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Diesel42 wrote:Yep, I wear hearing aids and I'm a musician.

This thread makes it clear that any disability makes it difficult to comply according to the expectations reflected on TV. That said, the best any of us can do is not appear a threat and communicate as best we can with the people on the scene.

I want to add... be sure and test your hearing aids playing your oboe and with other folks playing near you. The tones and color of your sound change dramactically.

Happy Trails! N

You aren't kidding! I played the concert on Saturday night which included the Bach Orchestral Suite #1. A professional 1st oboist was hired and I played the 2nd part. The technical difficulties of the piece were already stretching me to the limits of my current abilities and trying to match his sound and playing style in the give and take between the two oboe parts in the center of fast part of the movement was nearly over the top for me. Instead of sounding like a singular sound, his notes sounded like he was gargling every one of them through my hearing aids. I'm sure that it is somehow tied to the delays among the various microphones on both ears. It took a little adjustment but my wife was in the audience (she is a musician as well) and said that I managed to pull it off. Luck sometimes trumps skills. It was a risk to try to play with the hearing aides but since that is what I do, I figured that the time was now to figure out if I could.

The part of the compliance subject that is still not clear to me is whether one appears more of threat by action or by inaction. I totally agree with the comments that if its possible when officers approach to be on my knees with my hands in the air. In many of the scenarios that I can think of, however, that may not be possible. The traffic stops would be an example. The greatest part of my concern still is around trying to do something like kneel with my hands in the air if that is in conflict with what the officer is telling me that I don't understand. Even a slow movement in the wrong direction has the potential to incorrectly interpreted.

The after concert party on Saturday night proved to me that the hearing aides are not a perfect solution. While I believe that there are still some adjustments that can be made, I had several examples where women's voices where much harder for me to figure out than men's voices in that very noisy environment. I guess I'll just have to hope that the first officer on the scene for me is male.

tbrown wrote:

stoneg1 wrote:I wear hearing devices and have as yet had a problem of hearing LEO's asking me questions standing beside the drivers side of my vehicle. One scenario I have pondered is when you inform the LEO that you carrying and he/she asks you to remove your firearm, how would I respond. This of course is if you are standing outside the vehicle. I have pretty much decided that I will ask him/her if they would remove it from my holster since I would be reluctant to touch my firearm for any reason at that time. I could turn my back of them with my hands raised to reduce any threat I might present to them - but only at their direction. If seated in my vehicle I am not sure how I would respond other than asking them if I could step outside my vehicle where they could remove it from my holster. I don't know if this situation would ever occur but I always try to think about what I might do in any situation before they happen. Like I always told the players when I coached a softball team, think about what you will do with the ball if it is hit to you before the ball is pitched. Welcome other opinions .

I know of police disarming people with a CHL during a traffic stop but I don't know any where the police asked that person to pull their gun. I suppose anything is possible but if they don't feel safe with you having a gun in your holster I don't think they would be more comfortable with it in your hand.

Thank you. An officer wanting to disarm me is one of several situations that I've thought about. My expectation is that the officer is outside my car with possible heavy road notice behind he or she. They are giving me instructions about what I'm supposed to do or not do that I might not clearly understand. I've had the hearing aids several days now and know that the areas beside highways and inside restaurants are my worst case situations. The last thing that I want is to not be able to clearly follow specific directions in the event that I'm asked to handle my gun in any way in an officer's presence.

I'm not trying to overrate the associated risks in compliance. As I said, I'm rarely stopped for any traffic situation (3 times in the last 15 years and none were citations). I have had a recent interaction with officers specifically about my carrying but the environment posed no problem to my being able to clearly understand them. But I still be believe the time to think of such things is not when they happen and I appreciate all the discussion confirming the fact that I'm neither alone with my problem nor with my concerns about it. I also appreciate all the contributors to this thread not making it controversial. We ought to be able to have this discussion without needing a moderator.

Jim,

Thank you very much for your straight forward and heartfelt advice. I'm fortunate in that while I have hearing loss, a good percentage of the time it does not have a profound impact on me in any social interaction. I now have a full day of wearing hearing aids under my belt but it will take several more before I'm able to determine their impact. I've already found several circumstances where they provide no change.

