Cutting Edge Training

“With a technique, it’s like I have a bunch of strings that I have tie together to get anything to work, but a fight happens too fast to do that.  With this principle-based fighting, it’s like I have a ball of string and let it fall, and then I just follow the string wherever it takes me, and it flows.”                                    CPL Nicholas Wankasky, USMC

When it comes to a defensive tactics or combatives program for the police, I must respectfully disagree with any content that is "technique-based," which includes any Aikido, jujitsu, or other martial art-based program.  If it is "technique-based," it requires suspect compliance to be successful, it takes too much time to function effectively, locks in the user's attentional focus, it is too complicated for officers to employ, and it wastes valuable and limited training time. The only training that officers--or any armed professional--should receive is "principle-based" training based on how humans actually function in a real world combatives environment.

What is a technique and what is the problem?

 A "technique" is sequence-dependent series of connected actions that are functionally and inextricably tied together: the first move must be completed and successful for the second section of the technique to work, which must be successful for the third and each successive link in the chain to function until the technique is "complete."  Any interruption in the chain of individual moves making up the whole of the technique breaks the chain and the technique fails.  Any imperfection in the angles of movement (whether that is the officer's movement or the suspect's), and the technique cannot be completed.  Any hesitation in the application of the sequence of moves within the technique means the technique fails.  Because fights are unpredictable, involving a minimum of two individuals who each have completely opposing competing interests, the person against whom the technique is being applied is motivated to disrupt the sequence, either intentionally if it is recognized in time to counter it, or unintentionally through simple resistance.  It is most often through this simple resistance that a technique is foiled.

PROBLEM:  Techniques lack internal and external flexibility.  In any fight, the ability to adapt to the instant-by-instant changes in the status quo between the opponents is vital to success.  It is the dependence upon the proper and exact sequence of moves and angles that prevents any flexibility within the technique that disqualifyies this concept of training.  Internally, the movements are ordered, from the first to the last.  There is no room within the technique to adapt to the changing circumstances.  It's like a light switch, not a rheostat--it's either on or off.  The technique works only one way.  This inflexibility limits techniques externally, eliminating any chance of the technique being applied if the exact circumstances are not present for that particular technique.  Minute changes in the suspect's body angle or distance will cause a technique that is already in process to fail.  Once it is being applied, the technique requires the same circumstances from start to completion.  Any change, whether in the sequence or in the circumstances, causes the technique to fail.

PROBLEM:  Techniques take time that just isn't there in a fight. Every technique takes time to achieve this linking of the individual moves within the technique while that the suspect is actively working to limit the time to apply the technique.  In OODA terms, the officer must observe and orient to a suspect being vulnerable to a specific technique (this first requires an officer to be familiar enough with his catalog of varying and individual techniques to be recognize the situational vulnerability).  He must then decide which technique to employ, and then act on that decision.  With any resistance or aggression at all, the suspect will cause the officer to fail in successfully applying that technique.

We must remember that all humans actions within a fight function under the following formula, reaction time plus motor time equals response time, and are further limited due to other human factors.  The officer must react to the vulnerability and employ the correct series of techniques against the suspect who has his own agenda, drives, and will.  The recognition-time, decision-time, and pre-physical initiation time of the officer eats up window of opportunity when the suspect is vulnerable to the "technique"--the suspect is moving moment-by-moment and the situation is changing.  The motor time of a "simple" four-step technique would be measured from the time the officer begins to initiate the first movement to its completion, plus the completion of the second move, and so on through to the completed series of actions of the entire technique.  While efforting the movements of the particular technique, the officer is functionally blind to any changes in the status quo created by the suspect moving and countering the technique.  Techniques create "target-focus" (the officer is focused on the sequence and body parts grabbed, struck, angles of movement, etc.).  The officer is also "goal directed" as he attempting to execute the decision to apply the series of movements. Attentional load under survival stress (a physical confrontation) prevents a typically trained officer from breaking from the efforting of the goal of applying the technique--tenths of seconds tick by with the officer unable to see or be aware of anything the suspect is doing other than the "technique is not working." These human factors limitations put the officer way behind the suspect in the fight--the officer is still fighting to apply the technique but the fight has moved on and the suspect is generating other problems for the officer that he just cannot see because his attention is focused on fighting for a rapidly diminishing position.

PROBLEM:  Too complicated.  An Aikido-, jujitsu-, or martial art-based involving multiple techniques intended to be applied in a rapidly evolving, threat filled fight is by definition a failed system.  Fighting with "techniques" is extremely skill intensive.  The officer must be highly trained in the techniques of the system.  This training must be to "mastery" of the techniques as well as have sufficiently implanted the pattern-recognition needed for the instantaneous orientation and selection of the particular technique applicable within that individualized context of this moment in the fight.

The question must be asked:  "If it takes ten or more years to develop the capability of instant application of technique-based fighting methods in the UFC, how long does it take to train to street competency in technique-based systems?"  Most cops get, at most, 80-hours in the academy. Only a few agencies provide 16-hours of DT/ year (to include carotid restraint, ground combatives, impact weapons, etc.).  So how is any "average" cop going to learn and be able to apply a system of X-number of techniques that all must be "properly" applied to be effective? Experiences shows that they cannot.  In our DT classes, we ask, "How many of you have been able to successfully put a wrist lock/limb restraint on a fresh, resistive suspect without them being able to escape?"  Very few in over 15,000 have raised their hands. For those who do, ALL have been instructors, and all but a couple have admitted that it only worked once or twice in their careers.  Same-same with "takedowns to a cuffing position" when the suspect continues to resist on the ground--only one instructor who insisted that every suspect he's ever taken down was instantly put into a cuffing position.  What this means is that cops cannot apply technique-based methods in the real world away from cooperative partners.

PROBLEM:  Attribute-based.  The ability to apply technqiue-based fighting methods is also "attribute-based."  Attributes are the individual physical, mental, and psychological strengths and weaknesses any person brings the table.  Many look to the UFC-style Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) champions and use them as an example of what officers' training should be.  After all, isn't the octagon the best proving ground there is for what works and what doesn't?  First, the individuals competing in these MMA events are the best athletes in their sport--this means Olympic quality skills, strength, and reflexes. They generally have a decade or more of intensive training where their narrow-focus pattern-matching and recognition skills have been honed by the best coaches possible.  The activity inside the octagon is not a "fight."  It is a sport contest with inflexible safety rules, a referee, medics standing by, and a pat-down immediately prior to the contest ensuring none of the participants are armed with a deadly weapon.  Not one death has occurred in the UFC to date, despite the many knockouts that take place.  These, some of the most functionally fit individuals in the history of the world, with skills and reflexes beyond the comprehension of most average humans, do not represent the reality of fighting on the street.  Nor does it represent police officers working the streets.  While these people range in their attributes from below average to high-functioning athletes, most officers represent the athletic attributes of an average human being.

PROBLEM:  Wastes training time.  It is a universal truth:  cops hate defensive tactics training.  Instructors like to discuss among themselves that cops are "lazy, unmotivated, not interested in saving their lives," and other less-than-flattering descriptors.  However, the truth is worse and hard to face for those who love their complicated, technique-based DT program:  Instructors and their complicated systems create officers who hate to train.

No police officer walks into the academy and doesn't want to learn how to defend themselves against an assault, and how to put their hands on a suspect to take them into custody.  All initially enter the gym bright-eyed only to be confronted with a technical system which some find fascinating but most find daunting.  This dauntingness soon leads to dismay as the recruits are told they are being graded on whether or not they execute each of the dozens or more techniques "properly."  Many practice in their extremely limited "personal time" with fellow recruits trying to get the exact sequence, angles, and movements down.  Most squeak by on their final exam.  If a test were to be required in 8 weeks, how many would pass the same test without extensive study prior to the examination?  In 12 weeks?  How about a year?

Next, the officer is in Field Training.  The first application of a limb restraint works just like in the academy--as long as that first suspect is cooperative, like 99% of suspects being arrested (per DOJ BJS).  Upon the first resistive suspect, the limb restraint fails, and depending upon the reasonableness of the FTO, the trainee is either counseled and receives low marks on their Daily Observation Report, or reality is noted and there is no penalty for attempting policing with techniques that fail when they need to work.  Now the officer passes Field Training, and is working solo patrol.  No matter how many times a limb restraint technique is attempted and fails, the officer continues to attempt what he or she was taught--meeting the definition of insanity (attempting to do the same thing over and over again and each time expecting a different result).  The first in-service DT class as an officer often finds the young officer (likely still on probation with all the uncertainty that status engenders) fervently attempting to understand and apply the myriad techniques the agency instructor is presenting.  The officer is bruised, twisted, and strained, and spends several days healing, limping, and groaning from overuse or slight-to-moderate injuries as he or she pushes the patrol car and responds to calls for service.  Overwhelmed with the complication and the inability to apply it "like the instructor" or in anything remotely resembling a realistic street application, frustration builds.  Insanity in the field continues (attempting over and over again to apply techniques on suspects who refuse to wait around for the officer to finish the executing technique and failing to perform as advertised and trained), the officer soon grows disenchanted with spending any time in training that simply reinforces his or her "failure" and causes needless injury and pain.  This valuable survival skill and the time devoted to it is wasted because "training" cannot occur if the officer does not want to participate.  If there is no perception of value by the officer who is just trying to survive through DT classes with the most minimal participation, we are wasting training dollars, training time, and needlessly exposing valuable personnel to potential injury.

The question is often then asked, if not "techniques," then what do I teach my officers?

Officers learn best when they are trained to fight like a human being actually functions in a fight.  We fight by problem-solving.  This type of combatives training relies upon "contextually correct" training that mimics the human fighting methods.  Cutting Edge Training's "Effective Combatives Problem-Solving©" doctrine provides just that--training within the context of the human being in a police fight.  This briefly encompasses:

• Problem-solving:  officers are trained via adult learning theory.  Participants are permitted to experiment with their own reasonable solutions to their defense problems.  Rather than an instructor giving the officer the solution (which is the "instructor's solution reflecting only that instructor's unique attributes, experience, skills, aptitude, etc.), the student's solution is based on their own individual capabilities and attributes.   Critics complain that officers cannot be left to their own devices and be permitted to run willy-nilly through the streets solving their defense and control problems with their own solutions.  However, the reality is that technique-trained officers routinely fail to apply the techniques they were trained in because the techniques themselves fail in the reality of the conflict, and officers (actually, all humans) universally and reasonably solve their own problems in a combative environment.
• Universal Rules and Principles of Combatives.©  These Rules and Principles are universal in the human experience of combatives methods, and are the core consistencies upon which all effective fighting means are based.  The Rules are intrinsic to every physical conflict and represent goals and qualities that more common sensical, while the individual Principles are tactically applied as needed.  The Principles represent the "primal blueprint" that all humans operate within--those responses and hard-wired actions that humans employ in a threat incident that have caused humans to survive from the beginning of life.  Rather than the impossible task of attempting to train these primal responses out of an officer, the Universal Rules and Principles of Combatives recognize the advantages of the primal blueprint and assists the officers in how to consciously apply it.
• Simple skills.  Avoiding any type of technique, Effective Combatives Problem-Solving© employs simple, gross-motor "skills."  Skills are single movements executed upon decision.  They involve single movements such as a grab, pull, punch, kick, etc.  While any motor skill takes "movement time" (whether a "technique" or a "skill"), the skill is more "timing" dependent (requiring the officer to time the skill properly so that the skill affects the target), it is less "time" dependent (requiring a duration of time to employ to be effective or successful).  Gross-motor, simple skills are more likely to be successfully employed and applied in a combatives event.
• Reasonable within the law and policy.  All officer solutions within training is required to be 4th Amendment-based and justified.  Regardless of the officer's particular solution on the mat, like that on the street, the officer must problem-solve in a manner that this justifiable and defensible.
• Tactically sound.  It is imperative to maintain coherency with the "Univeral Tactical Principles"© doctrine.  Any system of training that fails to maintain safe tactics as a foundation only creates confusion with resulting injuries and death. 
• OODA and Human Factors Compliant.  The problem-solving must be in context with how humans actually function in the combatives threat environment.  Beliefs about what officers "should" be able to do must not conflict with what humans are actually able to perform.

Conclusion

Technique-based training is, simply, an antiquated method of training.  If approached with an open mind, technical training involving dozens or even hundreds of individual techniques that must be performed sequentially and properly cannot be justified any longer as a training method for any armed professional.  Techniques are too complicated, take too learn to learn, and too long to apply if they are remembered in time, to be effective on the street.

The message is clear:  Abandon techniques.  It is truly the dawn of the principle-based training system--something human factors research is proving over and over again.

A rash of shootings of off-duty officers occurred over the last few months.  These officers were tragically shot and killed by other police officers responding to reports of violence (generally shooting or man-with-a-gun calls).  This is not, unfortunately, an unusual series of events.  The shooting of off-duty or plainclothes officers is all too common.  These shootings almost universally occurred as these brave professionals were involved in off-duty enforcement actions—primarily in responding to imminent threat to life events with deadly force against the actual suspects.  Responding officers mistook their armed status, firing at what they reasonably believed to be a dangerous suspect.

