Over 200 others don’t even have to come to the Spartan Cops website because they subscribe and have the articles emailed to them or sent to their RSS feed reader. (Watch this short video if you want to know what an RSS feed reader is.) Emailed articles are also easier to share with others. If you are interested in subscribing to Spartan Cops, just put your email address in the box on the left sidebar. An email will be sent by our delivery service confirming you are not a robot and actually do want to subscribe. Click the verification link in that email and new articles will be sent directly to your inbox.

For those who recently discovered Spartan Cops, here are some of the best articles and videos of the last three months. If you want to see a best of list for the first three months, check out our three month anniversary article.

Best Police Articles

• Becoming a Trainer at Your Own Department – Obstacles and Solutions
• Weapon Proficiency: John Boyd’s Mastery of the Hun
• How Arizona v. Gant Affects Officers
• Use of Force Training should not be One Size Fits All
• Do You Take Your Partners Out of the Fight?
• Biringham Police Chase Gets Five Officers Fired

– Includes the video

• 10 things a police officer should NEVER do
• 10 things a police officer should ALWAYS do
• Spartan Tip: Add Realism to Your Police Training

Best Police Training Videos

• Video: Surviving an Armed Attack
• Video: Controlling a suspect with his hand in his pocket
• Video: Turning a Resistant Suspect onto his Stomach
• Video: Tactical Handcuffing Made Simple
• Video: Pinning a Suspect on the Ground
• Video: Pistol Retention for Police Officers
• Video: Knife Retention for Police Officers
• J.D. Buck Savage Police Training Videos
• Reality Training Videos by Dave Smith on Police One TV

Active Shooter Series

• Police officers should add a traffic vest to their go bag for active shooters
• Effective Active Shooter Strategy
• Solo Officer Entry for Active Shooters: Ron Borsch Q&A Part 1
• Solo Officer Entry for Active Shooters: Ron Borsch Q&A Part 2

ThorShield Series

This series ended up being our most commented set of articles. Tasers are controversial in the eyes of many citizens and several commented extensively on these articles even months after they were published. Click on ThorShield can make you TASER Proof to see most of them. Matt followed up on them by writing Are Tasers being used to Torture People? to highlight the topic more.

• ThorShield can make you TASER Proof!
• Spartan Cops interviews ThorShield Inventor, Greg Shultz
• Are Tasers being used to Torture People?

Austin PD Officer Involved Shooting Series

This series is part of a long term project to follow the effects and events of an officer involved shooting.

• Austin PD Officer Involved Shooting
• Officer Quintana Shooting: Austin PD Updated regularly with recent developments

Post from: Spartan Cops

The Best Police Articles and Videos of Spartan Cops: Six Month Review

If you can think of other things an officer should always do, add them in the comments.

10 things police officers should always do

1. Always wear body armor because it has proven to save officer lives.
2. Always carry a backup gun because you may need it when you are fighting over your duty gun.
3. Always do a felony stop at the end of a chase because you look foolish when you get shot at without cover.
4. Always handcuff first then search because it is harder for them to resist when you find their weapon, drugs, or stolen stuff.
5. Always stay in shape because physical conflicts favor the bigger and stronger person.
6. Always check out on the radio before you get out to investigate suspicious people because when you call for help it would be nice for responding officers to know where you are at.
7. Always practice dry firing every day because it is a cheap way to maintain firearms proficiency.
8. Always recite a positive mantra while getting dressed in your uniform to remind yourself that you will always win no matter how bad a conflict gets.
9. Always keep up with new techniques and tactics by attending training seminars and subscribing to professional magazines and websites because the true master is always a student.
10. Always keep a reactionary gap so you don’t get sucker punched.

Post from: Spartan Cops

10 things police officers should always do

I thought the list was great and came up with a list of 10 “nevers” for officers. Next week I will follow it up with 10 “always” for officers.

If you can think of other things an officer should never do, add them in the comments.

