Hero in Action
The Department of Criminal Justice Training prides itself on employing top-notch instructors with backgrounds and experiences from which students can learn first-hand. Each instructor boasts an impressive set of skills and talents, but only one of them has earned a Silver Star and his own action figure.
Critical Skills Instructor Jason Mike joined DOCJT’s staff in 2018 when he and his family decided it was time to come home after both an illustrious military career and a fast-paced law enforcement experience in Hawaii. A Radcliff, Kentucky, native, Mike said his early career dreams included a chance to play professional football. However, he was playing football for Jacksonville University in Florida on Sept. 11, 2001, when his career path began to shift.
“We were one of three football games after 9/11 that were played the weekend after,” Mike recalled. “I’m a military brat – my dad was 20 years in the Army, my brother is an Air Force veteran, I have a cousin in the Navy, my grandfather was Navy – we have a long lineage of serving our country. When we did our pre-game ceremony, the national anthem was a little different after what had happened on that Tuesday prior. I just knew as much as I loved football, this just wasn’t where I thought God was trying to take me.”
Mike finished the semester and returned to school in the spring, still feeling the tug of service. During spring break, he went to a recruiter’s office and joined the Army. Upon his father’s advice to find a military job he could use after his service ended, Mike became a medic. Two years into his military service, he was deployed to Iraq and his primary assignment was clearing roadways for critical-supply convoys. On March 20, 2005, Mike and his team were anticipating an early end to their Palm Sunday duties while waiting for a convoy to shadow safely through the Salmon Pak area of Baghdad where they were patrolling that day.
(Photo provided) DOCJT Critical Skills Instructor Jason Mike patrols the Iraq/Iran border during a Border Patrol Mission in 2010.
“This particular day around 10 in the morning, we ate some food, and we saw the convoy coming through a little early,” Mike said. “We thought, ‘Oh hey, they’re going to push out of here, we’ll get done early and go back to base.’ That didn’t happen.
“As the convoy was going through, we encountered a very large ambush, including roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire,” he continued. “Basically, the very front vehicle of the convoy was stuck in a kill zone.”
While trying to reach the front vehicle, Mike’s team realized they were hearing gunfire and explosions further back, too, and that the convoy was being attacked in all directions. Soon after it began, the attack shifted.
“The full brunt of the insurgent force turned from the convoy onto us,” Mike said.
Later intelligence showed that upwards of 100 insurgents were attacking Mike’s team of 10 on the roadway, and those 10 were divided between vehicles at different stages of the convoy. Mike got out to engage the attacking force, and two trucks pushed ahead.
“As soon as I got back out of the vehicle, our driver is shot damn near immediately in the shoulder,” he said. “A bullet came down and ripped through into his lungs. So I’m trying to deal with that, but we are so overwhelmed with so many people, I was trying to treat him and shoot at the same time. Then our guy who was running the truck is shot and can’t move. He was shot just below his vest in the stomach and it nicked his spine on the way out. Now I have two soldiers down (that) I’m trying to triage while trying to take out the threat.
“These guys were close,” Mike said of the enemy force. “They were within 15 feet of us trying to take our position. I’m firing using a pistol and my M4 rifle trying to keep them at bay. As I’m doing that, our gunner on top of the truck has our main weapons system running, and he is shot. So I have a total of three guys shot who are completely out of the fight, and now I’m stuck by myself for about 45 minutes trying to take out every single threat I can. I’m going through weapons system after weapons system, from my pistol and M4 rifle to the squad automatic weapon.”
Mike could hear rounds getting closer to him and he wasn’t sure where they were coming from. He scanned the area and noticed a house roughly 300 yards away with a sniper inside taking shots at him.
“I grabbed an anti-tank rocket out of the truck and shot the house,” Mike said. “I dropped the house down on top of the sniper. At this time, we had rained down – from the 10 of us – so much fire power on these guys that they started to retreat.”
Mike had to shift from warrior mode to medic mode to get the three wounded soldiers in his truck stabilized and keep them alive. The medevac helicopter wouldn’t land where they were, so Mike drove them a couple miles down the road to reach help before returning to the ambush scene. All three soldiers survived their injuries, he said.
“With all that, the Army saw that I deserved some kind of medal for me just doing my job,” Mike said. “And I was awarded the Silver Star.”
(Photo provided) DOCJT Critical Skills Instructor Jason Mike, center, poses after a firefight in 2005 where his team had assistance from the Estonian Army.
Mike spent several more years in the Army and Army National Guard, the last six years working for a special forces group out of Alabama. There he worked under a colonel who was a Kentucky State Police trooper who talked to Mike about law enforcement. In 2010, he deployed to Iraq as a civilian contractor working with a security firm, and came back the following year to give corporate America a shot, he said.
“I was working for a marketing company based out of Los Angeles on an Army video gaming project and it just wasn’t for me,” Mike said. “I was on the road probably 42 weeks out of the year doing marketing and going to different events. We started going down the road of having kids and being on the road that often and having kids wasn’t working.”