Each time there is a shooting of an off-duty officer, there is a call for a nationwide “universal system of identifying off-duty officers” who are taking enforcement action.  The idea of identifying off-duty cops is difficult at best as most do not want to be identified as “police” as they move about their off-duty hours, and carrying indentifying clothing or markers (which can be pulled on or revealed) gets old after a very short period of time.  It is unlikely that officers will become excited about anything like these suggestions.  Something else must be sought as a more practical solution.

Are Off-Duty Officers More Likely to be Mistakenly Shot Than Civilians When They Intervene?

Given the number of off-duty officers who are shot, and the number who are killed, a question arises:  Are civilians who are licensed to carry a concealed handgun and are, like officers also permitted by law to intervene in deadly assaults (by right of self-defense and defense of others), also being shot in corresponding numbers by responding police?  After all, there are many more concealed carry permit holders nationwide than officers, and these people intervene in violent acts at a greater rate than police officers (According to researcher John Lott, there are approximately 3.6 million defensive uses of a firearm by civilians per year in the US, of which 98% are merely brandishing a weapon to discourage criminal assault.  The remaining 72,000 defensive uses of a gun involve the individual firing in self-defense or defense of others.).

A search of the internet reveals the usual anti-gun sites listing crimes committed by a very few permit holders, but otherwise there is very little mention of police officers shooting civilians in the act of lawfully intervening in a violent event.  Why this difference between the two groups of individuals who are both in civilian clothes and armed with a firearm while engaging in similar intervention tasks?

In considering the number and circumstances of these shootings, it becomes plainly apparent that a two-pronged solution for police is necessary if we hope to change the number and frequency of these “blue-on-blue/friendly fire” shootings:

• Off-duty conduct during the act of intervention; AND,
• Current deadly force training.

Off-Duty Police Conduct and Intervention

Off-duty conduct has been addressed in training for years:

• Take enforcement action only in defense of life.
• Be a good wit.
• If you draw a weapon, get your police ID out and visible.
• When the officers arrive, DO WHAT THEY TELL YOU TO DO.

The unspoken problem with this? Cops have “cop mentality” and see other cops from their own perspective—an off-duty or plainclothes officer sees or hears responding officers and thinks, "Here comes MY team."  What happens when you are on-duty, in uniform or a raid jacket, and your team members arrive when you need help?  Some part of you relaxes a bit and you now begin to think and act like you are part of the arriving officers' team.  You are not alone.  You have support and assistance and your danger level just decreased immensely from what it was just moments before because your teammates will protect you.  You might begin thinking, “We are going to take care of the rest of this event.”

This is 180 degrees from the off-duty’s present reality—the arriving officers see a gun and think, "Suspect with a gun!”  Minimally, at gunpoint, the uniform begins shouting repeated orders to drop the gun, to get on the ground, to show hands, etc.  When the man-with-a-gun (the actor) is shooting at the other individual (victim) or is pointing a gun at the other subject (victim), the uniformed officer responds per his or her training or experience. 

With the off-duty officer completely snapped into his “cop-perspective,” he hears the orders he has heard hundreds of times on-duty.  He’s shouted them to suspects hundreds of times.  Once officers get to this point in a contact, they almost always have won and the suspect almost universally complies.  The off-duty is further lulled into a sense of safety.  His teammates are simply acting out their roles along with him—and certainly not against him.

Now the off-duty officer turns to greet the team.  The stress and fear from the previous course of events as well as the continuing level of danger are still on his face.  The weapon moves because the off-duty officer’s head moves toward the arriving officer(s). 

The on-duty, uniformed officer, with no information other than the original call of unknown violence or that a shooting has taken place, sees the man-with-a-gun turning at him.  Perception-response limitations and the certain knowledge that the uniform is “behind” in this gunfight act on the officer’s training and survival instinct.  He responds to a reasonably perceived threat, "He's moving at me!—SHOOT!!!!!"

These "blue-on-blue, friendly fire" shootings occur because, as officers arrive, the off-duty cop, thinking like a cop who is one of the team, acts like one of the team, and turns, fails to comply with immediate orders, or is simply shot down because he's in the act of firing on someone—or more commonly, holding a subject at gunpoint and turning with a gun in his hand to look at the officers.

TRAINING POINT:  Off-duty tactical and survival strategies are different than on-duty, uniformed or easily identifiable methods of performing the job.

• Think of the responding officers from the perspective of the most excitable and impulsive officer you've ever worked with.  What is s/he going to see and how is s/he going to be processing high-threat, time-compressed events when you are shooting at someone or standing over someone with a handgun in-hand?  That ought to make you fairly concerned about your safety as the cavalry arrives, and VERY compliant to any orders.

“Off-Duty Officer Safety” Suggestions

Take enforcement action only in defense of life, and be a good witness.  The common arguments for not taking routine enforcement actions remain viable:  you are not equipped like you are on-duty, you do not have communications capabilities like you do on-duty, you have no backup and no one is checking on you if you don’t report in, and no one knows where you are.

TRAINING POINT:  In this case, there is no reason to get involved in thefts, arguments, simple assaults, strong-arm robberies, etc., without extenuating circumstances (purse snatch: no;  beat down robbery:  probably).  Absent a threat-to-life-assault, with or without weapons, become the best witness you can.  While some officers believe they have a “duty” to intervene under any circumstances involving any infraction or crime, a more mature view is that being a witness and safely tracking the whereabouts or flight of the suspect(s), permitting on-duty uniformed officers to converge and apprehend and later prosecute the suspect(s) is still performing your duty without needlessly endangering your life or that of the responding officers. 

If you draw a weapon, get your police ID out and visible simultaneously.  Many officers carry a badge on a chain around their necks under their shirts, ready to flip outside of their clothing to be “visible” to all around them.  Others wear their badge next to their holstered weapon so that all who see the holstered weapon can see the badge and “know” they are officers.  Still others carry their badges in either their sole wallet or a second wallet, and pull it out and flip the badge open in their reactive hand to be “seen” simultaneously with the drawn handgun.

TRAINING POINT:  The problem is an arriving officer’s attentional focus will likely be locked onto the handgun and s/he will likely not be able to see anything other than that threat.  Absent a uniform or raid jacket, the arriving officer’s attention set (what s/he expects to see) is a civilian acting like a criminal with a gun.  Police trainers train officers to have this attention set, and most of the time it is the proper mindset and expectation.  NEVER RELY ON A BADGE TO PROTECT YOU FROM MISIDENTIFICATION BY OFFICERS EXPECTING A CRIMINAL.  With that said, ALWAYS, if it is practicable, have your badge visible, but don’t depend upon an officer seeing it in time.

When the officers arrive, do what they tell you to do.  See from the perspective of the arriving officers.  When you hear orders, understand that even if they see your badge, anybody can buy and display a badge.

TRAINING POINT:  Follow any police commands as if the orders were directed at you.  If ordered to the ground, do it slowly.  If ordered to drop your weapon, do it (don’t carry a gun that you don’t want to drop on the ground—carrying a customized, one-of-a-kind gun that you don’t want to ding is stupid:  everyday carry will ding and rub the finish anyway, so either don’t carry it or drop it when commanded so you don’t get shot).  DO yell that you are a cop.  DO have your badge/ID visible.  Then comply with every command until someone says, “No, not you.”  And you may be cuffed—comply, even if you wouldn’t handcuff someone who said he was a cop (Now is the time to thank the nice police officer for not shooting you rather than getting in his face because he “treated me like a crook!”  Save your moral outrage and comply like you hope another professional would if the tables were turned and you were uniform who was simply attempting to be safe while trying to figure out “who’s who in the zoo.”).

Nothing changes in your jurisdiction.  Just because you are in your jurisdiction where you are well known and know every officer in the agency, you cannot assume they will recognize you.  The attentional focus under stress cannot be switched on and off.  If there is a great degree of perceived threat, the likelihood of your being recognized by someone you have worked with for years is low to non-existent.  A tragic but extremely useful example is from California where an officer in an agency with 24 officers is changing from his uniform to civilian clothing at the end of shift.  An Emotionally Disturbed Person brandishes a handgun in the station lobby.  The off-duty officer circles around to the front of the station, gun in hand, to support the responding officers.  After a minute or so, the suspect, still armed with the handgun counts down while at gunpoint.  Uniformed officers fire and hit him, ending the threat.  As they approach the downed gunman, the off-duty officer pushes open the door and quickly enters the lobby.  An officer calls out, “Gun!” and two officers spin and shoot the man-with-a-gun, the officer who was off-duty, a man they had just gotten off shift with.  He died, leaving a wife and son.

He was shot because these officers, under this level of stress, threat, and time compression, were humanly able to see only the gun, and from that, both officers made their simultaneous survival decision.  Now, try to tell the two shooter officers that they couldn’t have done anything differently under the circumstances—it’s doubtful they have forgiven themselves, even though it clearly was not their fault.

Deadly Force Training

Many officer survival and firearms training programs emphasize recognition of the weapon as the trip-wire for response.  This is offered as “Gun = shoot.”  “Knife = shoot.”  The signal to shoot on the range is, "Gun!"  Knife defense deadly force signal, "Knife!"

TRAINING POINT:  Deadly force should be a behavior-based response rather than a simple response to the hardware an individual possesses.  Training should provide what I call "Early Orientation Markers" which provide threat pattern-matching capabilities for officers.  It is the concept of “threatening behavior + reasonable belief of capability (weapon) = Deadly Force.

"Deadly force” is permitted when an officer has a reasonable and objective belief that his/her life, or that of another’s, is in actual or imminent danger of death or serious physical injury (SPI) based on the totality of the facts known to the officer at the time."  While this discussion is not intended to be a primer on deadly force standards, the individual officer’s reasonable belief the suspect’s actions, based on everything known to the officer at that moment, creating an imminent (about to shoot) or actual (the subject is firing) danger of being killed or seriously injured is required.  The mere possession of a deadly weapon absent any other indication of threat (past threat such as in an active shooter event, or an imminent threat such as moving the weapon toward or at the officer, arming himself, etc.) is difficult to justify.  If the suspect is simply armed, the officer should likely need more information to shoot.

A first responding sergeant at the Trolley Square Mall shooting (an active shooter event) stated he  (the sergeant did not fire on the off-duty officer because of the officer’s behavior—though the plainclothes, off-duty was armed with a weapon in-hand and was maneuvering in a tactical manner, the sergeant instantly understood that the armed individual was not a problem (Source:  Steve Papenfuhs).  Simply put, the off-duty officer was not acting in manner that prompted his needing to be shot.  That sergeant’s instant evaluation in a high-threat environment is the behavior-based decision-making that I believe we need to reinforce in training.  Our job is to create in our officers a capability of evaluating threat behavior very quickly:  “Is the behavior I see right now like a criminal (threatening) or like a cop (protective even though tactical)?

Officers responding to high risk calls (man-with-a-gun qualifies) need to have proper tactics drilled into them in training.  As, or even more importantly, peer pressure and supervisory reinforcement of safe and practical application of tactical movement and response should be never-ending.  Proper tactics provide officers the time they need to evaluate the situation and to react to the threat-based behavior rather than simply the hardware they need to focus on when there is no time left but to react.

TRAINING POINT:  Good tactical response according to Universal Tactical Principles© creates time to make these decisions:

• Optimize distance.  Stay as far from the suspected problem as you can and still be able to conduct business.  Distance equals time.  While the “optimum” distance is a subjective matter that must balance efficiency and effectiveness with safety, generally the farther you can get from a weapon problem, more time is available enabling to you to operate safely.
• Minimize exposure.  Be as small a target as possible.  Cover stops bullets and the effects of bullets (ricochet and spall from the backside of the material) from harming you.  Concealment prevents observation but not bullets passing through.  All approaches to high-risk, weapon-related calls should be from cover to cover.  All contact with armed/possibly armed-subjects should be from cover or concealment.  Cover is your friend when you have a firearm in your hand. 
• Invisible deployment.  Officers should deploy on-scene unobtrusively and reveal their presence at a time and timing of their choosing.  The subject(s) should be surprised to find an officer pointing a weapon at them, rather than anticipating where and when the officer will be revealed.
• Keep subjects in a narrow field of view.  If you are part of a multiple-officer response, your objective is to contact the subject(s) from positions providing a wide triangulation for you and your fellow officers, giving you intersecting fields of fire as well as a narrow target.  When combined with the Universal Tactical Principle of “invisible deployment,” this method of contact creates an instant, extreme vulnerability for the suspect.  Essentially, it “flanks” the suspect and gives him wide and divergent angles in order to get firing solutions on each officer—a very difficult and unlikely proposition.

Conclusion

The shooting of off-duty or plainclothes officers is, largely, avoidable.  The solution primarily centers on both sides of the problem, the off-duty officer as well as the responding officer.

Responding officers must be trained to respond to life-threatening behavior rather than to a weapon.  By employing Universal Tactical Principles© within the response, the officer gains more time for decision-making while increasing their own safety.  “Getting the drop” on the suspect is a good thing (like being behind "cover" when you have a weapon in your hand).

