s more than just standing there and having a stiff neck and a firm chin. There is a prescribed method that Craig teaches. It works very, very well. It’s worked for me before. I’ve seen examples where it’s worked and, Craig, if you would just go ahead and address default cover.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. So it’s what I call a “default position.” And I describe that as a single non-diagnostic motor skill that keeps you conscious and mobile long enough to get in or get out. So it’s bridge work to an escape or it’s bridge work possibly into physical control, or it could be bridge work into a draw depending on whether that’s warranted or not. But nonetheless, it’s an asymmetrical head-cover where basically I frame my arms around my head in such a way that they’re almost like a helmet, they’re really close to my face and my neck and I lock them down. And I cover key areas, the temples, the hinge of the jaw, the sides of the neck. And I isolate the head from neck rotation. Those are the requirements that have to be met to keep from getting knocked unconscious.

Craig Douglas:

And I combine that with what we call a level change, which is a rapid drop of my center of gravity that stabilizes me and lowers me in an effort to stay upright under impact. So it’s a thing to do. It’s one thing, it’s like a seatbelt. I think the analogy to a seatbelt is really good. It’s nothing I want to use. If I were to make the driving analogy again, it’s preferred to have awareness and see the drunk weaving from side to side a quarter mile away, pull over to the shoulder and let that idiot pass. But if you’re not aware, if you’re on your phone, if you have a narrow field of awareness or vision, and you miss that guy and he slams into you, what kicks in the airbag, the seatbelt. Same thing with the default position, it’s a thing that mitigates the crash and it doesn’t diagnose if the collision is front side or rear, just like you don’t diagnose is what’s flying at your head, a left, a right, a straight, is there or is there not something in his hand?

Craig Douglas:

And that split second, that’s extraneous information. It’s a pretty simple heuristic or quarter second, this guy’s moved first. You’ve got to stay conscious and mobile long enough to get in or get out. And that’s the split second we’re in.

Shawn Vincent:

So maybe it’s a good time to talk about … we’ve spent a long time on the verbal skills and the social literacy. So now we’re getting to the point where if those haven’t worked and maybe we’ve used this technique to block the first blow, now what’s our plan? What’s our next step in our playlist?

Craig Douglas:

So, really depends on him. You know, if a guy swung at me one time and I covered with that default position, then he stood back and said, “What are you going to do now?” Maybe there’s an option to escape. There might be an option to draw a pistol if warranted. And it very well could be warranted. You know, if it’s a 300-pound dude that hits a girl who’s 90 pounds, she may very well, if she survives that initial blow, and she has the opportunity, she may very well be justified in at least drawing a pistol and trying to manage a retreat. Which is a tap on the brakes before actually drawing and firing a pistol. Does she have the presence of mind to do that after a single blow from someone that outweighs her by a hundred pounds, at least, does she have the presence of mind to do that after receiving that blow, but not being assaulted anymore? I think it’s interesting and I can’t remember where it was at in Florida. You know, we make all the jokes about Florida man, but there was a case about the parking spot. And Don, you may be familiar with that one.

Shawn Vincent:

The Michael Drejka Case.

Don West:

The handicapped parking spot.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. Where the guy starts giving the people the what for about parking and the boyfriend comes out, pops the guy one time, and just kind of stands back, and the guy, pop, I’m not sure what the status of that case is. I don’t see that going well.

Shawn Vincent:

He’s convicted of manslaughter.

Craig Douglas:

So that was the disposition of the case? It’s manslaughter?

Don West:

A jury trial. He had a full-blown jury trial, and the jury convicted him and he was sentenced to what, 15 years in prison? 20? Something like that.

Shawn Vincent:

I’ll fact-check it, but in that neighborhood. Yeah.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. And that’s exactly the case I was thinking of where it’s like, well, he was assaulted. Yeah, but.

Shawn Vincent:

Well, it’s funny, Craig, we talk about that case a lot as an instance where his defensive display, and, and just to be clear here, when you talk about a defensive display, we’re never talking about pointing the pistol at somebody until you’re ready to fire. Right. But he drew his gun to fire. And there’s this pause there that the Sheriff of Pinellas County talked about that “gave him pause.” If you saw the video of this, Drejka is on the ground – he’s got pushed there. Markeis McGlockton’s a big guy. He’s sort of lording over him. As soon as that pistol appears, Markeis McGlockton takes a couple of steps back. His whole body language changes. He’s like, “whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” This is a whole different story. He stopped the attack with the presentation of the pistol.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. I always call those a “tap on the brakes,” clearing a covered garment and establishing grip on a gun, that works. Clearing a covered garment, establishing a grip on a gun, actually taking it out of the holster, but not pointing it at someone, that works. That’s a tap on the brakes, drawing the pistol out of the holster and pointing it at someone. Those are all taps on the brakes. I hear people say, well, never point a gun at someone, or actually what they say is, actually pointing a gun at someone as part of the shooting cycle. And I take issue with that. ‘Cause I don’t know how many people I’ve pointed guns at. I have no idea how many people I pointed guns at in my law enforcement career, that I didn’t fire on.

