I pulled up to the massive white gate and looked to my left. A sign read: “POLICE VEHICLES ONLY.” This seemed pretty serious to me… was I about to get a felony? Fortunately, the man I was here to see had informed the gatekeeper of who I was, and the gate lumbered open practically before I had even finished saying my name. As I rolled in a rookie security officer on her way out eyed me suspiciously and then decided to turn around and follow me back in. I parked my car, stepped out, and my contact walked out to greet me. The security officer immediately understood and went on her way.
Although Jason Davis stands no taller than myself at around 6’2″, his handshake makes him seem a lot taller. He has the type of handshake that is immediately discernible as one of experience. The type that makes you go, “Damn, I need to watch some YouTube tutorials on how to improve my grip strength.” His credentials are somehow transferred by diffusion from his palm straight to my hand, and they let me know that he is not a guy I would want to mess with.
Yet at the same time, this intimidating persona is not the vibe Jason is trying to give off. It’s just how he initially comes off. Jason’s unsmiling steel-stature is betrayed by his genuinely kind and generous nature within seconds. “Feel free to take photos of anything,” Jason says as he sets down his Colt 6933 Commando and 1911 next to a MacBook Pro. Jason is warm and welcoming, and surprisingly he makes me forget that I am inside of the Arcadia Police Department; a place few outsiders get to see. As other officers walk by me they give me smiles and say hi as if I were an everyday fixture in the office. It’s a surreal yet relaxing experience. And trust me, I’m going to need to be relaxed to take photos of Jason blasting away on full-auto.
Jason, a Los Angeles native and former school teacher, has been with the Arcadia PD for more than a decade: “I pretty much grew up here in Arcadia and went to all Arcadia schools. Went to Cal Poly Pomona after high school and got a degree in Behavioral Science. I was always looking to go into law enforcement, and at the time I was getting ready to graduate I was thinking about going into the Feds. All I wanted to do was go into the Feds–specifically the Secret Service. I tested with them and at the same time a guy in the gunsmithing room–Dean Caputo–talked me into putting in paperwork here at Arcadia PD and simultaneously I started going through the process here.” Jason got a little further than “testing” with the Feds, though. He was close to being hired when an incident occurred: “During my last interview at the Secret Service I got into an argument with one of the raters. So that pretty much sealed the fate that I wasn’t going to work for them, at least not right then. But I came to work here.”
The incident doesn’t weigh on Jason at all. Now a Sergeant, he laughs about it and tells me how much of a blessing it has been to work for the Arcadia PD: “I’ve been here since 2000 and I can’t say that I absolutely miss the Feds or anything. I think I’m very lucky to have landed here. It’s a great organization and I’ve learned a lot. As far as training and equipment we’ve got what I think is a pretty darn good program for law enforcement. For a small municipal agency we’re able to do a lot here.” I look to my right and see the glass wall separating us from the firing range. The same range where Emile Hirsch trained for his role in Lone Survivor and where many photo shoots have taken place. In fact, the guys from 5.11 Tactical were here right before I arrived. “What guns do you want me to shoot?”, Jason asks as we prepare to enter the range. I tell him that the Commando would be more than cool.
Dating back to the XM-177 used in the Vietnam War until the 1980’s, the Colt Commando has gone through many variations. There was the 177, the CAR-15, and the M733–made famous in the public’s eye in movies like Heat and Black Hawk Down. The M733 Commando was used by the Arcadia PD up until 2011, when it was replaced by Colt’s newest models with detachable carrying handles: the 6933 and the monolithic 6943. Today Jason shoots a suppressed 6933, now standard issue for everyone on duty in the Arcadia PD. He also puts a few mags through one of his favorite 1911’s and a Glock 19. “The muzzle blast from the Glock is good for photos,” Jason tells me in between mags.