Off-duty safety in the past has centered on training the off-duty officer to act like a police officer.  When intervening in a criminal act, the off-duty officer was to “clearly” identify himself, take action, and then cooperate with the officers to take the subject into control.  But this almost universally trained strategy continues to end in tragedy.

While not empirical by any means, it is likely that off-duty officers snap into their regular enforcement mindset while for the armed civilian this is an unusual event.  When the civilian draws his weapon and engages a suspect by fire, this is strictly a surreal situation that is altogether different from any experience he might have had prior to the shooting.  When the police arrive on-scene, while there is likely a sense of relief, the armed civilian knows he is not on the “cops’ team.”  The officers don’t know him at all, and may treat him like a threat.  Paying attention and complying is the best path.

A shooting might well be a novel experience for an officer as well.  However, the officer will be well-conditioned by his experience of policing, confronting suspects, and taking subjects into custody to revert to accustomed behavior.  Add to this any scenario-based training involving the officer responding to threat with deadly force.  Moreover, officers are used to working as a team, and have that schema, or mental map, that filters their perceptions.  It is a rare officer who has not contemplated the very real possibility of being involved in an officer-involved shooting--and it is likely the officer personally knows one or several officers who have been in shootings.  This also adds to the “cop mindset” that officers bring to their off-duty interventions.

Acting like an officer when not clearly and immediately identifiable as a cop is a tactical choice that is inherently hazardous in the face of responding officers rushing to the scene of what they know only as a crime in-progress involving a firearm.  If being a witness is not an option, make a conscious decision to act in a manner that protects you from being shot by a cop who either doesn't or cannot recognize you as a "good guy," and take steps before the police arrive on-scene to lessen the chance of friendly fire.  If confronted, immediately respond the same way you hope a suspect will act when you get the drop on him.

While these tragic shootings may never be eliminated, I believe it is possible to limit their frequency through training both sides of this terrible equation. 

Take care, be safe.  And shoot straight.

Another in a series of never-ending shootings of officers on traffic stops just landed in my e-mail box.  In this one, gratefully, the officer was uninjured--not because of what the officer did, but because of what the suspect did not do.  A brief review of this particular incident, and the catalyst for this article, is the following:

• The officer, after having made a traffic stop, walks up and contacts the driver at the driver's window.
• The driver, in this case, engages the officer with a lie, to which the officer bluntly responds, "No.  I was right behind.  I saw you..." (slowing his perception-reaction time to anything the suspect might do). 
  
• The officer asks how much the driver’s had to drink, whereby the driver petulantly answers, “Plenty.” 
  
• As the officer says, "Plenty, huh?" the suspect produces a handgun (“out of nowhere”).  

This video is, thankfully, different than most of its kind—the suspect is A) too drunk to realize he has not chambered a round; B) is incompetent; or, C) both.  The loud “click” is the officer not being murdered from the muzzle 12 inches away from his face.

The officer’s reaction to the muzzle in his face and the very loud click (which is the second loudest sound in the world from that side of the muzzle) is similar to every officer who has survived this type of event:

• Hands go up to his face as his body crouches in a startle reaction.
• Expletive uttered.
• Change of balance to the rear (directly in-line with the trajectory of the round). 
• Amazement he isn’t dead.
• Realization that he is not finished with the gunfight and must take action occurs when the suspect fires a round at him.
• Response with deadly force. 

It is also similar to every officer who is unexpectedly shot and injured or murdered:  hands go up at the sudden movement of a handgun shoved at the officer, the expletive if there is time, and the change of balance in response to the fright and muzzle blast.

It's been common knowledge for decades that traffic stops are extremely dangerous.  That this type of shooting unfolds as it does is typical.  This is because we now have so many in-car video systems and recordings of these terrible, violent events.   We know the process and what happens during this shootings--officers walk up to contact the driver, and are shot before they can react.  Every officer, regardless of his age, fitness, tactical awareness, experience, or any other factor any officer believes exempts him from the limits of being in a human body and the attentional capabilities it posseses, is at the mercy of the driver upon approach for approximately one second of the contact.  And if the suspect decides to put a gun through the window and shoot the officer, it cannot be stopped because there just isn't time to observe the weapon, orient to the fact that a muzzle is now pointing at the officer, and to decide to do anything while acting in time to make a difference.  Typically, the suspect gets off two or more shots before the officer reacts with anything other than an instinctive flinch. 

This repeats itself over and over and over, the same way, year in and year out.  And still, trainers in academies keep teaching their recruits to walk up on unknown suspects in situations that commonly cause officers to be murdered.

So, as trained, cops keep walking up, and continue getting shot and murdered.  Even when an officer is hit in the vest, we see the suspect minimally get 2 rounds off before the officer reacts with anything other than shock and surprise.  The end result of every one of these is that the officer is either shot at and hit, or shot at and missed through no counter-assault action on the part of the officer.  If the officer walks up on an occupied vehicle, the suspect either does not shoot or he does—there is nothing the officer can do that changes this variable:  it is a roll of the dice.

To emphasize this, a State Trooper teaching a traffic stop class at a state academy put his recruits through a simunition/FX cartridge scenario.  The recruits were being graded on their approach and positioning as well as their contacting the driver appropriately.  Each recruit knew there was a gun involved, and knew the subject was going to attempt to shoot the recruit-officer contacting him.  Regardless of the efforts to properly position themselves, 100% of the recruits were shot.  Now, the purpose of this exercise (other than wrongly training the recruits to purposely walk up on a man-with-a-gun) was not, as I thought it was going to be, a caution against walking up on a traffic stop to contact the driver.  Instead, the Trooper, straight-faced and intense, stated, “That’s the risk you take being a cop.” 

Um…what?  So we teach officers to walk into a no-win situation; a crap shoot that could mean they are shot and murdered every time they walk up on a traffic stop?  Yup. Some well-known "tactics" instructors advocate that as officers approach the violator's vehicle, that they touch the brake light cover in order to have the officer's finger prints on the suspect vehicle for identification purposes should the officer be shot and killed!  Really?

BOTTOM LINE:  The walk-up (a.k.a. “I-have-no-idea-who-I’m-stopping-and-I-cannot protect-myself-so-please-don’t-shoot-me”) traffic stop presents an indefensible tactical problem for which the only safe option is to stop using it.  It is a violation of every officer safety principle there is, and is solely performed because “That’s how we’ve always done it.”  HOW MANY MORE MURDERED COPS DO WE HAVE TO BURY BEFORE WE STOP THE INSANITY?

There is no defense to a driver or passenger shooting the officer from either a driver’s side approach, or a passenger side approach.  It is time to get consistent with the tactical principles we teach to officers for every other citizen contact other than traffic stops:  Make the subject come to you. 

The "Call-back Traffic Stop"

Call the driver back to the side of the road with their documents, and make it a “Ped stop.”  Conduct business where the suspect is not in his environment where his hands and what is within reach cannot be seen by the officer until it is too late.  This gives the officer the advantage of noting the subject's compliance and apparent armed status prior to gaining proximity where time-distance factors mitigate against any effective response.

The usual objections to this much safer practice?

• “I’ll get complaints.”  Umm, not so much.  In fact, people will do what you tell them to do, and the courts have permitted getting the driver out of vehicles for years.  Officers who are practicing the call-back T-stop for two decades report no increase in the number of complaints related to their conduct of a traffic stop.
• “I won’t get my ‘plain-view’ arrests.”  Umm, again, not so much.  Nothing stops an officer from conducting the interview, issuing the cite, and then following the subject back to the car to get a look inside at anything that might be in plain view.  The question might be asked of these officers, “If you are up at the driver’s window or front passenger window and are busy looking around the interior of the vehicle, then who is monitoring the driver’s/passengers’ hands?”  We know that humans can focus on one task at a time, and the visual focal area is very small.  Attentional loads being what they are, if the officer is looking at the interior for drugs or guns, he’s not looking at the suspect’s hands, and (let’s say it together) “Hands kill.”
• “He could attack me just as he steps out of the driver’s door.”  Yes.  He could.  And he is 25+ feet away.  And the officer is back at his vehicle, with much more time to react, with a greater likelihood of being missed at that distance rather than 6-18 inches.  The suspect is also in the officer’s primary field of vision, where the officer’s attentional focus is.  Micro-threat cues should be alerting the officer’s spidey-senses that something is wrong simply by the way the subject is exiting the car, giving him a jump on his perception-reaction time.  This is a good time to focus on the driver’s hands (although EVERYONE first focuses on the subject’s face) because…well, you know. 
• “He could physically assault me at the side of the road.”  Yes.  He could.  So could every person you contacted on your last shift.  Physical assault, like deadly assault, does not exist in a vacuum.  Violence is a process.©  Assaults, guns, and knives do not “come out of nowhere.”  There are threat cues in every assault.  And having this person walk up to you gives you an opportunity to assess their compliance and glean something of their intent.  
• “I’m not going to have 80-year old grandmas and soccer moms get out of their car.”  Good.  Don’t.  It is always your choice to intentionally violate the safety principles IF you believe it is in your best interest and furthers your mission.  Think about this:  if you feel it is safe to approach because you don’t want to get grandma or mom out of the vehicle in the rain, take the conscious risk and approach the vehicle.  However, a routine unconscious violation of safe Universal Tactical Principles© doctrine (approaching an unknown, unsearched, and unidentified subject, and dealing with him in his environment) is an invitation to be assaulted and/or murdered, like that of the officer in the video, and every video of a police officer being shot on a traffic stop. 

There is simply no excuse for continuing to conduct the unsafe and dangerous traditional "walk-up-please-don't-shoot-me traffic stop."  It is time to stop this insanity of doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result.  Just because you spent 30 years walking up on cars and weren’t shot, only means that you didn’t walk up on someone who wanted to shoot you without warning.  If you had, he would have shot at you in spite of anything you did or didn’t do.  That is not “safe” or “tactical.”  That’s luck, and luck should not be considered to be a skill set.

We are asked what makes Cutting Edge Training different.  The following explanation is why we do what we do at Cutting Edge Training, and what makes our training programs for armed professionals truly unique.

The training philosophy of Cutting Edge Training, LLC, is this:  Training must be functional to be of value.  If the training cannot be immediately applied by an armed professional, or if it is too complicated, that training is ineffective and will be of little value to the officer when needed.  Functionality within a combatives environment is a direct result of effective, efficient, and practical training preparing an officer to lawfully overcome resistance and to defend against any assault.

To be functional, the training must be:

• Relevant to the professional's job duties, experience, expectations, and fears.
• Uncomplicated enough to work within the limiting human factors that are universal to every human, as well as under crushing fatigue, through injury, and when immersed in confusing and mind-numbing threat-to-life events.
• Sophisticated enough to apply to universal threats and the quickly evolving, high-pressure situations the professional routinely responds to.
• Oriented to problem-solving rather than attempting to train an professional to employ “techniques” to the thousands of problems that he or she will face. 
• Defensible in every post-incident venue:  agency, criminal, and civil.  It must also be defensible to the community or public, and to the media.

We look at a problem and break it down to discover how a human being, immersed in that environmental context, can solve that problem with the tools at hand and with the attributes (e.g., everything that person brings to the game:  intelligence, emotional sophistication—or lack of it, built in human performance limitations, values, goals, expectations, fears, etc.), their training life experience, etc., that person possesses.  We strive for “contextually correct” training.  That is, how this individual in that uniform must perform to win and survive within the circumstances presented in their fight, whatever the event might be.  Without being contextually correct, training has little value.  We understand that it is not what you can do in a fight, but what you can’t do—and knowing the difference—is the key to success in the combatives environment.

Functional fighting depends upon the application of Universal Principles of Combatives© within Universal Rules of Combatives©.  Training the professional in “techniques” forces that individual to attempt to remember, select, and then apply  the specific inter-related, sequence dependent series of moves comprising that unique technique out of thousands of techniques for this exact circumstance while under time constraints imposed by the Threat.  This routinely—and not unexpectedly—fails in the real world of combatives, causing the armed professional to fall back on primitive problem-solving methods.   For example, a young Marine (and MCMAP Brown Belt) described this principle-driven problem-solving concept in his evaluation of this training approach:  “With a technique, it’s like I have a bunch of strings that I have tie together to get anything to work, but a fight happens too fast to do that. With this principle-based concept of fighting, it’s like I have a ball of string and let it fall, and then I just follow the string wherever it rolls.”

This contextually correct training is something we call "Effective Combatives Problem-Solving."©  This combatives philosophy functionalizes training, making it accessible to the professional.  It is predicated upon integrating minimally the following concepts into a single, practical, and achievable program:

• The legal restraints (and permissions) imposed by agency policy, state and federal laws, the state Constitution, and the US Constitution for law enforcement, or the ROEs established for military engagements.
• OODA functioning and application in the threat environment.  This is the theory of how humans make decisions under time and safety pressures that is practical and built into all training concepts.
• Safe Tactical Doctrine compliant.  Everything taught and trained must be internally consistent as well as explicitly compliant to tactically sound principles. 
• Problem-solving through the Universal Rules and Principles of Combatives©.  All training is based upon this “primal blueprint” of intrinsic and hard-wired responses built into every human being.  Humans actually problem-solve their way through most combatives events, and rarely--if ever--apply "techniques" to a quickly evolving, highly threatening problem. 
• Simple skills.  All skills must be functional within the threat environment in which the professional operates.  These skills must be accessible to every officer—from the most to the least skilled—within the time and resources allotted for training.

