The Need for a Paradigm Shift in Law Enforcement Tactics

Posted on: July 25, 20160

The Need for a Paradigm Shift in Law Enforcement Tactics

 

After the recent attacks on police, I wanted to write a piece on something that desperately needs to evolve in today’s Law Enforcement Agencies. I have no doubt that the overall point of the piece will be very contentious, as many Americans have great fear of the over-militarization of our Law Enforcement (a point which I will address as well). Many others may get upset due to their belief in deep ingrained dogmas that have permeated our agencies due to a lack of severe threat and complacency. Change is always hard and emotional, but loss of life is usually what drives it. Until things change domestically and globally- we are at war, and is imperative for America to get ahead of the power curve.

 

Who should be allowed to train on tactics?

 

I want to first state that it is my deep belief in the United States Constitution that drives my view that all US Citizens should have access to the same training, weapons, ammunition and equipment as Military and Law Enforcement. That’s right, I said that. You either believe in the Constitution as a starting point, or you don’t believe in the principles of our Republic. Period. For many in Local, State, Federal and Military service- this is a standpoint that causes a great deal of objection and discomfort. If you can’t trust your fellow citizens in this manner, as our founders did, then we are in serious trouble. That being said- I believe that any private business owner has the right to refuse service to anyone. This means trainers in the industry as well. Many of us take this very seriously and take steps to do due diligence on clients attending courses.

 

The Over-Militarization of Law Enforcement

 

            Honest take here- there is truth to the over militarization of Law Enforcement. However, it has nothing to do with equipment. It is purely that some agencies use tactics and techniques that are not appropriate for the situation and/or operational environment. This is due to two main factors.

First- administrators are misusing their assets by placing unrealistic operational tempo on them, combined with a shortage of manpower. If a department does a “high crime day” with their SWAT team and hands them the task of serving a dozen high risk warrants in a shift- there is no way they can employ the proper techniques and have to hit houses hard (which is stupid). Administrators need to get on board to allow their assets to conduct operations with the proper amount of force, with realistic timelines and manpower.

Second- there is an impression that just because you might put on the same gear as a commando, that you need to conduct operation as a commando. Too many movies and myths have perpetuated that the cool thing to do is blow open a door and rush into a house, even though real commando units realized that this is makes no sense over a decade ago by learning hard lessons and escorting bodies home. Many of these tactics have stayed ingrained in the LE culture due to a lack of real threat. Now, I know that statement may ruffle some feathers- but, the threat that a SWAT team generally is exposed to during a no-knock raid is nothing compared to an assault force hitting a house in a combat zone. When you develop TTP’s (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) that only work for a lower threat, they will fall apart when faced with a higher threat. But, TTP’s that work for higher threats usually do fine in lower threat environments.

We also fall into a circular development cycle with our tactics. This is because we do not capture institutional knowledge and sometimes fail to grasp the purpose for the tactic and its application. The “Call-Out” method of addressing occupied structures and vehicles is a perfect example. Many millennial veterans believe this is a new thing, but it is really a re-discovery of the older “cordon and search/knock” operations that were heavily used during peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

 

The Difference Between LE and Military Tactics

 

There isn’t any difference. This is the biggest misunderstanding that exists in the training industry and the Law Enforcement community. We have Tactics, period. The difference is the application of tactics and levels of force.

Let me make an example here: US Army Battle Drill 1A is the tactic a squad uses to advance on an enemy position. It consists of the lead element establishing a base and the trail moving to flank. This allows the element to focus fire on the enemy, without them being able to focus fire on you. It also aids in defeating cover, which often only works well in one direction. Sounds like way too much for a Law Enforcement unit to use in an urban setting right? Why? Because they don’t understand that the way you apply the tactic depends on the operational environment. Sure, in direct combat and in a no kidding combat zone, soldiers will lay down suppressive fire- often at known, suspected, and likely enemy positions. What about in a peacekeeping scenario, like in Kosovo (my first Army deployment) where we acted more as police than infantry? We still used the same tactics. We just lowered the application of force. If we approached a town to meet someone that wasn’t friendly with us, we still moved in with a base and a flanking element. We just didn’t point our weapons at people and had smiles on our faces. This allowed us to soften our appearance, while still staying prepared and in the proper position to deal with threats. Were we still following the tactics of Battle Drill 1A? Can this be applied to a vehicle stop or serving a warrant? Can officers still engage with citizens in a non-threatening manner, while still maintaining the ability to escalate if needed? The answer is yes to all of these questions. This isn’t a difficult concept once you separate tactics from application.

Another point is Individual Movement Techniques (IMT). The days of saying “IMT doesn’t apply to me when I stop a vehicle” are over. When you get ambushed by some BLM extremist while making a traffic stop is not the time to learn that “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down”, and high crawl/ low crawl is actually a thing that works. Just as well, you can follow IMT techniques without doing a 3-5 second rush and dropping to the prone. Once you understand basic fundamentals of the technique, you can apply it to more permissive environments by following the principles.

