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From Force Science Research Center:
I. Ohio trainer makes the case for single-officer entry against active
killers
If you're a patrol officer who's first on the scene of an active-shooter
call, should you make immediate entry in hunt for the suspect...or wait
for other early responders and improvise a rapid deployment team?
Since the Columbine massacre 9 years ago, few if any trainers any longer
advocate delaying for a formal SWAT call-out, which can take 30 minutes
or more in some areas. But commonly a hasty assembly of 3 or more
officers for a search-and-confrontation team is recommended, with
coordinated movement tactics taught accordingly.
To trainer Ron Borsch, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who manages the
small SEALE (South East Area Law Enforcement) Regional Training Academy
in Bedford, Ohio, that's a deadly waste of time when seconds can mean lives.
Based on his on-going research of active-shooter realities, he's
convinced that single-officer entries can potentially lessen the toll of
casualties while exposing the responders involved to little additional
risk. Although popular law enforcement literature has just lately begun
to explore the single-officer concept, Borsch has promoted the idea to
in-service trainees for more than 2 years and has taught solo- and
2-officer entry-action models in academy courses for the past year. And
he finds that administrators whose officers are exposed to this approach
generally accept it enthusiastically.
"We offer this report not necessarily as a tactical advisory but as an
example of one trainer's effort to give tactical instruction a research
base," explains Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force
Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato. "We offer
it for your thoughtful consideration and we'd be interested in hearing
comments from our readers on Ron Borsch's conclusions." If you have
comments, please e-mail the editor.
"Time is our worst adversary in dealing with active killers," Borsch
told Force Science News. "We're racing what I call 'the Stopwatch of
Death.' Victims are often added to the toll every several seconds."
Where times have been reliably documented, the average post-Columbine
"rapid mass murder episode" lasts just 8 minutes, according to Borsch's
calculations. "The murderer's timeline begins when he says it begins.
Any prevention, deterrence or delay efforts have failed at that point,
and the police are handicapped with catching up whenever they are notified."
To have any hope of successfully intervening in a slaughter spree under
the usual tight time strictures, law enforcement "needs to get less
manpower on site sooner." Training LEOs to wait even moments to form an
impromptu entry team shows that "our country's tactical community at
large has failed to do its homework and to evolve strategies that
accurately reflect the known methods of operation and patterns of active
killers," Borsch asserts. "Law enforcement has already proved many times
over that we can arrive 'too late with too many' and spend too much time
gathering pre-entry intelligence. Now we need to fix what is obviously a
broken strategy."
Borsch, who logged 17 years as a part-time SWAT team member before
retiring from street work, has analyzed more than 90 active-shooter
incidents on the basis of data largely ferreted out from Internet
reports. Most involved schools and colleges, but workplaces, shopping
malls, churches and other public places are also represented. Among his
findings that have helped shape his tactical thinking:
98% of active killers act alone.
80% have long guns, 75% have multiple weapons (about 3 per incident),
and they sometimes bring hundreds of extra rounds of ammunition to the
shooting site.
Despite such heavy armaments and an obsession with murder at close
range, they have an average hit rate of less than 50%.
They strike "stunned, defenseless innocents via surprise ambush. On a
level playing field, the typical active killer would be a no-contest
against anyone reasonably capable of defending themselves."
"They absolutely control life and death until they stop at their
leisure or are stopped." They do not take hostages, do not negotiate.
They generally try to avoid police, do not hide or lie in wait for
officers and "typically fold quickly upon armed confrontation."
90% commit suicide on-site. "Surrender or escape attempts are unlikely."
Because active shooters seem so intent on killing, it's often difficult
to convince first responders that "this bad guy is one of the easiest
man-with-gun encounters they will ever have," Borsch observes. "Most
officers have already faced worse opponents from a personal safety
standpoint than these creeps."
He believes the profile he has drawn should "empower officers with
probable cause to believe that they can successfully prevail against the
predictable patterns of these mass murderers" if they arrive in time to
abort an actual attack.
From their experience in dealing with "a myriad of urgent
circumstances" in their normal work, street officers are "already quite
used to a multi-tiered response that begins with one officer, with
backup en route." A solo officer entering an active-killer scene "has a
virtual guarantee that an avalanche of manpower is coming fast behind
him," so he won't be alone for long.
