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, 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. Officers confront him from the Records doorway, pointing handguns and yelling orders. After a minute or so, the suspect, still armed with the handgun, begins to count down while at gunpoint, "Ten; Nine; Eight; Seven..." Uniformed officers fire when he reaches "Two," hitting him and ending the threat. As they approach the downed gunman, the off-duty officer pushes open the door and quickly enters the lobby to assist in taking the suspect into custody. An officer calls out, “Gun!” The 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 yet forgiven themselves for shooting and killing their co-worker, their friend, 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.