I snap some shots and then take some of him standing at the center of the range. When we are finished we proceed into the firearms classroom to begin the interview. Jason still has his serious demeanor about him as he looks around the room almost nervously, waiting for me to set up. But it’s not nerves at all, it’s situational awareness. Jason scans the room as if he were on the beat. When we start though, Jason becomes completely neutral and proves to be great at giving interviews. Fast to answer and brimming with stories and technical data, Jason rattles off answers one after the next with little pause.
So you got into gunsmithing through your father?
JD: I’ve been tinkering with guns since I was a little guy. I was going through old family photos the other day and I was probably four or five and I’ve got a Smith and Wesson Model 41 I was shooting small little steel targets at eight or nine yards. I passed my hunter safety course when I was six years old. I couldn’t read. It was a 100 question test back then and I had to have all of the questions read to me and then I answered them. I ended up passing that at six years old. Being around guns, weapons, all of that started at a very young age. So that was just my father and my family, that was just kinda their business (Jason’s father made leather goods such as holsters and belts) so I’ve always been around it and haven’t had any problems with them. My parents brought me up to be very, very safe. I think I knew the four basic firearms safety rules when I was about three. I mean, I’d get in trouble if I was pointing my finger at somebody. They’d say, “Hey, you can’t do that. Don’t let your muzzle cover anything you aren’t willing to destroy.” It was my finger at three, but it ingrained in me something that we still deal with out here on the range or any range. That’s just been my upbringing and where I am now.
Being a police officer I’m sure you have some pretty intense stories. Tell me one.
JD: You know, the interesting thing about Arcadia is that it’s not necessarily a sleepy town, but we do have some strange things that happen here. Somewhat unique. One that I could actually kinda laugh at, that was funny was that I was pulling out of Huntington Drive, which is one lane in each direction, split off in the middle by a big island. I came out of here one night going Eastbound, and I had lights facing me, so obviously someone was coming the wrong way. So I figured, it’s about midnight or so and it’s probably someone who’s drunk. We’ve got a bar right at the corner here and I figured that’s where they’re coming out of, they made the wrong turn.
I end up pulling the person over and I can see a lot of fidgeting going on. As a police officer that’s what you don’t want to see because you’re figuring they’re hiding dope, they’re hiding a gun, they’re doing something that should be alerting you. So I’m a little taken aback, but all I see is a lot of hair. As I get closer, in the rear view I can see the eyes looking at me and it looks like I’m going to be pulling over a female. I get up to the window and I said, “Can I see your driver’s license?” and the person looked up and probably hadn’t shaved for at least a day. It was a guy in complete female everything. A cross dresser going to meet a boyfriend at the bar, that I thought they’d come out of. So that was a good laugh.
Turns out the guy was actually wanted for an attempted murder charge. He told me who he was, and it wasn’t. Turns out it was his brother who he told me he was. The guy was a wanted person for a pretty decent crime so I can understand why they didn’t want to get caught. That one we got a good laugh out of for a while.
I’ve been in a couple pursuits, but the ones I’ve been in have been done and over pretty quickly. I haven’t been shot at. I was charged by a mountain lion and killed that. Having that come at me was just to me kinda a transition to hunting mode: “Alright, here comes a mountain lion. It’s pretty pissed off. I already put one round into it, it’s coming right at me.” I shot it at about four feet, hit it in the head, it veered off again. So that was a fun-packed six or seven seconds.
I did pull over a couple of aspiring rappers one night, and their loaded 12 gauge shotgun was right in the back. So obviously, my pistol came out and was basically drilled into the side of one of them, and I just waited for a couple of my guys to respond. And their reason for that was that they had just signed a big record deal and they thought someone was following them. So, they had to protect what they thought they had to protect. They ended up doing that by carrying around a loaded 12 gauge shotgun in the back of their car.
So you drew your handgun in that situation. Have you ever had to use your handgun off-duty, or a rifle off-duty?