Texasjoker, my approach to my fear is analysis. After logging 10s of 1,000s of flying miles, I suddenly became fearful of flying under rough air conditions. Before the phobia developed, I can remember circling the Philadelphia airport for more than an hour in a pretty violent thunderstorm and being more awestruck than afraid. It took me a while but I finally wrapped my head around the situation and have not experienced that rough air anxiety again. I believe that I'll be able to do the same with my worries about being compliant enough to survive a LE encounter under duress. It is very reassuring to me that I'm not alone, either in my condition or in my concern about it. Understanding a problem is halfway to resolving it for me.

I am and have always been a supporting of law enforcement. Our daughter was a dispatcher for 7 years and only recently moved to a different job. She had many stories of success that she shared with us. But she also had stories where less than satisfactory outcomes resulted. I believe that anyone who is unwilling to look at those outcomes carefully in order to make improvements is missing a great opportunity. I love my church's pastor and gain a great deal from him in many ways. But I'm not afraid to look him right in the eye and tell him that I think that he is wrong. He is a man just as I am and men make mistakes. I always believe that it is a mistake when someone who was not a criminal and committed no criminal act up to the point of the shooting is fired on by law enforcement. It remains to be seen in what I hope is a thorough and honest investigation following such a shooting as to whether the mistake was preventable.

I feel it is right for me to examine those mistakes also. If I were in the same situation, what could I have done to produce a different outcome? Having a good idea what normal police protocols might be in a given situation is a help. As a law abiding citizen, I'm not deliberately going to do anything that I understand to be provocative. But as happens on threads here all the time, a misunderstanding can easily lead to an unintended provocation. That is exactly what I'm trying to work through in my head. All I can do is try to train my brain how to think about LE encounters and hope that it will retain that when or if such an encounter develops. The last thing that I can afford is panic if I get a sense I'm not responding correctly.

jnichols2 wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

For perspective, I can sit across from you in a normal room and speak with you. Even if you speak in a very low voice, I can understand every word. Turn on a TV and start a dishwasher and suddenly, I can no longer hear some the consonants on many words. It becomes more of a hum in which some individual words disappear. It is really hard to guess in advance which situations are the most difficult. My ability to ear musical notes is not impacted which might seem strange. My particular problem deals in specific frequencies. Some of those affect the way that I hear some peoples voices under some conditions.

I suffer from the same symptoms, but when I go to get a hearing test I am told that I only have a minor loss in higher frequencies. Yet I know that if there is any sort of background noise I am going to experience extreme difficulties understanding what I am hearing.
I have no difficulties without any background noise.
There must be some other logical explanation (other than my ex-wife telling me that I just don't listen).

The problem you both describe is very common. You can hear enough of those frequencies in a quiet atmosphere, but they are low enough to be easily masked by other sounds.

My testing checked those frequencies under both "quiet" and "noisy" conditions. My hearing aids were tuned to my ability to pick sounds out of noise, and also designed for noise canceling. There are no miracles, but I hear much better under noisy conditions now.

I pick up a set of hearing aids today on a trial basis to see if they do help me. The company providing them told me that I'm "marginal" for improvement. That is why I'm being given the trial rather than a hard sell for purchase. I'm hoping that they do was you and the provider are describing but real world experience will either confirm or deny a benefit to me.

I worry, however, that it may not be a 24/7 thing. I work on vehicles and machinery a lot. The is no guarantee that I would have the hearing aids on during an encounter with police. I need to figure out what to do if that happens.

texanjoker wrote:

chasfm11 wrote:

texanjoker wrote: This is a tough subject with many videos out there. "Trying"to comply can be an issue. Some bad guys act like they are trying to comply just to get the upper hand. People of all ages and persons with disability can kill you. How long are you willing to stand there holding an armed person at gun point that refuses to put the weapon down? In fact there are many training tapes that show how fast a suspect can switch from pointing a gun at their own head or down, and then shoot the officer before the officer can react. I love putting trainees through that scenario because they always fail and learn from it. The key is to not have a weapon in ones hand after an incident when the police arrive. For me I know I do not want to have a gun in my hand when leo's arrive if I have been involved in a shooting. Sure I can waive a badge, but so can any bad guy that has a chl or security badge, or even "real" badges that they have stolen and now carry.

But let's assume that we all agree that gun in hand = bad situation. Where ever the gun is, it is not in my hands and my hands are clearly visible and will move very slowly doing whatever I'm going to do. That still may not get me past the compliance issue.