This contextually correct approach to training police officers, for example, creates an “integrated force concept” for officers in their response to resistance and assault.  This training eschews the concept of “training in a box.”  For example, historically (through to the present day), officers are commonly trained in distinct and separate categories of force.  This separation of force disciplines and force skills has taken the form of distinct "boxes" that never provide any integration of an officer's training.  The result is an officer responding to threat by resorting to his or her individual training boxes rather than fighting as an integrated whole:

• Firearms training:  at the range.  Firearms solutions only to any problem involving firearms and knives, or any threat to life. 
• Defensive Tactics training:  on the mats.  Martial arts or sports-based techniques.  Defensive Tactics solutions to any problem involving any threat level, including guns and knives and threats to life.
• Less-lethal/Taser/non-lethal:  in the classroom and practical training area.  Every problem except actual, immediate threat to life problems.
• Legal restraints on force:  In the classroom.  There is no explanation or correlation of classroom learning to the mat, the less-lethal practicum, or the live-fire range.
• Tactics:  in the classroom.  Following the discussion of “tactics,” there is no other practical application or incorporation of the tactical awareness into the training curriculum.

Through Cutting Edge Training’s integrated approach to training, however, the professional is presented with concepts incorporating his or her whole experience of policing and force response.  Law and policy, sound tactics, human performance limitations and threat decision-making are blended into no-nonsense skills and employment methods.  No longer is Defensive Tactics seen as solely providing defensive tactics-only solutions to police problems.  Instead, officers are taught to work the problem to the “police solution” (Universal Rule of Combatives #2©) and incorporate all of their knowledge, experience, skills, and tools into a lawful, reasonable, and defensible solution.  Every problem becomes a “police-problem” rather than a “gun-problem” or a “DT-“ or “Taser-problem.”  Officers become quickly accustomed to this problem-solving approach because it absolutely parallels their solution seeking on the street.  It mirrors and complements exactly how officers decisionize their every day responses as well as their extraordinary response to dangerous calls. 

It is in this integrated approach that combatives training (every skill and knowledge domain a professional is trained in involving an arrest and force response) becomes “functionalized.”  By taking a real-world approach, breaking problems down and finding methods that can actually be employed by every officer in that real world of threat, danger, and liability, officers are more likely to problem-solve their way to a defensible and successful conclusion.

Practical.

Tactical.

Functional.

Defensible.

That is Cutting Edge Training’s integrated and contextually-correct approach to functionalizing all of the force skills and knowledge domain training for law enforcement and military personnel.  That is why we are different and unique.  We don't just train you and your professionals.  We functionalize your combatives training.

(We are repeatedly asked why everyone isn't teaching combatives to armed professionals this way.  We have to admit:  we have no clue.) 

A very informative PowerPoint by the FBI’s Defensive System’s Unit has been going around the Internet (again).  The subject is an OIS (Officer-Involved Shooting) involving three police officers from Pennsylvania ambushed by a single suspect.  The specifics of the shooting for this discussion, while interesting, are not too important:

• The officers carried .40 caliber Glocks loaded with Speer 180 gr. Gold Dot ammo, and Hornady TAP 75 gr. .223 caliber (and SWAT employed 55 gr. TAP) from their AR15s.
• The suspect carried a single .45 caliber handgun.
• 107 .40 cal and .223 cal rounds were fired by two officers.  The third was wounded in the initial ambush.
• The assailant fired 26 rounds, and reloaded his magazine from loose rounds during the firefight.
• The suspect was hit 17 times, with 11 rounds exiting his body.
• The suspect’s right arm (humerus) was broken by a .40 cal. bullet after all .223 ammo was expended.
• The incident lasted approximately three-and-one-half minutes.
• Even with all of his wounds, the officers were forced to fight the suspect into handcuffs before he expired.
• The suspect had trace amounts of marijuana in his system. 
  

What is important are the conclusions the officers and agency came to as a result of the shooting:

• The .40 caliber ammo “failed” and “did not cause incapacitation” which is the opposite conclusion the FBI came to:  the .40 caliber ammo was effective, and the .223 ammunition "failed" based on their gelatin "standards.'
  

The question was then asked by someone in the long line of forwards, “If the ammo did not fail why did they have to fight the (S) (Suspect) after he was hit 17 times?...Wonder what the real truth is…"

To answer this question, we must remember there are only four ways to stop a human being:

1. Mechanically.  His bones are broken and he can no longer stand up.  If he continues to be motivated (see "Psychologically" below), though, he may continue to fight/shoot even though immobilized and on the ground.
2. Electrically.  His CNS is disrupted (brain, spine, or motor nerves are disrupted).  Dr. Martin Fackler, M.D., stated that "any bullet entering the brain" immediately disrupts a human's ability to act.  Hits to the spine cut the body's ability to send motor nerve impulses to the hands and legs, causing the body to fall.  If the spine is severed high enough, the hands stop functioning. 
3. Hydraulically.  He bleeds out sufficiently to cause unconsciousness.
4. Psychologically.  He doesn’t want to be in a gunfight/fight any longer and quits.

• NOTE:  This is not about "killing" the subject.  It is about stopping the "imminent threat" of the individual.  If he dies or does not is not relevant to the importance of stopping the threat by fire.

So, with the above in mind, there are only three requirements necessary to end a gunfight when the opponent doesn’t want to (and won’t) quit (psychological):

1. Bullet placement.
2. Bullet placement.
3. Bullet placement.

What is the most reliable way to stop someone? Put a bullet through the brain or spine.  The problem with either or both of these targets?  They are small targets.  They are relatively easy to hit on the square range with rounds going in one direction only and with sufficient time.  However, when bullets are in the air (these being bi-directional during an exchange of fire) with a corresponding overwhelming perception of high threat to one’s self, those "easy" shots on the shooting range generally become very difficult.  The higher the perception of threat, the greater the difficulty. 

The easiest human target to hit?  Upper thorax and/or pelvis.  The problem?  These targets requires him to bleed out (unless the spine is hit through the thorax), which may take your lifetime before he can no longer fight.  

• NOTE:  A pelvis hit with rifle fire is semi-reliable to fracture hip or pelvis (mechanical) and is likely to put his down as well as make him bleed out (hydraulic), whereas a pelvis shot with a handgun generally does not break the pelvis or hip, but is often fatal due to bleeding out (hydraulic). 

So you want to stop a bad guy from shooting you?  

• Hit him in a place in his body that disrupts his ability to continue to be an imminent threat.  This wound affects the mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic function of the body.  Until that happens, he can keep going until he wants to stop. 
• A "psychological stop" cannot be predicted or counted upon. 
• A "hydraulic stop" can take a very long time (every tenth of a second that he continues to fire is "a very long time" when the bullets are coming at you).  During that time, he remains a threat to your life, and may kill you.
• The only reliable stop is the "electrical stop," but it requires a bullet strike through very small, hard to hit targets.  
• The concept of “accuracy” is context specific.  On the square range, tight groups on the target is the premium.  In shooting at an imminent threat, it is actually beneficial to have a three to five inch spread between rounds to maximize the wounding potential, resulting in injury to a wider range of organs. 
• “Speed is fine; accuracy is final” (Wyatt Earp) is as true as anything can be.  Striving to be “first” is important, but what does that mean?  Getting the first shot off is impressive, and may be fatal to you.  Strive to be the first to hit the target in a vital area.  Hitting is the name of this game, as slow as you have to to hit and no faster.  
• The more hits you have on important structures (brain, spine, upper thorax, femoral triangle, pelvis, etc.), the more quickly he will likely stop.
• Discipline your training and slow your rate of fire to ensure sufficient hits with combat accuracy.  Forget "hammered pairs," "double-taps," and other "game" related activities.  Continuously fire on the Threat until he is no longer an "imminent threat to life." 

We hear in the question, “If the ammo did not fail, why…”, a question that everyone wants to resolve at some point in their shooting life:  what is the “best” ammo to use to save my life?”  One simple answer is, "The round you have in your chamber right now."  Even if you had a magical magazine that held an unlimited number of rounds, that would be a good of example of every blessing being a potential curse:  would that "unlimited" number of rounds result in an unlimited number of hits, or would it assure that you would get on that trigger like never before and hope that a wall of bullets would do the job?  The best strategy is to fight with the round in your chamber and put that one bullet through a target that disrupts his imminent threat.

We all want the “silver-life-snuffer-magic-bullet."  This isn’t going to happen with present technology (OK, .50 cal BMG round, but I’m not carrying a Barrett in my hip pocket—Dang!).  While some handgun bullets are statistically better than others, most bullets are going to do the job sufficiently well to eventually kill an assailant.  As Cutting Edge Training teaches in our firearms and knife classes, “All bullet wounds and knife wounds eventually stop bleeding.”  If you want to do it faster, there are the three requirements necessary to ending a gunfight that must occur (see the list above if you don’t remember).  

Stop blaming your ammo for any alleged failure to stop.  A .22LR in the right spot is an immediate fight stopper.  A .22Short pistol in the hands of a motivated shooter is a scary opponent.  If you have reliable ammo (it feeds every time, and goes “bang” when it should), forget about the ammo you are carrying.  9mm vs. .40 vs. .45?  Big holes are a little better than little holes.  However, we are talking about a difference of only 1/10 of an inch between the 9mm and .45.  The only difference in effectiveness is where that bullet is placed and what it passes through in the body.  A .45 through the outside of the thigh with no bone involvement will not stop the fight faster than a 9mm through the heart.  Bullet placement...Bullet placement...Bullet placement...  Stop “shooting” and begin “hitting.”

That my friend, is “what the real truth is.” 

“…the hero and the coward live just a decision away from the other.”

A recent discussion of fear caused me to think about the part that “fear” plays in the warrior’s response to the need to act in dangerous circumstances, where that danger is life threatening and a real possibility. 

The discussion started with a bashing of fear citing how debilitating and horrible having fear is to the human existence.  I believe that fear, in and of itself, is neutral…it’s really neither good nor bad.  It just is.  Fear is a part of being human.  It is our response to fear—our decisions and resulting behavior—that is the real issue.  In fact, there are times when fear is good and justifies threatening and even deadly responses (e.g., pointing a gun at someone whose behavior has placed others in imminent fear.  This creates a fear response from the antagonist—he stops his threatening behavior because he fears he is going to be shot, and injured or killed).  So fear has a place that can be healthy when it motivates people to behave appropriately.

Fear as a motivator is the mechanism by which many people achieve great riches, or why they get up and go to work every day even though they would rather sit in the sun and relax, or why they behave in socially acceptable ways.  Fear can be a co-motivator with healthy pride in achievement, causing warriors to perfect and maintain their skills, as well as to seek out new and different ideas, methods, and knowledge.  Warriors understand that no matter how prepared they are at this moment, they cannot prepare for everything, but they can be better prepared to meet the unexpected through a greater and more diverse skill and knowledge base.

Fear is a problem when we experience a degree or level of fear that paralyzes and causes us to do nothing when we should be doing something (even running is sometimes the appropriate response to fear).  Paralyzing fear is created when we let our imagination to overwhelm us, focusing on “what if,” and fixating on our mortal vulnerabilities.  When the mind has not been disciplined through difficult, arduous training, the mind can spin helplessly out of control, and the paralysis is complete unless something greater shocks us out of our stupor.

Fear can become debilitating when we deny it for too long.  The fear may be so great that we believe we cannot face it, so we consciously stuff it down.  Eventually, however, the fear will make itself known through negative psychological or physical manifestations such as mental or physical paralysis, numbness, and disease.

If we really get down to it, fear seldom occurs in a vacuum.  It is generally the companion of something more sinister (despair, anger, hopelessness, danger etc.).  So really fear is just the messenger of something that is already present or something that is coming.  Healthy fear does not generally happen by accident.  Perhaps the old adage of “Don’t shoot the messenger” is appropriate here.  Whether you see fear as a good or bad thing, as a stand-alone plague or a tag-along to a much bigger issue, fear will be present in a warrior’s life.  It is in our response or lack of response to this universal emotion that truly tests and forges who we are.

As Gavin DeBecker suggests, “fear is a gift,” and not a curse.  I don’t believe that fear is a “monster.”  It is what we do in the presence of fear that is telling about the individual.  In the presence of fear, our character is revealed.  Having been a police officer, I will tell you that there were times when I was definitely afraid, but I chose to do what needed to be done.  And in life there are still times when I am afraid, but I step forward anyway, through that fear. 

Am I schizophrenic because I feel the fear yet continue my life in a positive way?  Should I kid myself, deny that I feel fear, and live in pseudo-humility asserting all the while that I am not really scared at all?  I say NO to both.  I think that the hero and the coward live just a decision away from the other.  I think that the myth of the never-nervous, always calm, going forth and conquering warrior is just that…a fantasy.  Lt. Col. David Hackworth (US Army, deceased) once said, “Being brave on a battlefield is not letting anyone know you’re afraid.”  Fearlessness before and during battle is simply a perception by others, not something that is experienced except by the foolish or mentally ill…it is not reality.

