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Thread: AAR - 2018 Ohio Tactical Officers Association Active Assailant Conference

  1. #1
    Site Supporter Lon's Avatar
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    Apr 2011
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    AAR - 2018 Ohio Tactical Officers Association Active Assailant Conference

    Got to go to this today. Debriefs from Route 91 Vegas Incident, Sutherland Springs, Tx and a couple Incidents (historical) from San Diego.

    The first debrief was a debrief given by the LVMPD and LVFD. Nothing earth shattering. I had heard the debrief back in June. Good debrief and I’d suggest going to hear it if you can.

    The second debrief was the one I enjoyed the most. It wasn’t your typical debrief. This one was on the Sutherland Springs, TX church shooting. The presenter was Mr. Willeford, the man who stepped up and took the fight to the bad guy. Talk about a humble, God fearing man. It was an honor to hear him speak. A couple things he said stuck out in my mind and it won’t be a surprise to anyone hear.
    1. If you know you’re going to a gun fight, take a rifle.
    2. Make sure said rifle has loaded mags nearby so you don’t have to load one on the fly.
    3. When the cops show up, have a plan for not getting shot by them.

    Mr. Willeford is a man of great faith and believes his decision to stay home from church that day so he could rest up before going on call at work was God’s hand at work. He talked about how he was on the phone with his wife when this was going on and she told him to stay inside. He hung up on her and went and did what he needed to do. He talked about sending his daughter to go load him another magazine so she wouldn’t follow him out to confront the bad guy and how he knew she’d be mad once she realized he had done it just to keep her out of the line of Fire. There was no more ammo for the rifle. He talked about the aftermath and how the State of Texas took care of him. They basically told him “we consider this to be an Officer involved shooting” with him being the Officer. They got his employer to put him on Admin leave (going so far as to say they would reimburse his employer if necessary) and sent him to the same shrink the Texas Rangers use. He and his community are also trying to build a handicap accessible house for one of the residents who was paralyzed during the attack. He was quite a character and it was a pleasure to shake his hand and give him a department challenge coin to add to his growing collection.

    After lunch while Mr. Willeford was out in the lobby, the President of the OTOA got on stage and told us they were taking a collection to buy him a new LWRC rifle (the OTOA has a rifle spec’d out for its members) and a new Stetson. The OTOA made up the difference if the donations didn’t cover the cost.

    After lunch there was another presentation from the Route 91 incident, but this one was geared more towards the medical personnel in the audience (there were police, fire, EMS, school personable and hospital staff in attendance). The presenter was a ER Doc from one of the hospitals that handled over 200 of the injured people. It was an interesting presentation that dealt with his belief in how the triage system is broke and that first responders should be doing much more load and go/scoop and scoot than the accepted practice of triaging in the field and establishing casualty collection points, etc. Then he told us about how he threw out all the “rules” for a mass casualty incident that night and had the ER staff handle it the way he thought it should be handled. I have to say, from a non-medical person, that his arguments made sense to me. He basically put into words what I’ve been thinking for a while - we (first responding Officers) would be better off dragging/carrying/whatever injured people out of the “hot zone” and getting them to the hospital by the first available transport, be it police car, ambulance, commandeered vehicle or whatever, than waiting for Incident Command to decide it’s time to send in the rescue task forces. There are a couple SWAT docs that I know who where there that I am interested to hear their opinions on his presentation.

    The last presentation was from a retired San Diego PD Lt. Who debriefed several of their “active shooter” incidents over the years. This was the weakest of the presentations. It was ok and I had a couple of take away points. One of the incidents was not what I consider an active shooter, but an Officer ambush in which two SDPD patrol guys were killed and the shooter had a distinct range advantage over the responders due to his choice of weaponry (M1 Garland, M1A and more) vs their revolvers/shotguns. Even if it happened today, I think it would be a problem for most patrol officers. I got to thinking a variable power optic equipped rifle is something I’ve thought about setting up and need to revisit. And finally, he cleared up something I’d heard for years about the San Ysidro McDonalds shooting in ‘84. Yes, there was an order not to “green light” the sniper. But it was more than that. When the sniper was asking for the green light he wasn’t even in a position to take a shot. The SWAT commander told him he only had a green light if the emergency reaction team was in place. Once the sniper was in place and had a shot, he took the shot. He made a huge judgement call when he did take the shot because the guy he shot did NOT match the description they had been given of the bad guy. And he couldn’t see his face. He shot the guy he saw from neck down who was walking around with the UZI carbine.

    All in all it was a great day. The lunch was catered by Mission BBQ, so we didn’t need to go anywhere. I won a nice Black Cloud folding knife in a raffle (one thing the OTOA is good at is raffling off cool stuff). I’ll say it again, OTOA training is a good bang for the buck. This was a $75 entry fee.
    Formerly known as xpd54.
    The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
    www.gunsnobbery.wordpress.com

  2. #2
    Pretty good summary. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Mr. Williford speak. The ER doc was very interesting also. Too bad I didn't see you.

  3. #3
    Site Supporter Lon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Dayton, Ohio
    Quote Originally Posted by BobM View Post
    Pretty good summary. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Mr. Williford speak. The ER doc was very interesting also. Too bad I didn't see you.
    No kidding, lots of people there.
    Formerly known as xpd54.
    The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
    www.gunsnobbery.wordpress.com

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