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Police Positive
Four Pacific Northwest female officers put gun ownership in perspective, offer advice to novices and share their experienced observations

By Dave Workman
Contributing Editor

Thirty-six year old Diana Neff entered law enforcement 14 years ago, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant last summer, having chosen to spend all of her career, so far, in patrol.

She likes the activity, noting, “Every day is different.” Neff adds that, “Everything begins at the patrol level.”

A deputy with the King County, WA, Sheriff’s Department, Neff, like a number of her female law enforcement colleagues, is someone who does not simply have a firearm because it goes with the job. She enjoys recreational shooting opportunities, and six years ago, took up hunting. Last year, she bought a synthetic-stocked Savage Scout rifle in .308 Win., topped it off with 3-9X Bushnell riflescope, but was able to hunt only one day of the season.

This fall, she has indicated that’s going to change. Before the mid-October deer season opener, there will most certainly be some range time on her schedule, because years in law enforcement have taught Neff that proficiency is paramount for anyone who carries any type of firearm, either on the job, for personal protection, competition, recreational target shooting or hunting.

Neff is hardly alone in that philosophy. Ask some of her law enforcement colleagues in the Pacific Northwest-and we did-about the importance of firearms familiarity for anyone who owns a gun, and particularly women who are taking up guns for sport, competition and/or personal protection, and they uniformly stress being proficient.

It’s a lot more than just being able to hit a target, of course. Detective Carol Krancich with the Tacoma, WA, Police Department, who was affectionately and admiringly nicknamed “Crack Shot Krancich” by her male and female colleagues some years ago, thanks to her well-honed marksmanship skills, defines proficiency to include safe handling, shooting skills, care and maintenance of your firearm.

A state-certified firearms instructor part-time for her agency, Krancich, is presently getting a new opportunity to challenge her own proficiency. Tacoma has just adopted new sidearms for the entire department, three of the choices being Glock semi-automatics, two in .40 S&W and one in .45 ACP, and the other two being Model 1911-genre Kimber single-action semi-autos chambered in .45.

That announcement came earlier this year, and made Tacoma the first department in nearly 50 years to adopt the Model 1911-type pistol, and Krancich has chosen to carry one, out of the five different options Tacoma offers its officers. Those who select one of the two Kimber models will carry their sidearms “cocked and locked,” and will undergo transition training from their Beretta Model 92 and 96 double-action semi-auto pistols, now being retired from service.(For more on Kimber firearms, see Gila Hayes’ review in our print edition on newsstands now.)

Neff, however, is a true believer in the Glock, having purchased her own some years ago in 9mm and switching last year to the department-issue Model 22 in .40-caliber. When she began her career, she carried a department-issue S&W Model 19 in .357 Magnum, later switching initially to a Model 669 S&W semi-auto in 9mm.

Likewise, Master Police Officer Darlene Gibson with the Shoreline, WA, Police Department, carried a .357 Magnum Model 19 when she first entered law enforcement ten years ago. She now carries a personally-owned Glock 9mm Model 19, with which she practices every month.

Her shift sergeant is an instructor, and once each month, typically during their roll call sessions, officers will gather at the department’s range for practice.

As in Neff’s case, Gibson became interested in a law enforcement career at an early age. Once, when she was still a youngster, a drunken motorcycle rider crashed his bike on her family’s front yard, then tried to hide a liquor bottle under some brush. Gibson picked up the bottle, careful to wrap a leaf around it so as to not directly touch it, then she dutifully walked over to an investigating officer, handed it to him, and said the drunken biker had stashed it.
Not bad for an 8-year old. Now, some years later, Gibson is still catching bad guys, and as a field training officer, she passes on her experience to new recruits.

Practice
A firm believer in shooting practice, Gibson acknowledges that she has not had the opportunity lately to enjoy recreational shooting. Her husband is an officer with another agency, and they have a young daughter, who takes up plenty of mom’s time.

But for other women who may have recently purchased their first handgun, or are considering such a purchase, Gibson strongly recommends getting all the exposure to firearms you can.

Bellevue Police Officer Marcia Harnden gives that recommendation a big “ditto.”

An eight-year veteran with the Bellevue agency, Harnden got into police work after demonstrating a talent for nabbing shoplifters at the retail store where she worked.

“They invited me into the security department and that sealed it,” she recalls. “It’s a blast catching bad guys.”
Harnden’s personal sidearm is a Glock, but on duty, she carries a Heckler & Koch USP Compact in 9mm. It fits her hand quite well, and delivers less felt recoil than the .40-caliber pistol she initially had.

Her rationale is simple: “I was unhappy with control of the .40 caliber. I want a gun that I’m comfortable with.”
Harnden may be the text book example of a woman who found much to like about shooting after she had grown to adulthood.
“I’d never really touched a handgun prior to coming here,” she acknowledged. “I took a lot of training, and it’s still something I have to work on. I have to push myself to practice. That’s the key to consistency.”