I believe we should recognize our human fear and accept its capacity to motivate or cripple us.  As a warrior and trainer of warriors, I offer this to our students:  ”feel the fear and do what is required of you.”  Courage is not about the absence of fear, but what you do in the presence of fear, while under the influence of fear.  We train to respond in times of danger.  Imagine what your response is going to be—believe it, taste it, smell it—and then work your skills and tactics until your response is automatic.

The bottom line is that each of us must accept the fact that as a human, you and I will die one day—maybe today.  Also accept the fact that, as a warrior, you and I invite the possibility of death because we choose to run to the sound of gunfire.  Because it doesn’t matter that I am going to die.  What matters is that I die as a warrior if that is what God demands of me, stepping into my fear and not hiding from it.  If I can accept that, I need never fear being afraid—I will simply be whatever I am despite my state of fear.

So much has been written, talked about, and trained about the subject of police response to the “Active Shooter” (AS).  For years advocates of the “formation” have brooked no dissent and have held that the formation (whatever particular formation they have emotionally bought into) is the only method of training and responding because nothing else is “safe.”  These formations are complicated affairs with strict fields of fire that must be maintained while moving in a chaotic environment.  So little has actually been proven regarding this training in the real world that these claims—and the training that has resulted in the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of personnel hours—must be considered extravagant and ultimately wasteful.

I believe, as we have seen in the real-world of police responses to AS events, that the limited-number officer response is fundamentally the most successful doctrine we have available.  Solo officers have isolated the AS and limited additional carnage to innocents, ending the event either through their own gunfire or by motivating the suspect to initiate his/her end-game of suicide-in-place.  There has not, as yet, been a lot of room clearing during the event while it is still evolving.  There has been a lot of running to the sound of gunfire and then maneuvering for a shot.  None, that I know of, has involved a response by formation to an active event where there has been interdiction to a suspect who was currently engaged in murdering others.

Formations?  Not-so-much.

A little history of the various formations is important before moving into a discussion of street reality.  All of the various formations—the diamond, the “T,” the “Inverted V,” and others—are modifications or directly taken from the military.  The proponents point to the fact that if the military continues to teach these formations, they have intrinsic value.

The context in which these “formations” are valuable should be the only interest for those evaluating how to respond to an Active Shooter (a term Jeff Martin and I coined in 1999).  Each of these formations were developed and useful for crossing a large open area where it is unknown if there are hostile forces, and a large number of personnel are involved in the movement.  Dispersion (distance between personnel) is maintained to minimize casualties, and sectors of fire are established to increase the detection of the enemy and to prevent blue-on-blue (friendly fire) shootings.

The current requirement of a “tail-gunner” is a recent law enforcement development that resulted not from a real event, but from the creative imagination of two SWAT cops during a training scenario.  These two “suspects” hatched plans about how “they would do it.”  While one of the “suspects” kept the formation’s attention, the other circled around by climbing through the ceiling and duct work, and took the officers in the formation by surprise from behind.  The boogey-man was created, and thus was born the need for a tail-gunner.

The misapplication of these formations—inside a building with officers bunched up—has now been taught to most officers.  This formation training, with its needless, theoretical, and historically redundant tail-gunner, is too slow and inefficient to deal with the real-world demands of an AS event.  The theory is that the officers wait until a sufficient number arrive on-scene.  Quickly forming up, they move as a group with each member maintaining his/her field of fire.  As they pass a room, the formation collapses to permit clearing of that room through entry by two or more personnel.  Clearing that room, the formation is reformed and moves to the next doorway, where it is then cleared.  Meanwhile, the gunfire continues, and more innocents are butchered.

Bunching up creates a bigger target.  Believing that “firepower” will protect the members of formation only shows that this concept has not been thought through.  Officers will mask other officer's weapons, creating "friendly fire" problems or preventing officers from being able to fire.  While more personnel have more weapons and theoretically more “firepower,” each weapon (actually, each pair of eyes controlling a weapon) in the formation is not immediately pointing at the suspect’s position as he emerges from his position.  Each officer will require many long tenths of a second to orient that he is under fire, where that fire is coming from, overcome their surprise and fright, decide that a response is needed, what that response looks like, how not to shoot his/her partner, and then execute that response to the threat.  Meanwhile, the suspect is able to immediately shoot (he has no target discrimination requirements, so he doesn’t take a half-second determining “if” he should shoot or not), and then able to put out one round every two-tenths of a second into the group of the officers standing in a bunch just yards away.  So a more realistic timeline is:

• If an officer is looking at the suspect as he emerges and levels the weapon at the group of officers and fires; and,
• If that first officer is switched on and extremely well-trained, that first officer will return fire within approximately one-half second due to target discrimination requirements and natural human time requirements in processing changes in the status quo of his environment.  In the meanwhile, the suspect is firing an average of five rounds per second at the officers; and,
• If the other officers are able to overcome their surprise and have not yet been seriously injured by the suspect’s fire, they will likely return fire within three-quarters to one-second of the suspect’s first firing—after four to five rounds fired by the suspect into the group of officers; and,
• If the suspect is hit by the first officer’s round and if the suspect is unable or unwilling to continue firing, then he will have likely fired only two or three rounds into the group of officers; but,
• If the first officer misses and the suspect is able to continue to fire for a second-and-a-half to two-seconds, he will have fired seven to ten rounds into the group of officers standing in a group.

A key factor of actual Active Shooter (non-hostage) shootings: it has been estimated that from the first shot until the last shot in any of these events, one person is murdered for every fifteen seconds that the shooter is permitted the freedom to continue hunting and killing his victims.  We now have a tragic track record, with a sufficient number of events having taken place to gain some insight as to how they unfold.  In an average event, if responding officers wait for a sufficient number of officers (four to five), organize and form up, and then move in formation toward the suspect, the murders of innocents will already be well under way or over, well before any of these officers can intervene.

Formation training is a waste of time and expense.  It unproven in the real world, and is unlikely to perform as advertised.  It is an unsafe and misapplied technique in an environment that requires speed, agility and flexibility of tactics, as well as aggressive action to limit the rapidly accumulating loss of life experienced in these events.

Immediate Response to the Active Shooter

Ideally, two officers will respond within seconds of each other to the scene, permitting them to team up and move to the sound of gunfire.  Ideally they will employ “traveling overwatch” until they believe they are close to the shooter, and then transition to bounding overwatch as they get closer to the danger, bypassing any open or closed doors.  As soon as one of the officers sees the shooter, and if it is apparent that individual is intent on continuing to murder others, the officer should immediately shoot the suspect without warning.  The second officer should maneuver into position to provide cover for the first officer from any unknown threat (a possible second shooter)—“Contact and Cover” principles always apply. The officers should, if possible, contact the shooter while separated as widely as possible, providing interlocking fields of fire. 

However, upon arrival of the first officer to the scene of an Active Shooter, an extended ETA for a second officer of even 30 seconds is unacceptable and signals the need for a “Solo Response.”

The initial responding officer (for the balance of this discussion, I will use the male pronoun, with no disrespect intended for female officers) should deploy from his vehicle parked as close to the entry point as possible (while guarding against as many lines of threat as possible) and will approach from the most protected path of ingress.  Armed with a shoulder weapon (ideally a red dot-equipped rifle) and as much ammo as possible (three magazines in a Mumbai/Beslan event will last about one-minute), ballistic vest (should be already worn), a ballistic helmet, clear protective eye-wear (e.g. ESS ballistic eye-wear), and breaching equipment (bolt cutters and some type of hooligan tool, e.g., Benchmade’s Model 172 “Tomahawk”), entry should be made.

If the sound of gunfire can be heard, the officer should carefully and swiftly move toward it—run to the sound of gunfire—keeping cover and concealment options between him and the apparent origin of fire.  There will be the dead and dying.  All injured or dead should be bypassed—they will be cared for by follow-on assets.  There is one mission:  safely interdict the suspect(s) and stop the killing.  As the officer perceives he is nearing the suspect’s location, rapid movement is replaced with cautious aggression.  By this time, it is likely that nearly everyone without a gun has gone to ground and is attempting to get very, very small and hidden.  People are going to be cowering, and taking the chance to exit only if it seems safe to do so.  Parents will be desperately shushing their children.  A crowded area may initially seem almost deserted.

Communicate your position and progress as it is safe to do so.  The radio can be your friend, but your weapons and tactics will save your life.  Stay off the radio unless you have something you need others to know about the situation that will help you survive and prevail over the shooter.

Open doors or store fronts should be bypassed quickly while moving and shots are still being fired.  This is a variation of the “Forget the Boogey-man” Theory.  While many authorities insist that each room or area must be searched and cleared to prevent being attacked from behind, the responding solo officer should forget about the boogey-men that could possibly be hidden along his path of approach and focus on the identified threat(s) in front of him.

Being mindful of the background at all times—if that is possible in this situation—the officer should fire upon the gunman as quickly and early as possible.  Many of the AS suspects almost immediately commit suicide upon the realization of police presence.  If all it does is succeed in getting the suspect to engage the officer, it has at least diverted him from the murder of innocents.  A 150 yard shot with a pistol is not out of the question--and should be taken--given the goal of diverting his attention stopping the killing.

If the suspect is inside a room (as in a school) or inside a shop (in a mall), attempt to engage the suspect from the outside in.  Don’t make entry unless it is absolutely needed.  A dynamic pie slice or slide across the entrance while engaging the shooter is safer than making entry.  If the shooter has apparently posted in a hard corner, a limited entry (eyes and weapon only) is often the best option.  Hit him, and withdraw.  If entry is a necessity due to circumstance, enter along the path least likely to be obstructed and fire on the move.  Do not stop.  Entering, posting up, and shooting from a static position is the last option, and the least safe.

If he retreats because of your presence, be aggressively cautious in following him.  Sprint from cover to cover, keeping as concealed as possible.  Be constantly ready for any attack.  Shoot at him (and hit him) as soon as possible, and continue shooting until he is down to prevent his gaining access to more victims and/or potential hostages.

Once the suspect is down, be prepared to defend yourself against a possible second suspect.  Never handcuff the suspect alone.  That is a two-officer task at minimum.

Conclusion

It is time to give up the misguided notion of formation techniques in the response to an Active Shooter.  Not only are they misapplied, but they are dangerous to the officers attempting to respond to this dangerous situation.  They are less than useful because they are slow, giving the shooter much more access to victims.  Additionally, consider this:

• How frequently are officers trained in these formations?  Once a year in forward thinking agencies, but generally once or twice in a lifetime for most officers.  With dearth of frequent training, how well will officers perform this complicated technique under real-time pressures, hearing gunfire, and moving toward the shooter?
• What is the quality of that training?  Training cannot duplicate real-life.  However, training can sometimes approximate it, and the closer to real-life this training is, the more likely it will be that the formation fails and falls apart.

Instead, the response should be contextually-correct:  time is of the essence in saving lives;  a solo-officer response early is better than a multi-officer response too late to save lives.  The officer should be armed with a shoulder weapon and breaching equipment.  Running to the sound of gunfire, and being cautiously aggressive when close, the suspect should be fired upon without warning upon first being observed.  This should disrupt the shooter’s murder spree and get him to focus on the officer.  Hopefully the suspect will be like most who engage in this type of mass murder, and will immediately turn the weapon on himself.  If not, he just might engage the officer, giving the civilians a possible break.  Backup officers will then assist in stopping the suspect, and take him into custody (in whatever manner that manifests).  Following officers can then respond, set up a Casualty Collection Point, assist in a thorough search for additional suspects and victims, and secure the scene.

It is time for tactics to change to fit the real-world realities of the Active Shooter incident, and increase the likelihood of interdicting these murders of innocents.  A solo officer, or, if there is near simultaneous response, two-officer teams moving aggressively and tactically to the sound of gunfire and immediately shooting the gunman/gunmen is, to date, the only real response that can be expected to save lives.  Time to update training programs, drop the archaic and impractical formation concept, and deal with the real world as it is, not how we’d like it to be.

Equipment Note:  Every officer should be equipped with breaching equipment as standard gear carried in every patrol (burdening the sergeant's car with even more equipment than is required now doesn't make sense as the supervisor may not arrive for the first ten minutes of a call--cops who need the equipment should have it available to them).  The equipment should consist of:

1. Bolt cutters.  This should be standard equipment presently in every officer's car.  If your agency won't purchase it, shell out the $35.00 for one of your own...you're the one who will be listening to people dying and not able to enter, not your Chief.
2. Benchmade Model 172 Tomahawk.  Designed for military breaching requirements (not as an antipersonnel weapon), it is perfectly suited to breaching obstacles preventing access and ingress.  Easily portable, it is part hooligan tool and part breaching axe.  Its small size belies big capabilities.  For a 40% discount on all Benchmade products, contact us at training@cuttingedgetraining.org and request a "Benchmade Discount Form" (law enforcement, military, Fire, and EMS only).
3. ESS professional eyewear is available for a 40% discount through Cutting Edge Training.  Contact us at training@cuttingedgetraining.org and request an "ESS DepRep Discount Code."

Be safe.  Shoot straight.

