Episode 14 – Inside the Bataclan Hostage Rescue with a BRI Operator
Episode 14 – Inside the Bataclan Hostage Rescue with a BRI Operator
Jon Becker: This episode of the debrief will have a slightly different format. My guest today is an active member of France's elite brigade for research and intervention, or BRI. Because of the nature of his current assignment and the nature of their work, it is critical that we maintain his anonymity. As a result, we will not be showing this episode on video or using my guest's real name.
Additionally, because these events resulted in the deaths of 130 people and the injury of more than 400 others, we will not be glorifying the attackers by using their names or their organizations. These details will hopefully be forgotten to history, while the memories of their innocent victims will not.
My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.
The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.
Welcome to The Debrief!
On November 13th, 2015, Paris experienced a series of coordinated islamist terrorist attacks. These attacks took place over three separate areas of the city and were carried out by multiple teams of attackers. Almost 4 hours after they began, the events ended with a dramatic and successful hostage rescue. That will be the topic for todays discussion.
Jay, thank you for joining me!
Jay: Thanks, Jon. Thanks for inviting me!
Jon Becker: So why don't we first start for the American audience with just kind of an overview of the French policing structure, at least as far as tactical teams go and how they kind of relate.
Jay: Okay. Just for you to understand the structure, in France, we have two main law enforcement agencies, the national police and the national gendarmerie. National police is almost 140,000 officers who handle all the cities all around France. National gun armory is a kind of military police with civilian tasks who handle all the countryside of France.
Jon Becker: So that. So the national police cover the cities, the gendarmerie cover the areas between the cities?
Jay: Yeah. Small towns, little city, and up to 10,000 inhabitants is the police.
Jon Becker: So it's more. It's almost like a sheriff's department in the United States.
Jay: Yeah, we can compare police to police department and John Amery to sheriff departments.
Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so where does your unit fit in that national police and gendarmerie structure?
Jay: We are part of the national police, but because of the specifics situation of Paris, who is the capital of France. Paris has its own organization of police his own intelligence service, his own riotous control unit and also his own tactical unit. That's why we are Paris tactical unit. But we are still part of the national police.
Jon Becker: Okay, so then if my understanding is correct, the gendarmerie would be the tactical unit would be GIGN. And then you guys are obviously BRI part of the parisian law enforcement. And then where does raid fit into.
Jay: That for your understanding as an American, I try to find some instance. So let's say HRT is GIGN and red also. So GIGN will handle all the, as I said, the countryside, all the airplanes. Also if some hijack airplanes. And also if a French citizen get involved as a victim in a foreign country, GIGN with the special operation community will be involved in that.
The red as the HRT can handle any situation on the French territory. Hostage rescue, barricade people, counterterrorism. And then BRI is more like the LAPD SWAT. We are in charge of the city of Paris. But we also can work with the red if they need to. And they also can support us in Paris in case of a major event.
Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so then when did BRI start? Give me kind of a history and background of BRI.
Jay: BRI had been created in 1964. At that time there is a bank robberies, violent crime increase in the city of Paris. So the police commissioner create a special unit to fight this type of crime. After 1972 attacks in Munich, police think about creating a special unit in case of such attacks. A contrarism unit, because there is nothing on a tactical at that time. There is no tactical police unit. So GIGN was created on the John Armory side and on the police side. The BRI was designed to be the tactical unit of the French national police.
Jon Becker: Got it. Yeah. In a lot of the interviews that I've done, the Munich massacre was the triggering event for almost all of the counterterrorism units around the world. LAPD can trace their expansion to that. They were founded slightly before. But the expansion of SWAT can be tied back to the Munich massacre. FBI HRT. So many of these units happened because of the failures in Munich. This one little event in Munich can trigger units around the world, yours included.
Jay: It's a kind of revolution for the police community. So at that time and until 1985, where the red was created, the BRI was in charge of all the police tactical jobs in France. And also at that time they did a few operations in Netherlands. Because there were no special units also in Netherlands at that time, in the seventies.
Jon Becker: That's interesting. So then in 85 they split it and BRI retains the city of Paris, but the rest goes to the rest of the cities go to raid.
Jay: Yeah, that's it. Don't forget that we have been created to fight organized crime and violent crime. So all the guys at the BRI in the sixties, seventies, they were detectives. And we keep these specifics until now. That's what one of our DNA is, to work on violent crime. And then after 1972, we start doing the tactical job until now.
So this is very important to understand that we do both jobs and we still do that for our best understanding. It's like, for those who know how the LAPD works, but we do, like the SWAT job, the LAPD SWAT job, and also the SIS job. We are the only unit to do that in France.
Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it's actually worldwide. It's a very unique mission set that you have because generally speaking, units will have a violent crime or organized crime unit, and then they'll have a tactical unit. And it's unusual that the two be combined the way that you guys do.
Jay: That's true, but we think that it's the best model because, I mean, in France, if you just are a full time tactical unit, you will be spend most of your time training and waiting for the call. What we do is working on a daily basis on bad guys on the streets. Keep you ready. And there is kind of for the guys, for the operators, they know how to handle the stress on real life situation. Also they know how to hold their fire, how to manage a very emotional situation. And that's what we think. It is a good model.
Jon Becker: Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that I think is unique in your mission set is that you handle kidnaps. Right?
Jay: Also. Yeah, that's true, Jennifer, we, on the whole, the ransom delivery field operation, when there's a kidnapping, also like the SIS.
Jon Becker: Does, which, I mean, it's kidnapped is, you know, living in the US, kidnap is nothing. It's not a very common occurrence, and it's usually a domestic thing. But in Europe, kidnap is a business. Right.
Jay: Used to be a business until recently, but to be honest, now kidnapping comes in more bad guys for kidnappings today, most of the kidnappings today we face in France with some exception. For sure it's drug related between bad guys, you know.
Jon Becker: Oh, yeah.
Jay: Kidnapping are always very sensitive case. And we work side by side with the homicide squad, who will handle all the investigation on the kidnapping case. Our negotiator will be in charge to negotiate with the family and the perpetrators. And our perturb will be in charge of the ransom delivery operation. And it's a synergy which worked well. I cannot speak too much about our tactics in this kind of offense, but that's work. And we did it for now almost 60 years.
Jon Becker: And then you also have a counter terrorism tactical role.
Jay: Sure. Even Paris had been a target for terrorism since the 1970s. Actually, it never stops. And BR had been respond to this kind of threat for now 50 years. It could be islamic terrorism, it could be left wing terrorism. And more recently, since 2015, we faced big mass hostage situation related to terrorism.
Jon Becker: Which probably is a perfect segue for us to talk about. November 13, 2015. So, just to set the stage, if my memory serves me correctly, there are three. The event starts at 09:15, but we end up with three separate areas that are affected and multiple locations even within those areas. How many teams were there, actually, that hit the city simultaneously?
Jay: You spoke about the bad guys.
Jon Becker: Yes, bad guys.
Jay: Okay. It was a Mumbai style attack, multi location, multiple perpetrators. There were almost nine guy night attackers, all of them wearing suicide SBID, suicide vest and AK-47. Sorry, Jon. It was well coordinate. And the main task of these guys, like in Mumbai, is to create a chaos and made the police law enforcement response more difficult. And so they should be able to kill as much people as they can. That was their main task, actually.
Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, in the end, terrorism is about creating spectacle and creating media attention. And the more locations you can hit, the more people you injure or kill, the more chaotic the situation is, the more effective it is. So let's start with the first site. So at 09:15, three suicide bombers detonate themselves outside the Chate de France in Saint Denis.
