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This time it only resulted in a 9mm round smashing into some cheap drywall, rather than into a cop’s head. It could have been — and often has been — far worse, terminally worse. Without their permission I won’t reveal more detail, but essentially it came down to the fact partners who’d worked together four nights a week for over two years had never seriously discussed — much less trained for — handling multiple lethal threats emerging from different angles, like, from the front door of a residence and from deep within an adjacent open garage. They both focused on the same threat, and assumed the other threat “belonged” to their partner. Later, they confessed they had no reason, no justification for assuming so.
Their agency, like many others, focuses patrol officers’ training first on individual skills, then on large-group skills like crowd and riot control tactics, and then, rarely, on small-group skills used more often by tactical teams — four and six-officer techniques for hard entries, stairway and hallway clearing, etc. Even then one of the few techniques taught is doorway entries — first and second officer through the door. Another exception is training in high-risk vehicle stops. Those two cover perhaps five percent of the situations patrol partners routinely engage in, leaving a vast chasm to be filled with dead cops.
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Beyond Tactics
And it’s not just formalized “tactics” or “techniques” that are critical in two-officer operation: Very basic, second-nature behaviors are extremely important. In one case, two officers responded to a vaguely-described disturbance in a residential area and found nothing noteworthy. They stood in an empty driveway and had a brief discussion — about what, we’ll never know. Between partners, it could have been about their families, favorite fishing spots, or lunch plans.
They stood side by side, both looking — not scanning, just looking — in the one direction: the quiet, empty street to their front. They were both shot from behind, their assailant had cover, concealment, and accesses — gates, doors and windows.
Had they been trained to do so, or just thought about it and discussed it, they might have stood facing each other, offset by at least a body-width to their sides, so they could talk easily, even fulfill that all-too-human need for occasional eye contact, and still have almost unbroken 360-degree visual assessment of their surroundings.
All too often, for all the wrong reasons, partners who otherwise interact smoothly; who have great loyalty and respect for each other; who can almost read each other’s minds, seriously neglect that one aspect of “partnership” that will keep them alive: assuring their base-line, everyday tactical approaches to a wide variety of situations are consistent and compatible.
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A Triad Of Problems
Three factors frequently work against partner-training consistency: First, in order to manage staffing, agencies tend to split partners up for assignment to in-service training, using relief personnel to fill in vacancies. Often this is done to assure the presence of at least one officer on the beat with area-specific knowledge. This practice addresses one potential problem and creates a virtually certain problem.
Second, agencies commonly schedule officers for annual in-service training by hire date, seniority or even alphabetically. Often the curriculum, or details within the same basic curriculum, changes from quarter to quarter or month to month. Attend in different quarters, and partners may receive very different or even conflicting training.
Finally, even in cases where partners are taught from the same material and the same lesson plan — but by different instructors — the injection of individual style and relative emphasis may result in significant disparity in understanding by the students. As Director of Training in San Diego, I observed this “branding” phenomenon many times, and fought constantly to assure instructors had the opportunity to stamp their personalities on the style of instruction, but not on the substance of it. When it comes to tactics performed by partners, difference equals DEATH.
The Phantom Factor
Overshadowing all of these other considerations is something I call “The Phantom Factor.” Put a pair of partners through the same training together on the same day and you may still wind up with inconsistent application. This depends on how each officer receives, prioritizes, internalizes and interprets the instruction offered.
They may come away from training thinking they’ve got the same “lock” on what they learned, but be half-past-dead wrong. Only if they talk about it in detail, discussing scenarios and simulations, will differences be revealed.
That’s something a supervisor can’t count on, because as soon as the troops are back on the beat, they’ll have a myriad of other concerns to converse about, and — why should they even question whether they both “got” the same messages from that training?
The Triad Solution
That’s where the sergeant comes in. Every police partnership is really a triad, consisting of Officers A & B, and their sergeant; behind them, overseeing them, putting the “super” and “vision” together in “supervision.” No one else can make the on-scene observations you can; spot the errata and missteps in application which — count on it — will be there. The degree to which you do this will determine whether you spend your “free time” with bull sessions — or burials.
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John Morrison served in combat as a Marine sergeant, and retired as a senior lieutenant from the San Diego Police Department, having served there as Director of Training, Commanding Officer of SWAT and division executive officer. He has taught, written and lectured widely on training, tactics and leadership. Contact him at StreetLevelOne@yahoo.com.
First published in the March/April 2008 issue of American COP. |
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