Many intelligent and well-informed individuals have been warning for years that the world-wide trend of Person-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices, or "PBIEDs" (whatever you call them, whether suicide bombers, homicide bombers, or “insane-dude-or-dudette-with-explosives-strapped-to-his/her-body-to-kill-others-and-self”) will come to our shores and be directed against our people.  It really is a matter of time.

So the question in some circles is raging:  Head shots vs. pelvis shots?  While head shots are seen as a sure means of stopping a subject and putting him down, how difficult is it to hit him in the head while he is moving, and you are feeling the life-threatening pressure knowing that if the vest detonates you and others will die?  And there is the added pressure that if you miss the shot completely, he/she will likely detonate, taking you and everyone else with him/her.  Pelvis shots with rifles and shotgun slugs are generally a body dropper because of the bone breaking capability of those rounds, but that does not stop the terrorist from self-detonating.  And pistol shots to the pelvis often cause the individual to bleed out, but rarely force a subject down due to mechanical disruption.

Another reality:  neither a successful head-shot, pelvis shot, or additional confirming shots to the head will stop a second individual from detonating that PBIED from a distance by a remote firing trigger.

Given that the first indication of the presence of a PBIED is generally an explosion with casualties, there have been instances where these individuals were discovered prior to their detonating their device.  These discoveries have generally been through good fortune, sloppiness on the part of the suicide-bomber, or a change of heart where a second individual remotely detonates the PBIED.  Some have actually been interdicted prior to detonation by alert security forces and, at least in one instance, an alert armed citizen.

If there is a possibility of shooting to interdict the detonation of a PBIED, is there a real-world danger of shooting this terrorist in the body?  What is the real-world implications of shooting to the torso and possibly hitting the vest components?  Before we begin developing doctrine, it is very important to determine our limitations and the context we must apply them in.  Supposition and dangerous assumptions has a long history of killing officers, warfighters, and others who are responding to threatening circumstances.

I had the privilege to speak at length to an...um...individual who is assigned to a US. Govt. facility where they test out cool and interesting things about this and other…um…topics.  They asked that very same question (shooting and hitting the PBIED).  They set about creating explosive vests using the most common components and designs from around the world.  Those devices were subjected to extensive “testing” to see what would happen.

The results of their shooting the heck out of those bombs?  Only one round in all of the testing set off a vest.  It was later determined that the bullet happened to hit the blasting cap, resulting in a partial detonation of the vest.  A few blocks of explosive did not detonate due to a sympathetic explosion.  Bottom line:  Even though there is a possibility of a partial detonation, the entire vest did not explode, and casualties would have been limited as a result.

His recommendation:  shoot the terrorist in the area you are most likely hit, and put him on the ground.  If the vest detonates due to a remote activation, a ground detonation will decrease the number and severity of collateral injuries—almost half of the shrapnel goes into the ground, and a good deal is directed vertically.

As a result this information, Cutting Edge Training's suggested doctrine is:

• If you are close enough, make a proximity-shot to the head, followed by a second round to the head.  Justification for the second round to the head:  the imminent danger of the bomber and his/her intent to commit mass, indiscriminant murder;  The presence of an explosive designed and intended to murder and maim others;  the triggering device is likely easily reached and activated, and the need for self-defense—you are in proximity—and defense of others justifies this action to stop any possible detonation by the suspect.  Immediately evacuate the area, including yourself to prevent injuries should the PBIED be remotely detonated.
• If you are close enough, or have the equipment (red-dot and/or magnification), and the situation is static—you are braced enough and the bomber is still enough, take a head shot, followed by a second shot to the head (the same justification as above).  Immediately evacuate the area (including self).
• Take the shot at any target that you can hit, including any part of the torso.  Do not permit the bomber to deploy or transition to a position where he/she is able to maximize the casualties.  It will NEVER be better than NOW--shoot the torso.  Understand that bullets rarely work at stopping anyone from anything unless the brain, spine, or major load-bearing bone is disrupted.  Bullets stop people because they believe they need to fall down because they are hit, or they don't want to be shot anymore, or they leak enough blood to stop them from being able to stand.  So shoot that person a lot, then shoot him/her in the head at least twice.  Same justification, same immediate evacuation plan.

Let's keep everything in context:

• If a shot is taken, the bullet hits the detonator, and the vest explodes, it is no different than if the terrorist executed his mission, except the officer disrupted his timing and likely minimized casualties.
• If the shot at the head is taken and missed, the terrorist may decide to detonate then and there, or run to an area where maximum casualties will occur.  Now a shot to the torso (including the pelvis) is the only option left, and a running, dodging target presents all sorts of background problems, as well as increasing the difficulty of making the shot.
• If the shot to the head or torso (including the pelvis) is only partially successful, a detonation will probably be the result.
• A successful head shot and instant death of the bomber may still result in a remote det of the system.
• A shot to the torso that actually hits the detonator is unlikely, though possible, to create a detonation.  But that shot is more likely to hit the threat than a small target such as the head of a moving, breathing animated human.
• Due to the imminent threat of this individual, regardless of his medical status, a second (or many) shot(s) to the head to ensure his inability to detonate the vest is justified.

Head shot, pelvis shot, or torso shot?  Here’s a thought about will like be the foremost reality:  Identifying the individual carrying a PBIED with the certainty that most cops are going to need before taking a shot at anyone will likely be the main obstacle at anyone taking a shot before the PBIED is detonated.  No cop wants to shoot an innocent person.  How will there be enough certainty (probable cause) to press a trigger unless the PBIED is visible.  If the individual reveals the bomb-vest, it’s likely just to gain enough attention of his/her victims in the moments before detonation that a first responder will likely not be able to respond.

If able to respond in time?  Shoot him/her to the ground.  Quickly shoot him/her in the head enough times to visually confirm that the first stage of imminent threat is over.  And then get out everyone out—including you—as quickly as possible to avoid the effects of a remote detonation—leave the body and evidence for someone else.  Besides, that’s what the EOD tech’s signed up for (what were they thinking?).

Be safe.  Decide fast.  Shoot straight.

All of the latest studies on force response by police scream the fact that officers respond with force sparingly.  Over 97% of the time in an arrest, suspect behavior requires no force response by the arresting officer.  When an offender forces the situation, the majority of the time it is a low-level resistance involving muscular effort by everyone—a lot of negotiating by the suspect, and repeated commands by the officer(s).  When an officer is required by the offender to resort to force to control resistance or defend against assault, how should it be judged by the agency?

The evaluation of any force response should be fairly straight forward—the courts have provided very workable and, frankly, very sympathetic formulas for determining the reasonableness of an officer’s force employment.  Many agencies, however, muddy the waters in their test for reasonableness by using the invented standard of whether or not the officer employed “approved techniques.”   This unnecessary component of determining whether or not an officer achieved proper conduct creates liability for the officer and agency where there was none.

Background

A lot of money and time is spent training officers in defensive tactics and suspect control methods.  Whether the agency is forced to use the system endorsed by its particular state, or is free to choose the system to be presented, every agency settles upon a system or philosophy in which their officers are trained.  In many cases, the agency chooses a vendor to “certify” the agency’s instructional staff. 

Unfortunately, in many instances, these vendors dictate to the agency what the agency’s standards shall be.  They use the fear of the “Double-L of Law Enforcement ” (“litigation” and “liability”) to effectively coerce the agency into continuing to use their training system (translated:  transfer your agency's training budget to the vendor).  Anyone who has ever heard any of the following phrases has experienced this type of blackmail:

• “If you don’t use our techniques as we train you, you are on your own when you get sued…”
• “If your instructors do not re-certify regularly, we will de-certify them as instructors…”
• “If you use our techniques, we will testify for you.  If you don’t, we cannot assist you…”
• “The use of any techniques other than the ones we teach, or if employed differently than we require, will create liability.”

As a result, some agencies go so far as to create a policy or practice of requiring each officer to employ only those “approved-techniques” in which the agency trained them.  Generally turning a blind eye to what their officers actually do on a day-to-day basis, these agencies reserve the right to judge whether or not the technique the officer used was proper.  This artificial standard is based not only on the circumstances at the time, but also is also judged on whether or not it was applied in the middle of a dangerous fight as it was trained and in an "approved" manner. 

In these agencies, when a subject is injured by an officer using a “non-approved technique or method,” discipline is handed down—an officer who was simply attempting to get the job done reasonably has his/her career damaged.  Lawyers become involved and settlements are made.  And then every cop goes back to what cops do:  arresting bad guys, improvising tactically, and getting by as best they can until someone gets hurt the next time, with continuing findings of policy violations and all of the familiar aftermath. 

These policy violations and resulting liability are not a product of violating the law or a person’s rights.  Instead, this creation of liability is an artificial policy construct dictated by vendors or misguided policy makers that state, “Officers may perform only ‘trained and approved techniques and tactics.’”  Training has been officially deemed by the agency’s admin to be thoroughly comprehensive and sufficient for all circumstances.  The consequence of this is that failure to use the expected techniques and methods is a violation of policy, and while the force may have been reasonable and lawful, liability was created nevertheless by the written standard of performing only those techniques and tactics as trained. 

Important Questions

It is important that a discussion take place within law enforcement over who determines what a force response can look like, and how that force will be judged.  

• Is an officer’s force response to be judged on the techniques he or she employs in the field?
• Is it true that if the officer fails to employ a technique as the vendor trained it, or utilizes an alternative, the officer and agency is liable for that use of force?
• What if an officer uses an “unapproved” method?  Is there automatic liability?

Evaluating Police Force in the U.S.

In discussing any aspect of using force, we must explore the basis of force, how it is evaluated, and where true liability exists.  The basic framework of any lawful force response by police, since 1983, rests in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.  In US v. Place, 462 US 696 (1983), the court provided a balancing test to assist in determining the reasonableness of a police intrusion during a seizure. 

This was expanded in 2007 by the US Supreme Court in Scott v. Harris, 127 S.Ct. 1769 (2007).  Officers are required to weigh the likelihood of injury or death to the suspect balanced against the threat of the suspect as reasonably perceived by the officer at the time of the force response.  In Graham v. Connor, 490 U. S. 386 (1989) the US Supreme Court ruled that all police use of force is governed by the objective reasonableness doctrine, and is based upon a reasonable officer standard.  The only consideration when evaluating any police force response is, if in the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time of the force employment, would another officer with like or similar training and experience, given like or similar circumstance, have done the same thing or have made similar judgments? 

There is no mention of specific techniques or using “trained techniques” in any of these force decisions.  The question is simply asked, “Was the officer’s response objectively reasonable based on what he or she knew at the time?”  If yes, there is no liability.  If no, the plaintiff deserves to be compensated for their unreasonably received injury.

Most state laws require the same standard of reasonableness.  For the balance, these states require officers to use “necessary” force.  This is often defined as “force for which no reasonable alternative apparently existed and was reasonable to the situation.  Even with this more restrictive state law, there is no requirement to adhere to a specific technical standard.  

In both jurisdictions (state and federal), it is up to the officer to articulate the circumstances he or she perceived and responded to.  Even though the officer acted properly in the field, there can still be huge liability if that officer fails to fully articulate and document his or her reasonable beliefs.  There are no adverse judgments on the books stating the officer failed to employ some defensive tactics technique properly.  There are, however, myriad cases where an officer failed to prove his or her reasonable conduct in light of the totality of the circumstances known to him at the time.  This is the sole source of liability to officers and their agencies.  

The law does not evaluate the effectiveness of any particular force method, unless it has a bearing on the circumstances.  A shooting will be judged on whether or not a bullet hitting the plaintiff was justified by the circumstances, not on which stance or brand or style of weapon was used.  If deadly force is justified by the circumstances, it can be resolved by shooting, stabbing, choking, driving over, or even dropping a safe from the twentieth floor on the head of the person creating that imminent threat.  Deadly force is deadly force, and how you get there doesn’t matter.  In a case where limb manipulations were used with resulting injuries, no one in the jury at the end of trial is holding up a sign giving a score regarding how well the technique was performed (Juror #1, 8.8; Juror #2, 9.1; the French Juror, 3.1…).  Instead, the juror will simply be asked, was the actual force with which the officer responded reasonable given the circumstances?  Their verdict will generally reflect the defendant officer’s ability to articulate his justification of his actions, combined with the documentation of the evidence.  

According to the law, there is plainly no liability to using or not using any particular technique or method your officer has been trained to use as long as it was reasonable for the circumstances known to the officer at the time.

Responding With an "Unapproved" or Improvised Alternative 

The liability engendered by using an alternative technique is created only when the agency promulgates a policy requiring only “approved techniques” be employed by their officers.  Rather than limiting liability, this type of policy instead actually increases the possible exposure to the agency. 

The reality of any type of force response skills system requiring officers to “properly” apply only its techniques and no other is that no training is capable of answering all of the threats and problems an officer faces in the real world of policing.  Officers are constantly forced by circumstance presented to them by suspects to improvise, and training must reflect this need to problem-solve.  Relying only upon approved techniques cannot meet these needs (hence the need for improvisation) while meeting policy requirements.  In effect, a policy of this type forces officers to violate their policies in order to meet their immediate real-world defense and suspect control needs.