10 things an officer should never do

1. Never give up your gun, because there are better odds in fighting with your gun than in assuming you won’t be killed with it.
2. Never reach into a suspect’s car window to grab the keys or the suspect, because they often drive off and drag you along with them.
3. Never allow people you don’t know to touch your magic blue suit without your permission, because officers need strong boundaries.
4. Never give up during a fight, because the police always win.
5. Never hold your flashlight in your dominant hand, because you need to be able to draw your pistol quickly.
6. Never presume compliance from a suspect, because you will be slow to react to an attack.
7. Never kick a suspect who is complying, because it is wrong and you will be the next unsuspecting star on a YouTube video that goes viral.
8. Never get your feelings hurt when someone points out an officer safety, mistake because they are just trying to make sure you go home safe at night.
9. Never stand in front of a door or park in front of the house during a call, because you don’t want to be an easy shot for a suspect.
10. Never stick your hand in a suspect’s pocket without patting down the exterior first, because there may be an exposed needle in it that will stick you.

Post from: Spartan Cops

10 things a police officer should never do

On January 23, 2008 Birmingham Police officers attempted to stop a van for suspicious behavior. The driver, Anthony Warren, led officers on a high speed chase that lasted 22 minutes. Warren attempts to run over a Birmingham police officer that was standing on the highway trying to throw spike strips. The officer appears to be hit and rolls away. A squad soon forces the van off the road and the van rolls several times ejecting Warren. Warren lands on the ground unconscious. Several officers run up, one hits him with a nightstick, and several strike him with their fists.

At Warren’s trial for attempted murder over a year later, the prosecutor observes the video and notifies Birmingham police administration. Chief A.C. Roper fires five officers and called in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation for possible criminal charges against the officers. Roper also stated there will be disciplinary action against supervisors who failed to report the incident to higher ups.

Warren pleads guilty to 1st degree assault and receives a 20 year prison sentence.

Video

Link to full 20 minute video

How can officers avoid the same situation?

First, there is no way you can avoid vengeful feelings when you see a suspect attempt to kill a fellow officer or an innocent civilian. That is part of being human. But you have to act appropriately despite those emotions.

One way to work through it is by following good officer safety. The officers at the end of this chase rush the suspect even though he just attempted to kill an officer.

A better option is to do a felony stop. Going through the routine of a felony stop can help keep officers disciplined despite anger’s lure to lose control.

Just because the suspect wrecked out doesn’t mean he is not a danger. Here is a video showing a suspect shooting at officers despite wrecking out at the end of a car chase. Go to 1:00 if you want to skip ahead to the shooting.

Throwing spike strips

Throwing spike strips has become more dangerous recently. Several officers in Texas, Lieutenant Stuart Alexander and Sergeant Randy White, were killed this year by suspects running into them during police chases. Alexander was attempting to deploy spike strips and White was blocking oncoming traffic.

Attempt to throw spike strips from behind cover. At least your squad car but preferably something bigger and attached to the ground like the concrete base of a big light pole.

Final Thoughts

Car chases, shootings, and other critical incidents always cause an emotional response in officers. Personal and career survival require that you keep them under control. Following established procedures like felony stops help because officers just move through the preestablished steps. Other officers know those procedures and can coordinate their efforts.

When an officer rushes a suspect instead of staying behind cover at the end of a chase, he leads other officers into a bad situation.

Those are my thoughts and suggestions. What are yours?

Additional Links:

Johnny Law has a good post about this chase at his blog, the Johnny Law Chronicles.
Tape of Beating Leads to Firing of 5 Officers by the New York Times
Attorney: 5 fired Alabama police followed training by the Associated Press
Also check out our article about the importance of felony stops.

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Birmingham Police Chase Gets Five Officers Fired

Unwittingly, they have become our greatest trainers, our greatest motivators; for it is from them that we have learned the precious lessons of survival. Unable to save themselves, they have saved countless others.

Here are a couple of great videos that were done in tribute to fallen officers. Thanks to Lola Productions, APDWife25 of PoliceWives.org and becs2507 for sharing them with us.

