Individual Room Clearing at Gunsite Academy

[DDTSGM]

I am poster 31. How many of the 20ish people before me posted a tactical critique having never having cleared a structure with a firearm in real life or in a shoot house applying the ROEs demonstrated? I know Eric, JAD, myself, GJM, Trooper224 and Blues have. I am curious about the others.

I would acknowledge that his muzzle looked awfully close to covering his support hand. Looking like it did and actually doing it is difficult to tell given the camera angle as the margin could be a few degrees/inches. I would note his trigger finger was high up on the slide near the ejection port.

Full Disclosure- I have cleared the same or similar house at Gunsite. I have also cleared houses at Thunder Ranch and with the FBI Regional SWAT Team. It was quite a learning experience each and every time.

I have numerous times, plus teaching building search and active shooter techniques to police recruits for at least 100 classes.

Kind of funny, the first NTOA Active Shooter Instructor course I attended was conducted in Phoenix. Lots of SWAT guys. They lined us up in twos to check room entry techniques. Myself and Mark (my co-worker) were towards the end of the line and we are watching all cross- hook, or hook-cross entries ahead of us just kind of looking at each like WTF? We get up there, he pies the door, we criss-cross, with me going first into the uncontrolled area - kind of like what we'd been teaching recruits for several years Every one after us, saw the light and did the same.

So, any comment that I've made in this thread is based on more that one or two runs. You want a vitae?

[vcdgrips]

DL,

Not Vitae needed. I simply asked for background/perspective. I singled no one out. I made no comments disparaging anyone.

I have not been shy to date asking someone to back up their opinions. I go out of my way to lay out why I think what I think and freely acknowledge when I am at the edge or outside of my lane.

I was not taking a shot a you or anyone else in the thread.

We good?

DB

[Trooper224]

I prefer to stay in my lane when commenting on things like this. I say that because, while I was once a pipe hitting door kicker, it's been an awfully long time between then and now and things have changed. I'm sure I'm not up on the best and most valid training points. I did a lot of building entries early in my career when I was young and bouncy, along with helicopter assaults, rappelling, field maneuver with camouflage and all that cool stuff. My time in the gun barrel was more like the Branch Davidian/Waco era, ie. the bronze age. A lot of things we did back then have proven, through the doing, to be less than optimal. So I don't feel qualified to really judge anyone on the subject at this point. During the last twelve years of my career my duties were different and I may have done half a dozen entries during that time and none of them were a planned evolution and strictly ad hoc.

I don't have a problem with voicing an opinion, or asking a question. What does give me pause is when the comments start to get a bit personal in the mode of "WTF LAV?" I like to think we're better than that.

[DDTSGM]

DL,

Not Vitae needed. I simply asked for background/perspective. I singled no one out. I made no comments disparaging anyone.

I have not been shy to date asking someone to back up their opinions. I go out of my way to lay out why I think what I think and freely acknowledge when I am at the edge or outside of my lane.

I was not taking a shot a you or anyone else in the thread.

We good?

DB

We are. Upon reflection, I should have recognized that from previous posts you've made.

Over the years I've picked up a couple of good ideas from pretty raw recruits, so sometimes it bothers me when folks (not referring to you) start slinging the stay in your lane stuff around.

The whole debacle with Nightvisionary was kind of an example of that, it's like folks are allowed to have an opinion, and then the goading begins. Not defending him, just using an example.

I've always been a little slower out of the holster than the fast guys, I'm glad I didn't live in Kansas 140 years ago, that touchiness might have gotten me killed.

[willie]

The one and only thing that crossed my dim mind was that if I had been a bad guy hiding in the room, I would have shot Larry through the wall.

[GJM]

Bill Rogers had an interesting comment about shoot houses. Besides the obvious stuff about the differences between an individual and teams, and all the lessons learned, he talked about the psychology of running the shoot house exercises. If your team gets killed on every entry, it quickly becomes a negative, and pretty soon your team doesn’t want to clear a house. So teach lessons, press where appropriate, but leave your team with confidence and not in total fear.