JD: Funny you mention that. I haven’t been in a shooting off-duty, but I did end up at an intersection pulling my gun out on a guy last month. He was screaming and yelling, and when we came to a red light he decided that he didn’t want to get out. We operate…we try to operate…and one of the things we teach, obviously mindset is one of the biggest things you gotta have. Secondly, part of that conditioning, and part of learning, is one thing we call the OODA Loop. Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. It was actually Colonel John Boyd, who was a Korean War fighter pilot, who never lost a battle and came back and taught. His whole thing was, “I’m always at least one step ahead of my opponent.” And that’s kinda where we are here. As long as you can stay one step ahead you’re likely going to be able to win any situation you come into. And that’s kinda where I was with this.
I saw this guy. He started screaming and yelling because he thought I was going to come into his lane. I didn’t end up doing that, he screamed and yelled. We then both proceeded forward and I held back a little because I thought, “The light just went from green to yellow, and it’s now red. We’re going to have about 30 to 40 seconds. The guy’s a hot head, and he’s likely to come out.” So as he did, as he started slowing, I could see his reverse lights coming on momentarily. So that tells me that he put his car from drive into park. So right there I grabbed my pistol and I said, “I’m not going to be a victim in my own truck.” Because in the cab of your own car you’re stuck, you have nowhere to go. So right then I said, “Alright. If he comes out of his car, I’m coming out. I’m at least opening my door.” He’s out of his car. I said, “If he starts to take a step, I’m coming out and I’m just gonna confront him.” It was rush hour, we had a lot of witnesses.
The guy ends up coming at me, and I came out at the low ready. He was still screaming and yelling. I told him to get back into his car and fortunately he did. He didn’t take the step that I’d kinda drawn: “If he makes it here I’ve got a gangster looking guy, tatted up, I don’t know who else is in the car, I’m likely going to have to deal with him and then focus on the car.” People around me were calling 911; I’m not going to get on my cell phone. So yeah, that’s one of the few times I’ve had to use it (a gun) off-duty. But fortunately nobody got shot.
In a situation like that, if you take the totality of the circumstances, you look at everything—mindset, everything leading up to it—had he have pressed it forward it would have been a good shooting. You know, the guy has got baggy clothes, he’s jumping around here and there, I’m seeing his hands do all kinds of things, I don’t know if he’s got a gun as well. You gotta keep the odds stacked in your favor. And for him that day, he didn’t go beyond where he did. So, you look at everything and fortunately it played out like it did.
Do you think anything changes in someone when they become a police officer?
JD: At a certain point, yeah. I think you’re exposed to things that the average person isn’t. One of the big things that separates a lot of us is, let’s just say, that as a law enforcement officer you have the legal authority to take someone into custody. To stop them from being a free person. You have the ability to do that whether you put them in handcuffs or you take their life legally. That’s something that a lot of people have the opportunity to do, and it’s also something that I don’t think a lot of people have the mindset to do.
I do think people change. You see both good and bad. We’re human just like anybody else. You go through a lot of different emotions. You see some pretty bad things at times, and there really isn’t a way to channel it. Sometimes people talk to friends, buddies on the job, wives, girlfriends, husbands, boyfriends. But there are sometimes when you just see a lot of bad in a real short amount of time. And it’s interesting with the advent of social media you can see a bunch of cops at the scene of a real grizzly event and you’ve got somebody laughing, or a handful of people laughing. Oftentimes because that’s just how our outlet is. It’s not that we’re making fun of what’s going on, it’s that at times we channel out the bad stuff we’re seeing to try to make light of it so we can go home and go to sleep. There’s kind of a morbid sense of humor, but I’ve seen it, I’ve been witness to it, been part of it. That’s how you get through certain things.
One of the big things you see is that you see people become leaders. That’s something that’s very rewarding about this. Somebody that becomes a cop and all of a sudden at one point in their career you think, “God, they’re not really doing much,” and then next thing you know they’re starting to take on more responsibility. And then next thing you know all of a sudden they’re leading a team, or a group, or a handful of guys, and next thing you know they’re promoted. You see a lot of good people become leaders out of an organization. And that’s very rewarding.
Why did your department go with the Colt Commando and the Surefire suppressors recently? And what do you like about them?
