Randy Shepherd, Sniper Information for Thriller Writers

Image via Wikipedia







Image via WikipediaIt was fun to meet Randy Shepherd. He wears a broad and ready smile. Friendly, enthusiastic and just plain nice. He wears muscles on top of muscles, stacked high. Tight hipped. Cowboy stance. The gait of a soldier. His eyes invite conversation. Teasing is met with a quick wit. Definitely a ladies’ man, with a long history of banter practice under his belt.

Randy has a pulse of 54. Do you know what other animal has a pulse of 54? An Ox. Latent strength. I thought that it would be a bear in hibernation, but their rate is about nine beats per minute. And even Randy would be dead at that rate. Reptiles in cold conditions can get their heart rates down to 54. But not your typical guy. Of course, Randy is not typical.

He is able to keep his heart rate low by running. A lot of running. Marathons-just-for-the-fun-of-it running. His low heart rate is one of the keys to his success. That and nerves of steel. Incredible patients. Eagle eyes. Oh, and a willingness to lie there as he’s covered in bugs and other creepy crawlies, hour after hour, heat, sweat, cold, rain, whatever. Randy is a sniper. The winner of national sniping awards and a Lt. with the Guilford County Sherriff’s Dept.

Randy likes math. He was giddy over the idea of a cosine. Cosine make me nauseated. Well, they did back in college. If Randy had been my teacher, I would have had a better handle on my stomach. When he describes the formula, it is very interesting - it's exciting to think of math formulas from Randy’s point of view. And applicable. Maybe not for me - I’m not sniper material. I’d fall asleep if I had to lie still for eight hours at a time. Rifle  or no rifle. Bad guy or no bad guy. Exciting math formula or no. I’d either be asleep or swatting at the bugs, and needing a potty. Let's just say my pulse is not reptilian.

So here’s a little bit about sniping.

First the T Box - a T box on a face include the eyes as the top of the capital T and the nose as the stem. If a bullet hits in this area, the control portion of the brain will stop instantly. There will be no convulsion. The person who was hit would be unable to pull a trigger on the way down. Nothing. Just splat. Gone.

Snipers are trained to hit a 1” box at 100 yards. - 1” a football field away. 1”!!!! I’m thrilled to hit the bulls-eye at 20’. This area is multiplied by distance. For example at 200 yards the box is 2” and at 300 yards its 3”. At 300 yards! At 1,000 yards, he hits a 10” square. I didn’t know there was enough loft in a bullet to make it fly 1,000 yards. There are 1,760 yards in a mile just to make the distance clear.

Randy has a logbook where he meticulously documents weather conditions such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed. He uses these as a reference when he is adjusting his sites. Did you know that a 20-degree difference in temperature could shift the rise or fall of the bullet by 1” so if Randy were shooting on a day when it’s 40 degrees and a day when it's 100 degrees, the difference in the bullets movement would be 3”. Very significant when you need to hit the 1” box on the T.

Adjustments are made by changing the clicks on their cross-hairs  Theses changes are made in increments of minutes. A circle is divided into degrees and the degrees are further divided into minutes.

They have a formulaic for someone who is walking or running or sitting still. Randy never mentioned one for someone doing the tango - but it was probably because no one brought it up. Surely, Randy has thought of every contingency.

As Randy shoots, he has to not only consider hitting the T, he also has to consider where that bullet is going as it exits. Randy wants to embed it in a wall - he doesn’t want it to keep flying. I certainly don’t want it to keep flying!

So where do those cosines come in?

In Randy’s little black book, where he keeps all of his important numbers, he knows the heights of average things. The height of a window, a door, a lamppost etc. at various distances. This helps him figure out how far he is away from his target. He also knows how high up he is given the floor he is standing on. Important.

If someone from the ground were to say to Randy on the 14^th floor, “Hey Randy, we have a laser on him and he’s 380 yards away.” Randy has to take into consideration that that measurement was taken from a 180-degree angle. Randy is shooting from 154’ above. This would make the distance considerably different. Randy does his math calculations (Randy does this - not me. I said it was interesting, not that I’d actually partake) and comes up with the correct distance. He sets the minutes on his reticle of his crosshairs and he’s ready should the shot become necessary.

When is a shot necessary?
When there is imminent danger.

Do the snipers use lasers on their guns?
No, it makes them lazy and it’s just one more thing to go wrong - mechanical failure issues. And we don’t need any issues when trying to get a bullet in that 1” box at 1,000 yards.

