Keeping Your Police Tools Sharp and Ready

Mentally, I think of tactics and techniques as tools in a toolbox. Adding new tactics and techniques gives you more tools to choose from. The toolbox can get bigger as you add tools, but as it grows some tools take longer to dig out than others. The more you use a tool the more proficient you become and the faster you can get to it. So important tools that you don’t use often, like specialized tactics or shooting a gun, need to be practiced regularly to keep them sharp and handy.

No Perfect Police Tactics or Techniques

There is no perfect tool. They all have strengths and weaknesses. It is up to the officer to recognize when to use a tool based on the circumstances and goals they want to accomplish.

Over time criminals adapt to tactics and techniques forcing us to improve our tools or create new ones. This is difficult for some officers because they become conditioned to using a particular tool and often continue using it even when it doesn’t work well anymore.

Explained in terms of the OODA cycle, the officer doesn’t reorient himself to the new circumstances. Instead he assumes his initial orientation is still correct and moves directly to the action stage, which causes ineffective or at least diminished results. This also allows the criminal to get ahead in the cycle.

Evaluating Results

To keep our tools sharp, we must constantly evaluate their results. If they begin to lose their effectiveness we must reorient ourselves and either select a different tool that would be more effective or build a new one. Fred Leland writes about this process, learn-unlearn-relearn, at his LESC blog. Check out the link to learn more.

Example

For a contemporary example of all this, take active killers. For many departments, Columbine exposed the weakness of the contain and wait for SWAT tactic. The tactic itself is still a useful tool for many situations. But Harris and Klebold took advantage of the time it takes to set up and deploy by killing more students and keeping those that were wounded from being treated.

However, to this day many police commanders and supervisors when faced with similar circumstances still fall back on the contain and wait for SWAT tactic rather than changing to some form of immediate entry.

Frustration with the Debate

Some may get frustrated with the debate about using this tactic or that tactic with a situation. I admit at times it becomes the war story told for the millionth time. But worse is the person who is too lazy to get involved in the discussion, refuses to learn the lessons paid for with blood, and makes the same mistakes again.

Related posts:

1. What’s in Your Tool Box? Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Jerry...
2. Slowing down your opponent’s OODA Loop As I discussed in The OODA Loop: A simple concept for...
3. The TASER Generation: Issues for New Police Officers This is the first of a two part series. The...