What I’m saying here is that the LE community and especially their administrators need to shed the “military stuff doesn’t apply to us” mentality. Take the tactics and techniques that the military has perfected over our recent almost 2 decades of constant combat operations and adapt it to your operational environment. Start separating tactics from how you apply them.

 

Force Posture

 

Let me give you a question- picture a Law Enforcement Officer pulling you over at night. When he approaches the window, you see he is wearing a ballistic helmet with NVGs, body armor, and is carrying a rifle. Does the thought of that scare or threaten you? Why? If you saw those items laying on a table by themselves, would you feel the same way? What part of the thought of this causes so many fears? I would content that pre-conceived notions is a large part. The other part is DEMEANOR. Your demeanor shouldn’t change based on what you are wearing, it changes based on the situation and the need for it to change in order to affect an outcome. This situation could be easily reversed to have the occupant of the vehicle as the one kitted out. Many LE Officers would react strongly to this sight, something that I do not believe is the correct answer either. In either situation, you could tell the officer or occupant “Nice helmet, how’s it going today?” and judge the threat based on demeanor and body language. Now- I know that some officers reading this may be throwing a bullshit flag on the field right now because they are riding solo. Just wait, I’ll address that later. What I am saying here is that we need our Law Enforcement Officers to be properly equipped to protect themselves and to deal with threats. Being well and properly equipped in stressful situations will make officers much more confident and reduce fear. It can also reduce the need to escalate a situation in the name of officer safety because they are not adequately protected.

 

Force Multiplication

 

Law Enforcement has a great opportunity to take a piece of the Special Forces playbook in the form of Internal Defense. Notwithstanding local and state laws, Law Enforcement agencies should be (and some are) heavily engaging neighborhood watch groups. Proper training for these groups, to include what their legal authority and limitations are need to be provided. There needs to also be a vetting process that will enable the ability for shared communication methods. To ensure that the groups are responsible and to instill confidence in the partnership, they should be required to obtain background checks for all members on their rolls. With proper training, these groups could provide many capabilities beyond neighborhood patrols (again, depending on local laws)- manning outer cordons, traffic management, first responder medical coverage, surveillance for warrants, etc. The more agencies engage with and enable these groups, the more they will feel a part of the process and stay invested in the security of their neighborhoods. A byproduct of an initiative like this is that the local community will become more attune to the needs of the department, something that could drive pressure on elected officials to properly fund and support them.

 

Medical Training

 

All Law Enforcement Officers need to have full TCCC training. Period, end of story. There is no excuse for departments to not have their officers trained in TCCC. Some departments do, some are still running around with tampons in their kit and think tourniquets are bad. If you carry with you the ability to take a life as your domestic profession or lifestyle, then it is incumbent on you to have the skill and ability to save it.

There should also be no such thing as a “Tac Medic”. You are either a medical professional that works in a hospital/clinic or you work in the field. If you work in the field, you should be capable of operating in the field. Now, I’m not talking about medics as shooters. But, I am talking about medics that do have the ability to defend themselves and have the knowledge to follow officers into a scene. This doesn’t mean they are clearing rooms with the first 3-4 man group that shows up on an active scene. This means they are wearing the properly gear and know how and where to creep up the casualty collection point as the officers progressively gain ground at the scene, not waiting blocks back while officers and citizens are bleeding out in the streets because the scene isn’t secure.

 

Warrior Mindset

 

Stop using this term. Seriously. It has been overused and misapplied to the extent that mentioning it to a police administrator or to a citizen elicits a negative response. It also conveys the wrong purpose. Law Enforcement Officers (and citizens) need to have an alert mindset, a situationally aware mindset. We shouldn’t be thinking of where we CAN apply force, we need to have an analytical thought process of SHOULD we apply force. It is not the default.

Situational awareness should be a lifestyle for citizens, but more so for Law Enforcement officers. Too many years of safety have allowed complacency. As an officer on foot patrol, how often are you exercising normal patrolling techniques? In addition to observing people and patterns, are you frequently identifying positions of cover? Are you progressively scanning intersections before moving into them? Are you analyzing what your actions on near or far contact will be? Why aren’t you? Other than effort, there is no downside to doing these things. You can accomplish all these tasks without anyone knowing that is what you’re doing. You are increasing your situational awareness, while decreasing the chance that someone is going to get the drop on you. Thinking about things before they happen – mentally preparing yourself, will decrease the amount of thought required to solve complex and dangerous situations when they happen and allow you to act sooner, decisively, and with sound judgement.

