What's so hard doing about felony stops?

[Dagga Boy]

"They used incredible restraint, because when that subject put that car in reverse, they could've easily shot him and they took into consideration that right behind them was a restaurant with people dining, and those are the split second decisions we need to make as police officers," Miami Fraternal Order of Police President Javier Ortiz said.

And this right here is the problem. Are you f-ing kidding me. If you folks think that was incredible restraint I don't know what it would take to be an unmitigated clusterfuck. The public see's this crap, knows FAR less than people who have and do do this job everyday and you are telling them this is "restraint" and wonder why you have DOJ living in your rectum. Want to do your officers a favor, how about this statement....."What you saw today was what happens when city politicians and LE management lower hiring standards, place on-going relevant and high quality training on the bottom of the list for priority in budgeting, and when officers resort to responding from pure emotion and fear rather than solid training. Also, the lack of leadership and quality supervision were apparent here as well and should be a lesson about promoting people based on trying to create an appearance of diversity rather than based on their ability to control officers through example and experience. Hopefully; the public will demand greater training for our officers in actual proper use of force, firearms, driving and defensive tactics to avoid further incidents like this one. We also hope the department will realize that we are wasting valuable training time with feel good cultural awareness and diversity training that has no relevance to how officers are responding to dangerous high stress incidents. It is our hope that the officials elected to positions of authority in this city will take seriously the true task of leadership that is providing the public with exceptionally well-trained and disciplined professional police officers, rather than issuing sound bites and crossing their fingers that nothing serious happens."

[Cookie Monster]

Forgive me but I am slow.

On the Miami cluster-stop, was the group hug at the end just in the moment or more planned to shield from helicopter view the felon getting the kitten kicked out of him?

The LAPD had a lot of dudes around the stopped car, I can see how things could go south really fast.

[Edwin]

That stuff actually pisses me off to no end. The first people getting days off are staff, the on scene supervisor who obviously was not able to and almost everyone there. The job is dangerous enough without total lack of an iota of discipline creating the hazards.

One thing I learned VERY early through the discipline process was if you were not one of the primary cars in a pursuit and close enough to effectively parallel, the best thing you could do was roll center city and make yourself available for hot calls knowing there is a shortage of manpower. It is amazing.....all this modern communications and nobody can form a take down plan.....total amateur hour.

Having lived in Miami for 28 years, that's the most apt description possible.

[Lon]

On the Miami cluster-stop, was the group hug at the end just in the moment or more planned to shield from helicopter view the felon getting the kitten kicked out of him?

That was my first thought when I saw it. I'd have some guys in my office chewing some ass if I was their boss. It smacks of hiding something from the news choppers, even if they weren't doing anything wrong.

[Dagga Boy]

I don't know what the Rugby scrum was, but I got the impression everyone wanted a piece. Even in the 80's I never saw anything like that, and pre Rodney King, you ran, you got your ass kicked.....street rules. And before everyone gets hyper, the criminals understood it. By the same token, if a cop laid hands on a guy who gave up when told, or tuned a cuffed prisoner it was the same violation of street rules. Crooks understood the rules and so did officers. Youngsters were trained by the older guys on both sides. It worked well actually. Kept both sides fairly honest.

[Erick Gelhaus]

The complete lack of supervision, formal or informal, has been mentioned. The senior, by experience, officers need to be developing plans and communicating them if the actual supervisors are not.

We were 2 + a supervisor for quite a while, now we are 3+ a supervisor unless the need for more can be articulated.

The differences in equipment between the videos is obvious, however it does not account for the differences in the outcome. The LAPD video show Metro officers handling the PIT and resolution of the pursuit. Training and experience is the benefit there. These cops are selected (as well as self-selected in just the application process) with experience being a factor and then trained. They all work & train together; unlike most patrol entities.

"We" have to get away from dumping our training to adjust to the BadGuy's expected actions. Either we follow our training or we adjust it to account for the BadGuy's probable actions. We've gotten used to the BadGuys running at the end of the pursuit, so we run up to the car. That takes the K9s out of play because they cannot be released to chase the BadGuy. All of those cops out on foot now create the exigencies that lead to shootings of "un-armed motorists." How many organizations teach, train high-risk vehicle stops and take-downs in a manner anywhere consistent to what played out in the Miami video?

Actual street level (formal & informal) leadership is needed, as is training that is relevant to what we are really encountering, dealing with.

[Dr. No]

What is very impressive are the SIS car jams. They are literally doing a Multi car controls crash from multiple sides and they maintain total emotional control and discipline.....on crooks who are usually all armed, wearing armor and fresh of a robbery.

Dream job ...

[LtDave]

I don't know what the Rugby scrum was, but I got the impression everyone wanted a piece. Even in the 80's I never saw anything like that, and pre Rodney King, you ran, you got your ass kicked.....street rules. And before everyone gets hyper, the criminals understood it. By the same token, if a cop laid hands on a guy who gave up when told, or tuned a cuffed prisoner it was the same violation of street rules. Crooks understood the rules and so did officers. Youngsters were trained by the older guys on both sides. It worked well actually. Kept both sides fairly honest.

Back in the early '80's, one of our local crooks managed to start a pursuit with LAPD that went all over east LA. Eventually, dummy must have been running out of gas and decided it would not be a good idea to have LAPD catch him and administer a beating according to said street rules. So, he did what any self respecting street hood does, he drove to my PD's parking lot and tried to surrender to the locals. Unfortunately for him, LAPD did not recognize our parking lot as out of bounds. Our sergeant at the time, who eventually went on to become chief of police, is said to have told his officers to stand back and let LAPD handle it. LAPD administered the requisite ass kicking, threw dummy in the back of a unit and took him back to LA.

[LtDave]

Dream job ...

Absolutely. I wasn't LAPD, but I got about as close as you can to that job when I worked LA IMPACT in the mid '90's.

[pablo]

As an outsider knowing nothing of the tactics/training for these situations, the control these guys showed was impressive. Cool, calm, and collected!

Side note: I can't be the only one that was hoping the guy would make a run for it so the Mal could get in on the action....

Wait a minute there's a scary armored vehicle and lots of scary guys in body armor pointing rifles, OMG militarized police....an overwhelming show of force and very intimidating, who'd a thunk they might scare the bad guy and make him think twice about pulling any hijinks. But that's bad, Mkay. Group hugs at the end of chases are better than being scary.

Once upon time, at the termination of a chase we would swarm a car, smash all the windows, rip out the bad guy(s) by the ears and stomp him into a puddle of grease. But that one time the bad guy turns out to be a Regular Joe that had a mild stroke, think anyone wanted to hear the excuses about the way we handle up.