The possibility of the Blue-on-Blue use-of-force situation happening to us unfortunately keeps increasing. For the Off-Duty Officer or the Retired Officer, it is one situation that learning the right things to do and wearing/using items like the LEOSA banner seems good and will hopefully do the trick for you.
However, this Blue-on-Blue situation (like almost all others) is one where the “worst case scenario” is what we need to be prepared for (or at least be as prepared as possible). The worst case scenario here would be a coworker that changes paths and becomes a threat to you and your legal duty is to use lethal force against them.
How do you prepare for that?
I feel that being mentally prepared would be the most valuable single thing that you can do for this and all lethal force incidents. All that you have to do to get the mental preparedness started is to “daydream” about being involved in this type of situation (or just thinking your way through this type of incident, from beginning to end). Doing this very simple thing can help you tremendously in all deadly force incidents. Doing so does not mean that your psychopathic, it simply makes the scenario not quite as much of a surprise. It not being a complete surprise means that you are to some degree mentally prepared; therefore you will be better able to handle the event if it happens to you.
The “OODA Cycle” (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) is an important part. The OODA Cycle is something that we go through numerous timed during our day. The problem with the “Blue on Blue” situation in relation to this cycle is the possibility of our getting “hung-up” in the Orientation stage. The way that this cycle works (and one of the best ways to use it against our opponent) is that the human being cannot generally make a decision and therefore complete an action until they complete the Orientation stage (orient yourself to what you see or OBSERVE).
If we know our perpetrator to be a fellow officer, we stand a much higher chance of getting “hung-up” in this stage because it is so hard to believe what we are seeing. Mental preparation — seeing yourself get through this type of situation by “daydreaming” — is the best way that I know of to keep the Orientation phase as short as possible.
Many years ago, I set out to train all of the officers that I could to WIN confrontations — physically, legally, and psychologically. The psychological winning of the Blue-on-Blue incident would most likely be the hardest part.
This would require the previously mentioned “mental preparedness.” In the words of Dave Grossman (who I would consider to be an expert on Combat Mindset and PTSD), “The one who is most likely to get through the Rationalization and Acceptance Process (a stage of the human response to killing that has to be successfully completed to prevent PTSD) is the one that has thought their way through a similar situation by doing things like daydreaming.”
Or, in the words of Doug Wyllie, Police One Editor in Chief, “Mentally confronting the possible scenario.”
Remember, forewarned is forearmed!