Jay: Actually, there is three different attacks on the Stade de France. Remember that night? It was a soccer game. Stadium was full, almost 80,000 people. French president attended the game also. And at 920, we have a first explosion just in front of the entrance.
Jon Becker: So the first. Okay, so to go back and set the stage, there you have France versus Germany, a full stadium. The president of France is in attendance. And at 09:20, a guy blows himself up at one of the entrances to the stadium.
Jay: Yes, yes. Actually, I was watching the game at home at that time, and we. You can hear the explosion through the television. But at that moment, everybody was thinking about an accident or something happened in a restaurant outside the stadium. That's our first information.
Jon Becker: Then what happens?
Jay: Then very quickly, some bomb squad guys were handled, security on the stadium, went to the scene, and understand very quickly that it was not an accident, but it was an attack because they. They spot some on the scene, some elements of a suicide vest.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: So the information start coming to the authority and. But the decision was made to keep everybody in the stadium and to keep the game going and not to tell people in the stadium that something's going on. That was the best decision they can make.
Jon Becker: Yeah, because otherwise, you're gonna have, you know, what, 60, 70, 80,000 people freaking out and running out of the stadium.
Jay: And because, exactly, Jon. And you have to remember that at 09:30, there is a second explosion of the second attacker around the stadium.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: And something weird that it's. He detonates himself in the middle of nothing on a parking lot where nobody was there because everybody was inside the stadium. And he wasn't able to go inside the stadium because of the security, the private security measure. But he detonated himself at 09:30. So maybe it was his mission to just detonate himself at night 30, wherever.
Jon Becker: Things around him or the security measures were effective, he couldn't get in and decided to complete his jihad alone.
Jay: Yep.
Jon Becker: So then there was a third attacker. When did the third attacker detonate himself for that?
Jay: Kurt detonated himself at 09:33 also, five minutes from the stadium in the middle of a parking lot also.
Jon Becker: So really, only one guy effectively attacks the stadium.
Jay: Yeah. And he killed. And one killed one civilian, and one did more than 50. But the two other one, they just better than themselves. What? On my opinion, maybe they did that just because the mission was to dead end themselves of a specific time on a specific time.
Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so then at the same time, well, 09:25 ish, you start having a second group attacking restaurants and cafes in a different area.
Jay: Yes, Jon, the first. The first shooting start at 09:25.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: You have to understand, that stadium, it's 15 minutes driving north of Paris. And the shooting at 09:25 took place in a very popular area with restaurants, bars. And that night was a really nice night, very warm for a November day. And a lot of people were on the terrace enjoying the Friday night.
Jon Becker: Yeah, 09:25 is. I mean, you know, Americans tend to eat early, but 09:25 in Europe is like you're just moving past appetizers and into dinner.
Jay: Yeah. Specifically on Friday night.
Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. So you've got crowded cafes, people on the terraces, people in bars. And these guys begin by just open firing.
Jay: Yep. They use a car, park the car in front of t=Terrazze of a restaurant and a bar, and start shooting people randomly with AK-47 on full automatic.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: They know how to reload. They communicate to each other. When one reload, the other one tell him so they can coordinate their shooting.
Jon Becker: So this was a trained assault force.
Jay: Yeah. So they start shooting at 09:25, stop their car shooting, go back in their car, and go around, like, two blocks away and start shooting again.
Jon Becker: So they just basically just driving from restaurant to restaurant and open firing on the restaurants and get back in their car, drive a couple blocks, do the same thing again.
Jay: Exactly. And the bad thing for the dispatching the police organization, that they've got, like, thousands of coal of people who get shot of neighbors also report that, but because they were moving like this, everybody was calling the 911.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: And it saturates all the systems, so we don't have any good intel of what's really going on.
Jon Becker: Yeah, I can imagine that. I mean, you start with the chate de France, which is 15 minutes out of the city, but now you have a terrorist attack there with the president of France, and, you know, a full stadium, and now you have a second location and a third location and a fourth location. And every one of those locations, everybody in the restaurant picks up their phone, the neighbors pick up the phone. So dispatch is getting thousands of calls.
Jay: Yeah, exactly. And all reporting different information and, yeah, sometimes it's very difficult for them to understand what's going on. We get the call for our concern, we get the call in the BRI, we get some information very quickly because of the bomb squad guy who called our aud guys and say, hey, be aware that it's not an accident. It could be an attack. So we were, I mean, ready to go. And around 09:25, 09:30, we got information that the shootings in Paris. So we called the guy. Actually, we're on call first. It was our team, and said, let's regroup to the unit.
And we've got also call from our unit boss, say, all the guides available go back to the unit. Usually we have a QRF in the unit who is ready to go directly from home to the crime scene. I mean, to the location. The location where something happens. The thing is that we don't have really the location where to go. So the tactics that night was to regroup the unit, prepare and just waiting to be sent at the right location.
Jon Becker: Yeah, it makes sense. So, basically, your leadership looks at this series of attacks and just basically raises the flag and rolls everybody to come together and be prepared for whatever location you're going to get sent to.
Jay: And when we arrived, group put the gear on, and at that time, we asked one of our big chief and say, where do you want us to go? And he said, let's check it out because we don't know where to send you. We have too many information. And a few minutes later, they get information that something is going to happen.
Five minutes later, they have information that something happens in the Bataclan. And also they have information that one of the shooter of restaurants still on the location. So they create. They send two teams of the BRI, one to the shooting location, one to the battle clan. Our unit. Our team was the one who was sent to the battle.
Jon Becker: So let's, before we get to Batalan, let's go with the – So the first unit that deploys, do they end up encountering that suspect?
Jay: No, it was a fake information. But they have to search an entire building.
Jon Becker: Yeah, this is. I mean, it's a common theme in, you know, mass killing events, active shooter events, is that the. Not only is there an overwhelming amount of information, but the information received is usually wrong. So it's – Oh, there's ten shooters, there's three shooters, there's two shooters, there's three locations. And you compound that with the fact that here there are – There are nine assailants in, you know, four separate restaurants have been. It's just, I can't imagine the chaos that it must have created for the dispatch.
Jay: Even for our team was sent to the Bataclan. We have no intel what our chiefs told us. Something happened there. Let's go and check it out.
Jon Becker: Okay, so then, talking about Battleclan. So to set the stage. Battle clan is a theater. They're having a concert. Eagles of death metal, if I remember correctly, 1500 ish people inside the venue, concert actively going on. And. And what happens.
Jay: So at 09:40, free tourism through free tourists. Sorry. Park their car just in front of the theater, the concert hall, start shooting immediately to the security. It was an unarmed security because in France, most of the security of private building like this, it's unarmed.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: So they start shooting the security and made the entry from the main gate of the theater. And so the main gate was behind all the crowd. The crowd was looking at the scene. And they made the entry by behind at the rear of the theater, actually.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: No, no.
Jon Becker: Well, the front. So if I'm understanding correctly, the front of the theater, like, when you walk in the front doors, you're looking at the stage.
Jay: Yeah, that's it.
Jon Becker: And so the crowd is facing.
Jay: The crowd is facing the scene and the main gate.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: So they made the entry from the rear of the crowd and start shooting for seven minutes nonstop.
Jon Becker: So the crowd has no idea they're watching a concert. They're in the darkest, and all of a sudden, you have three assailants behind them open firing on them.
