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View Full Version : Dave Spaulding in Jun/Jul "HANDGUNS" - - - "Raging Bull" in On Patrol Column



JHC
04-19-2012, 07:11 PM
A really good and really sobering piece by this author. Re-tells a harrowing tale of an LEO that missed one of his training event recuperating but told him his story of dealing with a totally amped up fighter. OC and expandable baton failed in epic fashion. As close a call as one can get.

Article deals with the liability driven restrictions on use of force. OC that fails on a jacked up "enraged bull". Failure of hollow tubed batons used against "green zones" only so as not to risk serious injury of said enraged bull.

And the mental state of the survivor who now wonders "where do I go from here?" Everything I'd been taught failed.

Besides the great mindset lesson Spaulding lays out; it just pisses me off to no end the levels of "minimum" force LEO's are required to escalate through in these situations.

Equally valid mindset lessons for the civvie swept up into a maelstrom.

Lon
04-19-2012, 08:25 PM
.... it just pisses me off to no end the levels of "minimum" force LEO's are required to escalate through in these situations.


With the caveat that I have not read the article, I get frustrated when I read things like this because there is nothing in case law which requires LEOs to use "minimum" force or to escalate through all the levels of force. We've been fighting this battle at work and I think we finally won. I hate force continuums.

Sorry, rant off. I'll have to go buy this issue so I can read the article.

texag
04-19-2012, 09:18 PM
With the caveat that I have not read the article, I get frustrated when I read things like this because there is nothing in case law which requires LEOs to use "minimum" force or to escalate through all the levels of force. We've been fighting this battle at work and I think we finally won. I hate force continuums.

Sorry, rant off. I'll have to go buy this issue so I can read the article.

Some departments do, some don't. The one I worked for used the loosest use of force policy allowable by case law. Officers were allowed to respond with reasonable force as dictated by the situation.

dookie1481
04-19-2012, 09:37 PM
Failure of hollow tubed batons used against "green zones" only so as not to risk serious injury of said enraged bull.

Not an LEO, but we had the same thing in USMC less-lethal weapons course. I wondered if hitting them in a "green" area would do anything against the type of pissed-off mob we would be called in to deal with.

JHC
04-20-2012, 04:04 AM
With the caveat that I have not read the article, I get frustrated when I read things like this because there is nothing in case law which requires LEOs to use "minimum" force or to escalate through all the levels of force. We've been fighting this battle at work and I think we finally won. I hate force continuums.

Sorry, rant off. I'll have to go buy this issue so I can read the article.

Thanks! That is hopeful.

TCinVA
04-20-2012, 09:30 AM
The original intent behind a UOF continuum was to formalize the idea of there being levels of force and helping officers to understand which level is appropriate at which times. Touching someone is a level of force that's appropriate in a pretty broad set of circumstances. Punching them in the face is a much higher level of force that's appropriate in a much narrower set of circumstances. Shooting them in the face is the highest level of force and is only appropriate in the narrowest set of circumstances. Etc.

Different departments have different takes on how various tools work. In some departments the use of a taser is ranked lower than the use of "hard hands" (essentially punches and the like) where in others the taser ranks as a higher level of force than "hard hands". In some departments OC spray is regarded as a low level of force an officer can use to gain compliance from fairly "passive" resistance. In others I can cite they actually have a policy requiring the officer to inform someone that they are about to be sprayed with OC and to ask if they have any OC related health risks before the officer can deploy the OC. How, you might ask, is one supposed to do this with a violent suspect throwing fists? Because, shutup, that's how.

Anyhoo...

The UOF continuum was never supposed to obligate officers to use a lower than appropriate level of force before moving to a higher one in all situations. An officer who is being shot at doesn't have to resort to soft hands, hard hands, taser, OC, and then baton before he/she uses the sidearm. It was designed to help them understand that it was inappropriate to pull a gun and shoot somebody who was displaying passive resistance. I know, it seems like common sense but there's video out there of a sworn law enforcement officer pulling a sidearm and shooting a dude at point blank pretty much for passive resistance during a traffic stop. With a UOF continuum in place you can then fire that kind of officer because you can cite a specific violation of your UOF policy which forbids the use of a sidearm to deal with passive resistance. If you have no such guidance, believe it or not officer dimwit can actually win a lawsuit if you fire them. Remember that we live in a legal environment where questions on a police exam that asked candidates to do basic arithmetic and calculate how many hours they would have worked during a week in a scenario were thrown out by a court for being discriminatory. Is it a good idea to have people who can't add carrying lethal weapons and enforcing the law? The court didn't address that question.

