OnPoint Tactical Urban E&E Class short review (posted here for relevance to SHTF)
I've been looking at this class for at least 6 years, and finally made the time and money commitment to 'just do it'. There are barely any reviews about this class (none that are recent) and none on m4c. It is billed primarily as a class to teach you what to do if you were in a foreign city and taken into unlawful custody or kidnapped.
Background: OnPoint Tactical, founded by Kevin Reeve, has been around since 2004, and seems to have started this class around 10 years ago. Kevin's background is a little hard to really find, but he was an Apple employee and then ran Tom Brown's Tracker School for several years before starting OPT. He's consulted for some TV shows, movies and books. His bio has several big name agencies that he's taught, and this class seems to be his most popular and frequently taught, with very little competition from other schools.
Class: Class is three days, with day three being a full day in the field (city). The first two days are mostly lecture, with some skills labs to practice some of the skills taught during the lecture. Class size for my class was 15. The information on escaping from cuffs, zip ties, rope and tape is very good. The intro to lock picking is pretty basic, but definitely sufficient. You leave with some good quality picks. Disguises and "baseline" lectures are good, but start to get into the realm of being a spook, not a business traveler getting back to the embassy or police after escaping a kidnap. The information on caching is good, but definitely starting to get into survivalist or spook mindset. All in all, though nothing was earth-shatteringly new, it was good information. The bummer is that Kevin doesn't present the information very efficiently, with a lot of anecdotal stories to punctuate each slide, and almost every story has a name (or agency) drop. This can also lead to some tangents, that may or may not interest the class. Day 3 is definitely a hoot, because who WOULDN'T like getting bagged, cuffed, and interrogated for a while, then escaping and going on the run for the day. After you're on the run, you get information for meets and tasks to complete, all while being hunted by trackers that are looking for people out of baseline or that are recognizable. I didn't use my phone for anything other than receiving tasks or updates, since I figured my phone would be taken if I got grabbed.
Conclusion: I didn't take part two of the class (aka Advanced Urban E&E), as it gets into a lot more of living on the streets (more of a survivalist type skill, like this sub-forum is!) I think the class was a little too expensive for what training I received, and can't fully recommend it at this point. I'm saying that from the perspective that the going rate for pro-level instruction is $200-$250 per day, not because I'm a cheap-skate. I hope that Kevin will update some of the powerpoint to maybe give a bit more information instead of his stories in the same two days; as-is this could have been presented in one or one and half days. I also had a beef with the class not starting with student introductions, especially given the nature of the class and the people that may be in it. I'd like to know the resources that I may have in other students, and more importantly I'd like to know if there are any OPSEC issues I need to think about when it comes to photos, reviews, or even talking about the class. I brought this up to the assistant instructor, and he told me that they don't do intros because some people "can't be introduced." My opinion is that if that's the case, they can use a short cover-story, anyone else that needs to can say "hey, don't photo me because I may work UC again." I hope this is helpful to anyone considering this class, feel free to PM for more info about the class.