Is sniping a glamorous life?
Yes if your idea of fashion is a ghillie suit. This amorphous garment is made to disguise human form by making you one with nature. Basically, you look like a shrub.

The sniper practices being in place for 12 hours at a time. That’s where Randy’s sloth-like heartbeat comes in handy. The snipers are formed into two man teams called “sniper elements.” They try to have eight snipers in a situation. Imagine a building as a diamond. Two elements (4 people) sit together. One sniper element observes the right wall and the other sniper element observes the left wall. There are two other sniper elements doing the same thing only on the diagonally opposite side of the building. Watching walls three and four. So now, each wall of the building is being watched by a sniper element.

Let’s say Randy is on the element looking down the front of the building. He counts off the windows and doors and feeds this information to Command. The snipers try to find indications of what could be in each of the various rooms so if a ground team goes in, Command has an idea of where they are going. Person one on the element will look at their section with binoculars and report anything that they see, especially any movement to Command. They are trying to figure out where the bad guy is hanging out. Possibly barricading himself in.

While Randy’s partner is on binoculars, Randy is breathing steadily, heartbeat is low, eyes shut. He is in a state of suspended animation. On a cue, Randy will open his eye, train his rifle on any given window that is called by his partner, and shoot.

If after 12- 15 minutes nothing happens. They switch. Both snipers have their own guns. Though they train at regular intervals on each other’s guns - just in case one of them has mechanical issues.

They work on a SWAT team. Randy’s SWAT team is made up of two entry teams (16 men) and an 8-man striker team.

If you would like a link to more sniper math information try this:
http://www.sniperflashcards.com/windreading.php

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F.A.T.S. No, It's Not Another Diet, Information for Writers

Image via WikipediaCharacter Designation: Some good guys, maybe a hero, definitely some bad guys…

Character descriptions:
Okay. This is a little tricky. I would love to present a hero figure to you today. I know there were some in the room. I don’t have a clue who they were. I don’t know their names. I can’t even remember if they introduced themselves. Someone was tall-ish; someone was round-ish. There may have been some others, and there may not have been. I was in F.A.T.S. training. It was a simulator to train officers in using firearms, and I had tunnel vision from the second I went through the door.

Writers: If you think a witness is going to be with it and take in bunches of information, I would suggest that this would have to be a highly trained person. I have some training, and I’ve got almost nothing in the way of useful detail.

We went into a classroom, yup - just a normal classroom with a screen and a black plywood cutout. I remember this cutout vividly, because I did a lot of hiding there behind it. Seems that, training or no, my body reflexively wanted to duck. The two people I shot next to didn’t seem to have this reflex and stood square on while they were being shot at. Hmmm. Maybe they're not watching the same movies I am.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We were given guns and cartridges. No real bullets. I’m not sure of the technology that allows the screen to analyze your every move, but it does. I was the little number 8 bubble that wavered on the screen when we did the play back. We used Glocks. Now, I shoot a Springfield 9 mm. and a Glock doesn’t feel much different except that we had extended clips. This forced me to change my grip. I broke my wrist punching through concrete at a Tae Kwon Do testing, but that’s a different story for a different day, (Link to the story) and my right wrist never regained all of its strength. I say that with modesty because my right wrist never was very strong. I prefer to kick - I have long legs, and I want to be out of the bad guys reach. Reach in the F.A.T.S. scenario is not an issue. This fight is all about the gun. And my gun was now held slightly to the left of bulls-eye, sandwiched by my hands 

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First scenario:
We were shown a scene of an airport. A guy was being patted 
down. Some people were moving through the area. A silver haired man about six feet tall came around a barrier and shot at me. Well, us. But it felt very personal. Someone was shooting at me! I dropped behind the barrier. I was the yeller for the group. “Police! Drop your weapon!” All the stupid lines from the movies came back to me. I’m shooting wildly as I’m yelling absurdities. I don’t know what. It could have been, “No you’re not getting up from the table until you eat your peas.” Really. I knew my mouth was moving. I was yelling. But in my head, I was incoherent.

My bullet took him down. I know this because on the play back the little #8 bubble turned red when I shot him in the head. Red is a fatal shot. And then, inexplicably, when his body draped over the table, I kept shooting him in the leg with a bunch of yellow (non-vital hit) indicators.

I had to take off my jacket. It was getting hot in here! Whew! The instructors came over. Okay, now I remember - the guy was much taller than me. 6’2”?   6’3”? Salt and pepper hair. Very calm voice. He adjusted my finger on the trigger to help me straighten out the shot from my floppy right wrist.

