Editor’s Note: In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. This week’s essay comes from PoliceOne Member Jeff Paynter, a Detective and DT Instructor with the Lakewood (Wash.) Police Department. In the year since the brutal murder of four of his fellow officers, Paynter has written a sort of “Defensive Tactics Bill of Rights.” Do you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members? Send us an e-mail with your story.
By Detective Jeff Paynter
Lakewood (Wash.) Police Department
On 11/29/09, four of my partners were murdered in Lakewood, Washington, in an ambush and disarming assault. In the aftermath of this event, I talked with a fellow DT instructor who confided in me that he felt we had failed our fallen officers with the training we had provided them. One of the fallen officers, Sergeant Mark Renninger, served as a DT instructor with us. Mark’s loss, in particular, was difficult for me; he was a mentor and colleague for several years. Between us, my colleague and I have piles of instructor certifications and years of experience on tactical teams, all of which seemed quite meaningless as we had an unthinkable, surreal discussion about whether we had prepared our officers properly for their fatal confrontation with Maurice Clemmons. My efforts as a trainer seemed insignificant next to the fatal velocity of Clemmons’ bullets.
However, I strongly disagreed with him that our training program had failed our officers.
My fellow instructor and I had a long discussion about our program in which I explained to him that given normal limitations, we had delivered the best program possible to all of our officers. Having convinced my associate that he was torturing himself unnecessarily, I thought, “What if there is a major hole in our training that I am not seeing?” After that conversation I looked at our training program with a new set of eyes in order to better articulate why I felt that we had given our officers the best training possible. I subsequently made some changes to the program and more are coming.
After almost a year of tearing down our program and looking at the foundation, this article emerged as a sort of “Defensive Tactics Bill of Rights.” A solid defensive tactics program should provide a systemic approach to threats, incorporating empty hands, less lethal tools, and firearms. The program should facilitate skill retention and should be in harmony with the broader training curriculum. Dynamic simulations should be included as a proving ground where officers are evaluated. Finally, the program should pass “the pavement test” of reality and must meet legal, ethical, and instructional standards.
Your DT program should provide a systemic approach to threats.
Your DT program should teach a system that acknowledges the threats faced by your line officers. Does your DT program prepare a solo officer to confront and control one or more violent resistors? If not, back to the drawing board. The system should include techniques that allow for flow between ranges and tools. The techniques should be based on a common set of principles that will apply to varied situations. Your footwork should facilitate striking and counter joint techniques. Your counter joint takedowns should work equally well with empty hands or with one hand occupied by a baton or flashlight. Your striking techniques should maximize stunning and balance disruption while setting up range changes and control tactics.
Your DT Program should facilitate skill retention.
Psychomotor skill acquisition requires adequate repetition in order to become firmly seated in the long term motor memory. After techniques are learned, they must be regularly reviewed so that officers continue to hone their skills until the skills can be performed without conscious thought in field conditions. Flow drills that incorporate attack and defense, such as those seen in various martial arts of Kali, Wing Chun, Shoot Wrestling, and Aiki Jujitsu are useful in promoting the repetition of useful movements to move your officers toward mastery.
Officers will not usually attain skill mastery during basic training. Basic academy training will usually get officers beyond the Cognitive stage of learning (what do I do?) and into the Motor stage (how do I do this?). However, if the techniques are not practiced, officers will not perform adequate repetitions to allow for skill mastery (able to perform the techniques with little or no conscious thought).
The phrase “Forget all that crap you learned at the academy” should be anathema in the DT world. DT instructors should be regularly interfacing with their regional academies to facilitate skill development. Finally, if you are in charge of your program you must fight the “bright and shiny object syndrome”, or the tendency of instructors to become fixated on “new” training. New techniques should be carefully considered before they are added to your system and pull training hours away from other skills. More information on this topic can be found in Motor Learning and Performance by Schmidt/Wrisberg and other related materials.
Your DT Program should be in harmony with your PD’s broad training curriculum.
You may be teaching a solid system, but if your system teaches techniques that don’t interface with the firearms curriculum, you could have trouble down the road. For example, your weapon retention techniques are in conflict with your firearms cadre’s instruction on that topic.
You must ensure that your defensive tactics program is at least acknowledged by other instructors. I believe that DT instructors should be allowed to hold other collateral assignments (FTO, SWAT, Firearms Instructor) in order to facilitate this intellectual pollination. At my agency, this concept is in place, though not without some head/brick wall contact on my part. I am lucky in that our DT instructors are generally type A, goal-oriented individuals. Most hold a second collateral assignment of some sort and this facilitates the dissemination of DT concepts.
Your DT Program should include dynamic simulations.
Dynamic simulations are the proving ground for your system. Are officers able to execute their skills under realistic pressure in field conditions? Are officers able to make acceptable use of force decisions? Are officers able to transition from empty hand techniques to firearms? These questions are answered by a regular use of dynamic simulations. Training at the Speed of Life by Ken Murray is an excellent place to start if you are considering the addition of dynamic simulations to your program.
Dynamic simulations are not to be undertaken lightly. Numerous officers have been killed in these training events. Adequate funding and administrative good will are essential for this type of training to function safely. The benefits to your program are huge, as are the pitfalls. If your agency is unable to fund this kind of training, you might look to local businesses or your own guild or union for funding.
Your DT Program should be legally, instructionally, and ethically defensible.
Does your program include instruction on Use of Force case law? Are your officers able to make sound, justifiable decisions? Are the techniques you are teaching reasonable? There are very efficient martial arts systems available that are not necessarily a good fit for law enforcement defensive tactics. Your DT system should meet applicable guidelines for use of force.
In addition, the “lowest common denominator” should be able to perform the techniques adequately or your system may need to be simplified. As an instructor, you should be able to speak intelligently on the legal, ethical and instructional foundations of your program.
Your DT Program should pass the Pavement Test.
Finally and most importantly, your techniques must be street functional for the lowest common denominator (officers who only practice when you are yelling at them). If you are considering spending money on “the great new thing,” be sure that it is well vetted. There are combat sport techniques that are fantastic for competitors on mats, where a coach or ref is standing by to stop the action. Those same techniques can have catastrophic consequences when performed by a street cop on asphalt with firearms in play.
Defensive Tactics training is becoming an arms race. Techniques that were traditionally only learned by small numbers of instructors are now available on YouTube. The evolution of mixed martial arts as a mass media product has made martial arts techniques available to the general public on cable television. Your DT program must carefully take these threats into account and must provide a systemic response. I teach a system that blends techniques from multiple arts, including boxing, Aiki Jujitsu, Kali, Silat, and Judo. As a result, the system incorporates the use of striking, grappling, counter joint takedowns, impact weapons, firearms, and edged weapons.
After nearly a decade learning it, I am frequently discovering how much I don’t know. There are systems available that teach “everything in a week.” After a week, can you responsibly stand up in front of a class and know the answer to a “why” question?
In summary, the DT community should be in a state of constant self examination. Our losses continue to illustrate the necessity of solid defensive tactics training. As the threats to officers evolve, so must we, as instructors, continue to grow. If we are going to wear the cool black tee shirts that say “Instructor” on them, we must commit ourselves to the difficult pursuit of skill mastery and the associated hard work. We fail our partners when we settle for the status of paper tiger.
