Things To Think About If Someone Busts Down Your Door

Charlie Strickland, Talon Training Group, sat in for our personal defense segment as we pull stories from the news and try learn what we can.

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Let's do this show five thousand,one hundred and thirty nine of The Morning
Show with Prestin Scott. That's GrantAllen. I'm Preston. Good to be
with you, friends, ruminators,wherever however you are listening to us,
We thank you very much. Andagain a reminder, this time of year,
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(00:31):
have no control over. No,it's not the federal government. It's something
called ducting and it just happens seasonally. It's based on the sun and things
that we have no idea why theyhappen, but they just do every I
think once or twice a year thistime of year for certain, and so

(00:51):
there will be changes sometimes in thesignal quality. Though we are broadcasting at
full strength on all of our stations. What you need to know is that
you have the Heart Radio app andyou can always just stream the show live
there. And now we are joinedby our Personal Defense segment. Charlie Strickland,
co founder, co host of TalentOutdoors, co founder of the Talent

(01:12):
Training Group. Hello, my friend, how are you. I'm fine.
I listened on iHeart on the wayin this morning. I heard you making
fun of my name and all Chlie, I have to listen on our heart
because of the ducting phenomenon. Itcauses my radio to quack up, so
I have to, you know,listen through the app. Glad you're on
top of this stuffy Yeah. See, granted I didn't come up with that

(01:33):
in the shower or in a meditativestate. That was just right off the
top of my head. Yeah,you're much quicker than I am, That's
what all right? So well,good morning. I ran across a scenario,
ran it across you yesterday, andI think it will take and I

(01:53):
think it merits taking a little time. You've had scenarios in your law enforcement
career where you're knocking on doors atvarious times of the day and night.
We've seen stories play out nationally wherethe endings aren't so good from time to
time. How would you advise somebodythat comes to a training class on how

(02:19):
to deal with somebody breaking in yourfront door in the middle of the night.
Well, you know, as Floridacastle doctrine, and this is the
same in Georgia and Alabama. Ifsomeone is forcibly and unlawfully entering your home
coming in your house without permission.They're you know, they have no lawful

(02:45):
right to be there. That is, basically, it gives you the right
to use deadly force to defend yourself, your family, your home. That
is castle doctrine. If they areforcibly and unlawfully entering your residence, dwelling,
or occupied conveyance, then you canuse deadly for protect yourself. You
don't have to look look for theirintent. They don't have to express a
violent intent. There's a presumption ofviolent intent on their part because they broke

(03:07):
in your door, because they well, if they entered your door, they
entered your dwelling. They don't haveto break it in. They just have
to come in. So if youwake up the middle of night somebody's standing
over you in the bedroom, there'sa presumption they have violent intent. As
long as you know. We recommendthat you identify the target, that you
make sure it's not your adult childthat came home to visit and wanted to
surprise you or something, and youneed target identification is a big deal,

(03:30):
which is why you know we carryflashlights, have flashlights, you know,
have control of the lights. Allthat's important. That said that doesn't apply
if it's law enforcement in the performanceof their lawful duties. And so somebody's
trying to kick your door in,you can shoot them through the door,

(03:51):
but you can't shoot them through thedoor if they're law enforcement. They've announced
that they're law enforcement. That getsto the issue, and that is announcement
knowing their law enforcement and a lotof things that are different in every single
situation, Okay, and it's differentin different states because some states still allow
no knock warrants. Florida does notallow no knock warrants at the application process.

(04:15):
If there's there are exigent circumstances towhere someone's life is in danger,
then yes they can do that,but they have to justify it on the
scene and based on circumstances and again, and that's really a high standard,
sure his life or death. Soit I hear some music playing, So
we're coming up on the break,but it is what happens when this guy's

(04:39):
hosted his own show for a while. Now he goes, we'll be right
back, Well I don't. Idon't want to get halfway through a sentence,
and so stay tuned and we'll pickright up there when we get back
back with Charlie Strickland of the Challengetraining group Personal Defense. We're talking about

(04:59):
what happened when law enforcement, whetherit's local or state or federal, knocks
on your door in the middle ofthe night and then proceeds to enter your
home. You were talking knock andno knock warrants. Yes, so some
states still a lot of states stillallow no knock warrants. They apply for
the warrant, they apply for ano knock and then the judge signs off

(05:21):
and says, yes, you cango in without announcing. Based on these
circumstances in Florida, unless I recallincorrectly, and it's been quite a few
years since I've applied for a searchwarrant that we don't do no knock warrants
here now, So law enforcement isrequired to knock on the door and announce.

