Tips to surviving a suspicious or disabled vehicle call

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The Street Survival Newsline with Calibre Press

By PoliceOne Columnist & explosives expert Shawn Hughes

There used to be a time where if you got a call to check an unattended vehicle, you could take your time, park anywhere, run the tag and call for a hook.

While there will always be a few in the blue who will never change, with the increased threats patrol faces today, now is a good time to review your procedures. (Obviously, nothing I’m telling you should supersede your current written policy and procedures.)

First, encourage your already overworked dispatchers and call-takers to squeeze more information out of people reporting abandoned vehicles or traffic hazards. Asking something as simple as, “Do you see anyone around the vehicle?” could be huge later. And, with the bloom of video-enabled phones, it would be trivial to ask the caller to shoot a clip of the people they are seeing. Imagine how things might have gone differently in Oklahoma City if people were whipping out their phones when the Ryder Truck came to a stop?

Next, as you ride to this call, make sure that you have done your regional homework and are alert to the area you’re responding to. It doesn’t matter if your department trickles down intelligence or hot sheets. There are plenty of Internet sites offering real-time intelligence now. You should be familiar with high-profile places in your beat like a chemical plant or military contractor that might be an attack target.

You should also be aware of “polarizing businesses” like gene research, abortion centers, or others involved with hot-button topics. Is the place you’re responding to a critical infrastructure, like the only bridge into town, or a spot where all the town’s utilities converge? Are we nearing a date in history that has significance to bad people?

If you don’t do a roll call, did you at least talk to someone on the previous shift or listen to the patrol channel on the way into work? “Hey, they finally fired that nut at the metal plating plant” might sound like idle chatter now, but in ten years, when they are teaching your incident in the police academy, that one snippet of conversation could have been the difference between your failure and success later that day.

As you near the scene of the call, are you paying attention? I hate to use the entertainment industry as an example of best practices, but how many movies have we seen where the officers are tearing ass to a call so hard they don’t notice the bad guy quietly leaving the scene? That chestnut of movie scriptwriters has a basis in factual history. Think about it…you are in an industrial district and you’re nowhere near a bus stop. Or you are in a rural area. Why is that guy walking?

When you get on scene, resist the urge to park closely to the vehicle causing the problem. Use your cruiser to direct traffic and create a safe work zone as necessary, but consider this: in an explosion, the force of the blast and heat dissipate exponentially with the distance from the seat. That five feet you shaved off your walk to the suspicious car might have saved you, your face skin and your hearing.

Also, don’t just totally zero in on the car; look around (and, don’t forget up). Who is watching you? It's an unattended double parked car, whoop-de-do. That shouldn’t draw much attention. Then why is somebody videotaping? Might be because it is a growing trend for criminals to record their operations for posterity.

Think for a second. Is this a reasonable place for a car to be? Or is it an excellent place to maximize the potential for explosion or to release a gas to kill crowds? There is an empty loading zone, so why is this truck parked here? Why would someone ditch a running car in a drop off lane? Could this call be diverting resources from the real incident? Maybe this car is a honey pot to lure you into a spot where someone can pick you off with a rifle (which is why I said to look up earlier)?

While walking up on the vehicle, size it up. Most cars have neutral rake, in other words, the front and the rear of the vehicle are evenly balanced. A car that is squatting in the rear (like your overloaded radio car trunk) might be telling you that something unusually heavy is inside. More subtle clues, such as a box van covered in road grime that has a shiny license plate, or even the bottoms of tires that appear flat due to excess weight…all can help you to form an opinion as to what may really be going on.

When you get to the vehicle, look inside without touching it (you DID bring a flashlight, didn’t you?) Smell anything funny? Obviously, a burning smell or an odor that smells like the range after a bunch of people have been firing should be an immediate threat indicator.

But, what about shoe polish? Or ammonia? Or acid? Unless it is body funk or gasoline, generally cars should not be emitting a strong odor of any kind. A warning; don’t be doing any deep breathing exercises here. Many war gases have the characteristic of being able to overwhelm your nose so that you no longer can smell anything, and if it’s a rolling meth lab instead of a bomb, one hard whiff could permanently compromise your lung functioning. So, look for the obvious smell, but I don’t recommend huffing at the panel seams.

Obvious indicators include sacks or containers of stuff piled in every nook and cranny with thin wires or round, extension-cord looking tubes interconnecting them. Also, of course, look for items that reasonably appear to be common explosives or ordnance, timing devices or fuses. More subtle cues: there is a crappy or no stereo in the car, so why are there wires running to the trunk or back into the cargo area? Has the back seat been replaced incorrectly and sitting cockeyed? What about exterior features? Does there appear to be recent work on the vehicle, especially ones involving the sheet metal? External piping or sprinklers that might suggest a chemical weapon? Are there external wires hanging below? Obvious attempts to increase the load-bearing capacity of the vehicle?

Don’t assume that because someone is in the car, things must be more along the lines of a harmless person who doesn’t believe that parking lots apply to them. Overseas, victim-operated improvised explosive devices are a common tactic. How is the person in the vehicle reacting to your approach? Are they showing disdain over an impending ticket? Relief that the cavalry has arrived? Or fear and excitement? What are their hands doing? Have they used a coat or blanket to conceal something bulky? If the driver is operating a commercial vehicle, does he have a lack of common knowledge regarding vehicle operations or legalities (log books, driving laws)?

At this point, like any other criminal case, you should have enough clues to either build your argument that something is wrong and deal with it as a high-risk situation, or have enough information to confidently deal with the call as a standard traffic problem.

But what do you do if think it is a bomb? I’ll cover that in my next article.

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