RFI - officer survival wins

[Erick Gelhaus]

Some of you might have been around long enough to remember one of the early officer safety, patrol procedures books “officer down, code 3 …” It was written by Pierce Brooks with significant backing from Motorola. If you don’t know the title, it’s okay. The book’s focus – addressing the 10 Deadly Errors – is what is significant.

Those errors are:
1) Failure to watch the suspect(s)’s hands
2) Apathy towards suspects
3) Lack of rest
4) Tombstone Courage
5) Preoccupation
6) Missing pre-attack indicators
7) Taking a bad position
8) Relaxing too soon
9) Improper searching and/or cuffing
10) Failure to maintain gear

A couple very competent police procedures attorneys, who have been career reserve cops, are working on updating the original work. Both have written at length on Terry stop and Terry search issues.

They got me involved in the project. The collective “we” doesn’t want this to just be a west coast centric project. And, rather than being “don’t do this, this was wrong / bad,” I’d like to use a bunch of “damn, he/she/they did that right!” examples as well.

To meet both of those goals, I need to reach out and ask for success stories. If you can share, we will redact the hell out of agency/individual identifying information, but we need as much detail as possible – reports, interviews, etc.

I can and will share work email addresses for us if that will make sharing information easier.

Please let me know if you have or know of an event you can share. Thanks.

[feudist]

I'll share a #9 fuckup that I was a contributor to.

Answered a disturbance call as backup at a project store. The idiot was pointed out and I approached him for ID.

He immediately lied about his name( I ran him through NCIC) and came back as a non existent person.

He tried to walk off so I stop him and patted him for weapons. He had a wallet so I told him to produce some ID.

This time he came back with a felony warrant. I cuffed him and handed him off to the primary officer(who was talking to the store owner.

Primary transported him to the County and handed him over to the Intake Deputies, who frisked him and sent him to the in-processing strip search and dressout.

Primary was on his way back when the county called and told him they'd found a 7 inch butcher knife taped to the guy's upper thigh, with a cutout in his pocket.



The best part? He was wanted for Kidnapping and Parole violation for Robbery 1st. He shouldn't have surrendered.


I had 26 years on and missed it in my pat down.

The guy I gave him to had 10 years on and did not do a custodial search.

The county Deputy at the jail did a custodial search and missed it.

Only a strip search found the knife.

That's a lot of lackadaisical complacency.

The lesson is: it ain't a search until you grab his cock.

[Coyotesfan97]

The more shit someone gives you for searching his crotch area the more thorough you should be. Maybe he’s just fucking with you but maybe he’s hoping to throw you off finding something.

[Gray01]

I inhaled all of that genre of training, and when “Street Survival”, "Tactical Edge", and the seminars arrived, I transfused it.

One of the lessons kept us out of what would have been a root canal performed by proctology.

It was about 4 PM, a warm summer day in the south west metro U.S. My partner and I saw a Fire rig heading someplace; since they were always good for some fun, we followed. (In our working environment Fire (who also did all of the EMS) and LE had extremely close fraternal relationships.)

Big red rolled up to a local bar, and we followed them inside, just standing back and seeing what there was to see. As it went, some early 50's scraggly non-regular physically challenged another patron, who multiple witnesses say was just minding his own beeswax. Mr. Scraggle wound up getting his eye dotted for his trouble and hence the EMS call.

After the fire guys looked him over I decided to chat with him (I was contact.) As he was standing there with his right hand in his pocket, I casually moved behind him and then placed my hand on his wrist and told him to keep his hand in his pocket until I was ready for him to (with me keeping physical control) remove it. He immediately started to struggle so I ripped his hand out and went straight into a wrist twist and lock to retrieve the gold-plated pocket pistol (about the size of a Raven .25) in his hand.

The point of this lesson was that we are conditioned to expect an action when we give an action command (Theory of Presumed Compliance). The problem is that it might not be the action we expected. "Take your hands out of your pockets" is obeyed, but not with empty hands as we had wanted. Now we are behind the curve (and you just cannot cover every person with their hands in their pockets). I had learned that it was best to keep the hands where they are, and control them so that Bullwinkle does not pull a lion out of his hat. (That reference is dating me.)