(05:43):
Now, then you get in somefederal things, but state law enforcement,
local law enforcement is for sure.Now, how long they knock,
how loud they knock, how longthey wait for a response before they breach
and make entry, you know,and if they are compromised, sometimes they'll
go ahead and go in and knocking. Shriff's officearch wants, share, police
officer search want, and then somebody'sshaking the curtains, and if they feel

(06:08):
like you're in danger, you know, for compromised breach, breach breach,
they go in the door and itis a dynamic situation, but that it
depends on the type of warrant thatnow. I was in financial crimes,
and we knocked until they came tothe door. We didn't breach the door
unless nobody was home and we've beenknocking on the door for thirty minutes.
Well, let me ask you this, Charlie, in your experience and the
experiences of those that you are friendswith, that you're colleagues with, that

(06:30):
you know is a is the servingof a warrant going to be handled and
prepared for differently based on what youpredict or feel like you know about the
person being served. Absolutely, itis okay. So I worked in violent
crimes, financial crimes, We didpaper crimes, we did real crime,

(06:50):
you know bad you know, likeviolent crimes. And I was a swat
team leader and we went we haveoperational plans, search warrants have operational plans.
We do an in depth dive,a deep dive from our intel section
and obtain all of the criminal history, all of the information we talked to
the case detectives. All of thatstuff goes into preparing the operational plan.

(07:12):
You're doing drive buys to the house, You're getting photographs, you're pulling public
records. You're doing all of thisstuff to make sure one that you go
to the right house, and stillmistakes are made. You're making sure that
do they have children, what timedo the children go to school? All
these things go in and preparing asearch warrant properly for law enforcement. But
still, can we throw in aflash bang? Can we not? Depending

(07:36):
on how big a deal. Ifit's not a big deal, you're going
to knock on the door, wehave to have a uniform presence at the
door. There has to be auniformed officer at the door so that they
can see that it's law enforcement.But when it's all boiled down, you
have to make a determination that thesubject of that warrant and anybody who else
may be in the home is eitherlikely to be dangerous or not likely.

(08:00):
They might absolutely need to be arrestedand have their day in court, but
deemed dangerous or not. Is thata fundamental bottom line determination. Yes,
absolutely is what are the realistic chances? What do we believe, what do
we reasonably believe that this person woulddo if confronted? Have they Have they
been to court recently for violent youknow, they had injunctions applied against them,
The nature of the crime, thethings that they may have said on

(08:22):
social media, all these things matter. All of this stuff goes in and
it's probably way more robust now thanit was ten years ago when I was
still doing when you say more robustthe intelligence gathering process, they're probably using
things now to get more information nowthan we are available, not necessarily the
threshold now I'm from the MySpace era. I mean now they've got all kinds
of stuff I mean that you canget and there are whole sections that are

(08:48):
only their job, and they're reallygood at what they do is to just
gather this information, you know,and make sure that law enforcement has to
write information ultimately, though you stillmay not maybe laying in bed and you
don't hear them knock, you don'thear them announced. Now most warrants are
served, you know, not attwo three o'clock in the morning. They're

(09:09):
more like right before you wake up. That's typically the target at time is
just when you're really really in thatdeep sleep before you wake up. That's
when if you're dangerous otherwise. Youknow, a lot of these cases you
see around that are nationally known themare they probably should have just caught them
walking to the car in the morningright or at work, because there aren't

(09:30):
any doovers if it goes wrong.No, no, you can't take for
anybody involved. You can't take thatback. And I do want to talk
about the conflict between castle doctrine andsearch warrants, and we are back set
it very differently. Yeah, CharlieStrickland with me from the Talent Training Group

(09:54):
and personal defense. We're talking aboutwhat to do, what you should do,
what you need to think about,and you wanted to keep talking about
this scenario. So there is infact some conflict across the country between castle
doctrine, which is pretty much thelaw of the land. You can protect
your home when someone's breaking in yourhome, right you presume there's violent intent.

(10:18):
Law enforcement, on the other hand, has the right to breach the
door and come in under certain circumstanceswith probable cause and a search warrant signed
by a judge and in here locally, they're required to knock and announce and
announce their intentions. And that's prettymuch the way it is, unless there's
extraent circumstances, even around the country. So now you have a situation where

(10:43):
if I wake up in the middleof the night and I don't hear who
this, If I don't hear lawyou know, and the thing is is
law enforcement they're knocking on the door, Well, how long do they knock
and how loud do they announce.I've seen it done in a couple of
different ways, so you know,we have to knock and announce, but
I've seen some search weren't served towhere it wasn't necessarily that loud or it
didn't go on for that long.And there are some guidelines that they need

(11:05):
to follow, and they do.But in a thirty something of your career,
I've seen it done a couple differentways, and now all of a
sudden, the person doesn't here allright, So now you have a legal
defense for the homeowner. I didn'thear or see that they were law enforcement.
And you know a lot of timesthey're not wearing they're not wearing polyester
uniforms they're wearing whatever they end upwearing, it's just taighted to cool.