If the agency requires a technique to be used, it expects to see that method employed.  This is not only a dramatic misunderstanding of the purpose of training, but a belief that fighting is solved in an efficient and orderly manner with no input from the suspect.  The reality is that all training is merely a suggested method of resolution, and cannot be expected to be taken as a whole from the training floor and successfully placed wholesale into a combatives situation where the suspect is not a willing participant in the arrest.  Any situation where the suspect does not cooperate will almost universally result in any particular technique failing.  As long as an officer employs force reasonably, or employs an alternative method safely, there is no inherent liability, even if a subject is injured—unless the agency creates that liability by requiring adherence to a rigid technical system by its policy or practice. 

Rather than looking at the method the officer employed as being “wrong,” it would be more useful and would follow present legal guidelines to evaluate the context of the circumstances presenting themselves to the officer at that moment.  It is not a question of which hand was cuffed first and how, but, rather, the inquiry should be, “Regardless of the subject’s injuries, if any, were the officer’s actions and force responses justified by the reasonable perception by the officer of the suspect’s behavior and actions in light of the circumstances known to the officer at the time?”  

Vendors Can Create Liability for Your Agency--If You Let Them

It cannot be argued that vendors add their expertise to law enforcement's ability to do their jobs well and within the standards of proper conduct.  Someone must teach and train officers in the various and myriad skill and knowledge domains required today to safely and competently navigate through the requirements of law, policy, and expectations of professional behavior.  Those who make their living by training or supplying other services and products to law enforcement are generally upstanding individuals who are attempting to benefit both officers and the citizens they serve.  The problem begins when individuals devise a method of ensuring their income that is less-than-ethical.  Making a living by providing a service is one thing.  Coercion through unfounded fear is another

Many vendors who provide certifying systems to law enforcement state that failing to use their approved techniques will result in their not being able to “defend” a particular officer’s actions.  They say that only those incidents comporting with what the vendor declares to be in-line with its program can be defended.  Should the vendor’s technique fail because it was not properly executed (and for those vendors, any failure in the street is always attributed to “officer error”), or the officer simply improvises because he cannot remember how to do some complicated technique (which applies to every officer in a fight), or chooses to do something he made up on the spot, the vendor will not “defend” the agency in its litigation.  

At least one vendor has stated that they would make themselves available to plaintiffs as experts should their client agency’s officers fail to properly use their techniques.  The impression provided to the interested observer is that the officer and agency will be left hanging in court to twist in the wind when the vendor abandons them.  Command staff and officers often truly believe, and many vendors promote the belief, that to prevent being successfully sued, you must have the vendor on your side. 

Nothing is further from the truth.  Your officers will either act reasonably and prove their proper conduct, thus avoiding civil liability, or they will be liable to the plaintiff for their actions.  Their liability will not rest in the quality or type of technique they choose unless the agency creates that liability through policy.  It will, instead, hinge on the duration and type of force based on the circumstances known to them at the time.  Having a vendor’s representative as an expert witness may or may not be beneficial, but, in and of itself, will rarely, if ever, make or break your case.  

Conclusion

The question of liability in any force response is well-settled:  an officer may respond with objectively reasonable force based on the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time of the force response.  This evaluation method stands regardless of the method or force technique an officer chooses or is forced to employ.  Force cannot be excessive or improper based simply upon any technique, nor can increased liability result as a result of not properly employing a defensive tactics technique when the circumstances permit its attempt.  In fact, there is no liability created simply because a vendor states a particular technique should have been used instead of the method actually employed by the officer.  

Agencies can create a climate where liability can easily result by publishing an ill-considered policy of requiring officers to employ a particular technique as trained.  This creates a situation where failure to use an “approved technique” becomes a policy violation.  This creates tort liability in state courts.  It also results in disciplinary actions even in those situations where an officer must improvise due to system failures that did not address that particular circumstance.  This discipline will be capitalized upon by plaintiffs in federal court when the fact that the officer was disciplined will be used as leverage in settlement conferences to unnecessarily increase the value of the case.

Vendors should never be allowed to dictate policy to an agency.  Vendors have a vested interest in maintaining the agency as a client.  Beware of thinly veiled threats of de-certifying instructors should they fail to satisfy the vendor’s requirements, failing to testify should officers use non-trained techniques or methods of arrest and defense that are not approved, and of the creation of extra liability should you and your officers not adhere to their program.  This is simply a form of blackmail in order to secure an income stream for the vendor, and is unethical.  Vendors and their programs should support an agency’s policy, and while consultants may assist with policy development, it is always the policy-maker’s responsibility to provide a reasonable policy that protects all involved parties (the citizens, officers, and jurisdiction), not the vendor.  

“Approved techniques” versus reasonable force response.  Hands down, agencies should opt for policies requiring their officers to act reasonably in all circumstances.  Training in force skill domains should be looked at as guidelines for problem-solving rather than as hard and fast techniques by which officers must abide.  The phrase, “approved technique” should be stricken from the vocabulary of all police administrators, policies, regulations, and police trainers (as well as vendors).  While training standardizes behavior, officers must have the flexibility to respond to suspect resistance and violent assault, as well as changing trends in the street without having to fear inadvertent policy violations as a result of their surviving an incident.  

In the real world of law enforcement, there is no such thing as an approved technique.  Your policy and practice should require reasonable (and, if required, necessary) force responses from your officers.  Forget what your vendors tell you.  If you believe your officers are qualified to instruct, don’t send them to re-certification unless you believe they can use the update—your agency actually certifies that someone is qualified to instruct every time one of your officers formally instructs an officer.  If you believe your officer was reasonable in his force response, regardless of what technique he used, then reward him with commendations. 

Until police administrators take back their policy responsibilities, they will be controlled by the false fear of increased litigation and liability.  The Double-L’s are real in many areas of police work, but are mainly manufactured when it comes to anything approaching an “approved technique.  A “required technique ” is not to law enforcement’s benefit.  A hundred arrests of resisting suspects will require one-hundred different solutions.  Flexibility within a reasonable force response is the most realistic and valuable expectation and administrator can have.  The best and most practical standard for evaluating your officers’ force responses lies in Scott and Graham.  It is the law of the land for a reason, and it is a doggone good standard by which to evaluate your officer’s actions.

As an officer, you are given the challenging responsibility of employing force against citizens and others in the name of the people of your jurisdiction.  The US Constitution and federal laws require the “objectively reasonable” seizure of a person by any agent of the government in the enforcement of laws and the keeping of the peace.  State constitutions and laws require essentially the same reasonableness in police efforts in interacting with citizens.  How officers conduct themselves in arrest situations where force is compelled by the suspect’s behavior is a subject of great importance.  The issue of providing a reasonable warning to the subject prior to any force response, with exceptions, is part of that reasonableness.

The federal courts in recent years have enthusiastically taken up this topic and are enforcing the need to warn if it is reasonable to do so.  Providing a threatening, violent, and/or armed individual with a warning prior to responding with a force tool can decrease the likelihood of injury or death to the subject.  It is also critical to being able to defend that force response in later inquiries about the reasonableness of your actions and decision-making.

Law enforcement agency instructors, as a whole, have become very successful in training their officers to warn subjects of an impending force response, deadly or otherwise.  In fact, they have become so successful that their officers tend to attempt to warn subjects even when it is dangerous—and therefore, unnecessary—to do so.  Recognizing the difference and being able to explain your reasoning to your administration, the Prosecutor, and to a jury (civil or criminal)—why you either gave the warning or did not—may have a huge outcome on the outcome of post-force response proceedings.  The concept of warning prior to employing any force tool—non-lethal, less-lethal, and deadly force—seems to be widely misunderstood by many police trainers, and, subsequently, their officers.

This misunderstanding is seen in the form of a blanket requirement by some instructors, and even in some agency policies, to universally require a warning prior to every force response, regardless of the circumstance confronting an officer.  One agency has even taken this beyond the extreme:  recently, a firearms instructor proudly proclaimed that his agency had initiated the “ultimate liability prevention program” by requiring officers to continuously warn the suspect as they were shooting (“Police!  Drop your weapon…bang!...Get on…bang…the ground!…bang…Drop your…bang…weapon…”).  He was less enthusiastic and a more than a bit offended when, instead of wholehearted praise and welcome, his pronouncement that all agencies should adopt this liability prevention practice was met with just a few of the following arguments:

• This is a dangerous practice.  Some shooting incidents require a warning, whereas others do not.  There are situations where immediately shooting a suspect without warning may be the safest method of legally resolving the incident without further loss of life or injury.  This would include hostage-situations, armed robberies in-progress, assaults-with-a-deadly-weapon in-progress, etc. 
• Universal argument?  If this is a universal requirement, will a SWAT marksman be required to warn an imminent Threat before taking a surgical shot? 
• This is likely to lead to a decrease of hits, more rounds expended per shooting, with corresponding officer injuries or death, as well as increased civil liability.  If, for argument, the national average of police bullets hitting suspects is 30%, is it likely that shouting warnings while shooting at an armed suspect who is shooting or about to shoot at an officer is going to lead to an increase in the rate of hits, the same hit rate, or fewer hits on threat?  Requiring an officer to shoot and hit a suspect while shouting at the suspect is more likely to decrease the ability of the officer to hit the suspect who needs to be shot to prevent injury to the officer and/or others. 
• How is a suspect supposed to hear what the officer is saying?  Gunfire is loud, especially when it is directed at the individual who is supposed to be hearing these shouted commands.  If shouting while firing is just for the witnesses, how does that satisfy the spirit of the need to warn the suspect?  Additionally, the attentional load of the suspect is likely high as well, and it is unlikely that any attention whatsoever will be delegated to listening to the officer shouting while firing. 
• This is likely to lead to more liability rather than less.  This policy requires officers to shout the warning as they are shooting.  It is a policy intended to protect the suspect and gain their compliance more quickly, thereby reducing the number of rounds they are hit with, and lessening the likelihood of multiple serious injuries.  Because the policy is in place to protect the subject, it creates a duty that is owed to the offender.  Failing to perform that duty creates a negligence issue to be solved through tort litigation.  This forces a question:  Is an officer who is in reasonable fear of imminent or immediate danger of death or serious bodily injury likely to think of: A) policy requirements requiring him/her to simultaneously shoot and shout warnings, or, B) shooting and hitting the Threat until the suspect ceases to be a threat to the officer’s life?  At this point, the officer who reacts to the threat and is so alarmed and frightened by the suspect’s threat to the officer’s life and either couldn’t or didn’t think about yelling while shooting is now subject to: A) administrative liability and is disciplined for a policy violation, and/or B) subject to civil liability in a state negligence tort action for policy violations, and/or C) an increased perception by a federal civil jury that the officer did not comply with training and policy, creating a tipping point in their verdict against the officer for shooting the subject.

Creating requirements that might work in a perfect world with perfectly aware officers who are perfectly in tune with the situation is foolish.  Officers tend to be average human beings who react in a variety of ways to the act of someone attempting to murder them.  Laws, policies, and training on warnings must reflect the reality officers work in.  This includes a wide spectrum of events where the possibility of harm varies as well from little to extreme.

All forms of force tools require at least some type of warning, if feasible, prior to employing them.  This includes OC spray, Tasers and other electronic weapons, impact weapons (including kinetic munitions), police service dogs, and, of course, firearms.  It is, however, the “if feasible” part that seems to be the issue.  What does the feasibility of a warning actually mean?

When is There a Requirement to Warn?

There is a definite need to warn subjects if time and circumstance permit prior to employing police force tools.  Warning a subject, when it is feasible, is both humane and may preclude the need to respond with force.  The following are a few examples of the language of one of the most restrictive (in terms of police actions) federal circuits (the 9th Circuit) on the subject of the need to warn an offender prior to responding with force:

• “Here, it was feasible to give a warning that the use of force was imminent if Bryan did not comply.”  (Bryan v. McPherson, 590 F. 3d 767, Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2009). 
• “We do not hold, however, that warnings are required whenever less than deadly force is employed.  Rather, we simply determine that such warnings should be given, when feasible, if the use of force may result in serious injury, and that the giving of a warning or the failure to do so is a factor to be considered in applying the Graham balancing test.  In the present case, the desirability and feasibility of a warning are obvious” (Deorle v. Rutherford, 272 F. 3d 1272, Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2001).

The US Supreme Court in Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1; 105 S. Ct. 1694 (1985), when addressing the issue of shooting a fleeing suspect, stated: “Thus, if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used if necessary to prevent escape, and if, where feasible, some warning has been given.”

The common link in each of these cases is the phrase, “if feasible.”  “Feasible” is defined as “capable of being done with the means at hand and circumstances as they are” (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). 

The 10th Circuit explained that "feasible" and "practicable" are fundamentally synonymous:  “Since Congress did not define or otherwise explain the meaning of the facially ambiguous phrase "…practicable" within the statute, we assume Congress intended the words to be given their ordinary meaning, which we may discover through the use of dictionaries.  ‘Practicable is...that which is performable, feasible, [or] possible...’ Black's Law Dictionary 1172 (6th ed.1991); see also Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 923 (defining ‘practicable’ as that which is ‘possible to practice or perform: feasible’)” (Biodiversity Legal Foundation v. Babbitt, 146 F.3d 1249, 10th Circuit, 1998).

