By Chuck Remsberg
Senior Police1.com Contributor
The pursuit speeding toward death began with a trivial crime.
The suspect, later identified as a young man with limited mental capacity and a forgetful memory, had driven off from a gasoline pump in the rural Midwest without paying. He’d done it several times before and when contacted had always said he’d “forgotten” and had come back and ponied up. But this time, the attendant called the cops. A chase down the interstate quickly ensued.
In a replay of the dash-cam recording from one of the pursuit vehicles, you see an SUV from a law enforcement agency pull in front of the fleeing suspect car. The chase enters a construction zone and the highway narrows to a convenient chokepoint where a single open lane crosses a bridge. On the bridge where there’s no room to pass, the SUV and the dash-cam vehicle both stop, with the suspect’s old Cadillac forced to a halt between them.
The officer driving the SUV is out on foot immediately, running toward the suspect car from the front with his gun drawn. Other officers rush into camera frame from the rear, their guns out too. The suspect, possibly frightened and confused, won’t emerge. One officer kicks the side of the Caddy, apparently in frustration. Another tries to smash the driver’s window with a baton. Then, despite some hair-raising crossfire positions, officers start shooting into the vehicle.
When the smoke clears, all officers have miraculously escaped injury, but the suspect--unarmed, as it turns out--is dead. Later two of the shooters are charged with murder. They’re acquitted, but the stain of the encounter remains….
The outcome might have been different, Trainer Chuck Soltys believes, if the officers had known and used a refinement of their impromptu blocking technique for getting the suspect’s moving car immobilized. “They had a picture-perfect containment environment,” he says, but their lack of precise strategic deployment undermined a picture-perfect performance.
The alternative Soltys has in mind is a maneuver called “in-line active vehicle containment.” In the broadest sense, it incorporates a core principle of the stop described above, namely that law enforcement vehicles are positioned fore and aft of the targeted suspect car. But done properly with attention to critical detail, in-line containment closes important tactical gaps that permitted that tragic episode to spin out of control.
Soltys, a special agent and primary firearms/tactical survival trainer for the DEA in Chicago, described the recommended procedure in a presentation recently [4/29/06] at the 2006 training conference of the International Law Enforcement Educators & Trainers Assn. (ILEETA).
The in-line technique is one of several containment variations developed by DEA trainers in an effort to make potentially volatile arrests of mobile offenders safer. “We have a lot of incidents in and around vehicles,” Soltys explains. “Vehicles in motion carry the most inherent risk because the vehicle itself can be used as a weapon, as well as a means of escape, and efforts to get the suspect stopped present unusual dangers to the agents involved and to the public that happens to be in the vicinity.”
After a series of high-jeopardy snafus, DEA conducted a three-year analysis of its “vehicle-related critical incidents” in hopes of better understanding the negative dynamics involved.
Common Shortcomings of Problem Stops
Several threads common to these troublesome stops emerged:
• lack of planning and coordinated movement by enforcement personnel
• poor containment, or none at all
• agents running up to people and/or cars and not paying attention to the surroundings
• approaching the target vehicle from the front, where the suspect has the widest kill zone
• positioning in cross-fires, often without even realizing it
• verbal commands issued by multiple agents, resulting in contradiction and confusion
• agents displaying guns with their finger on the trigger.
With these problems identified, DEA then picked the brains of tactically astute trainers in more than a dozen municipal, county, state and federal agencies before designing four closely related containment measures that it feels are “legal, ethical, tactically correct and compatible with the agency’s policies and procedures,” Soltys says. Because he believes it offers the greatest practicality and maximum protection of people and property, he likes the in-line procedure best.
Because this method “takes away a suspect’s ability to use his vehicle as a weapon or a means of escape, he is left with options of fleeing on foot, fighting or complying,” Soltys says. “In reality, you can be on him before he realizes what’s happening.”
How In-Line Containment Works
The in-line tactic is most likely to be both surprising to the suspect and successful for the mission if two unmarked units are used as the containment vehicles. However, given the right circumstances, Soltys says, it can work with patrol cars as well. Either way, “the tactic must be practiced thoroughly in order to be executed smoothly,” Soltys stresses. “Timing is absolutely critical. During training, officers should play roles in every car involved so they understand the tactic from every occupant’s perspective.
In planning for the stop, gather as much intelligence as possible from police records, personal observation and informants. In addition to the suspect’s criminal history and his behavior in previous arrest situations, it will be valuable to learn about his likely weapons, their type and their probable location in the vehicle. “Pre-plan, plan some more, then plan again…and have an alternative plan in place,” Soltys urges.
Before the stop is initiated, one containment vehicle needs to be directly in front of the suspect car and the second one directly behind. The containment is activated when the front vehicle gets the suspect vehicle stopped at a chosen location of advantage, usually at a normal halt point such as a stop sign or red light.
The front containment vehicle then backs into the suspect vehicle in a “controlled roll” at approximately 3 mph or less until bumper-to-bumper contact is established. The rear blocking vehicle does a controlled roll forward at approximately 3 mph or less into the suspect vehicle until bumper-to-bumper contact is made. The closer the three vehicles are to each other when the rolls begin, the better.
If this is a covert action (using unmarked vehicles), the element of surprise is crucial to the proper application of the technique. The startled suspect most likely will believe he is the victim of an annoying traffic mishap caused by careless drivers, which diverts his mind from what’s really taking place.