Jay: With full auto. The only people who actually saw the tourists came in was the band, the american band Miguel of death metal. And they were. So they saw what's going on, and they left the scene. And at that first time, the crowd, people on the crowd, thank. He was like, a part of the show, and then they realized that they were just shot by three guys.
Jon Becker: Do you know at that point how many rounds are fired? What? Like, what's the – How many victims do we have? What happens in that initial engagement with the suspects in the crowd?
Jay: What we know now, it just. They kill almost 80 people at that time, and one did more than 200. How many rounds is difficult, but we.
Jon Becker: Retrieved at least 280.
Jay: We retrieve a lot of mag, empty magazine after the scene, but hundred.
Jon Becker: I mean, obviously, 280 people killed or injured. Hundreds of rounds.
Jay: Yeah. And as I said before, it was well organized between the three terrorists. So they speak to each other, communicate, reloading, start shooting. Stop shooting, moving.
Jon Becker: Is the theater just a big open room? Yeah. Is this like a theater where it has seats and people are in seats or people kind of standing on the ground in a big open room?
Jay: On the first floor just in front of the scene? It's full space without any seat. You've got seat at the second floor, actually, like in a classical theater on the balcony.
Jon Becker: Got it. So the suspects enter. They've got, you know, maybe as many as a thousand or whatever people in a big group in the dark, watching a concert. They open fire on them. What happens next?
Jay: So they shoot, shoot, shoot with Alanis for seven minutes, and two of them took position on the balcony. One of them, after the end of the shooting, and one of them stay on the scene, and then they start killing people, randomly speaking to people, kill people one by one.
Jon Becker: So they basically now have. I'm assuming some people ran.
Jay: Yeah, some people made it through the exit.
Jon Becker: Yeah, I'm assuming. But at some point now they've got captives on the ground, a lot of dead people.
Jay: And then you have dead people, wanted people, and people were acting like dead people because as soon as they move, they get shot. So most of the people, like, maybe 700 people stay inside. They were acting like dead people, if you know what I mean.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: One guy of the security made a great, great job also, because he crossed all the space to open one rescue door. And so people were, a lot of people were able to exit because of his action.
Jon Becker: So he ran through the crowd.
Jay: Through the crowd to open one door on the left side of the theater.
Jon Becker: Okay. And so. So two go up on the balcony. One stays on the first floor. He's engaging people. They're engaging people from the balcony.
Jay: Yep.
Jon Becker: And somewhere in here you get a call that something's going on at the battle climb.
Jay: Yeah, but without any more precision. But at that time, the twelve minutes after the shootings, after they made the entry, like 09:42, 09:45. The street police, actually, it's a street crime unit, arrived on the scene. So because they're patrolling on the car, so they are more quicker than everybody.
Jon Becker: Sure.
Jay: So they made the entry at 09:45. Two of them, especially, only wearing nine man and engage the only tourists they have on site. Actually, there's a gunfight between them. They were able to shoot the terrorists on the scene. This terrorist detonate himself. But the action, the action of the street police stopped them. The main shooting, the mass shooting.
Jon Becker: Got it. So the two that are on the balcony, so they basically engage the guy that's on the first floor.
Jay: They engage the guy who was on the scene on the first floor. It's the only one. They are on site, actually.
Jon Becker: Okay, where the two that are on the balcony, where, where have they gone?
Jay: They stay on the balcony and engage the two police officers.
Jon Becker: Okay. Okay.
Jay: So they weren't able to go further because they have the advantage because of. They're on the balcony and they have AK.
Jon Becker: Yeah. They're pinned down by the guy, the two guys on the balcony with AK-47s.
Jay: And the street police are only nine.
Jon Becker: Yeah. But they do engage the guy that the first guy they encounter, he ends up detonating a suicide vest, probably killing more people, I'm assuming.
Jay: Not sure, because what we know now, it's most of the people around him. Was he on the floor?
Jon Becker: So maybe, maybe not. We'll never know.
Jay: But they stopped the shooting.
Jon Becker: Yeah. Now the suspects turn and are engaged with them, so they're stopping killing.
Jay: It's from active shooting, active shooter situation. It became a massive hostage situation, but they stopped killing people at that time.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: So this is very important to say, and that will be the case in real life. The tactical unit will never be the first responder. The street police will be first on the scene.
Jon Becker: Always. Always. And it keeps with, you know, the theme and a lot of the active shooter training in the United States, which is to engage a suspect as quickly as possible.
Jay: Sure.
Jon Becker: Because he kill himself and at a minimum he focuses on the police. Okay, so then suspect one on the first floor is now dead. Suspect two and three are on the balcony engaging the officers. Are either the officers injured?
Jay: No, not on. No.
Jon Becker: Okay, so they managed to avoid getting shot.
Jay: Yeah. And they set up a perimeter and they regroup, try to make a signal entry. But because of the fire of the terrorists from the balcony, they weren't able to do it.
Jon Becker: Yeah, well, they're outgunned. I mean, 9 mm versus 8 mm.
Jay: Ended up real shield and it was tough for them.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So they set up a perimeter and wait for the tactical unit. First team of ten operators arrive. Our team arrived around 1020 on the scene. We have a really quick brief with the street police to try to understand what's going on. It was difficult to get information. So our boss, stay with the street police and we. We reach the scene, actually, so we – Because of something very important also, it could be useful for when they set up the perimeter, the street police, most of the. They left most of their car without any driver inside.
So we weren't able as a tactical team to arrive close to the theater. We have to park our car, like two blocks and move with the shield and all the stuff by foot, so.
Jon Becker: So you're not able to bring armor up to the location. You're having to run.
Jay: Yeah, we lost some time about that because the street police left their car. Yeah, and I can understand why they did that, but you have to think about it. But it's the same thing. If you need an ambulance to go on the scene, if you set up a perimeter, you have to be able to open the perimeter when you have to be open.
Jon Becker: Yeah. You have to be able to get vehicles in and more importantly, resources in.
Jay: So we make contact. We make contact with a few guys from street police who will handle the entrance of the theater. We pass the button, take the position. And now we discovered the pit. It was full of body, more than 600, 700 people in front of us. Nobody was talking. The only thing we can hear was the complaint of the wounded people, actually, who were screaming or crying or whatever, but nobody was speaking, nobody was moving. And then we start to understand what we're going to have to do now.
Jon Becker: So you make entry into the first floor. Yeah, there are 700 people on the floor.
Jay: Exactly.
Jon Becker: Some of whom are dead, some of whom are, you know, injured or mortally wounded, and some of whom are pretending to be dead so they don't get shot.
Jay: Yeah, that's it. That's the situation. So as a tactical officer, you train to handle mass shooting, active shooter, hostage situation. This is a combination of something very weird and the worst you can face, actually. You have suicide vest, AK-47 and hostage situation. Not an active shooter anymore, but after shooting anymore, but could be.
Jon Becker: They've obviously manifested intent at that point to be an active shooter because you've got 700 people that you have no idea. You can't triage them because you don't have time. So they may have killed 700 people, for all you know. When you walk in the door.
Jay: That's our first feeling, everybody is dead. So immediately we tried to set up a kind of strategy. It took a few minutes, to be honest. We didn't make the entry. Like, we didn't make a dynamic entry for sure. We tried to get some intel of what's going on. So we tried to speak with the guys who were the victims, who were very close to us to get some information.