Post from: Spartan Cops

National Police Week

While our topics are written with U. S. laws in mind, use of force is a global issue for all law enforcement personnel. We attempt to provide some information that is universal, like product reviews and defensive tactics techniques. But above all, I think that police officers are part of a brotherhood (sisters are included), and this includes officers from other countries.

Based on the number of pageviews per country, here is a list of the top ten:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Brazil
7. France
8. Phillipines
9. Greece
10. Spain

For all of our readers from outside the United States, please leave us a comment with the country you live in.  

For our readers in the U. S., leave us a comment with your home state.

Post from: Spartan Cops

Spartan Cops has a Global Reach

Effectively responding to active shooters begins with a good strategy. Reviewing historical and recent police active shooter responses can help develop one.

Texas Clock Tower Massacre and the Contain and Wait Strategy

In 1966 Charles Whitman took a gun locker containing 5 rifles, 3 handguns, a sawed-off shotgun, ammunition, binoculars, food and water up to the observation deck of the University of Texas clock tower. Whitman began shooting at people from that elevated location for the next hour and a half. Rick Armellino’s article about early active shooters describes how two officers and a citizen kicked open the barricaded door to the observation deck and shot Whitman while he was still shooting at innocents on the ground.

Many attribute this incident as the reason SWAT teams were created around the country. For the next 30 years police departments generally would approach active shooters as barricaded suspects with hostages and employ a contain and wait for SWAT strategy.

Columbine and the Immediate Entry Strategy

Most discussion about active shooters starts at Columbine in 1999.. This incident is generally attributed to be the turning point when police departments abandoned contain and wait strategies because while the SWAT team was gearing up outside Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were shooting children unimpeded inside.

Now experts universally agree that active shooters require a quicker response than traditional contain, wait, and negotiate strategies. Many have labeled this response Immediate Action Rapid Deployment (IARD).

IARD has responding patrol officers attempt to make contact and engage the active shooter to minimize death and injury to innocents. It is a paradigm shift for many in law enforcement who grew up in a time where high risk operations were shifted away from patrol officers to SWAT.

Ron Borsch and Solo Officer Entries

There is active discussion about officers making entry without waiting for any additional officers. Right after Columbine, most active shooter training schools advocated waiting for 2 or 4 officers to gather up before making entry. These schools taught formations and group tactics to quickly search buildings.

Ron Borsch has become the advocate and focal point for single officer entries. His techniques and research were published in Force Science Newsletter #97 Ohio Trainer Makes the Case for Single-Officer Entry Against Active Killers in May 2008. His thoughts led to much debate among officers and Force Science put out an additional newsletter, Force Science Newsletter #98 Solo Officers vs. Active Killers: Officers Speak Out, that month documenting the comments and discussion.

Personally, I believe this strategy can be effective for the most common active shooter, the lone suicidal gunman. Those types of active shooters are devistating against unarmed, passive innocents but can be overcome by even a single aggressive, armed police officer.

In March 2009, Borsch’s strategy was affirmed by Officer Justin Garner of Carthage, North Carolina, when he made entry into a nursing home by himself to confront an active shooter who had already killed 8 people. Garner encountered the shooter, Robert Stewart, in a hallway and exchanged gunfire with him. Garner was shot in the leg but was able to disrupt Stewart’s plan by shooting him in the chest and taking him into custody.

American Civics Association in New York

The latest active shooter occurred at the American Civics Association in Binghamton, New York. Despite the fact that experts have agreed for years that contain and wait for SWAT tactics don’t work, the police response to this active shooter does just that. Rick Armellio gives a detailed account of that incident and the backlash from the public in his article, Responding to active killers requires training and trust.

According to his statements afterward, Police Chief Joseph Zikuski didn’t let patrol officers make entry because they didn’t hear any shots fired after they arrived. He concluded that no one was actively being killed or dying. Making entry with patrol officers is dangerous and since no one was dying, he didn’t need to risk them and waited for SWAT. Other local officials like Broome County District Attorney Gerald F. Mollen defended Chief Zikuski’s decision to wait with the fact that the 13 victims were too critically injured to be saved and would have died anyway.