[Erick Gelhaus]

The one and only thing that crossed my dim mind was that if I had been a bad guy hiding in the room, I would have shot Larry through the wall.

And, that happens.

At least one, if not two, of the four Oakland PD cops (1 Officer & 3 Sergeants) murdered on 3/21/09 by the same badguy were shot through a wall. Never mind the entity formerly known as Delta losing multiple guys, in a short time frame, to belt-fed machinegun fire coming out of bunkers built in living rooms.

Regardless, that's not the situation being addressed in the training run the video showed.

[Mark D]

Bill Rogers had an interesting comment about shoot houses. Besides the obvious stuff about the differences between an individual and teams, and all the lessons learned, he talked about the psychology of running the shoot house exercises. If your team gets killed on every entry, it quickly becomes a negative, and pretty soon your team doesn’t want to clear a house. So teach lessons, press where appropriate, but leave your team with confidence and not in total fear.

I've been a "bad guy" for LE simunitons training on multiple occasions. Almost always, parameters are established to give the officers a higher chance of success. For example, my ability to move through the structure was artificially constrained, or I was told to hide in a sub-optimal location, and/or I was given minimal ammo (which also helps conserve a limited resource, of course). Any success that I had as the "bad guy" was minimized in the after action debrief.

I never had a problem with this, but I also knew I could much more challenging to the teams if I was given more discretion. The overall goal, as I understood it, was to provide training without damaging the teams' confidence.

[Hambo]

Bill Rogers had an interesting comment about shoot houses. Besides the obvious stuff about the differences between an individual and teams, and all the lessons learned, he talked about the psychology of running the shoot house exercises. If your team gets killed on every entry, it quickly becomes a negative, and pretty soon your team doesn’t want to clear a house. So teach lessons, press where appropriate, but leave your team with confidence and not in total fear.

Maybe at the beginning of training when teaching certain skills, but if that's always the plan it's total bullshit. We were really hard on guys in scenarios in basic SWAT training. For team training scenarios we used our own guys as BGs, and if they saw a chance to exploit a weakness or fuck up, they were allowed to do it. The point was to make everyone do everything right, every single time, not feel better about a scripted training win. I can tell you that I felt more confident in our ability when the opponent played hard.

[DDTSGM]

Maybe at the beginning of training when teaching certain skills, but if that's always the plan it's total bullshit. We were really hard on guys in scenarios in basic SWAT training. For team training scenarios we used our own guys as BGs, and if they saw a chance to exploit a weakness or fuck up, they were allowed to do it. The point was to make everyone do everything right, every single time, not feel better about a scripted training win. I can tell you that I felt more confident in our ability when the opponent played hard.

Maybe at the beginning of training when teaching certain skills, but if that's always the plan it's total bullshit.

Agreed, it depends on whether you are doing reality-based training or reality-based evaluation.

If you are trying to implant a 'trained' response at the basic level, success is critical.

There is a field of thought, of which I'm a member, that believes if the trainee is making mistakes the scenario should be 'paused' and the trainee coached through the problem area. Then the scenario is redone until the trainee is able to complete a 'perfect run. These training scenarios should be run at 3/4 or deliberate speed. Then ideally, the tempo is increased until the trainee is having success at full speed.

Unfortunately, class sizes are usually to large to go through the entire scaffolding process. In that case the best thing you can do is make sure the trainee imprints a success.

If folks are doing the reality-based/force-on-force thing, it is kind of important they attend training or educate themselves beyond the basic safety protocols.

I say this because after atending my first Simunitions Instructor course I was doing scenarios which 'exploited a weakness or fuck up' with the idea that getting hosed by a bad guy without getting a hit themselves would cause less stellar recruits to rethink their career choice. Problem was that in actuality none did, they had no confidence in their ability to prevail, but their ego wouldn't let them quit at that point.

Then I was lucky enough to read Training at the Speed of Life by Ken Murray, and later attend one of his courses. We completely revamped our f-on-f training process as a result.