So some of them told us they left. They left. Come and help us. They left. There's nobody. No more terrorists in the fjara. Some of them say, no, they're still there. Second floor on the left. Second floor on the left. So what we decided to do is to go and to climb the stairs, clean up all the left side of the theater under the balcony and use the stairs and take position on the left side of the balcony. Because of the intel they gave us, we have a medic with us, actually, it's MD. And we keep it there and ask him to start the triage of the victim who were very close to him. And also he started to call all the rescue units and he was able to tell them what's going on here on a rescue point of view.
So with the team of ten guys, we asked for also we asked for backup from another team of the. But the other team of the bi was stuck, you know, in – They were not able to come very quickly to the scene because when they have to cross the street to come to us, and as soon as they try to cross the street, they get engaged by the, one of the terrorists from the second floor also. So we have to manage situations for now. We were ten guys, so we have to make a choice, and our choice was to go second floor on the balcony and see what's going on.
Jon Becker: So let me just recap that so I make sure I get it right. So you get up, you get up to the second floor to engage a suspect. There's two suspects. You don't know how many suspects there are at this point. So it's somewhere between two and a million. And the suspect is engaging your second unit through the outside windows of the building to prevent them from coming in. So you can't get your backup in immediately. So you have ten guys to clear a theater with an unknown number of suspects and 700 victims.
Jay: Yeah, that's…
Jon Becker: Yeah, that's pretty ugly.
Jay: Yeah. So we start to do that. And I heard on my radio that finally the second team made it. And also we heard that we have a backup of the red team also on their way. So we did what we tried to do. We cleaned up. We search all the left side of the first floor and then go through the stairs to reach the balcony on the second floor.
Jon Becker: And at this point, you have not seen the suspect or engaged the suspects. But the consistent theme among the victims is that the guys are on the second floor.
Jay: Yeah, got it. Our main fear was, you have to understand that we were working in the middle of the people, actually. And when they start. So they start to ask for help from us. Help my sister, help my husband. What are you doing? Help me. Can I come? And we have to keep them, you know, lay on the floor. We were afraid that if somebody stand up, everybody will stand up. And if the terrorist was hiding somewhere, it's gonna be a mass shooting again.
Jon Becker: So when you also don't know. I mean, 700 people we now know are victims of. But for you it's 700 suspects.
Jay: Yes. Because you don't know.
Jon Becker: Yeah. They can hide anywhere in. In the crowd, outside of the crowd.
Jay: From the balcony, from the beat, from whatever. So it was a difficult time because we spent like 20 minutes working in the middle of people. But dead bodies wanted people, people who grab your pants, people will ask you for help. And I remember my friend of mine was my deputy in the team. He found in the restrooms a young girl, about 16, 17 years old who get bad wounded on the left arm. And he tried to put very quickly a tourniquet on it. But when he put the tourniquet on, there was no more flesh. It was only the bone. So that's why we faced at that time.
So we were working around the bodies of people. It was a really difficult time, to be honest. It took us like 20 minutes. And we made it on the balcony, second floor, until the last door of the balcony. There was a door, a simple wooden door. And we were. We did, like, open a lot of door at that time. And it was the last one.
So, I mean, now we know. We know it's the last one, but at that time we didn't know about it. And we were to open it and someone spoke to us and say, back up, back, back up. We are the. I want to speak to a negotiator. So our first reaction is, what do you want to negotiate? Just kill so many people, really? So it's not. Yeah, I'm not supposed to say that, but it was our actions.
Jon Becker: It's a little late to negotiate.
Jay: What do you want to negotiate? But then we came down and, okay, what do you want? We want to negotiate. We have people under control. We want to negotiate. They ask one negotiator. That means they know how we work out of the process. That's very important. So we start talking to them.
And very quickly, they gave us a phone number, a cell number. I tried to forward the cell number to the negotiator who was just at the entrance of the theater. It was not easy. First they gave us a fake number. It wasn't working. So after we get. We managed to communicate. I transferred the phone number to the negotiator and negotiators called them and they start speaking directly from the negotiator to the terrorists.
The very important thing at that time, it was around 11:15, because we made contact. We tried to contain this area and our leadership asked us, is it safe? Can we start evacuating the first floor? It was difficult to say it's safe, but we say we knew at that time, we have to do something for the people. We get wounded very quickly.
So we say, we're going to contain this door. You can start the evacuation. And they start the evacuation. My team and I, we didn't really see what's going on on the first floor. But you have to imagine that they have to start the recreations first. They had the non-wanted people to camp, but they have to check each people who get out of the. Of the theater.
Jon Becker: So, yeah, because they could be suspects.
Jay: They could be suspect. They could also wear suicide vests. They could be a victim. And terrorists put them suicide vests on. So they check one by one, all the unwanted people, and then they start evacuating the wounded people.
So you have – That was under the control of our MD. You have two different MD. Also MD. From the red came another one from the BRI. And they organized the triage and they asked the street police under the protection of the red and the other team of the BRI. Who were on the first floor to organize the evacuation.
Jon Becker: So you've got the suspects, or at least you believe you have the suspects pinned in behind a door. And the second team has come in now and is providing physical security for the doctors for the triage and as well as elements of raid to evacuate the first floor, treat the wounded while you are dealing with the suspects in a second floor behind the door.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: Exactly. The thing is, now that you have two major priorities for the unit. You have to contain and to neutralize the threat, but also you have to rescue the victims. And it's, you have to find a balance between the two priorities.
Jon Becker:
Yeah. Because it's stopped the killing, stop the dying. Right? Like, who knows how many more, how many more hostages they have. But, you know, you have hundreds of victims who, if you do nothing, are going to die.
Jay: Yeah. And on the other side. If you, if you acting too quickly, you can create a chaos. More than.
Jon Becker: Yeah. You can. You can create more victims. You can.
Jay: So it's a very difficult balance to find. And a few years later, it's important also to say there is an inquiry, a commission from the parliament. We're working on the event. And they really don't understand why we don't go quicker. We wouldn't be able to go faster than what we did.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: And some of them say because you weren't faster, some people die because of you.
Jon Becker: That's horrible!
Jay: And it was very tough for us. We really don't understand this because we really did a thing the best we can at that time. And we find the balance between rescuing the victim and searching the terrorists and neutralize the threat. And you cannot just on the scene like that go through running inside and shooting everybody. That's not the way we work.
Jon Becker: Yeah. And there's no, the problem with all these situations is there's no good choice. You have. You have no good choice. Every single thing you're faced with is bad. And so it's just trying to minimize the bad with an extremely limited amount of information under fear, pressure, people grabbing you, people asking for help, all the while not knowing where the suspect is.
So it's not really fair to, you know, look at it Monday morning and say, oh, that was a man. They could have done a better job.
Jay: And it was the first time that a European tactical unit faced this kind of event.
Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah.
Jay: So it's easy after a few years later say, you should have done that.
Jon Becker: Or that it's easy to pick the winner of the racehorse, the winning racehorse, after the race is run.
Jay: Yeah, always.
Jon Becker: So at what point do you become aware that these guys have hostages behind this door?
Jay: So they start talking to our negotiator by phone. That night, there were, like, five phone contacts between them and each in contact. They gave information to the negotiator. They want to communicate on their actions. So they told us they were harmed with AK. They have explosives. There are multiple people under the control.
Jon Becker: So they gave us information, and just without divulging any identities, the negotiator that is negotiating. I know the negotiator, and this is not the first time that this negotiator has negotiated with a professional terrorist organization or even this particular terrorist organization.
Jay: Yeah, you're right. The negotiator in Charles that night was the same who handled all the situation of the kosher market standoff in January 2015. So that's helped a lot because he had experience of this kind of situation.
