A dramatic series of dicey SWAT call-outs — ranging from a drunken military vet brandishing a live hand grenade in his front yard to a barricaded felon who coldly wrapped his shirt around a baby and thrust the infant into view to test if police would shoot — were critiqued in detail recently at the annual conference of the Assn. of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin.
The debriefings were designed to sharpen the skills of team leaders, snipers, and tactical operators. But embedded in discussions of their specialized arcanery — like the challenges of shooting through glass and the tactics for manhunting at night with infrared gear — were vital lessons any officer should remember.
Here are seven short excerpts culled from extensive reconstructions of complex incidents from a variety of locales. Inherent in each is a life-on-the-line street truth worthy of roll call reinforcement, regardless of your assignment.
“No critical incident is ever perfect,” observed presenter Randy Winn, a sergeant with the Sacramento County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Dept. “A perfect operation is like a unicorn: Everyone knows what one looks like but no one has ever seen one.”
It should be noted, however, that despite bumps along the way, each event referenced was ultimately resolved without additional loss of innocent life.
Training Point #1.) Don’t let ignorance compromise your training and safety.
Raving, pacing, swigging beer, and threatening to “kill someone” after a fight with his girlfriend, the ex-soldier had pulled the safety pin on the M-67 grenade he wielded but he still gripped it tight enough to keep the spoon depressed. When he moved out of his yard into a large open field surrounded by houses in a Kansas City (Mo.) neighborhood, a sniper brought him down with a rifle shot between his shoulder blades. When he fell face-down, the hand clutching the grenade landed under him. His sternum and the weight of his body kept enough pressure on the spoon to prevent detonation.
Sgt. Tye Grant of the KCPD Tactical Response Team, who debriefed this encounter, recounted that a high-ranking administrator and a department lawyer showed up at the CP not long after the sniper shot. The administrator, an eye to public relations, worried that the offender might still be alive and “in need of medical attention,” though he hadn’t moved in 45 minutes. The continuing threat of the grenade ignored, he urged that personnel be deployed to tend to him.
More tactically astute heads argued otherwise and stood firm.
Eventually a bomb robot was sent to the downed offender while officers remained at great distance, behind cover. When the robot nudged the suspect, the grenade exploded. “The top of his body was blown off and he flew 20 feet in the air,” Grant said, showing grisly evidence photos to prove the damage. “Body parts blew over houses and landed on roofs and lawns 80 yards away. The fire department had to wash down people’s roofs.” A finger was blasted into one woman’s screen door, an arm landed in a neighbor’s grass. Two hairy strips of the suspect’s scalp curled in a pile and were mistaken for dead squirrels.
After blood and flesh settled, evidence techs started sticking little red flags out to mark where body parts were found. They abandoned the effort after 400 flags had been positioned.
“Don’t let ignorance compromise your training and safety,” Grant warned.
Training Point #2.) Keep a “go bag” of essentials readily available.
The call started at 1735 as “people being fired at” near a remote railroad bridge in a wooded rural area “popular for recreation and fornication.” When Sgt. Jason Ducane and his Special Response Team from the Marinette County (Wis.) Sheriff’s Dept. responded, they expected they’d be out “20 to 30 minutes, 2 to 3 hours max.”
As it turned out, a 30-year-old “social dropout” had randomly shot two teenagers to death near the river bridge, and he had to be tracked throughout the night through vast, dense, rugged forestland of rocky outcroppings, swamps, and innumerable potential ambush sites. It took more than 15 hours to capture him.
Anticipating only their customary short deployment, officers risked dehydration and loss of focus because they didn’t have sufficient water. They shivered from cold because their clothing wasn’t warm enough after the sun went down. They were “eaten alive” by mosquitoes — no bug spray — but had no food themselves. Radio batteries died.
Since then, there have been many positive changes in deployment measures, said Ducane, who was not alone in speaking to the folly of guesstimating timelines. “We took advantage of a bad time to get better prepared.”
“Every rural officer who responds to a call must be self-sufficient until relief arrives,” Ducane advised.
Training Point #3.) Depending on expectations and assumptions can bite you in the ass.
In Pittsburg, Calif., negotiators and SWAT operators spent 29 hours dealing with an armed and mentally unstable gangbanger wanted for probation violations. He’d taken his mother hostage and had propped a backpack he said was filled with C-4 against his patio door to discourage forced entry. He threatened to kill any cop who came to get him.
“It wasn’t appropriate to shelter other residents of his apartment complex in place,” team leader Sgt. Phil Galer says. Evacuation was ordered, and “patrol guys told us everyone was successfully removed.” Assuming a cleared fire zone within the perimeter, the SWAT team planned its actions accordingly, positioning snipers and readying a gas assault.
About two hours into the standoff, team members noticed people looking out through the window blinds of an “evacuated” apartment. A woman was discovered hiding under her bed in a unit right across the hall from where the gunman eventually would be killed by the simultaneous fire of two snipers.
