A really good story, Witmaster. It even had a happy ending.
Just got this in my email. It's an amazing story about an officer's fight for her life, and some valuable lessons learned. Kinda long, but it's good.
****************************************
The 25-year-old gangbanger was a significant player in the life of Chicago P.D. Officer Candace Milovich-Fitzsimmons for less than two minutes. In that flicker of time she says he changed her approach to policing forever.
He wanted to kill her, she believes, but instead he was the one who died, leaving a legacy of lessons that she's convinced will help her survive for the remainder of her career-and can help other officers better face the mean streets as well.
"I didn't go looking for this," she told PoliceOne in an exclusive interview recently. "It found me."
If her sergeant had been a bit indulgent, she wouldn't have confronted those watershed moments at all.
At about 10:45 one chilly Monday night last November, having just transported a prisoner for a tac team, Milovich-Fitzsimmons and her young partner, Matt Blomstrand, were hanging around their district station on Chicago's Northwest Side, hoping to get cut loose from duty since only 15 minutes remained of their shift. "Too early to check off," their sergeant said. "Get back out there." So they did, Milovich-Fitzsimmons driving.
As they approached an intersection a few blocks away, a black Ford Explorer caught their eye up a side street. "It was going about 5 or 10 miles an hour," Milovich-Fitzsimmons recalls, "jerking back and forth like someone was jiggling the steering, and the horn was blowing like a maniac."
A domestic, they figured…and kept going. "Then our conscience got the best of us, and we went looking for that car." They quickly found it on a dimly lit street in a neighborhood predominately of small, single-family houses.
As they swung in behind, a male jumped out of the rear passenger-side seat, ran a few yards, then apparently changed his mind and ran back, trying to climb back in as the SUV stuttered forward in a jerky series of stops and lurches.
No brake lights signaled the stops, and the third time the vehicle abruptly halted the squad car rear-ended it.
What the officers had interrupted would be revealed only after Milovich-Fitzsimmons endured the most violent encounter of her 10 years as a Chicago cop. According to what police later pieced together, the male who'd been trying to reenter the vehicle and two cholos inside were members of the vicious Spanish Cobras street gang. The other occupant was a 33-year-old man who a few minutes earlier had been walking up to his front door from work, carrying a jug of milk for his family.
He was hailed by a young male pedestrian with a cane who insistently asked him for a ride somewhere. The mark had a "bad feeling" about the guy, so rather than risk the safety of his family he decided to "sacrifice" himself, and agreed. As the two approached his Ford Explorer, two more individuals leaped from the shadows, pushed the victim into the SUV and took off with him. Their original plan apparently was to hold him for ransom.
Inside the car, the assailants reportedly took $350 and a cell phone from the victim, then started taking turns beating him with their fists and the cane. Investigators believe they changed their mind about their crime plan and instead decided to drive to a desolate industrial area in the district and there murder the man.
The herky-jerky movement of the SUV was caused by the desperate victim grabbing the gear-shift lever and jamming it in and out of PARK.
Immediately upon the collision with the squad car, the gangbanger outside the Explorer and the one who'd been driving bolted. Milovich-Fitzsimmons radioed in a foot pursuit and beat feet after the driver. Blomstrand was delayed in exiting their unit because the crash had jammed his door. By the time he crawled out through his window, Milovich-Fitzsimmons had disappeared into the darkness. Blomstrand, with less than three years on the job, focused his attention on the two running vehicles, the beating victim who tumbled out of the SUV in a bloody heap, and the cholo inside who was trying to climb out through a rear door.
Milovich-Fitzsimmons, meanwhile, was sucked into a worsening series of clashes with the driver.
<Calibre Press Street Survival Seminar>
First she caught up with him on a parkway along the street and shoved him to his hands and knees. She had hold of his coat but before she could get a body grip, he pushed up, easily pulled out of the jacket and took off again. "That's why gangbangers never wear their coats closed," she told PoliceOne. "And they tend to wear a couple, so if they wiggle out of one they still have an outer garment."
The foot chase continued down an "extremely dark" gangway between two bungalows. Milovich-Fitzsimmons caught the driver again in an alley behind some garages and pushed him against a wrought-iron fence. "Get down on the ground!" she yelled.
Instead, "he whips around and starts fighting." During the tussle, her shoulder mike popped off, swinging around her legs out of reach for calling for help.
Milovich-Fitzsimmons felt no panic. Through a decade's experience, the 39-year-old, trim, blond officer with a tough-but-fair reputation was accustomed to scrapping with suspects and had never encountered a situation she couldn't control. "I was thinking very clearly, giving basic commands to myself to stay in the fight," she recalls. "I couldn't understand why he was so violent, though." Unaware of the kidnapping, she thought she was dealing just with a run-of-the-mill hot car.
