LAPD Hostage Killing 06/16/2018

[Hambo]

It's just one guy's opinion, but this could have worked with pistols IF they had a designated shooter or shooters. Work the angle, get close, and do it.

[Dave Williams]

What a terrible scenario, lots of lessons and learning points. I have been in charge of a hostage scenario, and it is dicey indeed. I really have a ton of respect for LAPD, I think the Officers there really have the ability to become good shooters, with ammo , the ability to carry a gun of your choice, and practice available, and monetary incentive to shoot well, something not all that common around the country.

In my training with Larry Mudgett, former LAPD SWAT, he told the tale of a hostage situation at the Mexican consulate in LA. The situation was Officers on scene had the hostage taker at gunpoint. Someone arrived on scene "who knew how to shoot", a Sergeant who just left Metro for promotion. He thumbcocked his 4506, advanced on the hostage taker, and shot him in the head. There is a helicopter video of that incident I've seen. Mudgett has had ~360 students in gunfights. In his training surgical accuracy is stressed. In my own personal training I don't shoot at anything bigger than a B8.

[Wayne Dobbs]

In my training with Larry Mudgett, former LAPD SWAT, he told the tale of a hostage situation at the Mexican consulate in LA. The situation was Officers on scene had the hostage taker at gunpoint. Someone arrived on scene "who knew how to shoot", a Sergeant who just left Metro for promotion. He thumbcocked his 4506, advanced on the hostage taker, and shot him in the head. There is a helicopter video of that incident I've seen. Mudgett has had ~360 students in gunfights. In his training surgical accuracy is stressed. In my own personal training I don't shoot at anything bigger than a B8.

There's lots of wisdom in that practice of shooting at small zones under operational speed pressure. It's a practice that produces excellent street results. As for the former Metro Sgt. who made that hostage rescue shot, when questioned about his decision and ability to make the shot, he simply said, "I've made that shot thousands of times". And he had, as a very serious shooter and practitioner of his craft.

[GardoneVT]

It's just one guy's opinion, but this could have worked with pistols IF they had a designated shooter or shooters. Work the angle, get close, and do it.

Problem comes back to TCinVAs point about training.

Ultimately , being a proficient shooter costs money. Doesn’t matter what profession the person is, being able to deliver a headshot period- to say nothing about a headshot from a handgun at range in a hostage situation- requires a level of skill that is above the willingness of most agencies to fund.
Somewhere in the upper floors of every urban uniformed agency HQ is a dude or dudette with an Excel spreadsheet showing the macabre cost benefit of training officers vs eating a lawsuit or a dead hostage/team member periodically. Not going to comment on the morality of the choice, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Someone did the math and determined the marginal and direct cost of the occasional dead hostage was lower then paying the additional staff payroll and ammo bill for training officers to resolve such a situation.

-Edit- this post is already too long, but it’s relevant to note also that agency culture plays a big role here. DB has expressed before how several agencies have cultures which discourage officers from being proficient shooters. A member who gets good enough to perform in incidents like this risks being marginalized by the team and the management if they view gun proficiency as a “bad thing”. Hollywood makes it seem like hostage rescuers get positive credit for their actions- but in real life , it’s usually the opposite. If members feel like the bosses will toss them to the wolves if they take action, it’s going to have consequences in situations like these.

[Wayne Dobbs]

Somewhere in the upper floors of every urban informed agency HQ is a dude or dudette with an Excel spreadsheet showing the macabre cost benefit of training officers vs eating a lawsuit or a dead hostage/team member periodically. Not going to comment on the morality of the choice, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Someone did the math and determined the marginal and direct cost of the occasional dead hostage was lower then paying the additional staff payroll and ammo bill for training officers to resolve such a situation.

I believe that statement is absolutely true and I also believe in my black and white moral mind that those selfsame folks should burn in Hell for that stance if you lose an officer or citizen over it.

[TGS]

Ultimately , being a proficient shooter costs money. Doesn’t matter what profession the person is, being able to deliver a headshot period- to say nothing about a headshot from a handgun at range in a hostage situation- requires a level of skill that is above the willingness of most agencies to fund.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to add some nuance:

"Funding" is a crutch. Even with funding, most LEOs at a given agency will not take advantage.

My agency has pretty decent pistol training in the academy well above what you can expect at an average police academy, and even more in follow on courses we have to take. We also have a 3 day pistol course that (atleast with the cadre who taught mine) is every bit as good as any private sector training I've attended, and each student is allotted 3000 rounds for the 3 days with a student:instructor ratio of 3:1 and only ever shooting at that ratio.