(11:28):
And then so the homeowner gets ina situation where they were legally lawfully defending
their home. They had no knowledgethat this was law enforcement, no reasona
believe it was law enforcement. Lawenforcement, on the other hand, had
a valid warrant, knocked and announcedit's on camera. Whatever they go in,
they waited a reasonable period of time. They go in and somebody starts
shooting at them, and they shootback. So now you have an untenable

(11:50):
situation where neither one of them isgoing to be criminally charged because both of
them were in the right. Theproblem being that in that situation, because
of your training and any number ofother things tactically that come into play,
like equipment and so forth, thehomeowner is going to be the one that
ends up dead. Well in lawenforcement is there are a lot of law

(12:11):
enforcement officers every year that are injured, particularly inat, in SWAT situations that
are serving warrants. It happens.It happens absolutely with all the gear in
the world. I mean, Irun a team. I don't want to
put my guys to a door wherethe person's armed and it's potentially violent.
There's no reason to be in ahurry. And I've always differed with some
of my partners in law enforcement isthat I don't think flushing a little bit

(12:35):
of weed is all that important.I mean, if I can't if you
haven't been able to make the casebefore you go in the house, if
you don't have enough to arrest thatperson, enough evidence to prosecute the case
before you go in the house,you really need to think rethink your case.
I'm not saying you shouldn't go thereto collect evidence, because you should,
but you know there's ways to handlethat stuff. I mean, if

(12:56):
your whole case hinges on the evidencethat you're going to find in the house,
we'll catch them while they're not inthe house, and then the house
is empt there, and then goserve the warrant on the house, which
you can do. They don't haveto be in it. Sure, So,
I mean, you know there's there'sWhen I was younger, you know,
I was part of the swat Iwas part of the tool the sledge

(13:16):
Hammer, that was the swat team, that is that tactical unit. I
have that train and I still dothat training. I mean I'm all for
it. I think there's a hugerole in absolute necessity for us to have
in a community. However, notevery nail needs a sledge hammer. Sometimes
it takes a smaller you know,you just have to use the proportionately to

(13:37):
scale. What would you say,because there's the other side that we've talked
about off air, and that isthe person that is the subject of an
investigation, and whether they think they'reshould be arrested or charged is irrelevant.
They're in that area of gray wherethey're doing things on the edge. They
should know people people know when they'redoing something wrong. You know, you

(14:01):
listen, you know, I Ispeak my mind very openly. You know,
we have FFLs, we have businesses, we have I've been in law
enforcement. I know what the lawsare. You know. I constantly am
reevaluating my situation to make sure thatI'm not doing anything wrong. But you
know what, sometimes the government canbe you know, they want to make

(14:22):
an example. And sometimes I actuallythink about the fact that what if they
wanted to make an example of usone day and they wanted to hinge on
some little minor thing that we didn'tthink was of any real consequence. You
know, what what I do youknow, and what I tell law enforcement
is sometimes knocking on the door andsaying, hey man, we want to
talk is a better way to takesomeone into custody than it is to show

(14:46):
up at four o'clock in the morning. Sometimes you've got to go at four
or five six o'clock in the morning, and sometimes you got to not really
loud, and sometimes you got tokick in a door, and sometimes you're
going to have to get in afight to deal with some people. But
not everybody is that person, youknow, and it's hard to but there's

(15:07):
a lot of people that make thosedecisions. It takes a strong boss to
tell your team, no, we'renot going to do it that way.
Sure, I used to hate itwhen they told us that. A couple
more segments, we'll get to acouple of emails that we've received in your
questions, But first I promised acouple of stories. One very notable story

(15:28):
at a mall in Sydney stabbing thatleft seven people dead at a shopping mall.
Guy just went nuts, just wenton a rampage and it was near
Sydney before an armed police officer endedit. Just a few weeks later,

(15:56):
at a church in Sydney, anotherstabbing of a priest. Worshippers of the
church service were attacked as well,again knife wielding. We could talk all
day long about how Australia's made thispossible by not allowing its citizens to be
armed. Instead, I'd like toask you to revisit something we've talked about

(16:18):
off and on over the years,because we are seeing more incidents of stabbings.
How does one best defend oneself whensomeone's with it has a knife.
Run right distance, run so theycan't shoot. They can't stab you from
thirty yards away. They can stabyou. They have to be up close
and personal. Okay, So somebody'scoming at So first off, if you