At a point when Milovich-Fitzsimmons grabbed her adversary by the shirt, he tripped and fell to the ground. "Stay down!" she yelled. He raised his hands for a moment, "teetering on his ass" and looking beyond her, evidently checking for her partner. Then he lunged toward her, grabbed the butt of her holstered S&W 9mm and used it as leverage to pull himself up.
"I could feel the top strap unsnap and the holster open," Milovich-Fitzsimmons says. "It was the first time my weapon had ever been threatened. I thought, 'I'm in big trouble here.'"
What she calls "Neanderthal thoughts" guided her-Reach here! Do this! "Very loud, very basic, like someone yelling at me in my head." She fought to keep her gun in her Level II holster while the 'banger continued to yank at it with one hand while trying to smash her in the face with his other.
Finally she managed to break away from him and pull her gun. "Get on the ground!" she screamed. He lunged for her again. She squeezed the trigger and fired a round, "the first time I'd ever shot my weapon on duty. As soon as I pulled the trigger, I knew it was a good shoot."
Yes and no. The round went through the suspect's left hand and through his sleeve-then, incredibly, ricocheted off his forehead and ended up in the doorframe of a nearby garage.
Blood streaming down his face, the attacker grabbed again at Milovich-Fitzsimmons' semiauto. She beat him with it, directly on his wound, but he was unfazed. He shoved her against a row of garbage cans and fled across the alley into a vacant field, which soon became the third-and worst-scene of the progressive fight.
Milovich-Fitzsimmons holstered and secured her S&W, took out her cuffs and went after him. When she caught up to him, he'd fallen to his hands and knees. "I thought, 'Game over' and I moved in to take him into custody. Color me wrong.
"All I could see were his wrists-major tunnel vision. I heard that voice in my head, Wrist…cuff." But when she got close, the suspect tackled her and although she beat him with the handcuffs, he took her to the ground. The cuffs flew from her hand.
"We grappled all over the place," she says. "I was punching him, kicking him in the face and chest, twisting his balls for all I was worth. He never flinched…just got angrier." She drew her gun but couldn't get a shot. Seven inches taller and outweighing her by nearly 90 pounds, the suspect pinned her, smashed her in the face and fought again for control of her weapon.
"His hands were like hams," she says. "He was able to bend my wrist so the gun was pointing right against my throat. I got scratches from the muzzle." A weight trainer-"I'm stronger than I look"-Milovich-Fitzsimmons first managed to push the gun off target, then turn it toward him. She pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The suspect was clamping the slide so it couldn't move.
The muzzle twisted back and forth as the officer fought desperately to save her life and the suspect fought to take it. "It seemed like an eternity. I fought with everything I had but I couldn't stop him. I was physically spent. I knew I couldn't hang on much longer."
Then the voice in her head came back. "Loud as day," three names echoed in her skull: Jake…Alex…Eddie. Her three sons.
"I can't give up!" she told herself. Despite her exhaustion, she continued to keep the muzzle away from her head and body until she glimpsed "my angel"-a man in a blue uniform shirt-running toward them from the alley. He was a responding officer whom her partner had sent in the direction he'd last seen her run as she pursued the suspect fleeing from the collision.
"Shoot this motherfucker!" she screamed. "He's got my gun!"
Almost at contact distance, the officer fired four fast rounds. One grazed Milovich-Fitzsimmons' right hand. Three hit the suspect. He collapsed, dead, on top of her.
"By then," Milovich-Fitzsimmons says, "I think I was slipping into shock. I could hear voices but I couldn't respond to them or move or even open my eyes. And I couldn't stop shaking. I was vibrating from head to toe."
From the moment she radioed in the foot pursuit until the backup officer called in the fatal shooting, only 1 minute 45 seconds elapsed. What happened during that brief time "changed me tremendously," says Milovich-Fitzsimmons, whose husband and sister are Chicago P.D. sergeants. She enumerates the mistakes she believes she made and the lessons she learned:
1. "When we were fighting in the alley and I shot, I should have kept shooting. When I had firearms training in the academy, we shot once, holstered and waited for the next instruction. We talked about two to the chest and one to the head, but we didn't do it. You perform like you train. My greatest regret is that I didn't light him up in the alley when I had the chance. I won't stop short like that again. If I'm justified in shooting, I'll shoot and keep shooting and not look so much to other avenues."
