NBC News report on police firefights during manhunt for Boston bombing suspects

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Ditto on that. Working at a university and in a very complex building, the local SWAT team would arrive to find many 10's of students and staff DRT. As I testified to the Texas House during the campus carry debate, if you have a marginally competent bad guy - you will lose the first thirty. However, no reason to lose the first 60 waiting for the local PD. Our folks have a pretty good training regime. Of course, the administration doesn't like to hear me say that the first thirty are dead unless someone is armed on the spot (assuming you aren't killed first). The campus carry debate is for another thread though.

Two minute response is better than about 10 minutes.

[TheTrevor]

The next county north of here is Boone Co.

From all I've seen, I pity the fool that wants to get cross-threaded with the BCSD. They're pretty big on training.

Some crusty older dude from Boone County SD did pretty well at Rogers this week... with two broken ribs, FFS. After getting to know him a bit, I'm 100% willing to believe he runs a squared-away operation.

[TheTrevor]

One key thing many agencies never understand is that not every senior leader is a crisis leader. Rank alone doesn't prepare senior officials for crisis management. Many senior officials, even with training, simply won't be functional. It usually takes a mistake to learn this. LSP learned this in the early 90s when an idiot Region Major interfered with SWAT resources at a hostage incident. That cluster led to a separate chain of command for such things in my old agency.

Ken and others have come close to pointing out the crux of the problem here, but I haven't seen anyone call out the well-proven solution by name: the Incident Command System.

I have been a huge proponent of ICS as a structured means of handling critical incidents in the Internet services sector, as my career focus has been on designing/building/delivering stuff that has to meet >99.99% availability requirements. My first exposure to ICS was actually during some hard-core volunteer disaster-response training, where we were actually taught the full ICS curriculum by mistake -- the volunteers were apparently supposed to get some weaksauce short-form version instead, but we got the whole monty. I not only took to ICS naturally, as it was very similar to how I'd been running Operations teams for years at that point, but (along with others) did a lot of work on how to apply ICS effectively in the context of critical Internet services vs. its origin managing public safety problems.

To Ken's point, the flow of control in ICS may or may not align cleanly with normal command structure. This is because incident management is, by definition, different from the everyday business of the agencies involved. Under ICS the command structure is role-based, not politics-based, and does not necessarily leave room for command staff (e.g. Region Majors) to feel like they are Contributing Meaningfully To Team Success by Issuing Important Orders.

Few things shock me these days, but when I run into an agency that doesn't have at least two operating modes (everyday and ICS) it really bugs the crap out of me. If I ever get tired of doing the technology thing, I'm pretty sure I could make a very good living as an independent consultant doing agency-level ICS training, despite all the free resources out there on how to apply ICS in the public safety context.

[jlw]

Ken and others have come close to pointing out the crux of the problem here, but I haven't seen anyone call out the well-proven solution by name: the Incident Command System.

I have been a huge proponent of ICS as a structured means of handling critical incidents in the Internet services sector, as my career focus has been on designing/building/delivering stuff that has to meet >99.99% availability requirements. My first exposure to ICS was actually during some hard-core volunteer disaster-response training, where we were actually taught the full ICS curriculum by mistake -- the volunteers were apparently supposed to get some weaksauce short-form version instead, but we got the whole monty. I not only took to ICS naturally, as it was very similar to how I'd been running Operations teams for years at that point, but (along with others) did a lot of work on how to apply ICS effectively in the context of critical Internet services vs. its origin managing public safety problems.

To Ken's point, the flow of control in ICS may or may not align cleanly with normal command structure. This is because incident management is, by definition, different from the everyday business of the agencies involved. Under ICS the command structure is role-based, not politics-based, and does not necessarily leave room for command staff (e.g. Region Majors) to feel like they are Contributing Meaningfully To Team Success by Issuing Important Orders.

Few things shock me these days, but when I run into an agency that doesn't have at least two operating modes (everyday and ICS) it really bugs the crap out of me. If I ever get tired of doing the technology thing, I'm pretty sure I could make a very good living as an independent consultant doing agency-level ICS training, despite all the free resources out there on how to apply ICS in the public safety context.

ICS works much better for the fire service, where it originated, than it does for badge toters.

[LSP972]

Ken and others have come close to pointing out the crux of the problem here,

Close? No he carefully articulated THE problem.

What you don't know (and couldn't be expected to) is this: when the decision was made in 1990 to completely re-vamp LSP's "tactical team" (what it was called then) program, one man was chosen to do it. He pretty much had carte blanche, except in a few areas like the upper command structure thing, and after the afore-mentioned incident that was changed to reflect proper doctrine. This guy studied the problem, selected three "assistants"- one of whom was me- and proceeded to build a program.

We went to LAPD Metro D platoon, we went to the Range 19 complex on Fort Bragg, we went to a bunch of places; learning, , stealing, and adapting ideas and concepts. By 1996, we had built a 3 platoon/70 man unit that had several actual for-real hostage rescues to its credit.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Ken was that man. He guided the program through the early years, through the minefields of politics and upper rank shiesskopfs whose toes got stepped on frequently.