With no gun in hand and being compliant you should be good to go. There are rarely "perfect" scenarios for anybody. I haven't read about any chl holders being shot by the police but I have read about off duty and plain clothed officers that didn't comply with the responding officers commands and they were shot. I know I am going to do whatever they tell me to do.

Sorry but you missed the point that that I was trying to make. I want to try again.

There is no gun in my hand BUT the arriving officers know that someone at the location had a gun. I submit to you that they may treat everyone present as though they are the one with the gun. I've re-holstered it but it is still there.
You are making the exact point when you talk about the plain clothes officers who were not compliant and got shot. In my case, it could well be because I'm failing to grasp quickly enough what they want me to do. That "quickly enough" I believe to be less than 10 seconds.

It makes no sense to me that I should end up being worse off after defending myself because of a police compliance problem but that is exactly the nightmare scenario that is going through my head. Until I can wrap my head around how not let that happen, it is going to remain my nightmare. I totally understand that the officers need to following their training and protect themselves. But I sure don't want them to do that at my expense - I'm not a threat to them. I totally get it that they don't understand that upon their arrival.

texanjoker wrote: This is a tough subject with many videos out there. "Trying"to comply can be an issue. Some bad guys act like they are trying to comply just to get the upper hand. People of all ages and persons with disability can kill you. How long are you willing to stand there holding an armed person at gun point that refuses to put the weapon down? In fact there are many training tapes that show how fast a suspect can switch from pointing a gun at their own head or down, and then shoot the officer before the officer can react. I love putting trainees through that scenario because they always fail and learn from it. The key is to not have a weapon in ones hand after an incident when the police arrive. For me I know I do not want to have a gun in my hand when leo's arrive if I have been involved in a shooting. Sure I can waive a badge, but so can any bad guy that has a chl or security badge, or even "real" badges that they have stolen and now carry.

But let's assume that we all agree that gun in hand = bad situation. Where ever the gun is, it is not in my hands and my hands are clearly visible and will move very slowly doing whatever I'm going to do. That still may not get me past the compliance issue.

The Annoyed Man wrote: So put me in the subject's place. I don't hear as well as I used to. I'm confused by conflicting demands, which I can't hear necessarily as clearly as I used to be able to. Like Purplehood said, I think you just do the best you can. For me, that means slowly laying down, face down, spread-eagle, and waiting for more clearly stated instructions. I might say, once they're close enough to hear me clearly, that I am a CHL in possession of a firearm, and what would they like me to do?

If I were a person without a gun on me, I totally agree with you about just lying down. The complication comes if the officer is giving you instructions other than what you are doing and views your lying down as non-compliance. He knows that you have a gun. That is really the dilemma that started my thought process.

Specifically, here is a scenario. I've just had to use my gun. I've done everything right. I re-holstered. I called 911. I'm waiting to hear the sirens. I already know that my hearing is not going to be at its best and I'm going to try to laser focus on the first thing that I do hear. The LEOs arriving probably have identified me and may come in unholstered and at least at low ready. Take it from there. Remember, this is just one possible circumstance. It is easy if you clearly can hear what you are being told.

texanjoker wrote:

JALLEN wrote:Keep in mind that in the situations I've seen video of, there is never one officer yelling, but anywhere from 3 or 4 to a dozen or more, yelling different commands, at asynchronous intervals, a maximum of noise, confusion, movement, distraction and more besides.

I've been in scores of situations like that. They all stem from a non compliant suspect. Usually the suspect has an edged weapon, but I have also seen people with guns acting the fool begging to be shot (literally). My thoughts are that it is best for one to comply when the police tell you to do something while pointing a gun at you

I'm treading lightly here. I DO NOT want this thread to go South. It is best to comply with police but if you aren't sure what they told you, that becomes more difficult than you might currently imagine. That assumes that you have a reasonable opportunity to comply. An amped up voice is much more difficult for me to understand than normal speech. And as I say, I've noticed that it can take me longer to much longer to process what I've heard so that it might appear to someone else that I'm delaying a response. I only became as aware as I am now as a result of the testing that I've just been through.