Second Scenario: 

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We were called to a school. We wound our way through the corridors to the library where a teen-aged boy held two females at the end of a knife. Now, if I were held at the end of a knife with a short bookcase between me and the knife-wielding dude, I wouldn’t just stand there and look frightened, I’d get the heck out of there. Just sayin’. Anyway, in we go. I’m the yeller. “Police. Put your knife down and your hands in the air.” Guy looks over. He's scared. He’s young. All he wants is a way out and to save some face. He knows what he’s doing is stupid - he just can’t think his way through this. He has tunnel vision. I have my gun aimed at him. It’s a close open shot. Of course, I don’t take it. Those girls aren’t really in harms way. They just need to walk in the other direction. 

As a one time Emergency Interventionist, working with people who have homicidal and suicidal ideations, I know I could probably talk this guy down. I need to put on my counselor hat. But no. I have a gun in my hand. I have tunnel vision on top of tunnel vision, and somehow I lost that counselor hat as I was winding my way through all those darn tunnels. There I stood like and idiot screaming, “I said put the knife down!” over and over and over again, until finally I bored the guy into submission.

Scenario three:

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is anyone else getting warm in here? Off came my sweater.

In this scenario we were in a courtroom. The camera panned around the people sitting in rows on the benches. I tried to pick out whom I thought might be dangerous. Turned out to be the prisoner. He clocked the guard that was escorting him, stole his gun, and started shooting at me. AGAIN! I got some rounds off - they only hit him in the arm as he was fleeing - maybe he could have bled out from my hits, but it would have taken hours. Maybe he’d die of an infection... eventually. Good thing my partner shot him in the head as we chased him through the park. That ended things sooner rather than later.

Scenario four:
I am sweating. My heart is beating a fast tattoo. I don’t have any more clothes to shed and still preserve modesty. I look around. There is a man in a red jacket sitting on a seat behind me, chuckling as I fluff at my t-shirt. He has grey hair too. Okay. Maybe I saw a bit more than I remembered having seen. 
      “I’m hot!” I told him. “Are there many more scenarios? I’m going to end up having to strip down.” 
     “Turn up the heat,” Round Guy says to Tall Guy. Tall Guy laughs and walks towards the thermostat. That’s all I saw of them - I was back to tunnel vision.

We were called out to a domestic dispute. As we pull up and get out of the car, a man is staggering up the driveway. He goes down. His back is covered in stab wounds. I chase the woman back in the house. She is obviously up-out-of-her-freaking-mind. Yes. That is the technical term an Emergency Interventionist would use. Yes, inexplicably, I’m the yeller again. I guess they saw what a brilliant job I did back at that library. 
      So again, “POLICE! Put the knife down. Move out into the open with your hands on your head!” Does she listen to me? No! She runs back into the bedroom and shoots at me. My hand comes up. I shoot her BOOM! dead-center in the forehead as I go down behind my little protective panel of plywood. My partners fill her dead body full of yellow #s.

And we’re done.

TAKE AWAY : Tunnel vision is very dangerous. All I could see, hear, feel, touch, think was the person with the weapon IN FRONT OF ME. Everything else, everyone else faded completely away. In a writing scenario this would mean that the bad guys could easily jockey themselves into another position. Hell. They could have walked right up beside me and pistol-whipped me in the head. Yup, that tunnel vision is a bitch and needs to be remembered when writing.

As I read this over, I notice I'm cussing a lot. Yeah - the ticker tape running at the bottom of my consciousness was pure gutter mouth. I was stringing them together like a drunken sailor. Lady-like demeanor be damned. Someone was *&#%ing shooting at me!

Even in a simulation there was a physical response. Every one of your characters should be drenched in sweat. If they’re walking away fresh as a daisy, you’ve written it wrong. They need a shower and a stiff drink.

See this article in action in my novella: MINE

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Lt. Josh Moulin, Cyber Crimes

Character Designation: Hero

Character Description: Josh has the perfect name. It’s familiar, accessible; it’s musically close to jovial but without the foolish quality. More, it's the kind of jovial that feels warm. If Josh was a season, I would make him summer. He seems the kind of guy who would be best at home at a cookout in his kaki shorts and polo shirt, soda in one hand, spatula in another - flipping burgers with friends and family.

Josh’s smile is a little hesitant, like he wants to share that jovial spirit, but isn’t sure how it will be received. It’s not timidity; it’s more about boundaries. Josh respects boundaries. His eyes though are merry and belie his mouth.

