By Police1 News Editor
Lindsay Gebhart
Police1 columnist John Meyers Jr., Director of Tactical Operations for Fox Valley Technical College and Team One Network, said the key to escaping ambush situations is getting out of the kill zone.
In order to do this, officers must be taught to think clearly during stressful situations. Meyers suggests training officers more like hockey players than figure skaters to facilitate this kind of thinking. Hockey players have the same skills as figure skaters, but they have an advantage in that they can vary their movies as needed; they are not choreographed.
“Even if (the hockey player) gets his teeth knocked out,” Meyers said, “it doesn’t mean he lost.”
In the end the player can still be holding up the Stanley Cup, Meyers said. The same goes for officers.
When training, Meyers said, it is important to teach officers use of cover, shoot and move, and tactics. Standing on a firing line will not prepare officers for most of the real-world experiences they will face.
One tactic Meyers teaches is “3 Seconds to Safety.” In this tactic, the officer is taught to step on the gas and reverse his or her vehicle, taking them out of the kill zone.
Meyers also said that often hiding behind/within a police car makes you a sitting duck. It is important to teach officers to seek other cover, which may make the difference in a live-or-die ambush situation.
View a full list of John’s Classes
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Editor’s Note:
As you read the following article, remember this basic but critical survival point: Trooper Brandon Brashear’s vest not only helped save his life, but it helped him continue to pursue the man who shot him, if only by eking out a description. The powerful mixture of his personal strength, his will to survive and his life-saving decision to wear his vest allowed responding officers to get the information they needed to locate a man who posed a threat to anyone who got in his way...including other officers. - Scott Buhrmaster
Missouri Trooper Shot at Least Eight Times
The Associated Press
As he lay in the grass next to Interstate 470 after being shot at least eight times early Saturday, Missouri Trooper Brandon Brashear found the strength to describe his assailant.
Less than an hour later, in an Independence pool hall, authorities arrested a suspect in the shooting that critically injured Brashear.
On Saturday, Jackson County prosecutors charged Tommy R. Rollins Jr., 25, of Grandview with first-degree assault on a law enforcement officer and armed criminal action.
The shooting occurred shortly after 2 a.m. when Brashear tried to pull over a man in a white Chevrolet Monte Carlo as he was driving erratically on northbound Interstate 470 in Lees Summit.
Brashear told Highway Patrol dispatchers at 2:08 a.m. that he was pursuing the vehicle in a chase that lasted about two miles from Woods Chapel Road on I-470 to just north of the Lakewood Way exit.
Dispatchers last heard from Brashear at 2:09 a.m. when he told them the car was slowing down and appeared to be stopping.
In court documents filed to support the charges against Rollins, authorities allege that he opened fire with a 9mm pistol as Brashear climbed out of his patrol car.
Rollins then chased Brashear into the median of the interstate, shooting him several times, authorities allege. Brashear stumbled into a ditch and was unable to call for help. The trooper was hit at least eight times and possibly more, prosecutors said.
About 2:15 a.m., after dispatchers were unable to contact Brashear, other troopers raced to the scene, where they found the wounded trooper. Just before being airlifted to a local hospital, Brashear described the man who shot him.
It was just unbelievable that he was able to do all that, said Sgt. John Hotz, a patrol spokesman.
Authorities said that Brashear was wearing a bulletproof vest and that some of the bullets hit the vest and others hit Brashear around the vest. They did not say exactly what injuries he had suffered.
Less than an hour after the shooting, police arrested Rollins at The Break, a pool hall at 2900 S. Missouri 291 in Independence.
In court documents filed Saturday, authorities alleged that Rollins told patrons in the pool hall that he had just shot a police officer and asked them to call authorities.
Independence police arrested Rollins about 3 a.m. and took him to the Lees Summit Police Department for questioning.
Court documents state that Rollins took investigators to a home in the 3400 block of Sioux Court in Independence, where the gun thought to have been used in the shooting was recovered. Investigators also recovered two homemade gasoline bombs.
Rollins was being held Saturday night at the Lees Summit Police Department without bond.
Brashear, 27, underwent surgery early Saturday and was listed in critical but stable condition Saturday afternoon at a local hospital.
The Grain Valley resident had been with the Highway Patrol for a little more than two years, Hotz said.
He was assigned to Troop A, which serves a 13-county area in western Missouri, including Jackson, Clay and Platte counties.
He’s a good young officer and does a great job, Hotz said.