(16:41):
can get away, get away,because that'll now if you can't outrun them,
all right, and that's very likelya possibility, he says, staring
straight at me. Well, I'mjust saying I don't run that fast either,
But you haven't seen me scared nativeexactly right. Even if you're just
run in the cover, you needto go. But not everybody can,

(17:02):
all right, So get away ifyou can. But there again, you've
got children, You've got you know, grandchildren, any number of situations,
so you can't run, So pickup a chair or something, a table,
something that you can put between youand them to keep them in arm's
length, you know, so thatthey're swinging their arm and they're gonna do

(17:22):
a lot less damage if you've gotsomething that's blocking between you and them.
Jump over a counter, you know, and if you're in a mall or
something, jump over the counter,get on the other side of the counter.
They're gonna look for easy targets typicallyunless they're targeting you specifically, you
know, throw stuff in front ofthem, get something to put between you
and them. There are two victimswant to I want to address quickly here,

(17:44):
the ones that we're talking about nowthat are not armed and those that
are armed. Are the protocols anydifferent for someone that's carrying a firearm in
terms of how to best address thesituation, which you mean, somebody's trying
to stab me and I got agun. Well, I mean there's well
it's an easy answer, yeah,I know, but but I'm going to

(18:06):
translate that to then what do youdo to prepare at the range in that
situation? Because, as you said, this is almost this is always going
to be a close quarters attack right, and they're not always going to announce
that they're going to do it.A person with a knife can do a
lot of damage in a hurry.Yes, and we have you know,
the law enforcement uses a twenty onefoot rule, you know whatever, where

(18:26):
you know for you to and that'sfrom a duty holster, where someone who
has a knife can charge you fromtwenty one feet away and put that knife
in you before you can draw andfire, assuming that the when you fire,
they're going to stop. And that'snot always the case. So someone
with a knife is very dangerous.So if someone has a knife and they're
threatening you, and if your gun'snot out pointing at them, and you're

(18:48):
back not backing away and putting somethingbetween the two of you, go around
the table, something that they wouldhave to clear a hurdle or get around
to. You need distance, cover, barricade, something to you know,
you don't have to necessarily have todraw and shoot them, but you need
to be putting something, a car, something between you and them in order
to keep them from being able toget to you. And if they come

(19:10):
at they're threatening you with a knife, a reasonable person would believe that that
person's trying to harm you with thatknife. Deadly force is authorized, but
you're the ones got to live withit, so you know how fast do
you want to use it? Fortyone minutes after the our final segment here
Charlie Strickland again tellanrange dot com greatplace to go to get your training and

(19:30):
to practice skills that could save yourlife. Obviously, Charlie, this goes
back to fundamental number one, whichyou, JD and I have discussed at
nauseum, and that is situational awareness. Being aware of the people that are
around you, noticing what might bein their hand, what they're reaching for.
If someone were to go to therange and want to better prepare for

(19:52):
this type of scenario, we're talkingabout, what's the best way to do
it well? In knife defense ofsome do you go back to your drawing
from the holster, whatever concealment andmethod you use. Just going out and
putting on an outside of wastepand holsterand drawing from that is useless unless you're
carrying an outside of wastepand holster.It amazes me how many people buy guns

(20:14):
walk out the door with a gun, no holster, no magazine, nothing,
They just take the gun and goI'm reckon, I'm gonna figure it
out later on with the perfect placeis right there. So you can purchase
something from us hopefully, or whereveryou buy your guns at, but you
really should go ahead and outfit thatthing with some at least in some way
fashion as you can go train withit. So drawing from concealment. If

(20:37):
you're a lady and you carry apurse, you want to draw from that
purse. If you're a guide,you know, carrying appendix, or if
you're a woman carrying appendix, oryou for some reason select to go with
an ankle holster for some odd reason. You know, that's never a good
place to carry your first gun,right, you know, second gun maybe,
uh, pocket holster whatever, youwant to work from that, and

(20:59):
you want to work, and wedo a comply, distract, react,
drill. You know something we puton you too many years ago, and
we still to comply. Someone's tryingto do something to you. Comply,
act like you're not a threat,Distract them, point the other way,
get them to the officer. Officer, he's got you know, a knife,
he's got a gun. And toget them to look somewhere else.
Step off line so that you're notwhere they last saw you when they look

(21:21):
away, and then draw your pistoland engage. When I say engage,
I mean pull the trigger and youknow, a drill like that, or
at least standing in front of atarget, going from the hole, getting
to the concealed pistol, presenting thefirearm and engaging. Maybe even not when
the sites are all the way upon target, but once you point towards