I keep imagining him in social groups, familial groups. Like a younger (okay much much younger) brother or maybe a grown nephew. I can see him at a family birthday party, bringing the perfect “boy” gift, loud and obnoxious, and see him sitting on the ground to play - not from childishness or even from being child-like but just from being nice.

Average height, average build, light brown hair cut respectably close. Josh’s eyes are set to take in the surroundings. I bet he always thinks he can fit that one more thing in before he has to go. I would have expected his eyes to be set closer together, like an engineer, given his expertise for fine detail. If I had read a description of Josh’s jobs as a firefighter and EMT, which he did for many years, I could have guessed he’d have that altruistic nose. The one with a slight scoop. I’m not sure that I’ve ever researched the default facial feature for someone who saves children’s lives as a Cyber Crime Task Force Officer. I think that deserves a special feature like a gold star on the forehead. But that would make undercover difficult. Okay nix the gold star idea.

I think that his familiar, familial vibe helps Josh’s success rate. He told us that most of the suspects are meek and almost 100% confess on the spot. I would suggest that this success rate would be much lower if a personality and physicality other than Josh’s was banging at the door.

Character changes: More than change Josh’s character description, what I think I would do is add family components and make sure that they are always described in the forefront of his mind set. His kids are paramount. He loves his wife. There’s meatloaf on the kitchen table. That and spilled milk.

What I learned from Josh: I’m techno-moronic. But I already knew that.

The Role of Digital Evidence

Lt. Josh Moulin is a nationally recognized expert in cyber crime and digital forensics. He also works as a Special Deputy US Marshal. This means he can fight cyber crime on the state and federal levels. Right now, he is assigned full time to the FBI.

A group accredits digital forensics labs. It's called the ASLAD (American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors) again, yeah acronyms! This means that if a piece of evidence goes to trial the defense attorney can’t poke holes in the integrity of the lab work. It has followed known criteria.

The kinds of crimes that they would be investigating include such things as: computer intrusion (hacking), terrorism, child porn/exploitation, extortion, identity theft, human trafficking, narcotics etc. So if you are writing about any of these crime areas the hero might be a cyber detective. Which, if you can wrap your head around all of it, would be a pretty cool plot line. They have amazing tools and capabilities. The problem is that the criminals are becoming ever better equipped and informed about foiling the good guys.

Example. I opened up the Popular Science magazine and in the section “The Goods: a dozen great ideas in gear” there is a Victorinox Swiss Army knife. “Victorinox’s flash drive protects your data with its own life. If it detects a hacker closing in on its password, it will draw enough power from the computer’s USB port to fry itself.” What if that data that’s being fried is the piece of the puzzle that would put the bad guy away? (as an aside every time I type "bad guy" my computer prompts me to say bad person. I guess here in the south "guy" is masculine, and I sound gender biased. But I’m from Canada where guy is neutral and my computer just needs to get over itself.)

Right now this is thwartable (though not a real word - it should be). In the post mortem exam,that’s when they look at computer that has been brought into their lab, they would use a Forensic Fire Wire Bridge that extracts and copies the data. That way they are never clueing the Victorinox in to the fact that its data is going to be processed. The password would be searched on the copied data not the original flash drive.

Writers - what if the police officer has a warrant and obtains a cell phone that they think contains vital information? I Phones can be remotely wiped. Police Officers should be trained not to just throw the darn thing onto their front seat. This is where a Police Officer can mess up in your book. Instead, he should put it on airplane mode, or remove the battery, or put it in a Faraday Box where radio frequency is enclosed. Radio waves can neither enter the box nor exit. Pretty cool. Huh?

What exactly is Computer Forensics?
It is the collection, preservation, analysis, and presentation of high tech related evidence. The priorities are to protect the digital evidence; discover all files on the evidence including deleted, hidden, password-protected, and encrypted files. Analyze all of it for evidence. Present findings, and consult.

Writers - If you have an Alpha character written into the foreground. Maybe one who is used to the spotlight and saving the day like a super hero, it might be interesting to create a beta male character, sitting day after day weeding through the cyber debris and finding the one piece of evidence that solves the crime saves the day and wins the girl right out of alpha’s arms. Wouldn’t that be a fun twist?

Also, when an officer has a search warrant he can only look for the thing on that warrant. He can come upon other things. So rather than having the warrant read computer systems - which are large and couldn’t be hidden in a bread box - have the warrant read that they are also looking for flashcards. Flashcards could be anywhere. They are tiny so the officer now has pretty much carte-blanche within the designated area to look through everything and anything. Hope that helps.

