Monthly Archives: October 2013

On cross fire, cover & real world shootings

Ballistic Shield User Course, Nov 18 & 19, Spokane WA. 
SWAT Team Leader, Dec 16-18, Spokane
SWAT Team Leader, Feb 3-5, Thurston County, WA.
2014 Classes —-
Tactical Carbine, April 14-16, 2014, Kent WA…
Tactical Handgun, April 21-22, 2014, Kent WA
High Risk Warrant Service, May 19-21, 2014 Kent WA

If you’re interested in hosting or attending training, contact me for details and registration.

Interesting past week for me which caused me to think through several things. It is easy to forget that as a senior guy on my team that some of our instituional and experience based knowledge doesnt always get passed down to the young studs. Or if it does, they dont hear the lesson or information because they dont have the experience to actually understand why the information is deadly important.

So cross fire first. Years ago my team was involved in a gunfigh that lasted 4.5 minutes. Not an exceptionally long gunfight by combat standards, but in the police world fairly significant. During that gunfight the suspect had gone into the attic. We had officers in the attic, officers on the floor below the attic and officers oustide at ground level. As this thing developed, the suspect was initially on the floor below the attic while officers were in the attic above him. (This was an apartment building) The suspect was initially engaged  by officers on the ground who were firing UP. This put the officers in the attic in their line of fire. The attic officers alos fired down, putting the officers bleow them and on the ground in a crossfire. Ground level officers fired at the suspect again, again putting attic officers in their line of fire. The same type of thing had occurred to use two years before with an officer in an attic firing DOWN at a suspect in the insulation. There were officers below that location in the master bedroom.

When I teach the TL class we talk alot about mitigating cross fires, but it is the hidden, unseen crossfires that guys cant seem to grasp. If we enter through front door and back door, everybody gets that we will have a link up somewhere in the target. Be careful, could be a cross fire. But I see guys put an arrest in front of and centered on a house all the time and then there backside containment is centered. So if you lifted the house up, you would have two groups of SWAT guys pointing guns DIRECTLY AT EACH OTHER! It’s a crossfire, dont do it.

On cover. We have some really nice armored vehicles. They stop damn near anything a person could get their hands on. They have glass windshields and side windows that have the same ballistic rating as the steel part. So if you are looking over the hood with your entire head exposed, I can shoot you in your head. Getting shot in the head is bad. So instead look through the glass, you can still see and contain the target. If a guy comes out shooting, you can simply roll out from cover and shoot him back. But staring at a window that has sun reflection and the house behind it is dark is dangerous. And it’s dumb. Don’t do that.

Real world shootings. Years ago we ha another team shooting wherein 3 guys fired at a guy sitting in a convertible. The guy was armed with a .357 that he decided he would point at the team. The 3 guys all fired at his head since that is what they could see. We were behind the car and when the guy turned his head to point the gun, one of our guys put a pill in his right eyeball. The other two missed! What the hell?! Two highly trained, competent shooters missed a minute of head shot at the incredible distance of 22 yards!!! The horror.

The reality is that all 3 shots were dead on, at the moment they were fired. However my good friend S.R. fired first, a split second ahead of the other two. This caused his bullet to get there first. When it got there and hit the guy, it caused his head to snap to the right, effectively pushing his head out of the path of the other two bullets that were super-sonically moving to give him a bad day. The investigation and trajectory sticks confirmed this.

The bottom line is that shooting someone in the real world is vastly different than range poker or paper. Shit happens. You never know what will happen in the time it takes you to OODA, and the flight time of the bullet. “Misses” in the real world would often times be X rings on a paper target. I was not concerned with the “misses”, I was glad that three officers on my team proved they had the courage of their convictions, and when they needed to, they did not hesitate to use deadly force.

As always, my apologies for typos.

“New” Tactics

 

Ballistic Shield User Course, Nov 18 & 19, Spokane WA. Get your Cap’n America On.
SWAT Team Leader, Dec 16-18, Spokane
SWAT Team Leader, Feb 3-5, Thurston County, WA.
2014 Classes —-
Tactical Carbine, April 14-16, 2014, Kent WA…
Tactical Handgun, April 21-22, 2014, Kent WA
High Risk Warrant Service, May 19-21, 2014 Kent WA

I will likely be doing a Hostage Rescue class in March 2014 but am still firming up dates. If you are interested in the above or want to host a class, get in touch.

Over the years I have been exposed to a bunch of “new” tactics, techniques and procedures. In some cases, those new things were beneficial and they were implemented by my team. Sometimes, they weren’t implemented even though I thought it might be superior to what we were currently doing. It is a team after all and I am only one voice.

I beleive that as professionals we have to take a hard look at what we are doing and ensure we have not become complacent or static in our processes. I have said it a million times that almost all training is good training if it gives you a different perspective on things. At the very least it increases your overall sophistication on the topic so you can speak intelligently if and when the topic comes up. However, just because you went to nationally known guy’s super course, doesnt mean he is spitting game from the pulpit. Its just his opinion.

I think a good instrucotr SHOULD have an opinion. That opinion should be forged from a crap-ton of training and experience with real missions. I think the instructor should give you his background, that way I can gauge whether or not I can make this TTP work on my team.

For instance, the instructor is from a 100 man team and they cycle through active missions and training on a month on, month off cycle. That team does 700-800 missions a year. Now on it’s face, that guy should be able to lay down some shiz that I want. However, I am on a 2 man team that trains for four hours every other month and we get 2-3 missions per year. Is it possible that we cant adopt his TTP’s because we lack the manpower, training time and mission time to get it right? I might be able to adopt some if his stuff, or flex it to make it work, but I probably cant print the powerpoint and write SOP on it, can I?

The same is true of a TTP that works like gangbusters with Simunition cartridges in a training environment. I hear guys say, “We didnt get shot once during the week using this super technique, it’s the best”. However when you probe them the technique features using doorframes as cover and barricading on them to make shots into a room. SO how many of those Sim rounds hit, and were stopped by the door frame? If the answer is a million, well I would bet that if some of those were real pills they would have hit you. And lets not forget the coward clause. My good friend Mark Renninger used to say that everyone is brave when its Simunitions, the reality is something different and I have to consider how that troll may affect my team as well.

Last, if I am buying what I’m hearing and the TTP is sound across a broad spectrum of circumstances, should I immediately adopt it? Well I have to consider the above with my teams training and mission tempo first. Its not just I want to, but can I? Secondly, if the new TTP is only as good as what Im currently doing, is the re-training effort worth it? Even if its just barely worht it because it fills a small niche, should I go through the re-training effort? If I have a month on, month off cycle maybe I should. If I get 4 hours every other month, maybe not. If it is clearly superior, then you must make the effort.

The way to  determine that is to run some objective testing. The testing should be as scientific as possible but allow variables for human error. Data should be recorded so that it can compiled and examined later. Try the technique with plastic sheeting so Sim rounds can go through it, like real bullets will. Record who fired first, cops or suspects, so we know if we are really scrambling OODA loops. Make note if the cops fire first, because real bullets may prevent the suspect from ever firing his first if they were hits. So on and so forth, this ain’t Bill Nye’s page to explain scientific process, look it up for chrissakes.

The point is to attend training to be exposed to new concepts. But before you adopt those concepts, be objective. Set up a testing process and let real data guide your decision, not the instructors panache or charisma. Or you can just stay the same and risk being called a Dinosaur, but I will end this by saying after 19 years there is nothing new in this game. It is mastering the basics.

As always, sorry for typos.