LE UOF Video thread

[TC215]

Lots of fail here. Even if the deceased was a career criminal... this should have and could have been handled much better in my opinion.

Sadly this is not the first time (and likely won't be the last) that a bunch of LEO's all screaming commands at the same time create conflicting guidance and confusion for a subject. Before an op, one and ONLY one LEO should be designated as the person to give commands. This is not a new lesson, but one we keep having to relearn.

Next, I try not to judge after the fact, but every time a LEO yells "HANDS!!" I roll my eyes and wonder if they were trained to do that, or they have no idea how completely stupid that is to do. The better command is "don't move" because yelling "HANDS!" you are going to cause the subject to rapidly show you his hands. This can result in you or another LEO shooting the subject for a furtive movement. The problem is the furtive movement was caused by the LEO yelling Hands! The other bad outcome is the subject wants to resist and has his hand on a weapon. You have now given him the head start because your brain expects him to pull out his hands. Now if he has a firearm in his hand you are even further behind the curve.

Lastly, we'll never know how deep of a sleep the deceased was in when they made entry, but they say "Police!" and "Search Warrant" a couple times upon entry. Presume that's what startles him awake. Maybe it's the kick to the back of the couch. As he's waking, did anyone notice what he would have heard? They yelled, "Get on the ground!" and "Hands!" and "Show me your fucking hands!" and "Get on the fucking ground!" At the point he's likely able to process anything, he hears that and probably gets a face full of flashlights. I don't know about you, but if I woke to that I'd believe it was a home invasion and not LE.

We can and should do better as a profession.

I agree with you generally, but that would not work on a SWAT op ("Before an op, one and ONLY one LEO should be designated as the person to give commands"). That might work in the first room, and even then, it would work if you happened to encounter only one person in that first room. After that, you don't know what team members are going to end up in what room, and which rooms will have individuals in them. "Police, Search Warrant!" should be getting announced the whole time, when not giving commands.

But I do agree that multiple people should not be shouting conflicting commands.

[Caballoflaco]

Failure by several civilians to run over a guy who is actively trying to carjack them and also shooting at police.

[Caballoflaco]

Phoenix Pd suspect barricaded in a car

[Caballoflaco]

Phoenix Pd suspect barricaded in a car

Quoting myself because I forgot to @TCinVA for another shotgun deployment, this time through a car windshield.

[cpd2110]

It is hard to tell exactly what options could be for either the Minneapolis or Vegas shootings. I have always heard very good things about Vegas SWAT however and with few exceptions I have always been impressed with uniform officer performance in OIS via their video releases. They may have very good reasons to do a dynamic entry. Having said that if I were in charge in Minneapolis, I think I would have a hard look at what we are doing and the why and if there are better options. Minneapolis seems to be a train wreck of a department in many ways and why set your guys up to fail.

I work in a covert unit and we once did lots of dynamic entries, that stopped a while ago. Now we have a guy stopped by uniforms and go and hit an empty house. Uniforms are supported by us as backups and other assets are there. I know things can go wrong in a structure or out on the street. When I was SWAT Commander of a not busy team we primarily did surround and call outs, old school SWAT guys threw stones. Then i reminded them about did your tactics work or were you just lucky? Losing a guy for some dope is not an option and nothing will change my view on that. Hostage rescue, active shooter, CI/UC rescue all involve more assumption of risk on the officers part and being dynamic.

A former Unit guy and good friend, gave a very passionate talk about risk vs. reward and losing an operator in combat on a mission where the bad guy just needed to die or give up. He basically explained a terrorist just in a building without any hostages wasn't worth his friends life. Better to surround and call out or drop a bomb. My friend is a hard dude, 13 deployments at the top tier of special operations. He would break down every time he told this story. He did it however to get cops to get our heads out of our asses and find better ways to do business and still accomplish the mission and bring your guys home. Change is hard, but as a profession we need to start getting right about some stuff and use some out of the box methods to catch bad guys.

[Coyotesfan97]

I was on SWAT for 15 years and Tactical for 25 in K9. I was both for several years. When I started in 1995 we served warrants dynamically. We rolled in with a PA blaring announcements and then hit the door. Dynamic searches are fun but they are very risky. I think it was Dan who mentioned giving yourself time and distance to make decisions. Dynamic entry takes away time. When we trained HRTs one of our TLs always said never move faster than you can shoot.