Once into the scene, to further gain confidence in advancing
aggressively toward the suspect, officers need to understand the nature
of these killers. Unlike conventional criminal predators, who often have
no reluctance about attacking police, active shooters tend to be
"cowardly," Borsch says.
"They choose unarmed, defenseless innocents for a reason: They have no
wish to encounter someone who can hurt them. They are personally risk-
and pain-avoidant. The tracking history of these murderers has proved
them to be unlikely to be aggressive with police. If pressed, they are
more likely to kill themselves." In his research, he has found no
evidence of any LEO in the U.S. yet being wounded or killed in an
active-shooting incident where mass murder was intended or accomplished.
"Officers need to understand valid military principles that apply to
these calls, such as speed, surprise and violence of action," Borsch
insists. "They need to learn how to close in and finish the fight with
aggression, having and keeping the 'momentum of battle' on their side.
The idea is to keep the adversary off-balance by forcing him always to
react to your actions, rather than, after contact, reacting to him."
For example, once an active killer is spotted, Borsch favors the swift
application of deadly force over seeking defensive cover in most
instances. "An unintentional consequence of going to cover may be to
lose sight of the offender, allowing him to gain the momentum of battle
and shoot more defenseless innocents until he says it's over."
SEALE's active-killer countermeasures, taught through a course called
Tactical First Responder, bypass traditional instruction in team
formations and movement. These can be important in a mass murder
response, Borsch says--but only later, during a search-and-rescue phase.
What's realistically needed by the first one or two patrol officers to
arrive at a scene--"the first of the first responders"--are instruction
and practice in how to enter, move and confront the threat alone.
Thus after a briefing on the predictable patterns of offender behavior
that his research has revealed, the trainees concentrate on perfecting a
swift zig-zag movement down hallways, on mastering an accelerated
slicing-the-pie technique for taking corners, on maneuvering up and down
stairways with a patrol rifle (the response weapon of choice, given the
killer's likely armaments), and on using sight, sound, smell and
intuition to gather intel that will help them close quickly on the
threat. "We practice until there's no speed less than rapid."
If an officer enters a school in response to an active-killer call "he
may see or hear nothing out of order initially," Borsch says. "The place
may be in lock-down and there may be hundreds of rooms, some of them
quite distant and out of earshot, where the killer could be wreaking havoc.
"The officer may have to set out in a direction with little guidance and
cover a lot of ground until he comes across something. In these
situations, intelligence often belongs only to those who go get it. But
what's the alternative--just stop and wait? The killing may be
continuing while you hear nothing."
Single-officer entry has been a controversial concept, Borsch says, but
he senses that the tide is starting to turn. In a recent issue of Law
and Order Magazine, hardly an advocate of radical innovation, the
executive director of the National Assn. of School Resource Officers
wrote in an article aimed as police chiefs, "Training CANNOT be limited
to the active shoot training where three, four or more officers respond
and form a team." At SEALE, Borsch has found that chiefs whose officers
have completed the First Responder course often want their personnel to
repeat the training to reinforce the single-entry precepts. Some
departments have also hired him as a consultant to evaluate and revise
their active-killer protocols.
"A slow-and-methodical approach--what I call 'tactical loitering'--is
still appropriate for most types of police encounters," Borsch says.
"Dynamic active killers are a unique problem. With time as a relentless
enemy, an officer has a choice to make: does he or she take the risk of
going in alone...or are potential victims left to the mercy of a rogue
human while the officer stays safe?"
Even with an immediate solo entry, Borsch concedes, police may not find
the killer until his bloodletting is over. But saving time by "getting
called early enough and taking action early enough," he argues, still
offers the best chance for mitigating casualties.
Aided by his research, "we prepare the officers' mind first, then work
on the motor skills in hallways, stairwells and rooms," Borsch says. To
motivate courage, he hangs the walls of his training classroom with
photographs of victims and their active shooters. "The victims' pictures
are big," he explains. "Those of the killers are small. They're
worthless cowards. The innocent people who may be their victims if we
don't stop them are what matter."
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Minnesota State University, Mankato.
================
--
Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
