Jim Wagner’s Law Enforcement Background: Why he’s qualified to teach you
After serving in the army, and learning graphic arts in college, Jim Wagner worked in the field of advertising, and taught self-defense on the side. One of his students, who worked for the City of Costa Mesa, informed Jim that there was a job opening in the city’s jail, and that he’d be perfect for position. At first Jim wasn’t interested in applying for the position, but after thinking about it he realized that he really didn’t know much about the criminal mind, and if he were to get the Custody Officer job he’d be a better self-defense instructor. After all, he was teaching self-defense in order for people to survive criminal attacks. A minimum of a year working in the jail would give him the experience he knew he needed.
In December of 1988 Jim Wagner was hired as a Custody Officer at the Costa Mesa Police Department Men’s Jail Facility. To be qualified to book and house prisoners Officer Wagner had to complete a 120-hour Corrections Officer Core Course through the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Being “locked up” with prisoners for two years gave Jim Wagner the education into the criminal mind that he had hoped for. He had to deal with every type of criminal imaginable: murderers, robbers, rapists, thieves, and even those under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
In 1991 Officer Wagner was selected to be a police recruit by his department, and he attended the Police Academy, Class 104; once again trained by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. It was 21 weeks of criminal justice courses, investigations, report writing courses, physical conditioning, Defensive Tactics, Arrest & Control, firearms training, and police patrol tactics. Upon completion of the police academy on June 21, 1991 he received his badge and gun. His first assignment was police patrol.
During his 10 years with the Costa Mesa Police Department Corporal Wagner’s other duties included the Special Weapons And Tactics (S.W.A.T.) team for three years, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program for school aged children from kindergarten to middle school, bicycle patrol, and Citizen’s Police Academy Defensive Tactics instructor.
While Officer Wagner was on the S.W.A.T. team he, and three other police officers, formed the police and military training organization HSS International, Inc. that eventually grew nationally and then internationally. On his many of his free days Jim was taught police agencies and military units all over the world in a variety of courses: Defensive Tactics, S.W.A.T. courses, sniper courses, bodyguard courses, and even counterterrorism courses. The demands, and the opportunities, of this side job eventually led him to make the decision to leave the Costa Mesa Police Department, teach full time, and become a Reserve deputy Sheriff with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; the very department that trained him at the Corrections Officer Academy and the Police Academy.
Initially Deputy Wagner was assigned to the Search & Rescue Unit, but when the Reserve Bureau found out about his tactical background, especially in teaching bodyguard courses, they promoted him to the rank of sergeant and made him the Team Leader of the Dignitary Protection Unit. He was also a patrol supervisor, and went out onto the streets in a “black and white” on a regular basis to enforce the law when not teaching for HSS.
Then September 11, 2001 changed everything. This was the day that Al Qaeda terrorists attacked and killed thousands of people on American soil. The United States government was looking for anyone with Special Operations experience at the time to help fight in the Global War on Terrorism, and Jim Wagner stepped up to the plate. He resigned from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, put his training company on hold, and was sent to counterterrorism school in New Mexico; the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLTC).
After 120 missions with the United States Federal Air Marshal Service, assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office, and the aviation sector had been made into a “hard target,” Agent Wagner left the agency to once again work full time as a police and military instructor. However, when he returned to his business partners things had changed, and not for the better, and so on January 21, 2003 Jim Wagner formed his own training organization Reality-Based Personal Protection. In so doing he decided to also offer civilian self-defense courses. The original program he had put together was comprised of five, 8-hour, courses: Defensive Tactics, Ground Survival, Knife Survival, Crime Survival, and Terrorism Survival. Although it started in Southern California, it wasn’t long until Jim was teaching in other states, and then soon afterwards in other countries.
Since Jim was teaching many techniques and tactics never seen before in most martial arts schools, instructors from every system and style came to his courses to become instructor certified. It was Jim Wagner who first introduced, through Crime Survival, paint guns to the martial arts community (going back as far as 1981), and then Airsoft guns when they first came out to provide realistic training and scenarios. He was the first to simulate a wide variety of robberies based upon his own police experiences. He was the first to teach people how to defend against criminal chemical attacks. Jim Wagner was the first to teach people how to look around corners with a mobile phone to keep safe and to record evidence. And, speaking of evidence, nobody in the martial arts community was teaching their students how to identify and preserve crime scene evidence, how to give the police a criminal description to a dispatcher, or even how to talk to the police when they arrived. There were a lot of things never taught before, and Crime Survival led the way, and still does today.
At the beginning of 2006 Jim Wagner went back into the military, only this time as a Military Police soldier at Joint Forces Training Base in California. For seven years he served as an MP, and then the last three years in the Security Forces (SECFOR), which essentially was the same mission. During all this time he taught law enforcement and military courses to not only his own units, but to outside Army National Guard and Army Reserve units; some were deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo. After ten years in the military Master Sergeant (CA) Jim Wagner retired on March 13, 2016. It was time to focus all of his attention on the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection system, and use his 30 years of experience to teach people situational awareness and how to survive all likely attacks by criminals and terrorists, and to teach martial arts instructors how to do the same.
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