Mike returned to the Lexington area and heard the Paris Police Department (PPD) was hiring. After talking to friends in law enforcement, thinking it over and going on a couple ride alongs, Mike decided he could see himself in a law enforcement career. When Paris offered him a job, Mike said the transition to civilian law enforcement was an easy one.
“To go from the military lifestyle and that comradery and obviously the peaks of adrenaline during unknown service calls and pursuits, things like that, for me, it was almost a natural progression to transition from the military,” he said.
(Photo by Jim Robertson) DOCJT Critical Skills Instructor Jason Mike, right, teaches during a DOCJT safety awareness event at the Fort Boonesboro firing range.
Mike worked for PPD for roughly two years when he and his wife discussed moving to Hawaii. Initially, it was sort of a joke, he said. He submitted his information on the Hawaiian government website indicating his interest in a position. In 2013, a hiring process opened, and Mike received a letter to go to Hawaii for a civil service test. He and his wife looked at it as a vacation…which turned into several vacations as he continued to advance in the process and return to the island.
“As I got deeper into the process, I think it was my third time going back, one of the detectives said, ‘Hey, you’re probably going to get offered a job, are you sure you want to move here?’ I didn’t really think about that. We were having fun. But talking to my wife, we said, ‘Hey, why not? How many people can say they lived in Hawaii?’”
Mike was offered the job, and his family moved to Hawaii. While the scenery and cultures are completely different from Kentucky, Mike said the saying that policing is policing no matter where you go definitely held true.
“I would have told you beforehand, if you told me that, that you were completely full of it,” said Mike. “But I will tell you there is no truer statement. It is completely the same game. The biggest thing is that if you treat people (well) and with respect, they will respect you as a law enforcement officer. The biggest thing in Hawaii is they want you to learn their culture and customs.”
The biggest concentration of crime in Hawaii is theft. As the most expensive place to live in the nation, Mike said people subsidize their income by stealing. The amount of thefts were shocking, he added.
“They tell you in Hawaii, if it’s not bolted down, it’s going to get stolen,” Mike said. “If it is bolted down, give it time, it’s going to get stolen. In my years in Paris, I never encountered one stolen vehicle. In Hawaii, you’re working stolen vehicles five to six times a week. It’s absolutely crazy there.”
Mike was first stationed in Waikiki and did basic patrol with a little undercover work walking around the beach in swimming trunks, he said. After that, he joined the traffic division focused on night enforcement of impaired drivers and illegal street racing.
“You talk about Fast and the Furious, illegal street racing is huge there,” Mike said. “I spent four years as a traffic officer, and it was an absolute blast. It was the best time (of) my career. I was in charge of the entire island with a 14-man team. We would go out at night anywhere on the island we wanted to go.”
Mike and his family were enjoying a great life in Hawaii, but with his wife expecting their youngest son, they began to miss family at home. Because living in Hawaii is so expensive, Mike said he was working 40-60 hours of overtime each pay period to make sure his family could live comfortably. So if he wasn’t at work or in court, he was often sleeping – even on the beach with his family.
“We had our fun, we made really good friends and good memories, but we needed to head back,” Mike said. “Even though we miss Hawaii, coming to Richmond, I never would have thought would be one of the best things we have done.”
(Photo by Jim Robertson) DOCJT Critical Skills Instructor Jason Mike provides students in the DOCJT Shoot House with information during an active shooter training.
Returning to Kentucky meant time to spend with family, having weekends off and the closest thing to normalcy the Mike family has experienced. Teaching at DOCJT has allowed Mike to take what he learned both in the military and during his years of law enforcement and give back to the Commonwealth.
As a Critical Skills instructor, Mike teaches tactical medicine, active shooter, traffic stops and building search courses.
“I am so passionate about it because I am able to put a little bit of my mark on damn near all 120 counties in the Commonwealth,” he said. “That is powerful. I do it because I love it. I have been offered jobs elsewhere, and I know I am where I am supposed to be. I am having a blast.”
The number one message Mike has for officers who attend his classes is to come to training with an open mind. Accept that the instruction you receive may be different or new, but it may be a different way of looking at things.
“We don’t look at what if’s or shoulda, woulda, couldas in our section,” Mike said. “We have made it a point to look at the data, and data is what drives how we teach. What you’re getting has been vetted, and not only vetted by us, but we have been fortunate enough to go to a lot of training over the past two years at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and with industry leaders in private training.”
Combining extensive training on the latest skills with knowledge and experience from the field, Mike said the team he teaches with seeks to create training that will reach every officer, from basic training recruits to those who have been working the field for decades.
“If you come with an open mind and understand this is a way, not the way, just be open to what we are doing,” Mike added. “If you learn one thing that changes the way you think or makes you reevaluate how you do business, then I’m good with it. The number one thing is to save lives. Our biggest goal is to keep names off that memorial wall.”
