Can your traffic vest be more important than your bulletproof vest during an active shooter?
During an active shooter training scenario (See end of article for the scenario) one point became pretty clear. Cops are probably going to shoot cops. During our realistic scenario almost everyone shot another uniformed officer.
The fact is cops are ramped up and speed to shoot instinctively becomes the most important issue for them. To increase speed, shortcuts are made by officers and one is obviously target identification.
Part of the problem comes from the traditional methods of training. We drill officers to watch the hands and then identify bad guys during scenarios by putting weapons in their hands. We have neglected to teach looking at the whole person first. This causes friendly fire incidents when speed is paramount and all the good guys have weapons in their hands too.
Beliefs vs. Reality
During training we take for granted that we will identify the other police officers because:
Belief: They are wearing uniforms
Reality: In practice uniforms didn’t do much. They are a plain color without immediately apparent police identification on the back or sides. The front isn’t much better. The shiny badge and buttons are small details and are not immediate apparent in your peripheral vision or upon a quick glance. The polo shirt or BDU shirt uniforms were more effective during scenarios because they had “POLICE” in big type on the front and back.
Belief: Other officers are our friends; we know what they look like.
Reality: During active shooters every cop in town drops what they are doing and rushes to the scene. That will include detectives, undercovers, off-duty officers, and officers from other agencies.
If the active shooter happens in a school or mall there will also be SROs or security officers involved. When is the last time you did anything with the local SRO? Most young patrol officers don’t recognize any of them.
Belief: We are moving as a group and not getting separated.
Reality: Cops will be entering the building from different locations and at different times. There will be multiple officers separately searching for the shooter.
Belief: Officers will coordinate their locations, efforts, and intentions by radio, yelling to each other, and using hand signals.
Reality: With fire alarms going off, the physiological effect of auditory exclusion, gunfire, etc. the ability to communicate will be severely hampered. Radio communications can be questionable because there is too much information pouring into a single channel.
The fog of war will be in full effect during this incident so we need to plan for it.
Solution: Use a traffic vest
A simple solution for these problems appears to be wearing your traffic vest when you go in. It is instantly recognizable from all angles.
Additionally, many officers have already done training repetitions not shooting officers wearing traffic vests during Force on Force training because the instructors wear them to identify themselves as off limits. Whether officers realized it or not they were getting training repetitions of not shooting people wearing traffic vests. (See article by Betsy Brantner Smith about this topic.)
The obvious disadvantage for wearing a traffic vest is that officers are more identifiable for the suspect. But the suspect is shooting everything that moves anyway. Looking like a walking traffic cone may actually surprise him and give an officer the half second he or she needs to get shots on target before the suspect reacts.
Update: A new product called DSM safety banners is another solution to this issue. Check out Frank Borelli’s review of them or go to DSM’s website. (Hat tip to Bill Lewis of Tactical Debriefs)
Final Thoughts
I think in the initial phase of an active shooter, the benefits of wearing the traffic vest outweigh the negatives. When things stabilize because the shooter has stopped, is contained, and officers on scene have begun coordinating their efforts effectively you can lose the vest. But in the beginning, it appears as important as your bulletproof vest so wear them both.
Progressive officers (Spartan Cops) carry a go bag or active shooter bag in their squad car. If you don’t have one, R.K. Miller wrote a good article about building one. But you should add a traffic vest to your go bag and put it on before you enter a building to engage an active shooter. Odds are it will keep you from taking some rounds.
Actual Training Scenario
As participants we were told there were at least two shooters but we suspected there were more inside a large grocery store. We were in uniform and armed with Simmunition F/X marking cartridges.
We entered the scenario one at a time during 30 second intervals so we immediately lost track of each other. The fire alarm was going off and the stress made auditory exclusion kick in. Officers yelling 5 feet apart could not hear what the other was saying. Attempts to communicate and coordinate were unsuccessful. Hearing the direction shots were coming from was extremely difficult.
Unbeknownst to us, the instructors had sprayed water on the concrete floors to simulate fire sprinklers. Several officers went sliding into walls while running across them. Also unbeknownst to us, the instructors sent in extra uniformed officers (SROs?) from different entrances. Those officers were shot several times because the original officers responding were not expecting them and didn’t see the uniforms until it was too late.