Harnden’s advice to new female shooters who are determined to hone their skills is to practice “at least once a month if not more, and then know your safety (rules) inside and out.”

All four officers put great emphasis on practice. Neff and Harnden indicated that shooting leagues for women provide great opportunities for newcomers to the sport, not just to improve your shooting and safety skills, but also for the camaraderie.

Taking all available training also gets the nod, as does shopping before you purchase.

Says Harnden: “Don’t buy something just because someone says you should get it. Get something that is right for you. If you’re not comfortable with it, you’re not going to be comfortable using it in a situation where you might have to save your life.”

“Women should shop for guns,” Neff concurs. “You get what you pay for in life, and you should not be talked into what you should have by any gun dealer or distributor. Make sure your hand fits the gun. Don’t buy a gun just because you’ve been told it’s a great gun.”

Krancich, also a proponent of shopping and testing various firearms before making a purchase, added a “reality check” to the process of buying a gun, especially if it is for personal protection.

“If you are in the mindset that ‘I would never shoot anybody, I could never kill anybody. I just want to be able to scare somebody away if they’re bothering me,’ I wouldn’t recommend they go buy (a handgun),” Krancich counseled. “If you haven’t accepted the fact that you might have to use it, then you shouldn’t be carrying one.”
And Gibson added a reminder: “Make sure that you always keep it secure and safe.”

In Their Own Words
“Guns are fun to have, and once you have one it’s really easy to get caught up in it and want to carry it and do all these things but there’s an order in which these things go,” says Sergeant Diana Neff, King County Sheriff’s Department. “You need to think hard about your reason for wanting (the gun). Is this for personal protection, for hunting? Side arms are for different types of things.”

Neff, who has firearms for the job, personal protection off-duty and for hunting, is no slouch when it comes to shooting.

Two years ago, using a friend’s shotgun, she harvested her first pair of grouse. More wingshooting appears certain in her future.

“Hunting had always interested me,” she says. “I didn’t know how attached I would get to it. My stepfather was going hunting with a couple of guys and they backed out at the last minute. He asked me if I wanted to go, and I did.”

She took a hunter education course, borrowed a Savage Model 99 in .300 Savage, and tramped the Selkirk Mountains of northeast Washington.

It was a turning point. “I just fell in love with it,” she says fondly.

Being around firearms, and enjoying shooting, is not new to Neff.

“The first time I shot (a handgun) was when I was 15 years old,” she recalls. “A Seattle police friend of mine let me shoot her .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 19. I started out with .38 Special wadcutters and then .357 Magnums, and I was hooked.”

A stalwart believer in practice, Neff encourages beginning female shooters to shoot with their peers and improve their marksmanship and safety skills simultaneously.

“I think that shooting leagues for women are great!” she declares. “There is a camaraderie there, and they are responsible groups.”

Job Skill
Being familiar with firearms is not simply a matter of recreation to Neff, of course. In her case, it’s a required job skill, but practicing with a firearm-any firearm-you own, is a must to maintain a competent level of skill, she maintains. Neff has high praise for her department’s serious attention to training opportunities. The agency provides monthly practice ammunition allotments to officers as an incentive to increase their practice and hone their skills.

“Our department in the past couple of years has been really good about implementing a week-long in-service training that includes much more firearms familiarization,” Neff explains. “We do a lot of combat shooting.”

She recently participated in a drill using Simmunition, which was an eye-opening experience.

“The great thing about King County,” she continues, “is that (the department) promotes women in a lot of ways. They’re supportive. Three of our top administrators are female chiefs, and they are very supportive of females in training.
“And we’ve got great leadership,” Neff insists. “(Sheriff) Dave Reichert has been a major part of turning this department around in the last eight years, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”

Neff suggests revolvers for beginning handgunners, noting that “they operate under almost any condition.” As a person’s confidence, competence and shooting skill improves, it is natural to step up to a semi-automatic. She looks upon a handgun as a necessary piece of equipment in her job.

“I think a firearm is such a primary safety tool in this line of work,” she explains. “When you go into this job you have to be proficient with all of your tools.”

Marcia Harnden
“Don’t be afraid of guns because if you know them well and are proficient with them, you are not going to be afraid of them”

So says 32-year old Marcia Harnden, who originally studied to become a history teacher, graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle with degrees in History and Speech Communications. But while working her way through college at a Sears store in Bellevue, she “got divertedand I have absolutely no regrets.”

Harnden’s advice to women breaking into the shooting sports, or purchasing a gun for personal protection is straightforward: “Take a safety class. Have a really good understanding of what the firearm will do…Most gun rangeshave courses that women can take.”

She also recommends joining a shooting league, noting: “I think it would definitely improve your skill level.”

A firearm is not something you buy then put away to gather dust, either. Harnden’s department builds into its firearms training program a sensible “reminder” to officers about firearms maintenance.

“We actually do have a policy that requires us to clean the service weapon within 24 hours after each practice,” she explains. “We have facilities (at the department range) to do it right then and there.”