We moved from dynamics to breach and hold. We used the armor car PA to announce then we’d move up to the door. After breaching we’d announce before we entered. If we had non compliance LSDDS were thrown, windows were broken, and gas was introduced. We tried to force people out to us rather then enter and search for them. We started clearing structures slowly. We talked about how to do things inside.

We moved from that to surround and call out for warrants and barricades. Again the PA was used, LSDDs were thrown with more PA announcements. Depending on the circumstances gas would be introduced, or a K9 was used to search ahead of the team. Sometimes it was both. Again the goal was to get people to comply and come out to us. Then we’re dealing with time from behind cover and we had distance. That gave us time to use less lethal as needed.

You know who was the most resistant to us slowing down search warrants. It was the Special Investigation Detectives because they didn’t want to lose dope. They didn’t like the time we took to call people in and plan the operation. They would fudge details on the risk involved and use a unit of dirty looking plainclothes because they’d do it dynamically. That changed because there was SWAT some of the units. The policy for using SWAT was changed. A SWAT team leader took over that unit and changed how they searched.

I’m not saying this is the case but I don’t think it’s been mentioned before. I don’t know how many suspects we found “sleeping” in a bed and acting non responsive. Usually yelling at them along with the threat of a dog biting them changed their minds. We’d get them out and they’d claim they never heard any of the PA announcements or the LSDDs. I wasn’t on the team when it happened but a sex crimes suspect was doing that. He pulled a gun and fired at SWAT who ballistically deescalated him. My long point is that Milwaukee could have done everything differently, still had the same outcome, and the same shitstorm.

I’m a firm believer in surround and call outs along with slow and deliberate searches. Sorry Narcs (spoken as a former Narc) the dime bag isn’t worth a shooting regardless of the outcome. I’m an even bigger proponent, as a former gas guy, of driving suspects out of a structure to you. My team had a huge reputation for using gas. I’ve shot and thrown a lot of gas.

[TGS]

@Coyotesfan97

Have you or any other of the experienced members here ever heard of a department where the tactical element has first right-of-refusal or even just any sort of oversight capacity over other units serving warrants? Seems like it would prevent some of the stuff you're talking about with units fudging the risk factors or just deciding to do stuff on their own, given that the nationwide standard is that LEOs have to go out of their way to ask SWAT for their involvement...

[Coyotesfan97]

@Coyotesfan97

Have you or any other of the experienced members here ever heard of a department where the tactical element has first right-of-refusal or even just any sort of oversight capacity over other units serving warrants? Seems like it would prevent some of the stuff you're talking about with units fudging the risk factors or just deciding to do stuff on their own, given that the nationwide standard is that LEOs have to go out of their way to ask SWAT for their involvement...

Our policy requires SWAT serves most warrants. If there’s a person barricaded in a house or it’s a warrant with people in the structure policy says the SWAT commander needs to be notified/consulted. If no one is inside other units can serve a warrant. We got pretty restrictive after patrol and other units were pushing the envelope. We got lucky no one was seriously injured or killed.

[Erick Gelhaus]

There's pros & cons to all sides of this in terms of who serves what and how.

Was on the Primary & Secondary podcast the other night talking about No Knock warrants and the various alternatives (yes, it rabbit holed in what does the public want). The tactics & procedures have certainly evolved over my career. While I'm a fan of Surround & Callout followed by deliberate clearing (because at some point, you do need to enter), one of the panelists made a very coherent argument for the safety of free flow clearing. He said that with the argument that not every team is capable of doing that. He added, & I need to ask about the source & numbers etc), the freeflow clearing is safer in terms of shot officers than S&C is.

[octagon]

There's pros & cons to all sides of this in terms of who serves what and how.

Was on the Primary & Secondary podcast the other night talking about No Knock warrants and the various alternatives (yes, it rabbit holed in what does the public want). The tactics & procedures have certainly evolved over my career. While I'm a fan of Surround & Callout followed by deliberate clearing (because at some point, you do need to enter), one of the panelists made a very coherent argument for the safety of free flow clearing. He said that with the argument that not every team is capable of doing that. He added, & I need to ask about the source & numbers etc), the freeflow clearing is safer in terms of shot officers than S&C is.

No disputing one method over another but where are the studies and data? So much of police action doesn't get properly researched, recorded and analyzed to help determine what works or not and what works better among the methods that work.

How much of that is due to the cost, lack of sharing, fear of optics or the it has always been done X way etc...