Eventually the bad guys were shot but the results were not what we would consider success. Despite surprising officers several times while walking around during the scenario, no instructor wearing a traffic vest was shot.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting thought - I will have to bring this up with the others in my active shooter cadre and see what they say.
So far we’ve been lucky & avoided a “blue on blue” during training - but that’s partly due to the scenarios we are running. On the other hand, just about every group has shot one or more citizens; and I’m also surprised at the number of people who are hesitating to take the shot, well past when justified - even though they “know” it’s training. Curious if your experience has been similar.
Great point. I feel as if it’s only a matter of time before this scenario gets played out. This is great food for thought.
Sean,
We haven’t had problems with officers taking shots. A possible reason is the instructors began the training by heavily emphasizing the strategy of attacking the active shooter before he could continue killing more citizens. The bad guys in the scenarios were always actively shooting. If the bad guys in some scenarios were barricaded or changed in the middle of the scenario from active to barricaded and forced the officers to transition strategies, the officers would probably have a more difficult time choosing appropriate actions.
Anytime the officers don’t react the way they should in training, it is an opportunity to instruct and displays the need for the training. If officers fly through the scenarios the first time without mistakes, the trainer needs to challenge them more because they are not learning.
Scott -
We are on the same page - spending a great deal stressing the importance of an immediate, aggressive addressing of the threat. If we give them a scenario where he is shooting at that moment, they engage fine. If we change to a barricade/hostage then we are also seeing a good transition. I seem to be seeing a consistent issue though in scenarios as follows:
- The shooter HAS already killed people - including in front of the officers as they move onto scene
- The shooter is still visibly armed
and
- The shooter is either moving towards new targets and verbally stating an intent to kill, or is very blatantly ignoring commands from the engaging officers and again stating/showing an intent to find more victims.
I’m sure you’re of the same opinion as we are - case law and common sense all clearly show that as a clean shoot, but it seems we are getting a chunk of people (say 40%) who want to “sir” the suspect to death as I call it. They are giving multiple commands, often becoming more and more visibly frustrated, before they finally fire. Just trying to think of good ways to address it in the next training session.
Of course, it’s also been interesting watching the reaction of some of the folks the first time that live gunfire (blanks) echos through the building on the scenarios - they “know” it’s training, but you can still visibly see the pucker!
I agree with you and have seen the same issue on similar scenarios. Here are some things you might try:
The issue in my mind is the mental trigger for some officers to shoot has been previously set at “if the suspect is not at this moment pointing a gun at someone then I can’t shoot him.” To reset this mental trigger we have discussed the fleeing felon rule and situations where you can shoot a fleeing felon. Many officers have a mistaken impression of this case law and it becomes apparent during active shooters where they have an obvious green light for the shot but can’t take it and fall back into the repetitive loop of giving commands. We then run them through a scenario where they have to shoot (with Simmunition F/X marking cartridges) the suspect that fits the criteria we have described. Several reps should reset their mental trigger.
If it is not confusion of law or policy, they may have a personal, moral, or religious issue they need to address internally.
Anyone who is having trouble coping with any issue of taking a life justifiably in our line of work needs to read the books On Killing and On Combat by Lt. Dave Grossman. Awesome, awesome reads. On that note here are my $0.02. If you are a police officer, and you feel you are not able to take a life when your life or someone else’s is on the line, you are not meant to be a police officer. They told us this time and time again in the Academy, “Some people are meant to be the police, and some people are meant to call the police, which one are you?”
Just finished a 2 days exercise with Simmunition F/X marking cartridges.
On the first exercise on day 1, my partner and I were called to a active shooter at a school, several shots fired several students killed.
Entering a quite hallway we started to go through the rooms. As my partner was checking a room I saw the armed shooter walk out from a classroom trying to cross the hallway with his back to me towards another room.
I yelled at him and then shot him 3 times in the back when he didn’t respond. My partner reacted immediately and fired a few shots too.
The instructor later told us this was the correct response to an active shooter, who has already shown intent and that this particular exercise was constructed to see if we were able to shoot a man in the back, as we should in this scenario.
Others did not fire on the suspect and he then continued across the hall and fired several shots in the next room (killing more students).