Craig Douglas:

And all of those things are efforts at not treating this person I’m interacting with like, like a plate rack at a USPSA match. You know, they’re all taps on the brakes. They all are. I think you can show a guy you are armed without drawing it. I think you can draw it and not point it at him. I think you can draw it, point it at him and not shoot him. And then I think you can draw and fire, right? And those are all things that are again, little taps on the brakes that keep you hopefully from having to fire. But the purpose of all this stuff, this is what I see more often than not, the more time people spend engaging in ambiguity and using these other problem-solving modalities, they become more decisive. After experiencing this, I get a lot of repeat business and I have a lot of alumni that train with me annually. I get a guy that’s doing like three or four ECQC classes, their shifts and their decision making when they know, okay, that didn’t work, boom, time to go here, that didn’t work, that didn’t work.

Craig Douglas:

And as importantly, their ability to tap the brakes, because a lot of times what’ll happen is they’ll get into some kind of physical confrontation. They’ll barely escape from the physical confrontation. And just like in that case, draw the pistol. And my people have the presence of mind usually after a couple of exposures, just tap the brakes a little bit, if that guy’s backing up or if he’s done just like in that video going, hey, whoa. Most of my people are pretty good at tapping the brakes and shutting it down right then, you know? There’s no doubt in my mind, it’s because of the direct exposure. And it’s because of the previous failures that they’ve had in good interactive, immersive experiential training.

Shawn Vincent:

I want to clarify something real quick for our listeners. And I’m going to guess if I know enough about all the firearm instructions we’ve talked to you about, that when you say, when you point the gun at somebody, you would never point the gun at somebody that you didn’t feel you were justified in using deadly force against. But if you can see that stopped the threat, you don’t have to follow through just because you’ve pointed a gun. Is that the right impression of that?

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. If I point a gun at someone, I’m most assuredly comfortable with shooting them, I’ve just chosen for the moment not to.

Shawn Vincent:

And these self-defense situations move so fast that in the split second it takes to raise that gun up and point it, the situation can change. And being aware, having thought through these situations, knowing what your playlist is, paying attention, are the things that allow you to tap the brakes, as you say, and step back, whenever things have changed. So it doesn’t all go from zero to 60 in a second.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And here’s the thing too, the better the students get, the harder I push them. So I will run scenarios specifically where I want a seasoned alumni, usually an intermediate guy, some guy Steve’s level or better, but I will specifically push the scenario in an attempt to hone their social literacy and their emotional intelligence and see if they can make a distinction between somebody who is expressively violent or immediately assaultive. So specifically, I’ll run a scenario where I will have them escort a female coworker out to a parking lot because she’s going through a divorce. So they do that. And in the middle of the scenario, I’ll send in a male role player and that’s the estranged soon-to-be ex-husband. And he’ll come in and say, hey, I need my keys to the house.

Craig Douglas:

You locked me out of the house. And then the female gets really verbally aggressive with him. He yells back and we see what the person does. Do they disengage or do they try and white knight? Do they try and inject themselves between the two? And again, I would say, this isn’t a person who’s important to you. I don’t say this is a family member. I say, this is a female coworker. So you’ve got to make a decision. You know, how much do you want to buy that? So, if the person that’s doing the escort interjects on the male role player, I’ll have him shift his attention from the female to him and say, “Hey man, that’s my wife. This is none of your business.” And then go back. He again has an opportunity to disengage. If he continues to white knight, my guy pulls his pistol out, and he points it at the male guy.

Craig Douglas:

Now one of two things is going to happen. Either he’s going to go for this draw, badly, or he’s going to be cool and say, “Hey man, okay,” and try and fade out. If he does that, then my male role player shifts his attention back to the female, points the gun down by his side, and starts talking loud, the female is even more aggressive. So now we have the CCW guy that’s evaluating this guy, holding a gun, not pointing it at anyone. We had the female who’s more aggressive verbally, and apparently has no fear of this dude or the pistol that he’s holding. So now he’s got one to two options. He can observe, or he can take that covert shot on the draw that he’s earned and zip dude, right in the ear, if he’s positioned himself well and solved the problem because the guy is indeed holding a gun.

Craig Douglas:

If he lets it go and chooses not to take any action, here’s how the scenario ends. She finally reaches down, snatches the pistol out of his hand and says, “I gave you this gun for Christmas. Now get the F out of here.” And he kind of stalks off with his head hung in this kind of like beta-male shuffle. So was the kinetic answer correct? Could be. Was the non-kinetic answer correct? It worked. Is there a difference between immediately assaultive and expressively violent? Yeah. Most assuredly. People in low-income neighborhoods and ghettos all around the country, routinely point guns at each other expressively and not a shot is fired. Now, unless you have experienced that and understand that, you don’t know. Now, can somebody fire a shot in a heartbeat? Most assuredly. Here’s the point though: the point is to hone their social literacy and get them to understand there are probably even greater splices of gray beyond just, shoot, don’t shoot. Gun in hand, gun in use.

