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Old April 23, 2001, 10:12 AM   #1
Betty
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 22, 2000
Location: southern U.S.
Posts: 1,807
I took my baton re-certification this past Saturday alongside my brother. (This is a yearly event.) It was at APPS in Nashville, with a reputable instructor, J. Buford Tune, who had enough awards and certificates from his long police service to fill up an entire wall. In the end, however, I was gravely disappointed in the class.

In brief, my last instructor took my $35 and “disappeared”, never giving me or the other members of my class the final certificate or card that I must carry on me. He would not answer my phone calls or return my messages. So, that is why we decided to find a new instructor.

There were about 20 people in the class, the majority being security guards in-training and correctional officers. There were only two women, including myself. My brother Phil and I were the only two non-security / non-cops. We did the classroom time and the written test, and then stepped outside to do our baton training.

I got paired up with the biggest sissy. This man was middle-aged, average height and build, but hit worse than a dainty little girl. I held up the padded shield and he tried to whack it with the foam padded practice baton. Tap. Tap. I could hardly feel a thing. Tune walked up and said to the man, “Do you like her (meaning me)?” My partner was a quiet man and lowered his head and mumbled something in response. Tune said, ‘Well, pretend she’s not a sweet little 105 pound girl and pretend she’s a six-foot-nine, 300 pound Hispanic gay male who wants YOU really bad. Now HIT HARDER!” Tap. Tap. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes while hidden behind the shield.Tune gave up on the man.

And then there was this other security guard in-training who was wearing a brand new white golf shirt, slacks, and shiny dress shoes. He definitely didn’t dress for the occasion properly, and adamantly refused to get his shirt dirty in the grass while the rest of us were prone for excercise. He just stood there and watched us. The entire time his attitude reflected “I don’t want to do this”. Makes me wonder how reliable both of these men were going to be as security guards.

It was not the other members but what I did not get out of the class that was disappointing. Last year, for my first certificaiton, it was an incredibly rigorous 8 hour long official ASP course that tested opening and closing the baton properly, closed and open baton strikes, how to deal with multiple aggressors, and weapons retention.

In this class, it seemed ultra-generalized with “whack, whack, whack the padded shield any way you want as long as it’s at a 45 degree angle”. I felt like I was on a fast food assembly-line. The class was definintely not reality-based like my previous one. We never touched a real baton, so we never practiced how to open and close one safely and properly, we never learned the closed baton strikes, and Tune said we weren’t going to go over the open straight-strike because he didn’t want us to “get hurt if we landed in the grass”. Oh, please.

In order to deliver the full effect of a baton strike, you must put the burden of your energy in your hips and legs, not just your arm. I was the only one who did this, out of constant practice and the fact that I really don’t have much of a choice with a rod fused to my back. So, I was the one who was generating the greatest amount of power in the baton, even though I was the smallest and probably the most physically weak in the class. Mr. Tune pointed this out to the rest of the class, but did not persue getting the others to use their body properly. And then next thing you know, class was over. It was very short and disappointing, and the other class members are going to go about only knowing the most basic of basic maneuvers without administering them properly or realizing their capabilities with the baton.

The lady handing out the certifactions looked at me and said, "You've had martial arts training, haven't you?" I said no. My brother piped up and said, 'She's just mean."

In the end, I retained what I learned in my first baton class and only got a little laminated card out of this one.
Betty is offline  
 
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