 

A Failure of Leadership

 

This part is going to sting some a little. Law Enforcement Administrators and City/Town councils are failing their officers. Other than the few departments doing things right, if you fall into this category- ask yourself these questions:

To the Administrator: Which day per week have I set aside for each individual officer to conduct in-service training, where it is his/her paid place of duty? Which days per month have I coordinated mutual support agreements with neighboring departments so that I can train collective tasks with my officers? Do I have a no kidding training plan for each officer and the entire department? (And I don’t mean just going to the range to qualify). In addition to this plan, do I have a matrix to track and analyze each individual officer’s competency and progress in each of their job related skills? Do I plan and conduct bi-annual interdepartmental/agency collective training scenarios (like mass casualty, active shooter, natural disaster, etc)? Do you know what each officer’s hit probability is, with each of their weapons, in a realistic scenario and variable distance?

To the City/Town Council (or funding and policy authority): Have you mandated all of the previous to your department administrators? Have you properly funded them to do so? Have you established manpower requirements adequate so that no officer is solo, that they always are able to travel with a minimum of two officers while covering their areas? Are you purchasing (as you should be) proper equipment for your officers, like body armor and rifles, or are they having to pay out of pocket? Do you mandate high proficiency levels for your officers AND FUND IT?

Many cities and counties that I have encountered would have a “NO” answer to almost every question I posed if they answered it honestly. And it is a disgrace. Our Law Enforcement Officers choose to perform a very hard, dangerous, and at times- thankless job so that citizens can life in a safe society. They need to be supported properly. You can have “community policing” initiatives and all the social welfare programs you want to promote your idea of some liberal utopia, but without law and order- you will never get there. If, as a council or mayor, you want to improve your inner cities- make them safe. If a disadvantaged child in a poor neighborhood drops out of school because it appears to them to be safer to join a gang instead of go to school, it isn’t a cry for social programs- it is a cry for help because you failed ensure a safe environment through enforcement of laws. You failed to properly fund your departments at adequate manpower levels. You failed to adequately train and equip your officers. You failed to support your officers and instill in them the confidence that you will stand behind them. You have failed your community. Fix that.

 

The Training Problem

 

One of the most daunting tasks to Law Enforcement, when it comes to implementing new training, is how to get departments trained up. Most of the issue can be solved by fixing funding, manpower levels, and in-service training like I previously stated. Even if you have an enormous metro department- an aggressive modular training plan, mutually supported by adjacent departments can accomplish the task.

To avoid staying in a constant re-training cycle, the police academies have to evolve. Critical tactics and techniques have to be trained at that level. Combat Shooting Techniques, movement under fire, Tactical Medicine, room entry, all need to be trained at the entry level. This may raise a lot of eyebrows, but it may very well be a new officer that is the first to arrive at the scene of an Active Shooter and all of those skills will immediately be needed. To clarify- “trained” does not mean you spent 2 or 3 days running around with Simmunitions and role players. I mean you spent adequate time training basic fundamentals in each category with LIVE ROUNDS. Simms and UTM are great tools for training collective tasks and contingencies once fundamentals are properly trained, but it DOES NOT train you to employ tactics with live rounds- only using live rounds does that. If the first time you perform CQB with live ammunition is arriving on the scene of an active shooter, then I’m sorry- your training pipeline needs to be fixed. I have heard the excuse that there isn’t enough time in the academy and there are many other tasks that must be trained. That is an invalid excuse. The timeline doesn’t dictate the tasks and standards. The standards and tasks dictate the timeline. If you disagree, maybe you need to factor in the time required to train replacements for dead or incapacitated officers into your mental calculus. Or maybe just move on to a career field where your way of thinking won’t endanger yourself, fellow officers, and the citizens of this country.

Another issue with training in some (not all) departments are training associations. Training associations and programs like we have in Texas in the form of TCOLE and TTPOA are a great thing. The problem comes in where department completely abdicate their responsibility to monitor their officer’s training to them. What do I mean here? Some departments level of concern as to how much training their officers get is if they got their 40hrs this year. But what does that 40hrs mean? Do the tasks trained in those 40hrs match your end state for that individual officer’s progression? Some can’t answer this because they aren’t tracking each officer’s proficiency level in critical skills and planning a training roadmap for the officer. If during an administrator’s regular skill checks they have determined and officer to need more training in medical, then that officer should be directed to prioritize their training association training as such. Then after the training has concluded, the skills should be re-checked to confirm retention and progression. Is this time intensive? Yes. Is it extra effort? Sure. Is it your duty? Absolutely.

 

Closing

 

I know this piece has been very general and critical. I am not saying that all LE departments are bad, nor are there officers. But, I hear form way too many officers that are fighting an uphill battle in their departments. Most officers want to get ahead of emerging threats, especially with the recent and constant attacks against them. Many are scared, their loved ones are terrified to see them put on their uniform and walk out the door every day. As administrators, you must enable them. As town/city councils, you must fund them. And as United States Citizens, you must support them.

 

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