The problems with their logic are this:

1. The absence of shots does not mean the shooter is not killing people. He could be killing victims with any number of quieter means like stabbing or strangling them. Also, many buildings like schools are built to absorb sound and you often can’t hear gunshots even when they are occurring.
2. The shooter could be doing other activities that need to be immediately addressed such as:
   • Searching for additional victims to kill.
   • Raping the women and children before he kills them.
   • Fortifying his defenses for the impending police assault.
   • Setting up booby traps or explosive devices.

All of these have been done before by active shooters and are additional reasons why experts advocate making entry early.

3. The victims he has already shot may survive if they get treatment soon. Just because the killer is not active that moment does not reduce the exigency of the situation. Chief Zikuski had absolutely no way of knowing the status of those victims when he made his decision to wait. Knowing later that the victims would not have survived means his decision was lucky not good and depending on luck is not an appropriate strategy.

Preparation of Officers and Command are the Key Elements of Success

It is obvious by his decision that Chief Zikuski did not have faith in his patrol officers ability to respond to this incident. No entry is without risk, even for SWAT officers.

If the patrol officers are:

• properly equipped,
• trained to respond to active shooters,
• and tested with a realistic scenario

then Police Chiefs should have faith in their patrol officers.

An often overlooked element of preparation is command. The supervisor on scene making command decisions also needs to be properly training and tested with realistic scenarios. Otherwise he will not be confident enough to send officers into danger and fall into the trap of waiting for SWAT, hoping the active shooter doesn’t kill anyone else or the victims don’t bleed to death.

Wait and hope is not an effective strategy. It is obvious after repeated incidents that active shooters have a strategy, kill as many as possible while deterring police response. Contain and wait doesn’t disrupt the shooter’s strategy, it allows him to kill without resistance. Simulations and actual incidents show that immediate entry is the best police strategy to disrupt the shooter’s efforts and minimize the loss of innocent life.

Further Reading

Articles by Charles Remsberg
To access these articles you will need a Police One logon for restricted users.

• 72 minutes of madness: How Denver cops hunted an active killer in a surreal scene from hell
• Lessons learned by Denver cops who hunted an active killer

Articles by Rick Armellino

• When they come to kill the kids: The critical need for “Immediate Action Rapid Deployment” in school invasions
• Revisiting the Amish schoolhouse massacre
• School invaders don’t take hostages

Post from: Spartan Cops

Effective Active Shooter Strategy

One officer dying in the line of duty is a tremendous emotional and mental burden to a department and its officers.  Four can be devastating. We hope that Oakland PD has strong leadership to help them navigate the rough road ahead. We hope that the city leadership and the community extends their help because it will be sorely needed.

It will take time before we can learn what if anything could be done to prevent these deaths.  Sometimes an officer can do everything right and still be a victim of an ambush.  But it is important that Oakland and other police departments take a look at these incidents and learn the lessons that they provide so that other officers may survive if similar circumstances present themselves.

One of the main reasons we created this website was to help officers survive deadly force incidents.  Realistically, these will not be the last officers that die in the line of duty but we pray that the number of future officers that give their lives in the service of their community and country will be as small as possible.

Funeral and Donations

Funeral Information
Donation Information
Thanks to Motorcop for funeral and donation information

Articles and Newsreports

Law Officer.com Article
The Lesson Isn’t Worth The Cost

Police One article
Oakland PD stunned by day of loss

San Francisco Chronicle articles of the incident and aftermath:
3 Oakland officers killed, one critically hurt
Killer of 4 officers wanted to avoid prison
Woman says she pointed police to Oakland Killer
Oakland residents struggle with latest tragedy

Post from: Spartan Cops

Oakland Tragedy

1. Tighe Chee – Retail Price $500.00

2. Tighe Breaker “XL” – Retail Price $575.00    (Matching Belt Buckle – Retail Price $250.00)

 3. Alamo Grey G-10 Armor Scales by Mikkel Willumsen – Retail Price $650.00

 4. Lightfoot Slice – Retail Price $750.00

 5. Combat Elite Rapid Response Folder – Retail Price $765.00

 6. Emerson Custom CQC-14 Sub-Commander Prototype – E-bay Price $2,100.00

7. Mick Strider Custom “XL Damascus Harpoon” – Retail Price $2,100.00

 These knives combine exotic looks with space age materials and superior craftsmanship. There are many more expensive knives out there, so if you have a favorite “dream knife” feel free to tease us by sharing your pick.

