By Jason Anderson
The Record
STOCKTON, Calif. — The Police Foundation’s independent review of the Stockton Police Department’s response to a 2014 bank robbery and hostage crisis highlighted the need for law enforcement agencies to train for the unexpected.
Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones recognized the need for increased training months before the review was completed. He said his department is now taking steps to implement that kind of training.
“We are moving toward, as the recommendations are outlined in the Police Foundation report, how we can better train and plan for the unthinkable,” Jones said. “We’re coming up with scenarios that we have previously not thought of so that if we ever encounter it, we will be better prepared to respond to those circumstances.”
The Police Foundation, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., concluded that no American law enforcement agency had ever encountered the circumstances Stockton police officers faced on July 16, 2014.
Three gunmen entered a north Stockton bank, fled with three hostages in a stolen vehicle and engaged officers in a rolling gun battle that raged for an hour before two bank robbers and hostage Misty Holt-Singh died in an intense shootout. One of the gunmen fired more than 100 7.62-millimeter rounds at officers from an AK-47-style assault rifle during the pursuit, disabling 14 police vehicles, including the SWAT team’s armored BearCat.
“One of the frustrations we repeatedly heard during our interviews with Stockton police officers was they were dealing with an event they had never trained for, let alone truly considered,” Police Foundation President Jim Bueermann wrote in the foreword to the report. “Even veteran SWAT members found themselves confused and vexed when dealing with a rolling pursuit with hostages, all the while taking heavy fire that repeatedly disabled their police vehicles, and each time left them worrying that one of their colleagues might be hurt or dying while they continued the chase.”
Jones knew his officers had just been through an unprecedented ordeal. He also knew they had to be better prepared if something similar happened again.
“Early on, we determined there was a need for additional and increased training,” Jones said. “Some training was given within months after the incident, and the type of training was force options. Also, we have recently implemented for all patrol officers more deadly force training, and this is what we often call shoot-or-don’t-shoot scenarios. It is not just about how well we fire a weapon and hitting the target. It’s the choices we’re making — split-second decisions and the choice we make to fire or not fire in these situations.”
One of the most critical points in the Police Foundation review addressed a phenomenon known as “sympathetic gunfire,” instances in which officers continue to fire their weapons without a clear perception of the threat simply because officers around them are firing their weapons. Officers fired more than 600 rounds into the getaway vehicle during the final gun battle at Thornton Road and Otto Drive, many after the threat had been eliminated, the Police Foundation said. The report concluded that the number of shots fired was “excessive and unnecessary.”
Jones said officers are now being trained to understand what sympathetic gunfire is and how to avoid it.
“A big part of that training is discussing it and making sure our officers know what it is,” Jones said. “We train to start firing when there’s a threat and stop firing when the threat is ceased. It can be very difficult to determine exactly when a threat is stopped, and that’s why these cases are so complex.”
Jones said recent training has also included Simunitions, nonlethal rounds that are designed to be fired through police service weapons, more closely simulating live gunfire situations.
“We have done Simunition training over the years, but we knew we had to increase it into scenario-based training,” Jones said. “In some scenarios, you will be confronted by an armed suspect. In some scenarios, you will be confronted with an aggravated person who may not be armed, and in some scenarios you will be confronted by someone with a hostage, so we can work on critical thinking under pressure and under stress.”
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