Officers will frequently try lesser levels of force to solve a problem because lesser levels of force often work and a lesser level of force applied early enough might preclude the need to use a higher level of force later on. Invariably there's that one time out of 10/100/1000 when the lower level of force doesn't work and then the officer is ratcheting up the force being used as the problem gets worse. If you took an ASP and gave the average person on the street a good whack in the thigh with it, they'd probably hit the ground and screech in pain because that hurts. Now take the average person on the street, amp them up on Meth to the point where they haven't slept in days and you can break bones and they might not even feel it.

Thankfully the average citizen doesn't typically have these concerns. I remember an episode of COPS that followed some officers in Philadelphia. They responded to a barber shop to find a large, muscular male stark naked and yelling incoherently. He was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was apparently experimenting with modern chemistry, lost his mind, broke into the barber shop, and then tried to break into the residence above the barber shop. The owner of the residence called 911 when he heard the disturbance. When Capt. Space Ranger tried to break down the door, the owner of the residence fired a shot which hit the man in the chest.

The owner of the residence had a pretty simple problem to solve. Had the space ranger pressed the attack further, it would have been more application of the 9mm until the problem stopped. The police who responded had a much more difficult problem to solve, namely taking this dude into custody so they could get him medical treatment. Even with over what I'd estimate to be 1,200 pounds of Philadelphia PD officer working their hardest to try and get this guy...who was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest, mind you...into custody it took them about 10 minutes and completely trashed the barber shop.

Because the average joe has no duty to arrest someone and take them into custody, the typical citizen's interaction with a bad guy is likely to be attempts at de-escalation and escape followed by the use of significant force if those attempts fail. This is usually happening in the context of a criminal assault. In other words, when I'm at a gas station trying to fill up I'm not trying to take anyone into custody...so when some hammerhead encroaches on me and attempts a robbery I'm pretty much clear to go for my pistol. That act in and of itself is likely to make most bad guys knock it off. If that doesn't work, pulling the trigger is probably going to solve it in a hurry. I'm not interested in stuffing him into the back of a cruiser. I want to escape, to have him bugger off and leave me alone, or in the worst case have him laying on the ground bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds while I call 911. In that respect, my problem is simpler in terms of a satisfactory solution.

David Armstrong
04-20-2012, 01:37 PM
The UOF continuum was never supposed to obligate officers to use a lower than appropriate level of force before moving to a higher one in all situations.
This. I think we may have messed up by discussing it as a continuum. Sam Faulkner once described it as a wheel, which I thought was more accurate.

JHC
04-20-2012, 02:43 PM
And Spaulding's message is heavily weighted to the expectations that training different levels of force may create in the mindset of the trainee. Chiefly expectations that they should work. Don't have ANY expectation that they'll work seemed to be his bottom line. Have no expectations at all. He didn't reference OODA but I gathered that a failed expectation couldn't do your loop any good.

NickA
04-20-2012, 03:08 PM
I'm sure this varies widely by agency, but how much does LEO training focus on the possibility of less lethal options NOT working? It seems like some FoF with the BG randomly cooperating or not (after being tased or OC'd) would be invaluable, but I have no idea if that's something that's normally done.
I can just imagine the reaction of an officer who's always seen the subject submit in training, only to have some guy shrug it off and keep coming. Would have to be unnerving to say the least.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

texag
04-20-2012, 05:33 PM
I'm sure this varies widely by agency, but how much does LEO training focus on the possibility of less lethal options NOT working? It seems like some FoF with the BG randomly cooperating or not (after being tased or OC'd) would be invaluable, but I have no idea if that's something that's normally done.
I can just imagine the reaction of an officer who's always seen the subject submit in training, only to have some guy shrug it off and keep coming. Would have to be unnerving to say the least.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

My training at academy was hitting a man wearing a padded suit with a padded baton while he punched you in the face. They were not happy when I tossed that baton across the room and went in with knees.

Departmental training was much better in that you had current officers telling you what can/will cause a taser to not get a good connection, why baton strikes sometimes don't work, etc. The training was almost all focused on striking and retention.