2. "When I reholstered my weapon, I deescalated prematurely, going for my cuffs. I should have made a greater effort to grab my radio and get help. I should have anticipated that the fight might not be over yet."
3. "When we were fighting, I used constant verbal commands. Yelling at him took a lot of energy, exhausted me. We're required to give verbal commands, but I would limit them more and concentrate on physically overcoming my adversary."
4. "Would I carry an extra gun? Absolutely not. I was in the fight of my life to retain just one. What if I'd had a backup gun in an ankle holster when I kicked him and he'd grabbed it? It's hard enough to hold onto one gun without having to keep track of two."
5. "The first thing I said when I finally went off duty that night was, 'I want a different gun, a .45.' I went to the range and tried several weapons. I ended up selecting a Sig-Sauer 9mm. It's light, with an easy trigger pull. I shot a tight group the first time I fired it. I'm going to the range more often now. I want to feel more comfortable with a gun. It wasn't second nature to me when I needed to use it."
6. "I find myself less tolerant to resistance from suspects now. If someone gets jumpy, I throw the cuffs on them. I'm not going to play anymore. I find myself analyzing people and situations a lot more closely. I will never, ever allow myself to be put in that situation again."
7. "After I had some time off and then went back on duty, I felt like I was coming down with the flu one night. I asked myself, 'If I have to get into something tonight, can I defend myself?' I decided to stay home. Before, I would have brushed it off and gone in, full of bravado. Now I know I need to be on top of my game when I'm working. I can't imagine going through the kind of fight I had feeling sick."
8. "At the station, some cops were talking about my incident, and one of the females said, 'If that had been me, I'd be dead.' Others nodded in agreement. I went off on them. 'Never give up!' I said. 'The minute you think that way, you've lost! If you're thinking you can't survive, you won't, and you'll be just another officer on a mass card.' I try to talk to other officers about what happened, because I want them to see what can be learned from it."
9. "I've become more involved with fitness. Sometimes I work out 10 times a week now. Before the incident, I could bench press 110 on a good day. Now I've set a goal of 238, the weight of the guy who attacked me. I'm already up to 160."
Officer Milovich-Fitzsimmons teaches a psychology workshop for recruits at the Chicago Police Academy. She knows something about motivation. She keeps a Polaroid of her assailant's body, decorated with gang tattoos, at her gym.
"He was in my life such a short time, but he altered so much of me," she says. "I look at that picture, and it gets me very angry. It pushes me to work harder."
NEVER write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ASS!!
![]()
I can run faster mad than you can scared
"All right brain... I don't like you and you don't like me. So let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" ~ Homer Simpson

A really good story, Witmaster. It even had a happy ending.
So many cries of inequality stem from one of group
of people doing little or nothing and then bitching
about another group that actually does something
to improve their lives.


a happier ending
America decides to quit fucking around and begins to exterminate violent offenders en masse.
Imagine the change in mind set if tens of thousands of these worthless, resource wasting, pieces of shit were being killed daily this week. Imagine the flood of waste back into mexico![]()
Don't look back ~ You're not going that way!
that poor guy. she should of klled a peoples nation dude. why did she have to get a folk.


hey no discrimination. all gang bangers need to be put to death. it would be really nice if a guy could bring milk home to his family without some shitbags trying to kill him.
Don't look back ~ You're not going that way!
NEVER write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ASS!!
![]()
I can run faster mad than you can scared
"All right brain... I don't like you and you don't like me. So let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" ~ Homer Simpson
danny.
that "poor guy" was brutally beating a guy who wanted to bring some milk for his family, then he tried to kill a woman who wanted to stop him from killing somebody.
how the FUCK can you say "that poor guy"? he deserved no less than to be beaten to death, he got lucky he was shot to death.
he wasnt even worth the brass it took to kill his pitiful ass
This is my journal. Click it and such
"tried and true theory on one's self is probably the only non-biased proof that something works for someone." - juggernaut
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Motivation Bench form Charles Poliquin When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. Lao-Tzu
Disclaimer: All health, fitness, diet, nutrition, anabolic steroid & supplement information posted here is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and is not intended as a substitute for proper medical advice from a medical doctor. We do not condone the use of anabolic steroids (AAS), all information about AAS is for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you choose to use AAS it's your responsibility to know the laws of the country that you live in. Consult your physician or health care professional before performing any of the exercises, or following any diet, nutrition or supplement advice described on this website.
he DOMS she would understand it if it was written like "yo i sho shoulda smoked dat foo in d alley"
OHHH she really dont understand shit then!!! maybe she would get it if it was in spanish!!! doubtful!!!! thats the problem i say DEPORT THEM FUCKERS!!!!