If you have any questions, I’d be glad to try to answer them. Just leave a note below.

Writers' Police Academy 2011

I huddled in a blue plastic chair in the front of the classroom - teeth chattering, body shivering. The air conditioning blew, even though it was quite cool outside. I had mud to my knees. Rainwater had wicked up the cotton of my jeans, up under my man-sized raincoat to my waist, up past my waist making my black t-shirt lay cold and damp against my stomach. My fingers were red and stiff as I gripped my ballpoint pen, and I drip, drip, dripped the water from my sleeve onto the open pages of my notebook. Heaven.


I was in Greensboro North Carolina for the Writers' Police Academy developed by Lee Lofland and hosted by Guilford Technical Community College and Public Safety Training Academy. I came in from an hour under torrential rains straining to hear the cadaver extrication teacher talking about how to remove a body from a shallow grave.

If I ever write a scene (and now you know I’ll have to) about standing out in a rainstorm during an investigation, I’ll have it down. I know the goose bumps. I know the sucking sounds that feet make when they’re pulled from muddy clay. I understand that the umbrella can only take so much before it gives up and water starts to run in rivulets down one’s nose.


The only sad part for me was that because it had been raining, the school’s crime scene simulator was not functioning - not putting off the aroma of death. And with no scent, there were no hungry insects to cover the “dead body.” I would have liked to have seen that. I would have liked to have smelled that for realism, without the actual reality.

It was a great privilege to spend the last four days with amazing teachers. They brought law enforcement and forensics to life through hands on demonstrations and tutorials. These instructors were the real deal. They train the very people we call when we need help. They have faced sniper fire, conflagration, life and death. What they had never faced was a classroom full of writers. They weren’t ready for us.

There is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance that the instructors needed to resolve for themselves in order to get their sea legs on the choppy waters of a thriller writer's questions. These men and women had taken oaths to uphold the law and solve the crime -- to foil the bad guy. We needed to know how to thwart the system and stymie authority. We needed the bad guy to make the right choices so only our hero could come in and save the day in the nick of time. That meant asking these instructors to think in a way dichotomous to their instinct. I bet it made for some good stories around their dinner tables.

I could often see their discomfort. Especially when I was asking the EMT if I could equalize a perforated lung by using my daughter's Glucogon needle. Yeah - he called his supervisor over for that one. I understood that our questions ran counter-intuitive to their instinct. But it was also what we needed to know in order to make our writing accurate.

I think most of our instructors volunteered to train us just because they were tired of reading books and watching TV shows, shaking their heads and saying, “That could never happen! That’s not right. These people have no idea what they’re talking about.” We all wanted to understand. That’s why we were there. We wanted to get it right. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the heft of the sniper rifle, the drip pattern of the blood on the wall, the collection of the DNA samples.

I left Virginia to drive to North Carolina on a Thursday afternoon. I took my suitcase to the car, and as I walked back inside I saw big fat drops of blood on my schoolroom floor. I followed the trail up through the family room, up the stairs, to the bathroom. It looked like there had been an ax murder. There were towels soaked in blood, blood in the sink, the toilet, on the walls, spattered on the mirror. But nobody - and luckily no body.

So I’m looking for the victim. “Hey! Who’s bleeding?” I yelled. My son shows up. He’s covered in blood too. “Mom, I think I broke my nose.” Hmm. Yup kid was jumping on the mattress and hit his nose with his own knee. It was spectacular. I got him cleaned up, put on a Band Aid, to keep his nose somewhat in place, and applied ice. In an incredible bid at maturity my daughter had cleaned up all of the blood. I called their dad to pass off the crisis, because I needed to get on the road.

The next day I’m sitting in a class on bloodstain patterns with Dave Pauly, a Professor in the Applied Forensic Sciences Department at Methodist University,and now I could interpret the blood trail that my son had left. Had I been investigated for this incident as a crime, I knew that they would use LCV to show the blood distribution. Even though my daughter had done a good job cleaning up and had even used a bleach based cleaner, it was still detectable. I know that that LCV has 0% false positives, so even if I had a damned good lawyer, he couldn’t punch holes in this forensic evidence. All of it was way too cool.

This week I will be blogging about my experiences at the Writer’s Police Academy. I hope you’ll join me. I’m glad to answer any questions just leave them in the comments below.

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