The front and rear drivers keep their foot on the brake initially, locking the suspect car in place.
While maintaining contact with the brake pedal and keeping his car in reverse gear, the front driver leans over into his passenger seat at about a 45-degree angle, out of sight. If gunfire erupts, his vehicle will provide substantial protection, Soltys assures.
“It will seem uncomfortable and awkward until you practice it, but it works,” he says. Among the visual elements in his ILEETA presentation was a filmed demonstration in which officers wielding a variety of handguns, long guns and ammunition, including rifle rounds and rifled slugs, fired more than 500 rounds into a sedan. Although many rounds shattered glass, flattened tires and punctured the auto’s outer skin, none penetrated through to hit targets positioned inside the vehicle, including a target placed on the front seat where the driver would slump during the in-line containment.
The key to the in-line tactic is making sure the suspect cannot create any space between vehicles that would allow him to ram or maneuver his way out of line. If he tries to drive forward, the front driver keeps his foot firmly on the brake while the rear driver releases his brake just long enough for his car to roll forward and maintain contact with the suspect’s rear bumper. If the suspect tries to accelerate backward, the rear driver brakes his car in place while the front driver rolls back to keep touch with the suspect’s front bumper.
Soltys points out that a controlled roll powered by the transmission is more effective in keeping bumper-to-bumper contact than an active acceleration. “Acceleration will only add more power to the suspect’s attempt to move in a given direction.”
He warns: “Don’t allow the suspect to develop a gap or he’ll work it, widen it and use it to break free. In this maneuver, space equals escape.” But if contact by the front and rear cars remains tight, the suspect can burn his tires down to the rims and not go anywhere.
(In the event the technique breaks down and the suspect is able eventually to bolt from the trap, DEA policy forbids pursuit except in extreme circumstances. According to Soltys, the risk is too great. Pursuit studies show that 30% end in crashes, 15% in injuries and 3% in death. Chases involving unmarked units seem likely to produce even grimmer outcomes.)
“Done right, the in-line strategy contains even vehicles of greater size and engine strength,” Soltys says. “The tactic properly applied dozens of times in training has resulted only in minimal damage to the containment cars, such as cracked license plate frames or scratches on their bumpers.” (The DEA’s alternative active-vehicle stops involve positioning containment cars perpendicular to the suspect vehicle. This exposes the cars to more serious potential damage to their sides, while making the drivers more vulnerable. That’s why Soltys favors the in-line alignment.)
Drivers of the containment vehicles, incidentally, should grasp their steering wheel at the 6 o’clock position, not at 12 o’clock. Soltys explains that in the unlikely event that an air bag is deployed by the bumper contact, the lower grip will minimize the risk of the driver’s hand/shoulder being injured or violently propelled into his face. However, there has not been a reported incident of air bag deployment as a result of the technique either in training or real-world application, Soltys add.
As the containment cars make contact, a law enforcement car carrying an arrest team pulls up at about a 45-degree off the left rear of the suspect vehicle. This angle shuts down a lane of traffic and provides some protection while the suspect is extracted.
If there are passengers in the suspect vehicle and the environment permits, another LE car can be positioned at an angle off the right rear of the suspect vehicle to provide additional firepower coverage. These supplemental LE vehicles can be marked units, even if unmarked cars have been deployed as the containment vehicles.
Extraction Options
Soltys explains two options for extracting occupants:
CALL BACK. With only one person on the arrest team issuing verbal commands, the occupants, beginning with the driver, are ordered out of the vehicle one at a time and instructed to come back toward the team in the traditional high-risk stop protocol. The cover team, if there is one, maintains armed surveillance of the suspect vehicle from the passenger side until all occupants have been removed.
RUSH & GRAB. A designated number of agents, guns drawn, quickly approach the driver side and passenger side of the suspect vehicle in unison, moving up from the rear to avoid the most obvious kill zone. Ballistic shields can be used if available. The first agent up on the driver side acts as cover officer, along with agents on the passenger side. The second agent to reach the driver’s door is contact officer. He opens the door or, if the suspect is uncooperative and the situation warrants it, breaks the rear-door glass with a baton or (preferably) a window punch and physically takes control of the driver and extracts him. Any other occupants are subsequently removed, one at a time.
Note: If the driver is wearing a seatbelt, do not permit him to unbuckle it himself. Reaching toward the buckle, he may be able to grab weapons hidden in seat cracks or the console. Instead, Soltys suggests that you command the driver to place his hands on the dashboard, palms up, and to lean forward so that his face is against the center of the steering wheel. Use your left hand or forearm to keep his head in that position while you reach behind him with your right hand to release his seatbelt.
Bottom Line
All this is “a” way to stop a mobile suspect, not necessarily “the” way, Soltys says. But he is impressed with the success this approach has had in the field.
Awhile back, he taught the containment technique to a group of U.S. marshals. The next day, they used it to apprehend a suspect wanted for murder. “It worked great,” Soltys says. “It’s so fast and so surprising when a suspect isn’t expecting it. The marshals told me that after they had the murderer hooked up, he just sat in the back of the arrest car shaking his head, wondering what happened.
“It’s a very frustrating feeling for the suspect when he can’t move his car. Once they feel they’re trapped, most will put their hands up and surrender. Very few are the 2%ers who are truly motivated to fight it out in a desperate attempt to get away.”
[For more information, contact Chuck Soltys, Drug Enforcement Administration, 312-886-4955 or csoltys@msn.com ]