I was taught fire at the chest and don't stop until they stop and we trained that way....
We should deport retarded fuckheads like danny as well.....let them try to live thug life in Bolivia for a while.....
Coarse edged youth, the irish pendants string from their smiles
not yet plucked as to slacken the seams
and drag down the features of age,
no folds or creases from unkempt wear
eyes of tranquilty, crystalline-beads
no sign of despair in their hair, nor their hearts
but oh they have yet to be experienced and that makes aging so very worth it...ML circa2012
Could not agree more. It is amazing how habits are formed based on the way you do things in training scenarios.
This is why I constantly avoid confrontation. I don't believe in halfway, if someone wants to fight you have to beat them until they don't move anymore. You never know if they have a gun, knife, or 5 boys that are going to come after you. If it makes you feel better to make me look like a punk by calling me a bitch, who cares, I'll feel a million times worse if I have to beat someone into a wheelchair or casket.
If sense were common, everyone would have it.
4/2007-Current 75th Ranked most popular image 1 spot behind Prince's bulge...


Disclaimer: All health, fitness, diet, nutrition, anabolic steroid & supplement information posted here is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and is not intended as a substitute for proper medical advice from a medical doctor. We do not condone the use of anabolic steroids (AAS), all information about AAS is for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you choose to use AAS it's your responsibility to know the laws of the country that you live in. Consult your physician or health care professional before performing any of the exercises, or following any diet, nutrition or supplement advice described on this website.
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I fail to see why this is a great cop story. She did everything wrong, is VERY lucky to be alive, and the entire article could be summed up as she did at the end when she said "When we were fighting in the alley and I shot, I should have kept shooting."
The story shows how little actual firearms training most LEO's actually have, and why depts should be willing to spend the $$$ on training.
- Will @ BrinkZone
The No#1 Science Based Performance, Fitness, and Bodybuilding Resource on the 'net....

She learned her lesson and is passing it on to others. She even said that she handled it like a schmuck and gave the play by play to prove it. It's an awesome cautionary tale for other officers. Additionally, it was a very interesting story.
Plus, a Mexican was killed.![]()
So many cries of inequality stem from one of group
of people doing little or nothing and then bitching
about another group that actually does something
to improve their lives.
You respond as you were trained (see her "lessons learned" #1) , and a lack of training gets you her story, which lends to the lack of training she received.
I didn't find it interesting, I found it sad. The way for an LEO to "learn their lesson" is not from almost getting yourself killed by making virtually every mistake possible due to a lack of training. I do not think most people realize how little firearms experience most big city PD have, especially in typically liberal anti gun areas such as the city she's in. The story makes me more angry than anything as I hate to see an LEO put in such a situation.
No comment
Last edited by Will Brink; 05-15-2008 at 08:55 AM.
- Will @ BrinkZone
The No#1 Science Based Performance, Fitness, and Bodybuilding Resource on the 'net....
OK.... I'll break this down slowly..... allthough DOMs already addressed you. I just don't want you to think I need anyone to speak for me.
I'll admit the title "Great Cop Story" could be interpreted a number of ways. Obviously, you are an "expert" in this field so you chose to interpret the title to be a misrepresentation of a "Bad Cop Story". Ok, I'll give you that.
I contend that what makes this story great is the fact that she took the time to detail out the chain of events, moment by moment, action by action. She openly admits her mistakes and lessons learned. She takes this story (that could have just as easily turned out to be another "dead cop" story) and turns it into, in my opinion, a fantastic After Action Review (AAR we call it in the Military).
Of course, her story reinforces and supports everything you claim to know, however, instead of endorsing a femalecop, you choose to sit back in your armchair quarterback position and heckle from the sidelines. That's your choice.
I, however, salute this woman who took this experience and shared it in detail as an example of what do do versus what not to do. Not only is this a "Great Cop Story" it's a story about a Great Cop.
NEVER write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ASS!!
![]()
I can run faster mad than you can scared
"All right brain... I don't like you and you don't like me. So let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" ~ Homer Simpson


i like the after part. i think the strength in the story is to be found there. in what she learned, what she felt led to the mistakes she made, what she would, in hind site, do differently and especially the changes she's making because of the experience. it's a story that might save lives
Don't look back ~ You're not going that way!