IIRC, we purchase somewhere between 20-30% over baseline ammunition amounts to issue as practice ammo. In the national capital region, we also have weekly proficiency fires at one of 4 different locations.....all you need to do is sign up. In addition, at qual they bring out a case of ammo to hand out to shooters. My last qual we had 8 people doing our full 5-gun qual, and the instructors brought out a full 1000 round case to hand out as proficiency ammo.

Not wanting to hog it all, I took my 2-box quota and waited until everyone had their turn before I indulged my gluttony for seconds. Guess how much of that 1000 round case I ended up taking? 950 rounds.

In current LE culture, an agency literally can't give away ammo to its LEOs. They won't take it, because they don't care. So when I hear "funding" being used as an excuse to why LEOs aren't as good as we hope they would be, it's something that slightly irritates me. Not that YOU are irritating me...….what irritates me is that LEOs don't give a shit, and until they do then all the funding in the world won't fix a cultural issue.

There are precious few PDs with cultures that still value shooting. Some of our instructors are super passionate about making agents the best gunfighters they can (we have two in particular that are phenomenal), but some others just want to blow through the course of fire and get out early themselves, and the old retired guys are typically more interested in being obnoxious old fucks mentally/emotionally stuck in the past. It's at all levels.

[Wayne Dobbs]

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to add some nuance:

"Funding" is a crutch. Even with funding, most LEOs at a given agency will not take advantage.

My agency has pretty decent pistol training in the academy well above what you can expect at an average police academy, and even more in follow on courses we have to take. We also have a 3 day pistol course that (atleast with the cadre who taught mine) is every bit as good as any private sector training I've attended, and each student is allotted 3000 rounds for the 3 days with a student:instructor ratio of 3:1 and only ever shooting at that ratio.

IIRC, we purchase somewhere between 20-30% over baseline ammunition amounts to issue as practice ammo. In the national capital region, we also have weekly proficiency fires at one of 4 different locations.....all you need to do is sign up. In addition, at qual they bring out a case of ammo to hand out to shooters. My last qual we had 8 people doing our full 5-gun qual, and the instructors brought out a full 1000 round case to hand out as proficiency ammo.

Not wanting to hog it all, I took my 2-box quota and waited until everyone had their turn before I indulged my gluttony for seconds. Guess how much of that 1000 round case I ended up taking? 950 rounds.

In current LE culture, an agency literally can't give away ammo to its LEOs. They won't take it, because they don't care. So when I hear "funding" being used as an excuse to why LEOs aren't as good as we hope they would be, it's something that slightly irritates me. Not that YOU are irritating me...….what irritates me is that LEOs don't give a shit, and until they do then all the funding in the world won't fix a cultural issue.

There are precious few PDs with cultures that still value shooting. Some of our instructors are super passionate about making agents the best gunfighters they can (we have two in particular that are phenomenal), but some others just want to blow through the course of fire and get out early themselves, and the old retired guys are typically more interested in being obnoxious old fucks mentally/emotionally stuck in the past. It's at all levels.

I'd be there fighting you for that practice ammo!

[GardoneVT]

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to add some nuance:

"Funding" is a crutch. Even with funding, most LEOs at a given agency will not take advantage.

My agency has pretty decent pistol training in the academy well above what you can expect at an average police academy, and even more in follow on courses we have to take. We also have a 3 day pistol course that (atleast with the cadre who taught mine) is every bit as good as any private sector training I've attended, and each student is allotted 3000 rounds for the 3 days with a student:instructor ratio of 3:1 and only ever shooting at that ratio.

IIRC, we purchase somewhere between 20-30% over baseline ammunition amounts to issue as practice ammo. In the national capital region, we also have weekly proficiency fires at one of 4 different locations.....all you need to do is sign up. In addition, at qual they bring out a case of ammo to hand out to shooters. My last qual we had 8 people doing our full 5-gun qual, and the instructors brought out a full 1000 round case to hand out as proficiency ammo.

Not wanting to hog it all, I took my 2-box quota and waited until everyone had their turn before I indulged my gluttony for seconds. Guess how much of that 1000 round case I ended up taking? 950 rounds.

In current LE culture, an agency literally can't give away ammo to its LEOs. They won't take it, because they don't care. So when I hear "funding" being used as an excuse to why LEOs aren't as good as we hope they would be, it's something that slightly irritates me. Not that YOU are irritating me...….what irritates me is that LEOs don't give a shit, and until they do then all the funding in the world won't fix a cultural issue.

