Loud noise... and so much more
By Officer Gary Monreal
New Berlin (WI) PD
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A training scenario I call "Loud Noise Complaint" is my favorite. The title, like so many 911 calls officers are dispatched to, is deceptive. Trainees are confronted with circumstances they may never have thought about before. Their ability to make immediate tactical decisions in a crisis is challenged. Thorny questions about their personal moral code may surface, and their knowledge of policy and law regarding the use of deadly force is tested in a realistic life-or-death situation.
This scenario, like real-life street encounters, tends to elicit a wide range of responses from officers, many unexpected to the trainer.
THE SET-UP
Trainees are told that they are responding to a complaint from a woman who said she came home to her apartment to find her neighbors shouting and playing loud music, with their door slightly ajar.
To reinforce good habits, I always encourage my trainees to ask me questions like they would ask of dispatch when driving to an actual call. I have pre-planned answers for questions such as: "How many occupants?" "What is the call history for that apartment?" "Are there any known weapons involved?" "Any warrants for known occupants?" etc.
The scenario calls for two officers to arrive and find the apartment door slightly open, just as the complainant has said. Two role players (adult males) are inside yelling and a radio is blasting. The only way the officers can effectively announce their presence is to push the door open and shout.
What they see as the door opens fully is one male lying on the ground trying to defend himself, while the other, on top of him, is hitting him in the head with a simulated “metal pipe." The "loud noise" complaint has turned out to be a violent domestic disturbance.
The subjects are positioned in a corner of the room, so the attacker's back is toward the responding officers, who are approximately 21 feet away. No obstacles are between the role players and the officers, but the officers are not able to make eye contact with the assailant.
OFFICER REACTIONS
When we first used this scenario, other instructors and I expected that most trainees would react decisively by drawing their sidearm and entering the room or drawing and staying at the doorway-and, perhaps after an attempt at verbal contact, quickly use deadly force to stop the lethal assault. We were so certain officers would respond this way that we even estimated where all their shots would be directed so we could adequately protect the role players.
After all, is there any doubt that a metal pipe smashing down on a person's skull puts him in clear and present danger of suffering death or serious bodily harm?
Were we surprised! Almost 80% of officers did not deliver deadly force immediately, despite the fact that the victim role player was being viciously assaulted with a deadly weapon. And this response has held fairly steady each time we've introduced officers to this scenario who have not seen it before.
What do they do?
Some hesitate at the door, waiting for a "second attack" to occur. For some reason, they seem to think the instructors are setting them up for an ambush. There isn't one. Some repeatedly yell "Police!" until the attacker acknowledges them.
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Others go hands-on without even taking their gun out. One detective immediately charged at the pipe wielder, knocking him off of the victim with a full-body slam. Asked why, he explained, "It would take me at least a second to draw my gun and shoot, then I have to have good placement to shoot the suspect in the head to immediately stop him, all while he's a moving target. I knew I could run across the room in under two seconds, and 220 pounds of body mass being thrown at him has a higher chance of success than 140 grains." Well, he did "stop"-or at least disrupt-the threat. But he potentially hurled himself into close-quarters combat with the pipe wielder.
Officers sometimes draw their baton before entering the apartment, anticipating a physical encounter. But then they don't escalate to their firearm when they realize they're witnessing a potentially lethal assault. Some officers deliver baton strikes to the assailant's arms and back and one, I recall, moved up behind the suspect and struck him several times in the head. He said later that if he'd had his gun out he'd have shot the suspect, but because his baton was available he used it as an instrument of deadly force. We looked at this response as an application of the closest weapon, closest target rule. That officer expediently adapted to a higher force level with what was in his hands, rather than start over with another option.
Some officers openly admit they do not trust their shootings skills. They're worried either that their rounds won't stop the threat or about target isolation, that they will shoot the victim rather than the assailant. Some say they'd be concerned about the risk of "over" penetration from their ammunition if this scenario were a real-life incident. These fears bring up other training issues. Can an officer's lack of confidence in or knowledge of his weaponry affect his tactical decisions on the street? How many cops truly know the ballistic capabilities of their firearms?
You'd be surprised by the number of officers who run up to the suspect, weapon out, and kneel or squat in front of him. It's obvious they don't feel comfortable using force until they're certain the suspect knows of their presence.
Some times, this seems to reflect a misdirected mind-set that believes fights should be "fair." A firearms trainer who I had a lot of respect for once said, "I believe most cops are good people." I agree, and I feel there's a natural inhibition among many officers to shooting someone in the back. Certainly this is a training issue that needs to be addressed.
In other cases, it appears that officers move past the suspect to see the front of him, to get the same visual image of a "target" that they see on the range. Think about it: Other than in specialty (sniper) training, how many of us receive instruction and practice in shooting at the side or back of a target? It's probably safe to say that over 90% of firearms training sessions are performed shooting at the front of the target. Could we as trainers be unwittingly creating undesirable training "defaults," in which our officers instinctively look for a particular target image before shooting?
An important factor we can't dismiss in considering officers' responses to the "loud noise" scenario is the pervasive concern these days about liability. Because we live in such a litigious society, some officers fear lawsuits more than they do criminals. No officer wants to be involved in a lawsuit or worse yet to be the butt of creating "new case law." And none of us welcome the scrutiny of our actions by police administrations, civilian review boards, or the media either. There is no doubt in my mind that these things hinder the proper use of force by some officers, not only in responding to this scenario but on the street as well. And this, too, presents a sizeable training challenge.
Interestingly, detectives as a rule seem to resort immediately to deadly force at a much higher rate than patrol officers in resolving the scenario. I believe this happens because they generally have fewer force options. For better or worse, many detectives don't carry a baton, pepper spray, or a TASER, but they all have a firearm. Fewer options may mean quicker, more decisive responses.
LESSONS LEARNED
This scenario is likely to surface many valuable questions for productive discussions and reinforcement. These include:
This scenario also brings up a point that isn't discussed often enough in training, in my opinion: the problem of judging the actions of others in real incidents.
If I were to ask participating officers before they went through the scenario what they'd do if they encountered a deadly assault in progress, most if not all would probably say they'd shoot the offender. Yet presented with that problem in a realistic training exercise, many do not react as they think they would.
Their experience in Loud Noise Complaint helps them realize that to judge others without being there is not the right thing to do. You may think and train for what your response will be to high-risk incidents but until you have actually been in such a situation you are only hoping what your reaction will be.
I have other versions of this scenario that I use to keep it fresh and to present other tactical issues. One, for example, puts a third person in the apartment cheering the suspect on, so trainees have multiple threats to deal with. Another moves the action to a parking garage, where officers pull up in a squad car and see the assault. I'm always happy to see officers actually shoot from inside the car, or exit, shoot, and move to a cement pillar for cover, instead of approaching the suspect.
I conduct this scenario over and over, and each time the officers are thinking, What is different this time?
About the author:
An officer with a suburban department in Wisconsin, Gary Monreal has more than 21 years of law enforcement experience in corrections, patrol, SWAT, and training. He is a specialist in SWAT explosive entry and also teaches chemical munitions, defensive tactics, firearms, vehicle contacts, tactical emergency medical support, active-shooter response, and less-lethal deployment. |