Craig Douglas:

We used to teach that back in the 90s. Steve probably remembers that. Gun in hand, gun in use. And we shot people when they were holding guns in public spaces. That’s what we did. Now with the explosion of CCW, with open carry, I mean, we just can’t do that anymore. I like that kind of stuff. That’s where I dwell. There are plenty of guys that shoot better than I do, that are better marksmanship and gun handling diagnosticians. It’s not where I spend my time. This is what I do. ‘Cause I think it’s important. And I just don’t see people spending time here and I think it’s as important as all the gun stuff.

Steve Moses:

Hey, Shawn, something I would like to throw in right now also is that part of Craig’s ECQC program includes retention shooting, and close-contact shooting. In regard to, maybe, the 300-pound guy and the 90 pound woman, he punched her, she stood back, she grabbed a gun. Well, if an average person did that, probably they would end up having that gun taken away from him and perhaps used against him. And Craig teaches within his system a four-part draw. What this does is it gives the students the ability to use a firearm from a very close position, a retention position, when they’re in danger of being entangled. What this really does is it gives the students additional options. And in conjunction with this confidence, I can take care of myself, which probably carries over during the managing unknown contact phases. It’s also a very powerful thing for the students to have in their possession when dealing with another person and something that perhaps would maybe prevent someone from going to a firearm too early, simply because they didn’t know what else to do. And they were scared, which might result in criminal charges later.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. So within the program, there’s a live-fire module where we adapt shooting to the specifics and peculiarities of within arms-reach entanglement, a clench, a ground fight confined in a crowded space. So it’s not about teaching people how to shoot, but to adapt shooting to a specific problem. And that thumb pectoral index retention position is a big part of that. Dialing that in. So it’s consistent, accurate, safe. Deconflicting the support hand that’s invariably ahead of the muzzle, always, in real life, to make sure those rounds aren’t coming anywhere close to where his hand is always going to be active and trying and problem solve and fight.

Shawn Vincent:

What I just heard there in a complicated way is: tactics to keep you from shooting your hand while you’re in a close quarters.

Craig Douglas:

While shooting someone else. That’s exactly it, Shawn. Yes, sir.

Shawn Vincent:

You know, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation so far. And one of the big things I’m getting from it, we kind of set this up in the beginning, that the encounters that people see are very seldom, the cut and dried encounters that they might imagine. And they’re much more likely to find themselves in an unfolding domestic dispute between two other people and they have to decide, “How am I going to be involved in this?” And we couldn’t possibly imagine all the scenarios that we could potentially encounter, taking the time to visualize and look at real-life encounters and think about how we’d interact is one thing that we can do.

Shawn Vincent:

But also to understand, you talk about the social literacy, that there are other people from other walks of life who aren’t going to behave in a way that’s predictable to us or that we understand. And to keep in mind that there are other possibilities for their behavior than the one that we jump to the conclusion and assume. And also that, really, I have this huge sense of every little thing that we say and do is going to have a huge impact on the result of any conflict or any potential encounter with an unknown contact.

Craig Douglas:

Yeah. I’ll tell you a really quick story on that. I’m loaned out in the 90s to an agency buying drugs. And this is a funny story. There’re no severe consequences, but I’m buying crack, so I’m trolling along in a vehicle, in a housing project, ‘97, somewhere around there. And it was just a dry hole of the day. Nobody would sell to me. And I’m there loaned out to this agency to make cases for them on this drug sting operation. So anyway, I’m driving along and I see a guy on the corner kind of gives me the chin lift, and drive up to him. And I’m trying to think of something and be cool and buy from this guy. And I said, “Hey, man, I need something.” He’s like, “What do you need?”

Craig Douglas:

And I said, “I need a forty.” Meaning, a $40 piece of crack cocaine. And he kind of like, ah, I said, “Come on, man, I got money, man, hurry up. There’s police right around the corner, man. Let’s go.” Beause I want him to sell to me quick. And he said, “There’s police around the corner?” I said, “Yeah, man, I just saw a patrol car.” And as soon as I said “patrol car,” because nobody says that except a police officer, his head snapped down, he looked at me, sucked his teeth. He said, “Yeah, go on.” And I was done. It was that one slip. Not a horrendous thing to blow a dope deal and not be able to buy on that block. ‘Cause I can move a couple blocks over. So in all, done, that quick because of the lapse in language, you know? ‘Cause I said “patrol car,” nobody says that except a police officer. So lesson learned, with no consequence.

Shawn Vincent:

All right guys, that’s our show for today. Turns out we didn’t hear much from Don West in part two, but stick around in part three, because you’ll hear a lot more of Don West and we’ll continue our conversation with Craig Douglas. I promised you a fact check: Michael Drejka was sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter in the shooting of Markeis McGlockton. We’ll have more next time. Until then be smart, stay safe, take care.