Jon Becker: And the suspects are expecting. The terrorists are expecting to negotiate.
Jay: Yeah, they negotiate. They want us to broadcast their political communication on the news channel. That was the big thing. So during that time, during the negotiation between negotiator and the terrorists for on a pact, on a tactical point of view, we use this time to prepare our action.
So we immediately set up. We immediately set up assault plan, emergency assault plan, in case they start shooting people. That was the first thing. They start to shoot people. We go. And because of what's happened in January 2015, we got the green light to make the assault in this case, very quickly, from the leadership, because of our experience. And in the meantime, we use this time to create and to build and elaborate assault plan.
Jon Becker: So just to go back, you say January 2015. What happened January 2015? That's the kosher market event?
Jay: Yeah, the kosher market.
Jon Becker: Got it. Okay.
Jay: And because it was the first, I mean, on large scale attack like this, it was more difficult for the chief of the tactical units to get the green light to make the assault.
Jon Becker: The first time.
Jay: The first time in Japan.
Jon Becker: Yeah. But the second time, now we have this event from ten months ago, eleven months ago in recent memory. They're willing to make a faster decision.
Jay: Don't forget that France is a very centralized country. In this kind of event, the decision will be taken by the minister of interior. Prime minister and the president also could be involved. So the good thing. I mean, the good thing that night, we get the green light to action very quickly.
Jon Becker: Got it. So the suspects are negotiating with you, they're barricaded. What ultimately makes you make the decision to make entry?
Jay: After the negotiator told us after the second contact that there will be no surrender, based on his experience and based on what the terrorists told him, he was sure that there's gonna be any surrender.
Jon Becker: Yeah. They're there to die and take as many people as they can.
Jay: Exactly.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: Just as they did like Munich before. So the decision was made to storm this. They regroup. So the two terrorists regroup in a very small corridor for you to understand the situation. The corridor is 1.5 yards large and 9 yards long.
Jon Becker: So it's 27 ft by 5 or 6 ft of – It's basically a hallway.
Jay: And you have, at the end of corridor, also a green room with a. Regroup some more people. And at the end of the corridor you have the stairs, who go through the scene, actually.
Jon Becker: Oh, down to the stage.
Jay: Down to the stage.
Jon Becker: Okay. So if I'm understanding correctly, you've got a door, closed door, a hallway that's 5 or 6ft wide and 30 ft, 27 ft long with a bunch of hostages in it. You go down, you make a turn, you're into the green room, which is where the bands would get ready for the concert. And then there's a spiral staircase that goes down to the stage.
Jay: Yeah, exactly.
Jon Becker: Okay, got it.
Jay: There is two windows in the corridor, but we were not able to get information from outside because they asked the hostage to stand close to the window and to give them information about what's going on outside. So it was not a way for us to get intel of what's going on in corridor. We were blind of what's going on inside.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: This is very important. We have no intel about it. So what we decided to do is to use a shield on wheel, a big shield on wheel. It's a class four shield, almost 180 kg.
Jon Becker: So three almost 400 pound rolling ballistic, level four ballistic shield.
Jay: Yep. So our tactics was to bridge the door, engage through the – And get through the terrorists in this particular corridor. The thing is, we understood at that time that they put some. They asked some hostage to sit. You know, we can hear that. That the hostage were closed to the door. So we went. The decision was made not to use explosive breaching because of that.
Jon Becker: Yeah. Because they've placed hostages up against the door.
Jay: Up against the door.
Jon Becker: So if you use explosive breaching, you may kill those hostages.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: So you have to mechanically breach the door.
Jay: That's what we did.
Jon Becker: While the suspects are engaging you.
Jay: It was the risk.
Jon Becker: With hostages between you.
Jay: So we were preparing the assault and Ayod guys come to us for a briefing and said okay, we were able to retrieve a vest who partially failed on another location. It's TATP. If you shoot TATPs that's going to detonate so what you have to do is to shoot, make headshots. So okay, headshot is good on when you playing at call of duty but when you are in real life it's not the same way.
Jon Becker: So you're getting ready to make an assault in a 6 foot wide by 27 foot hallway with 10 to 15 hostages, two suspects and a barricaded door and the EOD guys come to you and say oh by the way, don't shoot the vest, don't shoot them in the chest because you may detonate them. You have to shoot them in the head. Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.
Jay: So that's what we were preparing for the assault. The initial the alpha team. Alpha team and the leadership of the unit prepare a second stack just behind us in case of something happened to us and we saw that and Montale was really tough. It's the first time. Usually when you prepare your assault you have some backup but you don't have another stack, another team prepared to do what you are supposed to do. So we expect the worst.
Jon Becker: Yes. You have a second team staged in case they blow themselves up and kill all of you.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: To then send in a second team.
Jay: Just behind us ready to go if.
Jon Becker: If they need to rescue you or.
Jay: Rescue or rescue the – That was the first time in – on my experience that something happened like this. So at 00:18 decision was made to storm the discover to make the assault. Okay, so we start moving with the shield in front of us. I'm not going to speak in detail about the tactics because I want any bad guys to.
Jon Becker: I'm good with that. Yeah.
Jay: So we went through the scarter trying to open the door to bridge the door. We bridge the door we immediately get caught on a fire but one of the first terrorists was maybe 4 or 5 meters from us in the corridor and start shooting I guess at us immediately.
Jon Becker: So you breached the door on this six foot wide, five foot wide hallway that's 27ft long before it ells to the side and as you breach the door, about halfway down the suspect engages you with an AK-47.
Jay: AK-47, 5 meters range, two times one guys of the team were able to fire back two or three rounds and then we receive a full magazine of 7.62 in the – On the stack. Actually 26 impact in the shield. And unfortunately when a bullet impact one guy who was in the middle of the stack, he was hit in the left hand very badly.
Jon Becker: If I remember correctly, he was the only left handed guy in the stack.
Jay: He was the only left handed guy in style.
Jon Becker: Murphy is always present.
Jay: Oh yeah. And he was a very tough guy almost with all the four gear, maybe 120 kilos. And because of the energy of the round, it was just behind me. But some guys from the stack saw him jumping like the impact made him fall down.
Jon Becker: Yeah. Violently.
Jay: Violently. And my first feeling at that time, Washington, s***, we didn't make the really the entry and we already lost one guy.
Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's good. Your position is kind of in the middle of the stack.
Jay: In the middle of the stack, yeah. Six, seven. The stack was twelve guy got it. But the guy was handled the shield after get hit 26 time continue.
Jon Becker: Continues to….
Jay: Move towards to move through other suspect. This is because of him we were able to go through the suspect.
Jon Becker: It's hard to conceive of. Had you not taken the ballistic shield, your stack would have taken 26 AK 47 rounds.
Jay: I think we had lost a half of the stack.
Jon Becker: Yeah, half the stack. I mean, 26 rounds would have been plenty to do. At least half the stack. So as you enter 26 rounds at the shield, one hits the only left handed guy in the stack. In the left hand, the guy that's controlling the shield, despite the shield being hit 26 times, continues to move towards the suspect, which then allows the remainder of the team to enter.
Jay: Yep, because of his action, we were able to pursue action.
Jon Becker: Yeah, if he had stopped. You're stuck in the doorway.
Jay: You're stuck on the doorway in a funnel. Yeah, in a funnel. And as soon as we made the entry, people start quarrying to us, the hostages in the same time. So we have the shooting, but in September of people recording to us. So you have to check also who is coming to you.