The point I'm trying to make here is that he is aware of the civilian-oriented management programs like you mention… and he is also aware they rarely, if ever, successfully translate to military-based organizations.

An excellent example is the Lean Six Sigma Program. Looks great on paper, and actually seems to work as advertised in the DNA section at our lab. But another state agency, one with minimal enforcement/arrest authority, has implemented it… and it has been a total disaster there.

Not throwing rocks at you personally, but I am reminded of the classic definition of a consultant… one who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is.

.

[TheTrevor]

ICS works much better for the fire service, where it originated, than it does for badge toters.

I have heard everything from enthusiasm to outright hostility from LE agencies regarding ICS. In my limited experience, this seems closely coupled to whether there are one or more folks in leadership who are (for whatever reason) strongly motivated to adapt ICS to the LE context at their agency. Not saying it's good or bad for LE as you're the SME on that, not me, just observing that some places have made it work while others don't even want to talk about ICS or NIMS.

To your point, it would surprise me to find agencies using ICS in its "off the shelf" form outside of fire/rescue. It does require tailoring to the environment at hand, whether that's LE critical incidents with extensive inter-agency coordination, or IT crisis management in a "five nines" 99.999% uptime environment. If there's a competing standardized and well proven system that's more accepted by LE I'd be interested in hearing about it.

[TheTrevor]

Close? No he carefully articulated THE problem.

What you don't know (and couldn't be expected to) is this: when the decision was made in 1990 to completely re-vamp LSP's "tactical team" (what it was called then) program, one man was chosen to do it. He pretty much had carte blanche, except in a few areas like the upper command structure thing, and after the afore-mentioned incident that was changed to reflect proper doctrine. This guy studied the problem, selected three "assistants"- one of whom was me- and proceeded to build a program.

We went to LAPD Metro D platoon, we went to the Range 19 complex on Fort Bragg, we went to a bunch of places; learning, , stealing, and adapting ideas and concepts. By 1996, we had built a 3 platoon/70 man unit that had several actual for-real hostage rescues to its credit.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, Ken was that man. He guided the program through the early years, through the minefields of politics and upper rank shiesskopfs whose toes got stepped on frequently.

The point I'm trying to make here is that he is aware of the civilian-oriented management programs like you mention… and he is also aware they rarely, if ever, successfully translate to military-based organizations.

An excellent example is the Lean Six Sigma Program. Looks great on paper, and actually seems to work as advertised in the DNA section at our lab. But another state agency, one with minimal enforcement/arrest authority, has implemented it… and it has been a total disaster there.

Not throwing rocks at you personally, but I am reminded of the classic definition of a consultant… one who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is.

.

Makes sense. I'm interested in learning why ICS does or doesn't work in the LE context, not shoving it down anyone's throat. I was half kidding about the consultant thing, apologies as that was likely unclear.

The more complex and structured any system becomes, the more likely it will turn into a Lean Six Sigma horror show. Been there done that.

Given my own success in adapting ICS to multiple mission critical environments which were decidedly not fire/rescue operations, and my understanding that at least some LE agencies have had success with it, I'm not going to roll over and play dead just yet.

There's room in the world for more than one solution to a problem, especially if those solutions don't conflict in damaging ways. I would be interested in hearing more about the system that you and Ken designed and implemented, rather than just being told "silly civilian with your cute disaster management protocols, run along while the grown-ups get real work done here..."

[TheTrevor]

Never mind. I'm bowing out of this thread. I should know better than to get involved in contentious topics like emergency incident command, even if I do have non-LE professional experience and perspective which could have made for an interesting conversation. Not worth getting into it with folks I like and respect.

[LSP552]

Never mind. I'm bowing out of this thread. I should know better than to get involved in contentious topics like emergency incident command, even if I do have non-LE professional experience and perspective which could have made for an interesting conversation. Not worth getting into it with folks I like and respect.

Don't leave. I don't have time now, but will share some perspective later this evening. The concepts are good, the implementation is generally what's lacking.

Ken

[TCinVA]

Only in America do kitten universities have full blown police departments with SWAT teams.

There is no kitten way in hell anyone can justify that with a straight face. Is there no police presence from the municipality where the uni is located, to even begin with?

Give me a kitten break

In an active shooter situation, time is everything. Having guys actually on scene rolling with the necessary equipment to get on scene of the incident as quickly as possible is going to save time. That saved time will be fewer dead bodies.

There's nothing special about a university. It's full of people who will behave exactly the same as the people who exist outside the boundaries of university property. Occasionally one of the people who isn't part of the university will show up and cause all manner of problems. Having the capacity to deal with an active shooter or barricaded suspect with hostages isn't a bad thing...especially since the university police are more likely to know the layout of facilities far better than a town/city/regional SWAT team that doesn't live in the environment every day.

Having officers on the university PD who can show up first in an AS situation to try and deal with the threat or fall into an element from the regional tac team in case of some other form of emergency is a pretty smart idea in theory.

Some universities absolutely suck at the execution of that theory, but that's a different thread.