As it turned out, the derringer was a lighter. If we had been using another technique, he might have gotten lit up, and we both would have been the recipients of the aforementioned examination.

He spent the weekend.

[Coyotesfan97]

I’ve written a more detailed post about this here but one night I went to the local mental health facility (which is right across the street from the QT I was going to) for a guy disturbing. When I got there he was standing in the lot wearing a vest with his right hand in the right vest pocket which had a bulge showing. It was right after a Flagstaff Officer was killed by a suspect who had a gun in his pocket.

My little voice told me not to approach and I starting giving him commands standing in a draw position. He denied being armed. I had him turn around and keep his hand in the pocket. He complied and when backup got there we approached. I controlled his right hand/wrist and removed his hand from the pocket. I immediately looked in the pocket and saw what was a small single stack 9mm in his pocket. He also had a spare magazine.

He got booked that night. I’m pretty sure if I’d approached he’d have drawn. I don’t think he liked the distance and my body language was I’m ready to draw and shoot. He was spun pretty high on Meth and claimed to have shot the gun in the area.

[FNFAN]

Third officer arriving on a domv walk in the front door and the other officers are still trying to chill the boy and girl from the reciprocating "FU", "NoFU" stage to see what's happening. Everyone's using their outdoor voices except this old guy with a beard setting down at the end of a couch, still as can be. As I come through the door he looks odd being so still in the middle of the maelstrom. I see that his eyes are tracking me though his head is facing the tv. Hand imperceptibly moves toward the end of the couch cushion.

What it looks like to everyone else is I walk through the door, straight over to the old dude and put a snowy boot on his hand while sticking a 6.5" M27 in his face. After he was cuffed I pull out a fully loaded Star PD from the edge of the cushion.

[Jeff22]

I bought that book back in about 1978 or 79. I was just beginning college to be the police.

"Officer Down! Code Three! is one of the first "officer survival" books to come out.

I'm happy to see that somebody is going to prepare an updated version. (The revised version of "Street Survival" came out this summer and I just got my copy of the hardcover edition in the mail yesterday)

I wish I could find a DVD or VHS of the "Officer Down! Code Three!" movie that Motorola Teleprograms did (which I saw in the Police Academy) or of "Survival Shooting Techniques".

[FNFAN]

I bought that book back in about 1978 or 79. I was just beginning college to be the police.

"Officer Down! Code Three! is one of the first "officer survival" books to come out.

I'm happy to see that somebody is going to prepare an updated version. (The revised version of "Street Survival" came out this summer and I just got my copy of the hardcover edition in the mail yesterday)

I wish I could find a DVD or VHS of the "Officer Down! Code Three!" movie that Motorola Teleprograms did (which I saw in the Police Academy) or of "Survival Shooting Techniques".

I got to meet the author when he was releasing the book and giving one night presentations. I was still in high school just in the planning stages of LE college. (My Mom had to go with me as I just had a learners permit ) I agree that an update of this book would be an excellent idea!

[BigDaddy]

One of my best friends was murdered on the job. He was searching a robbery offender and recovered a gun. But he missed the 2nd one the guy was hiding in his waistband. We were all new and my friend never even thought to look for a 2nd gun even though that was drilled into our heads in the academy. But to make it worse, two other friends were also murdered while trying to apprehend the guy that killed Jimmy. While we were carrying Jimmy out of the church to go to the cemetery they were shooting it out with the friends of the original guy. Those were rough years for us back then. And I learned some valuable lessons because of it.

[Sixgun_Symphony]

I bought that book back in about 1978 or 79. I was just beginning college to be the police.

"Officer Down! Code Three! is one of the first "officer survival" books to come out.

I'm happy to see that somebody is going to prepare an updated version. (The revised version of "Street Survival" came out this summer and I just got my copy of the hardcover edition in the mail yesterday)

I wish I could find a DVD or VHS of the "Officer Down! Code Three!" movie that Motorola Teleprograms did (which I saw in the Police Academy) or of "Survival Shooting Techniques".

https://youtu.be/5hN9ftvqVaU