JD: 1997 is when we went live with our patrol carbines. At that time we had Marlin Camp Carbines that were 9mm’s. They were basically a big pistol. In law enforcement we were starting to see—and I wasn’t here then—the need for bigger weapons. Basically, we really needed to see a rifle cartridge that could go out on a patrol. Interesting thing is, the same month we went with our Commandos the North Hollywood shootout happened. It literally happened right up at the butt of that. And back in that time LAPD had just pistols. They had a few shotguns here and there, but they had nothing that could defeat the armor these guys were wearing.That was a huge turn of events for law enforcement in general.
The reason we went with the carbines: At the time you could have gotten a 20 inch full size gun, a 16 inch carbine, a 14.5 inch M4, or the 11.5 inch carbine. Our carbines stay in our vehicles, and the mounts that they’re in takes them almost up to the ceilings of our cars. If we were to go even three inches more with the M4 and the 14.5 inch barrel—getting that in and out of a car is just that much more difficult. The three inches on the end of that barrel is more difficult as you’re sweeping, coming underneath the steering wheel, going around corners, doing things. The 11.5 seemed to us to be the best barrel length for law enforcement. You were losing a couple hundred feet per second velocity, but where we shoot people in law enforcement it’s not three, four, five, six hundred yards away. It’s oftentimes in a room like this, across a street, a couple car lengths away. So we’re still getting a lot out of that cartridge and we’re not missing anything by going longer. But having the shorter barrel was definitely the way to go just for operating as we do. You collapse the stock, you can cinch up the sling, and hide it against your body, and most people won’t even look at it because it blends into our uniforms.
So the reason we went with the Commando was specifically for the size and doing what we do traditionally in law enforcement: lots of house searches, if we get a hot call like armed robbery, burglary in progress, most of the time our guys are at least going to take out their Commandos. We’ve got very large yards here, the lot sizes are huge, so confronting somebody with that makes things real very quickly. When suspects all of a sudden look at you with an M16 they think twice. It is an added bonus gun out in the field having that there.
The reason we went with the Surefire suppressors are a couple reasons. We’ve got a very good relationship with Surefire. I’ve been doing a lot of work with them since about 2003, 2004. We’ve been using their lights—their lights went on our original Colt Commandos back in the late 90’s. When they started to get in on the suppressor game I was fortunate enough to get in on that, and have been using them since they came out.
I’ve been trying to get suppressors for years, and the whole reason behind it is health related. The decibel level that the M16’s fire out of are damaging to your hearing. So much so that there have been officers who have ended up getting into shootings that have had permanent hearing loss to the point that they’re now retired. I don’t want to see any of our personnel get into a shooting that permanently disables them to where they’re either deaf or close to being deaf but they have to stop doing what they love doing, which is being a police officer. If I can buy something that costs a little over a thousand dollars they can take the decibel level down to below a pistol level on the decibel reading, then that’s something I’ll do if it will save their hearing.
You’re a big 1911 guy. You have a nice collection of 1911’s. Tell me about your passion for them—how it started and why you still have a passion for them.
JD: You know, the reason that I’m passionate for those is my upbringing. My dad did a lot of shooting (with them). And again, when I was young that’s what I shot. When I passed my hunter’s safety course, Irv Stone of Barstow Barrels, way back then when they were local, said congratulations and sent me my own 1911 barrel with my name engraved on it. So at that point my dad said, “Let’s go ahead and fit this barrel to this gun.” It was a 1911 obviously, and that was what I grew up shooting. My father shot 1911’s, I shot 1911’s, that’s what we issue here. The thing I like about the 1911, there are many things, but the ability to have such a great trigger pull is pure. My guns break at about 3 ¾ to about 4 ½ lbs. and they’re just absolutely crisp every time. I do a lot of long range shooting, and kinda like my bolt guns as well—2 ½ lbs. I know they go. These guns I know they just go exactly when I’m ready to press.