No place did I make any such claim nor do I make any such claim. I did however send the story to a few LEO pals, one of which has been in 8 guns fights and walked away from them all due to his work on the gang units, SWAT, on the streets, etc. He agreed totally with my feedback. I also put the story up on a forum visited by high level LEO trainers and SOF, and they generally agreed. In fact, they were much harsher than I was:
LEO lessons learned? - Special Operations Community Forum
The reason I sent it off to my LEO pals and posted to the above, is I have read plenty of after action reports, etc, and this one struck me as odd, which it is.
Thanx
Those lessons are SOP she should have known as a veteran LEO who clearly did not have the training she should have in a big city PD. I don't blame her, but I do blame her dept. I'm glad she's alive, I am glad she's sharing her "lessons learned" and glad it was the BG who lost the day.
The only reason it's not another dead cop story is not due to anything she did, but shear luck another LEO showed up (and the BG by that time had her gun and could have made for a "two cops dead story") who took out the BG.
I don't care of she's a purple male cop with a tail, I don't endorse a long list of bad decisions that almost got her killed as a result of poor training and very bad decision making.There's nothing here to "endorse" other than she learned a hard lesson the hard way and is now attempting to pass that along. Hopefully she's also calling for better training of LEOs in her dept.
There's no heckle BS going on, and normally, I agree with you, I don't like it either when people second guess people who were fighting for their life with some "I would have done X,Y,Z like Rambo did" so I make sure not to do that. However, in this case, I think it's fair to look at it based on what she wrote and judge from there, minus any attacks on her.
It's a story about a poorly trained officer who made a bunch of really bad choices who is passing along her experiences and appears to have actually woken up to the fact being an LEO means actually knowing the basics of various things, such as "I want to feel more comfortable with a gun. It wasn't second nature to me when I needed to use it."
Now, that's not a bash on her, but her lack of training and her PD lack of training. Most LEO's shoot once per year at a large easy to hit target to stay qualified, and that's it, unless they do their own training, which she didn't, now realizes it might just save your life...
- Will @ BrinkZone
The No#1 Science Based Performance, Fitness, and Bodybuilding Resource on the 'net....


I haven't read the link Will posted yet, but I will give my opinion on this. Any story that is a result of an officer either being injured or killed is a bad story. There is no sense or need for any of it happening. With proper training (and this means constant...not just once or twice a year, but ongoing) most of these types situations can come out in favor of the officer like Will mentioned. She did make bad decisions everywhere. She is very lucky to be alive and I think it is by luck that she is. Nothing she did helped her. Females have to be very careful anyway due to most males having more strength when it comes to a wrestle match or a fight. I don't care that she lifted, she isn't going to match the strength of most males, so she is at a disadvantage right off the bat. When she took out her firearm, she should never had re-holstered until the threat was gone(that means dead or cuffed to me).
The only good about it is that she did not die. But I will stress again that it is a shame that this even had to happen. Even with tons of training, officers can make mistakes as things like that happen in a split second. So you can imagine what a lack of training does. There was an ex chief in my county that responded back in the 90's to a call for officer down(one of his guys was shot while getting out of his car while answering a domestic call) When he pulled up, he knew to be on guard and he always trained for situations like that and some people called in looney for always training like that. He was also shot in the arm by a high power rifle, but was able to get in excess of 30 rounds fired into the door and house. ONE of these rounds hit the shooter and disabled him. If it had not been for his quick actions, he too would have been killed. His training saved him. I wish stories like this would be a wakeup call for justice acadamies and police departments across the country to realize that there needs to be ongoing training with high risk situations.
Disclaimer: All health, fitness, diet, nutrition, anabolic steroid & supplement information posted here is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and is not intended as a substitute for proper medical advice from a medical doctor. We do not condone the use of anabolic steroids (AAS), all information about AAS is for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you choose to use AAS it's your responsibility to know the laws of the country that you live in. Consult your physician or health care professional before performing any of the exercises, or following any diet, nutrition or supplement advice described on this website.
- Will @ BrinkZone
The No#1 Science Based Performance, Fitness, and Bodybuilding Resource on the 'net....
What's silly about all this is everyone is saying the same thing.. just in different ways.
I say it's a great story because it illustrates the mistakes made and the necessary steps needed to correct these mistakes.
Other's say it's a terrible story because there were so many mistakes made it proves that steps need to be taken to correct these mistakes.
Glass half full, glass half empty... whatever symantics you prefer, I think we can all agree that there's definately room for improvement. I just applaud the woman for having the courage to face this issue rather than retreating back in fear and running from it.
NEVER write a check with your mouth that you can't cash with your ASS!!
![]()
I can run faster mad than you can scared
"All right brain... I don't like you and you don't like me. So let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer" ~ Homer Simpson
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