When you are ready to return to reality, go back and read my guide to selecting a knife that you and I can afford.

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World’s Best Police Knives

Weapons, Weapons Everywhere:  The world is full of weapons so choose wisely by Steve Ashley

This article discusses the amount of conventional and unconventional weapons at each officers disposal and how to properly retain them.  He also discusses weapons of opportunity and weapons of last resort.  He cautions that having a weapon taken from an officer does not automatically require a deadly force response but should be evaluated by the actual circumstances presented.  Too many officers have preplanned shooting someone who takes their pepper spray or other non lethal weapon from them without looking at the consequences.

You never know by Johnnie Law

This post shows the dash cam video of James Freeman murdering Game Warden Justin Hurst.  My understanding is that Freeman received the death penalty in October 2008.  Freeman shows good tactics and the video emphasizes why felony stops are necessary.  See our felony stop post for additional videos that reinforce the need for them.  Hurst stays in the fight and goes down shooting.  RIP sheepdog.

Combative and Defensive Mindsets by Tgace

This short article is about offensive and defensive mindsets and the need to have both available in your tactical toolbox.  Good discussion in the comments.

Countering Terrorist Teams: A different threat requires a different response by Richard Fairburn

This article is the first in a three part series discussing how American police agencies would respond to Mumbai style attacks.  Fairburn gives some research that backs up his belief that we need to switch from the “lone wolf” to “pack” responses by officers to armed events.  Future articles in the series will discuss tactics to go along with this style of response.  This article requires a Police One login.  Sign up for one here.

Tactical or Tacti-Cool?:  How to ensure your DT training really prepares cops for the street by Charles Humes

This article gives a simple 4S test to tell if the training is effective or just has a high coolness factor.  Is it simple, sensible, street proven, and is the source credible?

The Active Shooter Conundrum:  What will you do? By Dave Spaulding

This article approaches the active shooter issue from an individual officer’s perspective.  Dave Spaulding describes his plan that he initially made after the 1984 San Ysidro, California McDonald’s mass killing.  He then tells how it evolved through the years and other events and what his plan is right now.  This article is an excellent read for street officers.

Making the Grade: Good gear is even better with good training by Jeff Chudwin

Jeff Chudwin discusses making sure the gear selected or purchased by police administrators actually helps officer’s safety.  He reviews a couple of common errors made and a couple of incidents where gear helped and where lack of training hurt.

Grab Your Go Bag:  Essentials to have at hand for worst case and other scenarios by R.K. Miller

So far this is the best article I have seen about what to put in your active shooter bag.  Most articles talk about what type of bag to buy.  He discusses that briefly but what makes the bag is what is in it.  His list and reasons why are the best I have heard.

Drilling for Gold:  Build a solid foundation by drilling your survival skills by Ken Davis

Good article about maintaining the foundation of skills and habits that can keep you safe and win the fight.

Point of Domination by Tony Blauer

Blauer always provides good stuff.  I like his definition of point of domination. 

This is a space in the room in which the operator can cover danger areas, engage threats, and protect their teammates. It is the theoretical ideal “place to be”. Like anything in combat this position can constantly change.

Taser Inventor Jack Cover, rest in peace by Capt. Greg Meyer (Ret.)

Article about the inventor of the TASER by an officer who was involved with the weapon from the begining.  Meyer has been a pioneer with TASERs and at the front of the discussion throughout their history.  He gives some interesting insight into the inventor and his popular weapon.

Post from: Spartan Cops

Recommended Police Use of Force Articles: March 2008