Additionally, my hands are large and they just fit me pretty close to perfect. So, having grown up with them and having now shot ‘em for about 30+ years it’s just a natural progression; almost an extension of my arm. That’s what I enjoy about them. You can do a lot to them as well, but you got to make sure what you do to them is correct, and you don’t screw ‘em up by just throwing a bunch of parts or making a bunch of different cuts, taking angles off here, putting angles on there. You can get into a lot of trouble with the 1911 if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s better left for people who have built these guns for 10, 20 plus years.
But my affinity to them is I just think they’re a great looking pistol. The fit and feel in my hand and how they shoot—the guns I have all shoot very, very well. So it’s just kinda been one of those passions. Like Ford vs. Chevy you can buy one and you figure out, “Ok, this is the one I like,” and you go from there. It’s just what I’ve grown accustomed to.
Modifying firearms has really taken off in recent years. Everyone is doing custom AR’s and custom handguns. Do you think that’s where the myth of unreliability in the 1911 comes from—people making Frankenstein guns?
JD: That has a lot to do with it. You’ve got one school of thought that says leave the gun alone or at least have it built just like John Moses Browning intended it to be built, and then you’ve got another side that says you can do all kinds of things to them but just know how everything originally works and build everything around that. If you can do that your guns will pretty much run flawlessly for the most part.
Take a look at a Brownell’s catalog and you’re gonna see national match this, match fit that, drop-in this. On a 1911 about the only thing that’s truly drop-in is your recoil spring, maybe your firing pin too. Everything else on that weapon has got to be fit at some point to make it work correctly. You can’t just get a box of parts from a dozen different manufacturers, put ‘em all together and think that you’re gonna have a reliable 1911. Everything’s got to have a reason to be fit and it’s got to fit next to something in a certain way. It just has to. And that’s where some of your problems are. Everyone adds their specs to whatever it is they’re building and they don’t take into account what everyone else is doing. So to just grab a bag of 1911 parts and think that I’ve got a 1911 in waiting, it’s probably not going to happen. You can do that with a lot of other guns, because they’re built kinda out of cookie cutter molds. The Frankenguns—once you start throwing all kinds of parts together—you run into all kinds of issues.
If you could leave the readers with one piece of advice—firearms related or not—what would it be?
JD: I think where we are right now in history I think one of the biggest things you can do is not only support the 2nd Amendment in whatever way you can. I’m a big fan of the Constitution, and I see any amendment, whether it be the First, the Fourth, the Second, the Eighth, the 14th. Any amendment that people absolutely want to do away with, if that were to happen, that just opens the floodgate for everything else.
And again, I’m a huge fan of the Constitution. I don’t buy into: “Well, when the Founding Fathers wrote ‘this’ they didn’t foresee ‘this.’” In a way I think they did. They foresaw people attacking their document time after time after time. Which is why they made it in such a way that is pretty close to set as should be. So my biggest thing is don’t let any of those things slip away from us. Guns are really simple and easy to attack because they’re an inanimate object that oftentimes goes out and kills things on its own. And that’s what a lot of people believe. So if we wipe all the guns out we’ll be a great big happy family again.You look at the laws and where we’re going…law abiding citizens shouldn’t have any problem if they want to go buy a gun, because the criminals don’t go through the normal channels. Why is it very difficult for us to do so? It’s easy to start saying, “You have to do this and you have to do that to buy a gun.” The bigger picture is just that Constitution.
I think the NRA is a really good way to look at where we are currently. Again, you look at the people they are bringing in to be the spokespersons for them; they look like you and I. They are the Colion Noirs, the Austin Weisses, the Dom Rasos, those guys. They are people who have been out in the real world and have lived, and have done things that a lot of people haven’t, yet they have done things that a lot of people have. Because they are just regular people. I applaud the NRA for going out and finding people like that rather than just the old, stodgy bureaucrats that used to go out and just say, “Don’t touch our guns.” They’re doing things differently and I like the marketing behind how they’re doing it. Kinda a long way around trying to preserve the Constitution, but if I could leave people with anything it’s just take that to heart, and don’t let anything easily leave us.
Follow Jason on Instagram: @southerncrossllc
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