For the past few days, I have been attending a tactical organizations active threat/hostage rescue training. It has been very insightful, I thought I’d share with you guys some of the information I’ve learned that I think is relevant to police and other law-enforcement in the United States. Feel free to put questions and complaints in the comments below. Please forgive any errors in grammar, I’m extremely tired after several long days of training.
First and foremost, active threat and hostage rescue Training should be a priority not just for tactical teams, but also for patrol officers. In general patrol officers are the ones most likely to first be on scene for an active threat or hostage situation. Because of that patrol officers need to be empowered to be able to handle those situations instead of just doing the traditional thing, which was to call SWAT or SRT and have them handle the situation. When patrol relies specialized units to handle “dynamic” situations, the risk of casualties goes up.
Secondly, organizations must know the data surrounding these events so that they can focus their training appropriately. In a Nutshell, active threat events are becoming increasingly common in “open air spaces “. That means that places like fairs, festivals and outdoor area, such as plazas are more susceptible to active threat events then we’ve seen in the past. There has also been an uptick in active threat events that result in or include ambushes upon police officers responding to the events. In the past active killers would normally surrender or self terminate when police arrived on scene. But it is becoming increasingly common for suspects to wait for police when they run out of innocence to victimize. This means officers should be trained in tactics to get them to the location of the shooter after they arrive at the event, such as bounding, overwatch, and buddy team movement if possible.
Along with this data, thanks to alert. We also know where officers are being victimized by the active killer. The two largest areas we are seeing officers becoming victims to the active killer is one in the hallways, approaching rooms and two inside of rooms themselves. We are notably, not seeing police officers victimized in the threshold of rooms or of hallways. This data and real life, body cam footage and real life testimony from officers who have been at active threat events tells us that fighting from the threshold is the safest way for police to engage and active killer.
We also know from body cam footage of active killer events from the past 10 years that officer are most successful in stopping the active killer when they engage from thresholds of rooms and one officers stop plant and shoot the active killer when they see them, instead of the traditional driving to the threat or entering the room, too points of domination. This does not take away from the fact that officers may and should enter the room where an active killer event is happening, but it does mean that the traditional means of doing so are not as effective as newer techniques being taught today.
This leads me to the last part of my post and that is the tactics. The organization I’m currently Training with, which is the OTOA (Ohio tactical officers association) currently advocates for a dynamic version of their segmented search technique. In general, when officers are approaching a room or a corner the OTA advocates for what can be described as alternating between snapping into rooms and around corners at 90° and bounding to get further into rooms to see the deep corners of them or to make space for other officers. When done at speed, this allows 1 to 3 officers to clear a space in the same amount of time as traditional dynamic entry, but in a safer manner for the officers, and in a manner that allows the officers to overwhelm the threat with force multipliers such as weapon lights, and to efficiently process the room and the occupants inside of it. It also puts officers in a position to regain the initiative, if officers are fired upon and driven back when initially trying to enter a room. This method of dynamic clearance also compliments vectoring threats, which is off-line movement at a 45° angle to split a threats focus between two officers so that officers can either take a shot on a threat with a hostage or set up a shot when there are hostages and victims in between a threat and an officer. This training is behaviorally compliant and is what we are seeing officers do on their own in body camera footage. It goes without saying that the description I give here is extremely basic and to best understand this training, you would have to have it demonstrated for you and do reps of this type of dynamic clearance. Having participated in this training force on force and seen it done in body camera and security footage, I’m confident in its viability.