I believe that when an order is issued, a reasonable gap afterward is needed to allow the person to respond. I can not recognize words as fast as a person speaking can create them. If there is no gap and another command is issued immediately, I'm distracted by trying to understand the second thing that was said instead of acting upon the first. A great example that I've heard on a video was "Get on the ground" followed immediately by "Do it Now." There was plenty of time to react. On another video, the order "Show me your hands" was followed immediately by "get on the ground". I can almost promise you that I will have more difficulty with that second sequence. I could easily be trying to display my hands while I'm trying to figure out the second sentence and then how to get onto the ground without my hands. And that assumes that I can clearly understand the "get on the ground" and that it is not coming through my ear as "blah blah blah blah blah". Depending on how rapid fire those commands were delivered and pitch range of them, it might take me a couple of seconds to process them. Those same words, spoken without a truck passing behind the person speaking them would have been clear as a bell to me. Add that truck and the words are nearly impossible for me to distinguish. Add another person speaking from yet a different angle and it is going to take me yet more time to sort it all all. Remember that a part of the brain is involved in speech recognition.

I'm assuming that 10 seconds in a compliance situation is a long time. During the testing, it took me more than more than a second to recognize several of the individual words. String them together and it is yet more difficult. The amazing part is that in normal speech, I easily follow even a person talking rapidly and can clearly and rapidly distinguish even a second speaker trying to talk over the first. It ends up being all about the environment. I'm assuming that any compliance situation will be the worst possible sound environment for me.

Purplehood wrote:

For perspective, I can sit across from you in a normal room and speak with you. Even if you speak in a very low voice, I can understand every word. Turn on a TV and start a dishwasher and suddenly, I can no longer hear some the consonants on many words. It becomes more of a hum in which some individual words disappear. It is really hard to guess in advance which situations are the most difficult. My ability to ear musical notes is not impacted which might seem strange. My particular problem deals in specific frequencies. Some of those affect the way that I hear some peoples voices under some conditions.

I suffer from the same symptoms, but when I go to get a hearing test I am told that I only have a minor loss in higher frequencies. Yet I know that if there is any sort of background noise I am going to experience extreme difficulties understanding what I am hearing.
I have no difficulties without any background noise.
There must be some other logical explanation (other than my ex-wife telling me that I just don't listen).

I got a chance to try one device Tuesday for an hour. I'm going to try another device starting tomorrow for a week. I can tell you that there was some improvement with the first one. It amplifies the voice range frequencies so that you can hear them better than the background noise.

Be prepared for about a 2.5 Kimber expense, however.

RKirkwood wrote: My point you may not be able to tell the officer right away because of the situation but by showing you're not a threat, no sudden movement, trying to obey or stay in position with your hands clear. I truly believe the shooting in the news are more of an exception. There are hundreds of contacts with LEOs & non LEOs that don't end up bad. Your concern is real but I believe the media has driven everyone to believe it happens every day.

I understand and agree with your point. I've had several interactions with LE enforcement recently and none of them had the slightest problem. I certainly hope that it stays that way. I try to study all situations that I read or hear about where I can imagine myself. The real catalyst for this discussion was my exploring hearing assistance and recognizing just how difficult some situations are for me. I not being driven to think about it because of those news reports. I'm simply trying to use those situations in light of my better understanding about my hearing. Adding them together gets me thinking about compliance situations.

For perspective, I can sit across from you in a normal room and speak with you. Even if you speak in a very low voice, I can understand every word. Turn on a TV and start a dishwasher and suddenly, I can no longer hear some the consonants on many words. It becomes more of a hum in which some individual words disappear. It is really hard to guess in advance which situations are the most difficult. My ability to ear musical notes is not impacted which might seem strange. My particular problem deals in specific frequencies. Some of those affect the way that I hear some peoples voices under some conditions.

JALLEN wrote:Keep in mind that in the situations I've seen video of, there is never one officer yelling, but anywhere from 3 or 4 to a dozen or more, yelling different commands, at asynchronous intervals, a maximum of noise, confusion, movement, distraction and more besides.

I've seen a couple of those as well but I'll assume that the protocols of many departments include the requirement to have one officer o issue commands. I believe that I'm more than likely to encounter 1-2 officer situations. I'm not sure how anyone could deal with having multiple people yelling different things at them. Perhaps that was the underlying problem in the Scott case.

Noise and distraction are definitely factors for me. In a quiet environment, I have no issues at all. When background noises like traffic or crowds increase, my discernment gets markedly worse.