Therefore, officers must warn prior to responding with force to the offender’s behavior when the officer believes it is reasonable and the situation safely permits a warning given the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time.  Whether or not an event was rapidly evolving in circumstances that are tense, threatening, and/or out of control will determine if the officer was able to provide a warning.

The research into the “attentional load” of a human being definitively demonstrates that we have only so much ability to focus, and that all attention is serial in nature.  When presented with multiple attention requirements, humans are able to focus on each issue in turn rather than being globally aware of all of the issues at once.  When responding to an imminent threat, an officer who is required to fire and shout warnings must minimally concentrate individually and serially on the threatening actions of the offender, tracking the suspect’s target area, the complicated act of shooting (and hitting the imminent Threat), shouting warnings, avoiding being shot, realizing the subject is falling and no longer a threat—or remains a threat, the presence of unarmed civilians who may be near the line of fire, other officers who may be in the line of fire, other officers who may be firing past the officer, etc.

Each component requiring focus affects up attentional capacity, and, like a computer’s RAM, once it is filled, there is no more room for more information.  Each component can only be separately and consecutively focused upon if the officer can afford to pay attention to that specific detail in the midst of a life-or-death response to someone attempting to murder him.  Those specific areas of focus most related to surviving will be given priority to the exclusion of other “nice to have” information--attentional capacity decreases as the perception of threat increases.  Attentional resources will be devoted only to those skills and areas that are necessary at this moment to survive.  The mere thought of warning a subject who is now an imminent threat of violence, serious bodily injury, and/or death may be well beyond the capability of a particular officer in a particular situation at that particular time.

This time requirement also demands the likelihood of the force tool effectively stopping the threatening behavior in time to prevent harm:

• OC spray:  The spray must be delivered from the canister to the subject’s face and mucous membranes.  There is a delay from the time it hits the offender until the maximum effect of the substance is achieved.  The effectiveness of OC spray varies widely, however, and is affected by the mental state of the subject (people who are mentally ill, under the influence of various stimulants or hallucinogens, or in a rage often are lightly affected, or demonstrate none of the expected effects).  Its effectiveness and “stopping power” cannot be predicted. 
• Taser:  The officer’s trigger finger must press the trigger, the probes must be expelled, and both probes must hit the subject to complete an electrical circuit with a sufficient spread to create neuromuscular disruption.  The effectiveness of Tasers are well-known.  However, misses with one of the two probes are common enough that it must be factored into the consideration of whether or not the subject can safely be warned or not given the time available to the officer.  Additionally, there are many cases where the mentally ill and those who are under the influence of certain drugs seem to be partially or wholly immune to the effects of the Taser energy. 
• Hand-held impact weapon (baton):  While the baton can be a very effective force tool, the commonly taught “Green-Yellow-Red Zone” targeting method is particularly ineffective (it is actually a product liability strategy rather than an attempt to satisfy either legal or officer safety requirements).  Because the impact weapon is employed properly as a means of defense and control of an aggressive, violent subject, it must be used to stop and disable the violent subject by targeting the bony surfaces of the body to create maximum pain.  Because the only effective targets are bony surfaces of the body, there is a possibility of a strike breaking a bone.  However, people who are mentally ill, under the influence of various stimulants or hallucinogens, or in a rage often exhibit a level of tolerance rendering them immune from pain--including that of broken bones.
• Kinetic munitions:  Delivered from a less-lethal shotgun or a 37mm delivery system, this force options fires a diverse assortment of rounds.  Best known is the 12 gauge fabric covered bag commonly filled with shot at low velocity in order to deliver a kinetic blow at a safer distance from the suspect.  Foam rounds from the 37mm weapon are extremely effective as well.  Its impact is similar to a well delivered baton strike.  Its success depends on either of the following results:  1) the suspect believes he has been shot by a firearm, and believing this, thinks that people who are shot are supposed to fall down, so he falls;  2) the suspect tires of being struck with a number of kinetic munition projectiles, and complies with orders.  However, people who are mentally ill, under the influence of various stimulants or hallucinogens, or in a rage often absorb tremendous numbers of projectiles with little immediate effect (with resulting spectacular bruising that is later used to dazzle and horrify civil jurors).
• Firearms:  The ability to stop any particular human being with a bullet, or a number of bullets, is completely unpredictable.  Absent a bullet strike through the brain or spine, the human body can absorb an unbelievable number of rounds and continue to function in a threatening manner until succumbing to organ failure and/or exsanguinations some time later.  While many individuals are stopped after being shot once (or by simply being shot at), others continue to be a threat until they have been hit numerous times.  Simply being shot is not a predictor of compliance or overcoming resistance.  People who have been hit with multiple “fatal” rounds have continued in their assaults and have seriously injured and murdered several people before succumbing to their wounds (e.g., the April 11, 1986 FBI Miami shootout).  The bullet must be fired, penetrate the suspect’s vital structures, and either cause the offender to psychologically give up, or create a physiological failure of the body to continue.  This takes time that the situation (determined by the suspect) must give to the officer.

This reality—the time it takes to observe and orient to the threat, decide to respond with reasonable force, deliver the force tool, followed by the time it takes for the offender to either realize the danger to his health and well-being and stop his threatening action out of self-preservation, or for the tool to overwhelm the subject physically and cause the behavior to cease, added to the time for the officer to perceive whether or not that particular force response was successful or not—requires a sufficient length of time be available to the officer before the perceived harm can occur, and partly determines whether or not a warning may be feasible.

Distance Equals Time, and Affects the Ability to Warn

Distance and time are components of each other in tactical doctrine.  Time considerations are often a function of how much distance is involved and the rate of movement of the involved-parties (time = distance/speed).  It stands to reason that the closer you are to the Threat, the less time you have to react.

Reaction-response time is built into this requirement to warn.  This involves the officer having the time to give a command, which, in turn, requires the offender to hear the command, process the required action, and respond to the command.  This then requires the officer to have the time to be able to perceive and orient to whether or not there is a change in the suspect’s actions or level of compliance, and to then act on the offender’s actions in time to prevent or respond to the Threat.  This takes time and is not in any way instantaneous. 

If you have a choice, recalling the Universal Tactical Doctrine Principle© of “Optimize distance from the Threat,” every contact would ideally be from as far away from an offender as possible while still being able to conduct the business at hand.  Every day contacts require enough distance to obtain information, conduct an investigation, exchange paperwork, etc.  This calls for you to be a step or two from the apparently unarmed, apparently cooperative suspect, giving you at least some time to react to a sudden assault.  As threat factors increase (apparently under-the-influence, apparently mentally ill, hostile, threatening, violent, prior extreme violence, possibly armed, verified armed, etc.), the greater distance is needed for a safer response.  As the distance between you and the Threat increases, the likelihood (and practicability) of the need to warn prior to a force response also increases.

In the real-world of policing, officers must often place themselves between civilian innocents and aggressing suspects at distances they, themselves, would admit were unsafe but feel is necessary for the protection of others.  Since suspects always control the speed, evolution, and location of a call, you may have no choice but to get closer in proximity than you would otherwise choose.  This will affect the time in which you have to react to sudden assault, as well as the time you have to warn the subject prior to responding with force.

In this case, given the threat level of the offender as well as the proximity of the event, the need to warn is dependent upon the offender’s behavior.  If the situation is static and a plan is in place to reasonably compel compliance through force, and it can be safely accomplished, give a warning.  If the situation is dynamic, is threatening to become violent, or violence is imminent, and the officer is in proximity to the suspect, a warning is less likely to be feasible, and is therefore less likely to be required.

Safety Factors in Providing a Warning

The safety of the officer and others may also be a factor in whether or not a warning is required.  As a dynamic, rapidly evolving, and/or highly threatening event unfolds, a warning may no longer be feasible.  Just a few examples where a warning is not necessary might be:

• An offender suddenly reaches down to the floorboard of his vehicle as you belatedly see a handgun. 
• A suspect makes a grabbing, pulling motion from his waistband.
• An offender is in the midst of an armed robbery using some type of deadly weapon. 
• An offender with a knife or stabbing instrument is charging or lunging at you.
• An armed, apparently violent subject is about to enter/exit a doorway leading to an area where unarmed civilians are likely to be present.
• An apparently unarmed suspect charges you.
• The suspect is initiating or is in the midst of a criminal, violent assault.

If the officer believes that she or another individual is in imminent or actual danger of assault, serious physical injury, or death, a warning is likely not required before responding with force.

Additionally, if a warning is likely to create the ability of a suspect to develop or initiate a countermeasure, it is unlikely that a warning is required.  For example, an officer who is about to go hands-on with a resistive subject is not likely going to provide that individual with a warning, giving up all hope of surprise.  This will simply turn what may have been a simple takedown into a brawl with a higher likelihood of injuries to both the officer and the suspect.  Likewise, a violent suspect who is standing near the open door from which he just emerged may simply step inside upon being warned and close the door, preventing the officer from tasing him, delaying and complicating apprehension efforts.

Provide a Warning, If Feasible, Regardless of the Suspect’s Condition

Some officers in the past, faced with a mentally ill individual who is in crisis, or a suspect who is under-the-influence, have reasoned that the subject is not only not complying with commands, but is apparently unable to understand or comprehend anything, negating the need to warn.  This is a flawed reasoning that will create no end of problems in post-force proceedings.

Regardless of your perception of whether or not an individual comprehend the warning, either because of mental disability, mental capacity, their state of sobriety, or apparent language barriers, a warning, if feasible, should be given.  In the case of a language barrier, a uniformed police officer shouting commands while pointing a police weapon at a person is a universal signal to stop whatever behavior that person is presently doing.  Giving a warning if the suspect’s behavior and time permits helps the jury understand that you are attempting to resolve the incident without injuring the subject.

Articulating Your Reasoning

Whether or not you warn an offender prior to responding with a force tool, you will be required to justify your actions, or lack of actions.  Properly acting but failing to sufficiently articulate what you did and why it was reasonable is a common problem in police cases where the officers are found liable for their force conduct.  Everything you do or do not do must be accounted for in your reporting of the incident.  While the tricks that criminal defense and plaintiffs’ attorneys play for the jury (“If it was so important, why didn’t you include it in your initial report?”) are often just that, tricks that are easily seen through by any rational juror, your reality is that there are key components to every force incident that must be addressed in your reporting and testimony that explain your “state of mind.”  All force by police is evaluated on your understanding of the totality of the circumstances—20/20 hindsight is not permitted.  All factors in this evaluation are based on what you knew then, not what is known following the force incident.  Failing to address in your report the facts you knew at the time creates a very difficult defense in subsequent inquiries.

If the circumstances created by the offender forced you into proximity to the suspect—even when admittedly dangerously close—explain why you were forced to take that position.  Your reasoning may include that others were endangered by the suspect’s actions.  If the suspect then forces you to respond with force without the ability to provide a warning, it will be up to you to articulate the need to be in that position and as close to the threat as you were.

Until now, officers have not universally been trained to address the subject of warning as a requirement in the reporting of facts known to them at the time.  The increasing focus of the courts on the topic of warnings by police prior to a force tool being employed demands that the prudent officer include it in the initial report of the incident.

• If a warning was given, specifically document that in either your report and/or interview.  Provide a direct or approximate quote of your commands and warning(s). 
• If a warning was not provided prior to the force response, explain why the suspect’s behavior and circumstances did not permit the feasibility of a warning.  This would include the threat of the offender’s actions, the relative dynamism and rapidly evolving events driven by the suspect, as well as the safety issues involved in your decision.

Conclusion

“The safety interest in controlling the group increased further when the group was warned by police that a chemical irritant would be used if they did not move back from the area, and the group refused to comply.  Jackson, who heard the warning, also chose to ignore the officers' orders, and instead began to directly interfere with Officer Davis' attempt to maintain order.”  (Jackson v. City of Bremerton, 268 F. 3d 646, Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2001).

The courts are interested in the safety of all concerned, the public, the officer(s), and the offender.  The courts also understand that officer safety is vital, and will provide a lot of leeway to officers when they can prove they reasonably perceived they were under actual or imminent assault.  The courts also understand that an officer’s job is a difficult one, and that split-second judgments are made in circumstances that are dynamic, tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving.  There is no requirement for perfection by police officers—officers are permitted a wide spectrum of reasonable conduct.

Warnings, when feasible, are no longer optional.  While the lack of a warning is not determinant to a finding of excessive force, it may well be a factor mitigating against you.  The concept of the feasibility of providing a warning to a suspect whose behavior calls for some type of employment of a force tool to gain their compliance is contextual.  The context is driven by the offender, with the officer adapting her tactics and force response accordingly.

There is a real-world requirement to warning that borders on being commonsensical.  Training that an officer must always provide a warning is counter to common sense and to safety—and does not decrease the liability exposure to an officer or agency.  Failing to train an officer to warn when given the opportunity to perhaps give the offender a chance to reconsider whether or not to comply is no longer excusable.

Bottom line:

• Warn the subject prior to a force response if there is time and you can safely do it.
• If it is not safe or there wasn’t time, respond with force per your training and your understanding of the context of the incident, and then explain why it wasn’t possible or safe given the totality of the circumstances you faced at the time.