Jon Becker: Yeah, because that could be one of the suspects. That could be a suicide vest, could be anything. And you've got what, 10 or 15 hostages in this?
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: So we have a. We have a six foot wide hallway with 15 people in it, a suspect 5 meters away dumping a 26 rounds of an AK-47 into your shield. While you're making entry, the hostages are crawling towards you and you're trying to engage the suspect.
Jay: Yeah, that's the situation.
Jon Becker: Yeah, that's about as ugly as it gets.
Jay: And we start using flashbangs very quickly. So you, then we have smoke also smokes from the fire, the smokes from the gunfight, the gunfight, and also the smoke from the flashbangs. And remember, we have to shoot the guys in the head. In the same time, you got full of different people were crowded to us as a hostage tried to escape from this corridor, and they came to us.
But the thing is, you have to check all of them to be sure that they are not wearing eids, they are not terrorists trying to escape. So what we did, our EOD guys were at the rear of the stack, search for them very quickly and evacuate them in the same time that we went into the corridor, something we didn't notice on the plan of the theater.
After 1 meter in this corridor, there is two steps. And what's happened because of the weight of the shield, after two steps, this is just after the first shooting, the shield collapsed, and the guy who was holding the shield was not able, because of the weight, to keep it. So the shield collapsed and our guy face without any protection, the two terrorists at that time.
Jon Becker: So they fire 26 rounds into the shield. He continues to progress, as he progress, not expecting two steps, the shield just snaps away from him. And does it pull him down onto the ground too? Or is he.
SpeakerBNo, no.
Jon Becker: He's able to let go of the shield.
Jay: Yeah, it lets go to shield.
Jon Becker: And now he's face to face with two terrorists with suicide vests and AK-47, SDE, surrounded by hostages at 5 meters with no protection.
Jay: Yeah, that's the situation.
Jon Becker: That's when you were standing at the door, you were probably thinking, how can it get worse?
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: And that that's how it can get worse.
Jay: And it was the only one to see what's going on, because remember, it's a corridor, so in the stack we didn't see s***.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So he holsters his sidearm and I start shooting and progress in the same times.
Jon Becker: So he continues to close on the suspects, firing at them with a handgun. Yeah, because he was expecting to only drive the shield.
Jay: Yeah, got it. And this shield, you need the two hands.
Jon Becker: Yeah, I've seen the shield, it's huge.
Jay: So it still progressed through the terrorist. What we understand, after it hit one of the tourists, we get wounded, the tourists back off at the end of the corridor at the corner, and our guy is still going through them. And one of the terrorists, the guy who gets hit, detonates himself.
At that time, we were the first of the stack were at maybe 4, 5 meters from the detonation, and all the stack was beyond them. So we were very lucky because all the fragmentation went through the wall. So what we felt. We felt the blast of the explosion, but nobody was hit by the fragmentation.
Jon Becker: So the frag went out sideways, basically, as opposed to coming towards you guys.
Jay: So we're still on going. So the first guy detonated himself when we arrived. When the first two guys of team arrived, they discovered, like him, in different pieces all over the place, the stairs. And they spot the second one, who was heavily wounded, but is still trying to detonate his vest. So they have to neutralize him.
Jon Becker: So the second you've engaged both the suspects, they've both been wounded. The first guy successfully detonates his s fast.
Jay: No, it's not exactly that.
Jon Becker: Okay.
Jay: Only one terrorist was on site. The second one was already in the….
Jon Becker: Oh, it was around the corner in the green. Got it.
Jay: So the first in the stack were able to hit the first one who detonate themselves and wanted his friends. His friend.
Jon Becker: Oh, so his s vas injures.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: Suspect number two.
Jay: Exactly.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: Okay, tango number two. So tango number two was every one that still trying to determine his vest. So there are no choice that to neutralize him.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So.
Jon Becker: So they shoot him, which then neutralizes that threaten.
Jay: They neutralize the suspect, but the threat still. Because the threat is the explosives.
Jon Becker: Yeah, he's still a human bomb.
Jay: Yeah. So that's why it's very – We were very lucky to have EOD guys in the stack because we have to go through him because we understand that we have some ten more people we're hiding in another green room. But for that, we have to go through the tango number two.
Jon Becker: So you have to move over the suspect.
Jay: To move over him. So we called the Yodi guys, who was a former army, the Yodi with a lot of experience, and he says, okay, as long as you not touching the vest, there is no risk. So you can go over, step over him.
Jon Becker: Just don't touch him in any way, shape or form.
Jay: So what he did.
Jon Becker: And if you do, you'll blow up. Yeah, yeah.
Jay: So what he did, he stand over the body of the tango number two, and we step and we go through using his. The body of the Yodi guys as a protection to go through. And that was.
Jon Becker: Was he in a bomb suit?
Jay: No, nothing like us. Only a ballistic protection.
Jon Becker: So he's just wearing soft armor.
Jay: Soft armor.
Jon Becker: And he places himself between. Above this. Above the tango, above the bomb. So we allow you guys to move through.
Jay: I will remember that forever.
Jon Becker: Yeah. I don't know how you'd forget that.
Jay: And then we arrived to the second green room, who was locked and stopped asking people, okay, you need to open the door. It's okay, you're free now. And those people, we understand at that time, they barricaded in this room at the beginning of the shooting. So they didn't see anything of the attack. They know that something was bad, this was going on. And maybe an hour before the tangos, they tried to make the entry in their green room and told them that they were GiGn and something interesting, they make a vote inside the room, should we open or not? And like a democracy stuff. So they say, no, it was a good, good decision.J
on Becker: So the suspects tried to lie their way into this other green room 1 hour before. An hour before when they had everybody else held hostage. And the susp. And the people in the second green room basically said, no, you're gonna have to force your way in.
Jay: But the thing is, now we're gonna ask him the same thing.
Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Now you're standing there saying the same thing the suspect said an hour ago.
Jay: So they say, no way.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So we have to speak with them, tell them to call the 911. We also call the 911 and say, if those guys call you, tell them that we are the police.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: It took 15 minutes.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So then they opened the door and we discovered like, maybe 12, 15 people in a very small room. And you have some American citizens, British, German and French, and something interesting. We get to show you the difference of culture and relationship with police and population. So we had the room and we asked them, leave your stuff, leave your bags, put your hands up and come one by one so we can check you and start the evacuation.
So the american guys complain, braids, Germans, and then the French guys starting insulting us and say, no way. I gonna keep my belongings with me. And why does it take too long for you to come? It was funny, actually, we have in the middle of this. It was something funny. I don't know if I can say funny, but, you know.
Jon Becker: Yeah, funny.
Jay: So all those people didn't see anything about the attack, but the only way for them to evacuate the theater was go through the pit.
Jon Becker: Oh, God!
Jay: And the pit at that time, there were only the dead people, but almost 90 people.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: With really bad, bad wound. AK-47 makes you like you have a car crash. It's not only a hole, it's like they crush your bones.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So these people who didn't see anything.
Jon Becker: Are now traumatized by having to walk through and see. Walk through, literally a butchery.
Jay: Really tough for them. There were a kid also we found because after we still searching everywhere and another team of the beer I found people were hiding in the attics, you know, and there was a kid there. So I remember one Gaviri puts his hand on the eye of the kid to cross the pit to inside to avoid him, to see the.
Jon Becker: Yeah, to prevent the kid from seeing anything that happened. So just to at this point that you've cleared the hostages. No hostages killed?
Jay: No, not, no one.
Jon Becker: None of them were injured or seriously injured?
Jay: During the assault, the final assault. No.