There are precious few PDs with cultures that still value shooting. Some of our instructors are super passionate about making agents the best gunfighters they can (we have two in particular that are phenomenal), but some others just want to blow through the course of fire and get out early themselves, and the old retired guys are typically more interested in being obnoxious old fucks mentally/emotionally stuck in the past. It's at all levels.

It’s a leadership question, ultimately. We can’t expect everyone to be hung ho about shooting, any more then every cop should be gung ho about writing reports or how printer toner works. But ultimately the priorities of an agency are set by management, and management always funds what matters. If , hypothetically, management views it’s better for their careers and agency budget to have cops losing gunfights to thugs they’ll fund their agency accordingly. If the management conversely values their teams lives over media perception, they’ll motivate folks accordingly. Talk’s cheap- what they fund and encourage shows what matters to the bosses.

“Free day off to any officer who clears a perfect Dot Torture on this months quals”. Even the grumpy and uncaring like days off, no? While I’ve never served a day in a LE uniform, I’d guess those memos in the LAPD probably say “Free Day Off for anyone who takes racial bias training”.

[TCinVA]

In current LE culture, an agency literally can't give away ammo to its LEOs. They won't take it, because they don't care. So when I hear "funding" being used as an excuse to why LEOs aren't as good as we hope they would be, it's something that slightly irritates me. Not that YOU are irritating me...….what irritates me is that LEOs don't give a shit, and until they do then all the funding in the world won't fix a cultural issue.

It's tough to make people who are pretty sure it will never be them having to really fight unfuck their thinking and make better choices.

For years Ken Hackathorn had weekly range time available to guys from the agency he was a reserve in...and nobody on his department availed themselves of the opportunity to go out to Ft. Harmar and do some training with the guy.

This is one of the reasons why regular joe training classes are often refreshing to people who trained LE and military people...because the regular joes who shell out their own money to show up to a class at least have some level of buy-in to show up. It's one of the reasons why Tom Givens can take someone who has never used a holster before and get them passing the FBI qual almost at the instructor level in a 3 day class whereas the actual FBI struggles to get everybody through it with weeks of training.

Just as most citizens think lethal violence is something that happens rarely and only to other people, shitloads of cops live with the same delusion. It usually takes personal experience with tragedy, narrowly avoiding tragedy, or some excellent leadership (rarer than hen's teeth in any organization, sadly) to change that.

[KeeFus]

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to add some nuance:

"Funding" is a crutch. Even with funding, most LEOs at a given agency will not take advantage.

My agency has pretty decent pistol training in the academy well above what you can expect at an average police academy, and even more in follow on courses we have to take. We also have a 3 day pistol course that (atleast with the cadre who taught mine) is every bit as good as any private sector training I've attended, and each student is allotted 3000 rounds for the 3 days with a student:instructor ratio of 3:1 and only ever shooting at that ratio.

IIRC, we purchase somewhere between 20-30% over baseline ammunition amounts to issue as practice ammo. In the national capital region, we also have weekly proficiency fires at one of 4 different locations.....all you need to do is sign up. In addition, at qual they bring out a case of ammo to hand out to shooters. My last qual we had 8 people doing our full 5-gun qual, and the instructors brought out a full 1000 round case to hand out as proficiency ammo.

Not wanting to hog it all, I took my 2-box quota and waited until everyone had their turn before I indulged my gluttony for seconds. Guess how much of that 1000 round case I ended up taking? 950 rounds.

In current LE culture, an agency literally can't give away ammo to its LEOs. They won't take it, because they don't care. So when I hear "funding" being used as an excuse to why LEOs aren't as good as we hope they would be, it's something that slightly irritates me. Not that YOU are irritating me...….what irritates me is that LEOs don't give a shit, and until they do then all the funding in the world won't fix a cultural issue.

There are precious few PDs with cultures that still value shooting. Some of our instructors are super passionate about making agents the best gunfighters they can (we have two in particular that are phenomenal), but some others just want to blow through the course of fire and get out early themselves, and the old retired guys are typically more interested in being obnoxious old fucks mentally/emotionally stuck in the past. It's at all levels.

On the giving away ammo statement...it's true. We received a new chief last year and he has amped up the firearms training considerably. We have added two open range days a month and its the same 4 or 5 people showing up every session. Not that they aren't getting anything out of it because we work on different things, dependent on the officer. In my current position I have made a conscious effort to teach combat shooting techniques to the scant few that show up...most just aren't interested.

I have mentioned to them John Hearn's statement: "It's not the odds, its the stakes" to no avail. Its a mindset that I have never been familiar with and these newer officers have it bad.