Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection

Christmas in Afghanistan
Jim Wagner

Many of my Reality-Based students and instructors sent me emails wishing me a Merry Christmas. All of them made this season a little more special for me in doing so. The email that came from the farthest reaches of the planet was from Tim Stinson, one of my Level 1 instructors who I trained in Los Angeles a couple of years back, who wrote me from war torn Afghanistan.

Here is what Tim Stinson wrote to me:

I spent Christmas Day out on the desert and it was pretty nice out there...lots of activity, but the air was crystal clear and the temperature very comfortable in the sun...it goes from peaceful to chaos pretty damn quick....

As far as what I do here...I will tell you a sanitized version. I am attached to a U.S. Contractor operating in Helmand Province, Afghanistan providing internal and convoy security for assets, equipment, and personnel. I operate with multi-national military units in augmenting the force protection and gathering information from local nationals that assist in the security operations in this area. I also instruct security personnel and members of the United States and British military in hand-to-hand combat training utilizing many of the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection techniques and tactics, and Bet Your Life Combat Martial Arts System training. The two systems combined have made short term training more adaptable to real world combat scenarios in this environment.

Tim Stinson represents the many professionals that I have trained who help keep the world safer: from soldiers and contractors in Afghanistan, to military police officers in Kosovo, to police officers patrolling the streets of Amsterdam to New York City. May God keep them all safe in the New Year 2009.

20 Years Ago in Jail
Jim Wagner

It was December 1988 when I entered into my career in law enforcement. This month twenty years ago I was hired by the Costa Mesa Police Department City Jail and started learning how to book, process, and house prisoners. My supervisor was Sergeant George Yezbick and fellow correction officers upon my hire were E. Gonzalez, D. Hamel, M. Asbaugh, M. Fantozzi, and M. Yagerlenger. Soon to follow was A. Gutierrez and S. Malone.

The jail was the perfect learning environment to get to know the criminal mind. Police officers would arrest the offenders and bring them in the jail. This was their first stop before being bailed out, going to court, or going to county jail or eventually prison. Many prisoners came in drunk, under the influence of drugs, or violent. The jail was always a buzz of activity during the grave yard shift on which I was first assigned. Eventually I moved to my favorite shift; the p.m. shift.

Although the jail environment is a rather bizarre culture, it was one of my favorite jobs. However, after two years I felt like I was “doing time” myself behind bars, and I eventually developed the desire to go out in the streets and arrest the criminals myself. The jail environment prepared me for the next step in my life. By the time I graduated from the police academy and was out on the streets as a cop I could read the criminals very well, better than those officers who had no jail experience. I could tell who was lying to me and who was giving me a straight answer.

Twenty years later, today, I am in a military police unit. My law enforcement career has taken me from the jail, to police officer, SWAT officer, Reserve police officer, Reserve Deputy Sheriff Sergeant, United States Federal Air Marshal, Reserve police sergeant, and finally Staff Sergeant with the California State Military Reserve. In between being agencies I was training law enforcement officers either in Defensive Tactics, Tactics, or Firearms courses.

I was never one to stay too long in one job. There were just too many things I wanted to do and experience. If someone would have told me twenty years ago, when I was just starting out in the jail, that I would be training police agencies all over the world and jumping out of helicopter, scuba diving up to Gas & Oil Platforms, assaulting trains, buses, planes, and following around terrorists, I would never have believed you. My career was definitely in the fast lane, and I would not trade all of those experiences for anything. It is that background that is the backbone to the Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection system. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PHOTOS