Training and more training is the key to proficiency. During Bellevue’s in-service training segments, Harnden says officers train to shoot in low light, close quarters and fire from different angles.”
On the subject of keeping a gun at home, she notes, “You have to balance the ability to have access to it in an emergency versus safety in your own house.”

If there are children in the home, Harnden’s advice is to let the youngster know about it when they are old enough to understand that it is not a toy.

“Let them know how it works, and know what it will do, good and bad,” she says, the less likely they’ll take it and play with it.”

Though carrying a gun is part of Harnden’s every-day routine, she notes, “I’ve never had to use it, and I hope I never do.”

Darlene Gibson
Darlene Gibson is a deputy with the King County Sheriff’s Department, which contracts law enforcement services to the City of Shoreline.

She is a devout advocate of practice with any firearm you carry for personal defense, observing matter-of-factly: “You’ve got to protect your life, and if you’re not going to be able to hit what you’re aiming at, then what’s the use of having it?”

The mother of a 3_-year old daughter, Gibson says there is no specific “magic” age when gun-owning parents should acquaint their children with firearms safety. This event is a judgment call parents should make when they believe the youngster is old enough to grasp the importance of the message. That may be age four or five for some children, but seven or eight for others. As with firearms, themselves, there is no “one-size fits all” rule on this.

Until that time comes, firearms should be stored safely “out of sight, out of mind” of the child. The choice she and her husband made was to purchase a coded lock box, but she also gives the nod to security cabinets and gun safes. This choice, again, is an individual decision based on personal requirement.

The critical aspect of having a firearm for personal protection and surviving a traumatic encounter, Gibson suggests, is “mindset,” and she speaks from experience. About two years ago, while pursuing suspects in a bank robbery, she was fired at several times.

“I was instantly mad, because there was no way they were going to be controlling me, and controlling my future,” Gibson recalls. “You need to have a positive mindset, the ‘win’ mindset; that you’re going to come out on top. You’ve got a family to raise and to be there for.”

In addition to basic, and perhaps advanced, firearms training, she suggests taking a course on weapon retention.
For those women who have made the decision to purchase a handgun, Gibson stresses, “Shop around. You want to make sure it is going to fit your needs, and you’re going to want to make sure it is safe for you and that you have a safe place to store it, yet it is going to be accessible where you can get to it to protect yourself.”

Carol Krancich
Carol Krancich grew up in Michigan and went to the Pacific Northwest while serving with the US Army. Stationed at Fort Lewis, it was a short trip to nearby Tacoma, where she settled following her military hitch.

“Police work is not something I always wanted to do,” she says. “I didn’t think about it seriously until after I was out of the Army.”

But once she got the notion to enter law enforcement, “it became a burning ambition,” Krancich remembers.
Her first real exposure to guns came after an older brother bought a gun.

“He enrolled me and my sister in a firearms safety course with the YMCA, telling us, as long as he is going to have a revolver in the house, we were going to learn safety,” she says. “I think that was the smartest thing, getting us enrolled in a firearms course right from the start. We didn’t learn any bad habits.”

Reportedly one of the top female shooters in the Tacoma Police Department, Krancich used to compete in an informal police shooting group called COPS (Combat Oriented Police Shooters). They would get together for “fun shoots” every few weeks, for the camaraderie and to sharpen their skills. These sessions, or any kind of competition or informal shooting practice, falls under her broad definition of training, and in her book, it is all time well spent.

“I would recommend as much training as you can possibly get,” Krancich insists. “I don’t think you can train too much.”
The more training one gets, the more reliable they will be even if there are long breaks between shooting opportunities.
“Women are typically less apt to grow up around guns and be in the shooting sports than guys are,” Krancich acknowledges.

But that does not mean women are at a disadvantage once they take up firearms and become competent, she says. Krancich is living proof.

How should women carry a personal defense pistol? The wrong way is to “throw it into a purse under 50 pounds of junk,” she cautions. She prefers a belt holster, but on the job, she has been wearing the department-issue Beretta 96D in a Galco Miami Classic shoulder rig. That may change as she transitions to the Kimber .45-caliber Pro Carry recently adopted by the Tacoma agency.

Regardless how you ultimately choose to carry a handgun, her bottom line is that it must be accessible.

Even more basic than that is the necessity for simple familiarity with any firearm you purchase.

“Know your weapon,” she insists. “Know how to maintain it. Then maintain it, maintain it, maintain it.”

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For any woman, perhaps a single mother or a woman living alone, who is making her first firearm purchase, especially a personal defense handgun, here are some reminders from the experts:

Before buying a gun, shop around, experiment with different models. Find what’s right for you
Seek and obtain competent instruction
Treat every firearm as if it were loaded until you have personally checked it
Become familiar with your firearm
Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction
Don’t load a firearm until you are ready to use it
Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot
Be sure of your target, and what lies beyond
Keep your gun out of the reach of children
Practice whenever possible to build and maintain competence
Learn how to prevent being disarmed
In an emergency, keep a cool head
Have a positive mindset; prepare to win