Others have suggested that I let the officer know about my hearing problems as soon as possible. I would try to do that but I worry about doing anything that doesn't appear compliant and talking back to an officer instead of doing what he/she is instructing could have that appearance.

drumbdummer wrote:

chasfm11 wrote:

I'm not sure than non-musicians would understand but I'm practicing to perform a Bach orchestral work. The notes in it fly by quickly. There is but one fleeting instant in time for each note to be correctly played and if that note occurs after that point, it is wrong. 4 of those notes (16ths) have to occur in half of a second and some measures have 4 groups of 16ths in them. While I'm only slightly slower that what is required, it is still wrong. Almost doesn't count. My fear is that compliance in a LE enforcement encounter could turn out the same.

I completely understand what you are saying here (I'm a musician too).

I think that the best thing to do is follow txglock21's advice and tell them as soon as possible that you are hard of hearing. In a traffic violation type situation, I would suggest this be the first thing that you tell the office while your hands are at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. In a MWAG type call outside of a store, I would suggest raising arms slowly and stating loudly that you are hard of hearing and cannot hear the orders to comply with them. Keep the hands up and don't move until someone makes it so that you can understand the commands. I hope that your upcoming Bach performance goes well!

Frankly, I worry about that being enough. I've watched many of the videos of LE encounters and the expectation appears to be higher than that. I think it goes up measurably (the speed of expected compliance) when there is a gun involved. Any time there is more than 1 officer involved, my problem could get a lot worse.

It is the Bach Orchestral Suite #1 Overture and I'm playing oboe. The part is fast and very exposed in places. I'm the only non-professional musician playing in the group. It is quite a challenge for me as I only recently picked up the instrument after not playing it for over 30 years. My fingers don't move as quickly as they did but my breath control is even worse. MM=104.

I've been thinking about this subject a lot. Frankly, I've been hesitant to voice my concerns because of some of the heated exchanges that have taken place on other threads. I know that I'm hanging myself out there by even bringing it up but felt like it was something that I wanted to get some input about. To avoid going down the wrong path, please indulge me a little context.

When I first got my CHL and started carrying, I had a couple of worries: would I be discovered and what would happen if I had to use my gun to defend myself or my family. As a result of reading and thinking a lot over the past 4 years, I'm comfortable with the answers to both of those questions. I still don't know about the latter question but I'm no longer anxious about it.

Starting with the the Erik Scott situation in Las Vegas, I started to become anxious about compliance. At the end of the day, Erik was killed because the police said that he did not comply with their orders. Since then a number of situations including the Ft. Worth homeowner who was killed last year and now the 13 year old boy who was killed over the toy "assault rifle". My anxiety has grown over the matter.

Please hear me out. This is NOT about the police but it is about me. I'm older and my reactions have slowed. I'm working through hearing problems and will be starting a trial on mechanical aids tomorrow. I know for a fact that I have difficulty discerning any speech that doesn't come from directly in front to me. It isn't that I cannot hear that speech but it takes me measurably longer to parse what I'm hearing into the specific spoken words and process them. When fractions of a second count, it sometimes takes me many full seconds to understand and respond to what was said. I can also document that I have more difficulty when the words are delivered in a sharp, short, staccato manner.

I work very hard at situational awareness. I believe that I need more advanced warning of pending things (and I'm speaking generally hear, not just about self-defense) in order to respond to them. It is my compensation for being a little slower than I was. I'm at a loss, however, as to a means of compensating for my response to spoken words that I can't or don't anticipate.

I do understand what I'd be likely to face in a situation with LE. Rapid movements are bad, especially with my hands. My inclination is slowly raise my hands as high as I can and remain there as steady as I can until I've processed what is being said to. My fear is that while I'm doing that processing, I'll get more instructions to process and it could be easy for me get confused.

Paranoid you say? What are the chances that I'll have to deal with it? Frankly, I believe they are many times higher than my needing my gun to defend myself. My recent situation of trying to enter a town function and resisting an attempt by the security to wand me while I was carrying is but one example of how it could be triggered. Responding to the police commands that I knew were coming was in the back of my head during that incident. While I haven't had a traffic citation in many years, the possibility of one and of an LEO trying to disarm me during it are, I believe, higher than my being in a defensive situation with a criminal.

I'm not sure than non-musicians would understand but I'm practicing to perform a Bach orchestral work. The notes in it fly by quickly. There is but one fleeting instant in time for each note to be correctly played and if that note occurs after that point, it is wrong. 4 of those notes (16ths) have to occur in half of a second and some measures have 4 groups of 16ths in them. While I'm only slightly slower that what is required, it is still wrong. Almost doesn't count. My fear is that compliance in a LE enforcement encounter could turn out the same.