Jon Becker: One of your guys shot in the left hand. I'm assuming he's recovered.
Jay: He's recovered, get promoted. But yes, he left the team because of his wounded.
Jon Becker: The nerve damage to his hand. What is the aftermath for this event, for your team? How does this affect the team?
Jay: Something I can. Something I want to tell you. It's after the – So we left the theater, the scene maybe around three in the morning. EOD stay on the scene to keep the search of explosives. So at 04:00 we were at our headquarters. We saw all the victims who are also witness came to the one where not wounded, were regrouping buses and came to our unit because our unit is at that time was at the same location where all the criminal investigation division was. So they want all the people who get involved to be interviewed at the time.
Jon Becker: Sure. Yeah.
Jay: So. And we saw like hundreds of people there. So for us it was the first shock, you know. And then we left the unit and we were back home around 05:00 so something very strange, weird. It's you just back home and try not to awake your family. And our wives and relatives were, they were waiting for us with no information, with no real good information. And then they ask you, so what's going on? What did you do? How are you? And you really don't know what to say.
Jon Becker: Yeah. How do you even begin to….
Jay: It's not like a soldier who's, for example, is in Afghanistan. You have a combat in Afghanistan when he's coming back. Yes. You know, he takes a plane stop in Germany and then there is a kind of saskimon, you know, a kind of decompression.
Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. There's an opportunity for them to separate themselves from the battlefield and their home, which is still, you know, we know, not long enough and, and, but this is….
Jay: This is directly from the battlefield to the home.
Jon Becker: You're, you're going back to work taking a shower and going to your family.
Jay: Yeah. With your suit. You know, I remember my. My shoes and my suit was full of the bloods of the tangos when we detonated them himself. You know, it was really something weird. So when I went back. I wasn't able to speak and to. To tell my wife what's. What's going on, what's happened a few years before.
Jon Becker: How do you even, I mean, I can't imagine how you even begin to articulate that night?
Jay: And because also something important, our family, during the January attack, when we stormed the kosher market, it was broadcast on the. Live, on French TV. And so some guys from our units, red and BR, get shot during this assault. And saw the family, they saw the action, you know, life.
Jon Becker: I see their family members being shot on live TV.
Jay: So this time there were no broadcasts from the inside of the theater. You have broadcast from outside, so you can hear the assault and the gunfight, but you don't see anything of what's going on inside. So for me, I wasn't able to speak or to tell anything. I tried to sleep well, maybe I sleep like 1 hour and we get a call back from the unit and they want us to go back on the field. It was like 09:00 something, for surveillance on, one of the car left by the terrorists on the day before was full of arm. And they expect that some other tangos will come and take the car and they want us to arrest them in this case.
So we were – After 2 hours of sleep, we were back to the unit, go back on the field. The surveillance didn't. After a few hours of surveillance, they decided to tow the car away. But also something important. When we lost our guy get hit in the hand, it was so much chaos that we evacuated him, but we were not able to know where he had been evacuated for hours. We didn't know about him. There were so many victims dispatching different hospitals without names, without nothing. So it took like maybe 3 hours to get the information on which hospital is he and how is he.
Jon Becker: Yeah, because you have no idea how badly he's wounded. No, they just pull him out, take him to a hospital. Nobody knows where he goes. And I mean, you know, it's 400 injured victims of – Across Paris it's 130 dead. Like, it's. You can only imagine. Every hospital in Paris is in full triage in…
Jay: And the priority was not to the name of the people and all this.
Jon Becker: Yeah, they're just treating people so.
Jay: And for him also because he was alone in the hospital, and he didn't know nothing about us.
Jon Becker: Yeah. So he doesn't know whether….
Jay: What's happened to us during the assault and after the action.
Jon Becker: Long term, how did this affect the unit? Like, the guys that were involved in this event, obviously, the guy that's injured ends up having to leave the unit because of the damage. Did it solidify the unit? Did it break it up? What happened to the guys that were involved in the event?
Jay: It solidified the unit for sure. A few of us decided to leave the unit. Some of us tried to join the red or another tactical unit, and some of us left Paris, you know, to live in the south of France, west of France, whatever. But most of the guys after the 2015 stay in the unit. And what I think is the best protection for. Against PTSD, on my opinion, was your friends, actually, because when you share experience like this with friends, you can speak about it, you can understand each other, but if you leave a unit just after a traumatic event like this, you're going to feel really alone. We cannot share this kind of event with people who weren't there.
So I think this is – This protect us. The leadership they sent us sent us some psychologists, but because it was police psychologists, nobody wants to speak to them. You're afraid of, if they detect something wrong, they will tell your leadership and you will take your position out of the unit. So nobody talked to the psychologist. We heal each other by speaking about the event and by sharing some time.
Jon Becker: You've shared with me in the past, your recollections. What are the most profound memories you have of this event?
Jay: As I told you before, when I make my way back to home, it was very tough on the scene after the first wave of recreation, when only the dead people stay in the theater. What I remember, it's the cell phone rings in all the pockets of the victim. Because at that time, people all over France know by TV that something happened. And the relatives who know that some of their family is in the concert start calling to get some news about their relatives. And you can hear the cell phone, see the light of the cell phone on the dead bodies and hear the ring ringtones. That was tough. Really.
Jon Becker: Yeah, because you realize that every single one of those cell phones is somebody who's not gonna see that person again.
Jay: No, it was a bad memory. It was a very bad memory. And also something we did two days after our leadership asked us to go back on the scene in the theater, grab the shield, who stayed in the scene to bring him back to the unit because the minister of interior wanted to see it. So our team was designed to do that.
So it was a Monday morning, I think. So we went there. It was full pitch black inside. So we used our lights and went inside. The smell was terrible. The soul was sticky about the tons of blood everywhere. And we made through this shader to get back the shield. And it was a very bad idea, actually.
Jon Becker: It was a terrible idea.
Jay: It's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea to ask us to go and grab it. Maybe if you ask another team,.
Jon Becker: Someone who hadn't experienced it.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: So basically, you've been through a traumatic event and they send you back there a couple of days later for a show and tell.
Jay: Yeah.
Jon Becker: The two days later to walk back through the area where this whole traumatic event took place. Smell the smells. Feel the blood on the floor.
Jay: Yeah. This was bad. Really bad.
Jon Becker: Yeah, that's a terrible idea.
Jay: The next day, so the Tuesday morning, we got a call around five in the morning for my unit bus. Say, hurry, hurry, we have to go in. Suddenly, the redhead located the terrorists and there is a big gunfight between the terrorists and the red. So go and back up the red. Now. This time was really, really tough for the family, I'm sure, because. And I called the other guy from the teams. Each team leader called the other one, you know, and I have to say. And they ask, what's going on? Don't ask questions. Just gear up and…
Jon Becker: Yeah, just show up.
Jay: Go. And so they told me that the family has. Where are you going? Are you going? It's not finished. No, it's not finished. We have to go. It was a red operation, but we just back up them. But we were on the scene, so for the family, it was really, really tough. It's a never ending situation.
Jon Becker: So when they subsequently raid, subsequently hits the house and gets the remainder of the cell. Right?
Jay: Say it again.
Jon Becker: Raid subsequently hits a location and gets the remainder of this terrorist cell, at least the ones that are still left.
Jay: They killed the element leader of the tangos.
Jon Becker: Got it.
Jay: And two accomplice.
