April 12, 2013

Jack Hoban Chicagoland Workshop

On Saturday, April 20th, I'll host Jack Hoban for our annual Chicagoland workshop!

It's always great to see Jack and this time out we've another busy schedule. Aside from the seminar we'll also be presenting at the annual ILEETA (International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association) conference, sitting down to talk ethics and training with leadership from the Chicago Police Department, and filming another RGI training video, this one involving tactics for maneuvering and recovering from the ground.

Join us for training:
 
Darien Park District Community Center
7301 Fairview Avenue
Darien, IL 60561-3567
12-4 pm
$75.00

 
WINJUTSU:
Facebook:
Jack Hoban Bujinkan Seminar in Chicagoland

We hope to see you there!

~James


April 5, 2013

A Scary Situation

Received this recently from a friend. Scary stuff.

~James


Greetings Jim,

It’s been a long time since we spoke last and I've been meaning to message you. 
 
What prompted me to contact you today is regarding something which happened yesterday that I wanted to share with you and the other Buyu. This is the type of thing that I would have discussed at length with Mark (Hodel).

Yesterday, about 1pm my wife (a stay at home mom), was vacuuming on the second floor of our home. Our kids were at school and aside from our adult black lab, she was home alone. Our vacuum is a Kirby and is pretty loud, so it’s hard to hear much while it’s running. However, she was interrupted by our dog barking on the first level. She looked out the front window and was surprised to see a large Penske truck (the size typically used for moving from one residence to another) backed into our driveway. She then went down to the first floor to put the dog in his cage and retrieve one of my .45s, noticing a black male had exited the driver side door. He lingered around the truck while smoking a cigarette. At this time she could see that there was another male in the passenger side with his cap pulled down possibly to cover his face, apparently talking on a cell phone. She immediately called the police.
 
Her personal impression was that the driver appeared to be very shady looking, possibly nervous. She was pretty sure the driver saw and heard our dog’s loud barking at them through the glass windows at either side of the front door. Going back upstairs (armed), she waited for the police to arrive. While waiting, she noticed a van pull up at a neighbor’s house with business markings of an HVAC service on it. Fortunately, the presence of activity at my neighbor’s house seemed to prompt the characters in my driveway to get in their truck and leave. Unfortunately, this all happened before the police arrived some ten minutes later. If you recall we live on a wooded, dead end road, which is past a curve, making it hard to see our house until you are right in front of it.

A few things we've discussed since then. We are grateful that ultimately nothing happened and no one was hurt. This is the standard MO for a home robbery. Sometimes if burglars are surprised by a woman at home alone, she is beaten or killed to shut her up and often raped. We are grateful to have had the foresight to place firearms in speed safes in multiple locations within our home. We are grateful that we both have permits to carry concealed. We are grateful that even though we are trying to train our dog to not bark, that he was barking at these characters at this time. We are grateful that our neighbor’s furnace died the night before and as a result, he had come home to meet with the repair service at the time this was happening.

Additionally, we should not be lulled by the fact that we live in a peaceful, quiet secluded neighborhood, where you would not expect any crime. My wife indicated that she caged the dog, because she didn't want to be tripping over him or shoot him if he got in the way. We decided that it would be better to leave him free to attack or dissuade any intruder. If he got shot in the process of defending our lives, he would get a hero’s burial. And finally, I will be discussing this incident with all of our neighbors so that they all are aware of the incident and hopefully it doesn't happen (or worse) to anyone else on our street.

That is all for now. See you at the Jack seminar my friend.

Bufu Ikkan