Although my Spanish is very good (I always remember Sergeant Moffit telling the German Captain Diettrich that his "German was very good..." on the Rat Patrol), I would never say my version of Spanish is always correct. I would say, though, that I get to use it a lot and if nobody corrects me and seems to understand what I said and doesn't laugh, I must be close enough for my purposes.
This past weekend I went to the National Mexican Police Combat Championships in Juriquilla, Queretaro. It was funny, I didn't even know they had such a thing and I guess this was their 3rd annual attempt at it. I got invited by a couple of official looking guys walking up to me and my friends when we were practicing at our home range.
"We know who you are and know what you did," they said after introducing themselves as Police Instructors from Mexico City. My friends and I looked at each other with raised eye-brows. Was I a member of some super-secret organization so clandestine that even I didn't know what it was?
"You know," they continued. "The IPSC thing." Ah, yes. I was one of IPSC/Canada's original Section Directors back in the Cooper days. "We want you to come to our Police Championships and show the crowd some fast shooting, and then explain to the politicians present that we need more resources to practice."
Well, that all seemed simple enough. I agreed to go, if I could take my friends. Why walk into the Valley alone if you don't have to? I decided to take my Super. It's registered as a .22, but it's certainly serviceable if it needs to be. Old Tex Mex would understand that when the Mexican Authorities invite you to something like this, it's generally with the understanding that unless you do something really silly, they won't look at you too close because they invited you in the first place.
My shooting demonstration was simple stuff. Bill drills (the draw and six shots) in 3.5 seconds instead of the usual 2.0 to 2.5 seconds because the distance was 15 yards and I didn't want to miss. It wowed them. One guy asked me; "What modification did you make to your gun to allow it to fire so fast?" Right. Well, they're still learning.
The whole match was reactionary targets, all steel. There were 38 Police Competitors from a few different areas of Mexico, and despite the really limited amount they get to practice -- like a box of shells every six months -- some of them weren't bad. They weren't bad at all, a lot better than I expected. And very dedicated -- they WANTED to shoot better.
I shot a couple of the stages with them, just to show them how fast they could be done if they could practice more. Yes, I was nervous. Yes, I slowed down. No, I did not miss and was still easily half their best times. But that's not the point, I get to practice as much as I can afford to reload, they get very few shells and everything they get is strictly controlled. It's tough on them.
They had a ladies team with about 7 women cops competing. The winner was Raquel Alcocer from Mexico City. I talked to her for a minute or two, she seemed nice. She was using a Beretta Storm. She told me it was her duty firearm and that she had jumped through a lot of hoops to get a permit to be able to bring it instead of taking a "potluck" gun off the gun-table.
Many of the shooters wore no hearing protection. I gave them my two-cents worth about that. I seemed to have the run of the place, as I told my friends, so I'm going to use that to try to do some good. "Use your hearing protection" I told them, "when you practice. If you don't have any, get some."
Match winner was Hugo Hernandez from the Queretaro P.D., using a Glock 17 (his duty gun). I asked him if he liked the Glock. He told me that it was "okay enough, I guess, but I'd rather have yours. It's
presciosa!" Yes, well, Nash Bridges and me have the same taste, you know?
The guest-speaker was this cool-lookin' dude who emphasized the need for the authorities local, State, and Federal to quit screwing around and get more practise ammo for the Police and to get them better training with the firearms they have. The talk went over very well with the cops, and one of them told me that; "...any idiot could have stood up there and said what you said and it wouldn't have gone over well with the Politicos...but when you stood there saying it wearing that Super...
that made your point. They had to be wondering 'who is that masked man?' " That made me chuckle.
All in all, a good day. I did not like having to see the cops go and requisition each and every round of ammo they needed for each and every segment of the course. I commented on that. I told the Politicos that in "a society full of bad-guys, like it or not, these guys and girls here are your society's gunfighters and you need to treat them better."
I suppose I'll get a say in the next year's match as it appears that the people who originally invited me are coming to meet me and my friends in a week or two on our home range. We'll see what they say, and help if we can with suggestions or whatever.
When things wound down, I went to the men's can and switched my slide back to the Conversion Kit. My friends stashed the Super rounds in a place where the sun don't shine for the drive back. Walking out into the sunlight, an older Policeman was waiting for me.
"I am one of the three shift supervisors working today," he told me as he handed me his card. "If you get into ANY problems on the road home, phone me immediately, and we'll make them go away." I thanked him profusely and gave him my card. His eyebrows went up.
"You sell Ice Cream?" He seemed shocked, I guess. With a wave, my friends and I drove off into the town of Juriquilla where they have a Carl's Junior Burgers and ate our faces off before driving back home. But in all that, I told just one person -- the female winner with the Beretta Storm that her "pistola estaba bien", but the only person I saw who was told that their arma was presciosa was me. So there. That's that about that.
.
Dang. I thought I was speaking Spanish. 