Jon Becker: So I think to kind of work our way towards wrapping up, I would love to hear your thoughts on, you know, the specifically, like, debrief lessons learned, kind of stuff that your team took away from this that you would want other teams to know as they train or prepare for these kinds of events.
Jay: Okay. Something that, you know, in the states, because of the active shooting situation you face, it's the street. The first responder will always be the street police. So what you need to do is to train the street police to train them what to do. To train them what not to do and to train them how to prepare your action. It's as we did after 2015 with the street crime unit, with our – In France, you have three levels of police response in case of an event like this. You've got level one, it's street police. Level two is the street crime unit. They are patrolling. It's like the metro division in LAPD.
So your police station, metro division, and then the SWAT in France, it's the same thing that you have to train the street police, and you have to train also the metro division to prepare your action and to act and not to. And also teach them not to act. What, I mean, it's, they should be able to identify in an active shooting situation where they have to go, an all state situation where they have to wait for you. This is very important, in my opinion.
Also, it's something we improve after the 2015 incident. It's, you have to gain time on the evacuation of the victims and of all the people involved in this kind of crisis, especially in a massive hostage situation. That's why what we did, we trained and equipped some guys from the fire department with ballistic shield.
Jon Becker: Yep.
Jay: So now we train them with the metro division guy. So as soon as we secure one area of the situation, for example, the pit is secure. Now this fire department special team, under the protection of the metro division, the level two police will be able to evacuate people very quickly. This is very good, because if we have that at that time, maybe we can save a few people. You don't have to wait that this become a cold zone, you know? You know, there are three different zones. You know, the hot zone.
Jon Becker: Hot, warm, and cold.
Jay: Yeah. So far, until 2015, you have the rescue organization, EMT, fire department. They only work on the cold zone. What we did not did now is to train there under protection of police to be able to intervene on the warm zone. This is very important, and that can save lives.
Jon Becker: Yeah. So you have to, I mean, to do that, you have to train the metro police that initially, the second level of response to secure the perimeter and protect the fire guys, and then you have to train the fire guys to be able to respond into a warm area. But you don't have to train them to the level of a SWAT team.
Jay: No.
Jon Becker: You just need to teach them how to secure a facility and protect fire so fire can go in and evacuate people. That's a really good….
Jay: Except if it's an active shooting situation, they have to go.
Jon Becker: Sure, sure.
Jay: But otherwise, they have to be able to organize themselves with us because, you know, the free zone is not. It's not.
Jon Becker: It's not a clear partition. Clear partition.
Jay: It's an ongoing situation.
Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a fluid. So, for example, temperature changes.
Jay: When we arrived, the full theater was a hot zone.
Jon Becker: Right.
Jay: And then the pit was a warm zone, and then because of what we did, the pit was a cold zone. You know, this is an evolutionary…
Jon Becker:
Yeah, it's evolving.
Jay: It's evolving. So that's why you have to train with them. This is something I think really works. And also, I spoke about it later, but before. Sorry, it's the eod guy. You must. We think that you must be able to take one to have a guy in the stack, or if you cannot have a guy in the stack, train one guy of your bomb squad to be able to come with you.
Jon Becker: To move into a hot zone, and also.
Jay: Not only to defuse some explosives, but to be able to make the – Possibly the stack to go through.
Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, like in this instance, I mean, if you. If the. If the EOD guy doesn't make a call on that device, you are either risking your life stepping over it, or having to change course and move a different direction. So his expertise and his willingness to put himself in harm's way immediately moves the problem along when it would otherwise stall you. Yeah, yeah.
Jay: Otherwise, you know, you can be blocked, for example. I don't know, but the tourists left like a grenade on the floor. If you don't have the expertise.
Jon Becker: You don't know what to do.
Jay: You don't know what to do.
Jon Becker: How did this event change the way you guys train?
Jay: I used to say that before 2015, we were acting like police officer, and then we have to change our mindset a little. And in this case of situation, you're still a police officer, but you have to acting like more like a soldier. And this is something really difficult, because a few months after the events, we have a warrant for drug, you know, and we prepare ourselves, and I can see that the team prepare as they were going to war. You know what I mean?
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: And we have to say, hey, calm down. We are back to the police work now. We have to arrest him. Nobody get killed.
Jon Becker: Yeah.
Jay: So it's something. You have to be able to change your mindset. In this case of type of situation, there has been no surrender, no arrests, for sure, but you're still a police officer, so you have to respect some procedure, the policy, the SOP. We are not able to kill everybody, you know, even the tangos. So it's, you have to move between the police mindset and the military mindset.
Jon Becker: Yeah, I think one of the things that when we first started dealing with the US military for non lethal and they started putting the US military into riot control situations, I had a discussion with a colonel who basically said, this is, we don't, you know, this is not what we do. Force is a switch. When it's time to engage, we flip the switch and we turn on the military machine and it goes until somebody, until we reach surrender or an armistice and then we turn it off.
He said, it is very difficult for me to understand, like a police officer does, that force can go up and down at any point and can start at any point. You know, everybody you pull over could be a deadly threat to you or could be an old lady lost on her way home from the store.
And I think that line becomes finer when you get into tactical situations. And I think that there's a lot of discussion about demilitarizing police and how law enforcement militarizing is, you know, is promoting the wrong mindset. But I think that that's a naive position. When you look at a situation like Bataklan because you were in a war.
Jay: You're in the war. But yeah, to be able to be.
Jon Becker: Able to switch, yes, and that's a very difficult switch. I mean, that that requires a great deal of training and expertise. And I think that's why it is essential to have units like Brih who have the ability to engage this kind of a threat. I mean, I told you when we first did the debrief for this at Aardvark, I mean, I remember introducing you guys, briefing this and saying to the teams that were there, were there, you know, 200 guys, every single one of you has a tactical nightmare. You have a situation that you're afraid of and that haunts you and that you picture. And none of those are as bad as this situation, right?
Like you just go back to the hallway and explosive devices and AK-47s and hostages and smoke and you think about all of those things. To be able to effectively execute this hostage rescue in all of that chaos and all of that danger and all of that threat is a testament to how well your unit was trained and the kind of guys you've selected. Like there is – If you played this in a simulation game a hundred times, everybody is okay and only one guy is shot in the hand is never going to be the result of that simulation.
Jay: You're right.
Jon Becker: Yet somehow you guys managed to pull an amazing victory out of this horrific situation. What? When you look back at this, and this will be my last question, when you look back at this, what are you most proud of?
Jay: The behavior of the unit member? None of them. All of them. Sorry, all of them did the job. All of them got forward to the enemy through the theater. It was something you don't know how people will react before the situation happened. So that night, all the guys who were involved with us, with the unit, did the job, and without any hesitation. So this is something that you never forget.
Jon Becker: There are a lot of people that are alive today because of you guys that certainly would not have been alive. You know, I hope that your unit and, you know, you know how proud you should be of the actions you took that night. And, you know, I would encourage anybody that listens to this podcast to watch.
There is a three part or four part documentary series that Netflix did called November 13th, Paris, that shows the chaos and shows the events and talks to the victims and talks to the people that were there. And, you know, if it's certainly not, you know, family TV. It is violent. It is dark. Even I watched it in parts. Despite 35 years of being immersed in this. It's. It is a heavy documentary. But, you know, I would encourage any of our listeners to go back and watch that video. And, you know, buddy, I thank you so much for doing this with me. And, you know, like I said, you guys should be very proud of what you did.
Jay: Thanks, Jon! Thanks for the opportunity to share with you, and thanks again for the invitation!
Jon Becker: My pleasure! Thanks, buddy!