(21:41):
the target, make sure your supportside of hand is out of the way
because if you had to lift yourshirt or hold a purse or a bag
or something, you want to stillmaintain control of that. And a lot
of times this is going to beone handed shooting, but you want to
be able to hit the target fromthree to five seven feet away, you

(22:03):
know, and you can do thatwithout actually aiming most of the time,
because it's like pointing your finger atsomebody. If you in the practice this
basically make your weapon safe and sitin your car in the driveway when the
neighbors aren't watching, or in yourcar port where nobody can see you,
or in your living room or atthe reins or whatever, and stand in

(22:25):
your living room, make your weaponsafe, take all the amo out of
it, work the slide, makesure it's safe, and then look at
something across the room or ten fivefeet away, something close. Just look
at it, close your eyes,point your gun at it, open your
eyes and see if the pistols actuallypointed at that item, would it hit

(22:45):
that based on your alignment, andthen work on that skill set. That
just a little learning point shooting tosome degree, but your body's pretty good
at aligning things. You can closeyour eyes, point your finger at something,
open your eyes, and it's pointedat that thing because your brain knows
where your body is a relationship toother things. Same thing with a pistol.
That's why you want a pistol thatyou are very in tune with,
that you've shot enough to where youknow which way it's pointing. Because under

(23:08):
a critical incident stress and that's thosewhen split seconds matter. You know,
drawing and pointing and pulling the triggerthat first round or two is the most
important thing in the world. Atthat point in time, you've elected to
send something down range to stop someone, it needs to go where it belongs
and in a close quarter fight,side alignment, stance, grip, all

(23:30):
those things breath control. None ofthat matters. It is getting the weapon
pointed in the right direction and pullingthe trigger. You have two choices.
Either stick around for a very brieffinal segment to answer the email questions,
or you dictate answer and I sendthem by an email. I got nowhere
to go, Okay, I wasjust you know, hey, I gotta

(23:51):
go to work, said, hemight get mad. It may be late.
I'm always late, so it'd besurprised I'm actually there today. Back
one more segment with Charlie Strickland ofthe Talent Training Group. We're going to
get to your questions. And firstPatrick wrote in and asked about a specific
Florida Statute seventy nine dot three threeField of Regulation of Firearms and Ammunition.

(24:15):
Does it invalidate a given counties requirementthat all firearms sales on property accessible to
the public require an NICs background check. Yeah, seven ninety thirty three actually
pre empts all local ordinances related tothe field of firearms, and by that
it says it invalidates all local ordinancesrelated to anything to do with firearms.

(24:38):
Now, there may be some exceptionsin there as it relates to commerce.
Sometimes the state will leave a littlebit open for you know, being able
to determine where FFLs are and FFLrelated activity. But on its face,
just a quick read of the firstpart of that chapter, it invalidates LeAnn
County's local But it won't be thefirst time. At tallass here, Leanne

(25:00):
County had a law that's still onthe books, like discharging a fireman in
the city limits. Even though that'sperfectly legal by state law, and you
can't enforce that, it's still sometimesthey carry those things on the books,
So I mean, that's not anenforced ordinance anyway. Second question came from
Roger who asked, does federal lawenforcement have to comply with state law or

(25:22):
could federal law enforcement still authorize ano knock warrant in Florida? Okay,
So the way it works is youhave local law enforcement who will assist federal
agencies serving federal warrants, and youhave federal agencies that will assist local agencies
serving local warrants, well Florida warrants. In Florida, the government, the

(25:44):
federal government can't exempt the local agencyfrom the no knock requirement. The county
agency or the city agency helping thegovernment the federal government exercise a federal warrant.
A federal warrant can still be authorizedas no knock and would allow them
to have a no knock warrant.So if ATF or DEA or one of

(26:07):
the FBI showed up and they said, we have a warrant, it's no
knock. You know, we needy'all to help us, local could still
go there and be the first onesin the door based on the facts of
federal warrant. You know. It'sthen you get into agency policies and rules
and liability concerns and all that.But yeah, technically sure, I would
ask you what's coming up this weekendon Talent Outdoors, but I know better

(26:29):
than to do that because you won'tknow till you start talking. I don't
know. We're going to try toget a good friend of ours in on
the show and talk about gathering andsurvival, hoping to have a guest Billy
Bailey on the show. It's gonnaIf not this week, would be the
next week. But thanks, it'sgoing to be a good, good move
for us. We're picking up somemore subject matter expertise. Thanks for coming

(26:51):
in. Yeah, thank you.Charlie Stricklin of the Talent Training Group s