Incomplete evacuations were a staple in several of the conference presentations.
Training Point #4.) Plan for contingencies in tactics and gear.
Another seedy apartment complex, another helpless hostage — this one the 16-month-old baby, a cousin’s child, that a wanted bank robber and murderer flashed into view in an effort to bait officers into shooting. During an exhausting 56-hour standoff with the Sacramento County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Dept.’s Special Enforcement Detail and tac units from multiple other agencies, the offender, armed with two handguns, fired at least 50 rounds at the cops and police equipment.
After one volley, officers inside the perimeter performed a routine safety check of themselves and their equipment. As one operator drew his Sig Sauer 226, the frame came out in his hand — but the slide remained in his holster.
One of the suspect’s bullets had penetrated the officer’s holster and struck his pistol’s take-down lever, team leader Randy Winn explained. The impact was enough to cause the gun to field strip upon being drawn.
There may be much you can’t imagine but nothing that cannot happen in law enforcement.
Training Point #5.) Don’t bet your life on a suspect’s professed or apparent compliance.
With the help of night-vision gear, a SWAT team from the Fresno County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Office located a killer they’d been tracking across rocky, scrub-tangled ravines in the low Sierras. Motionless and silent, they watched him move within about 15 yards of them on the other side of thick bushes. In the moonless darkness, he couldn’t see them, though he apparently sensed their general presence. He was armed with a scoped rifle.
“Suddenly he starts talking,” said Sgt. Matthew Alexander. “He says he wants to give up. He asks us to turn a light on so he can know where to surrender.”
No one spoke or moved. “We figured he wanted a white light source so he’d have something to shoot at,” Alexander said. “We just waited.”
The suspect, seemingly familiar with every crag and animal trail in the wilderness, managed to slip away temporarily, but he was captured later on. Before the hunt ended, he did fire on other officers who were attempting to take him into custody, but they escaped injury.
Remember! Sometimes “submission” is spelled s-e-t-u-p.
Training Point #6.) Be emotionally prepared to never receive the gratitude that your skills and courage have earned.
Kansas City officers wanted to question an 18-year-old male about a rash of property crimes in his neighborhood, but when his mother opened the door to talk with them, he grabbed her back inside. Soon he was barricaded with her. He was believed to be armed. The Tactical Response Team deployed.
Sniper Toby Sicks was starting over a fence behind the house when the suspect tried to go mobile through a back door. He stood in the doorway behind the glass pane of a storm door, pulled his mother against him, and put a knife to her throat. “You’re going to have to kill me!” he shouted to an officer who tried to open dialogue. He meant business.
It wasn’t a simple shot for Sicks. He was 38 yards away, his bolt rifle hastily supported on a chain link fence. His bullet had to smash through the door pane without glass spraying the mother’s face, without a sudden jerk yanking her into the line of fire, without the knife slicing her neck.
He patterned the suspect’s movements to get the timing right, aimed for an ear hole, and paused his breath. Seconds after the blade went against the woman’s throat, Sicks pressed off a .308 round that tore at 2,600 feet per second into the kid’s head. He was dead right there, the mother free and unscathed.
It was true Sicks likely saved her life, but true as well from her perspective that she had lost a son.
She was silent for a moment, then began screaming. She refused to come out of the house. “You killed him!” she cried. “Now you’re going to have to kill me too!” She grabbed paper towels and for 20 minutes mopped up blood. She took the blade that had been against her throat, cleaned it, and threw it into the sink with other knives. Once she was taken from the residence, investigators had to stage a “knife lineup” for officers to identify it.
“To this day,” Sicks said, “she refuses to admit he ever had a knife.”
Training Point #7.) Never underestimate your adversary.
Because authorities feared for the life of the baby held hostage in Sacramento County, opportunities for aggressive police action to end that standoff were limited. When the 25-year-old suspect was open as a target, he was not easy to take down.
At one point, an officer on the perimeter fired at him with an AR-10 as he ran from one side of the apartment to the other. The offender showed no reaction and the shot was written off as a miss. Later it was discovered the .308 round had gone clear through his left shoulder, creating a major wound. Without a word of distress to negotiators, he managed to get the bleeding stopped and continued his resistance as vigorously as before.
In a final showdown, after commanders decided that explosive breeching and dynamic entry were necessary to save the baby’s life in a rapidly deteriorating situation, the suspect was shot in the lung and heart — and kept moving…shot in the foot — and fired back…shot twice in the hand — and fumbled in his waistband for a second weapon…shot in the head — and only then at last fell dead. Blood tests revealed no drugs in his system.
“The will to survive is not just reserved for you and me,” Sgt. Winn told the Wisconsin audience. “There are guys who will fight through lethal injuries for extra seconds or minutes. Those who do not care if they live or die have a huge advantage over those of us who do.”
Never, ever underestimate your adversary.
