Episode 15 – Chief Phil Hansen

Jon Becker: 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!

My guest today is a legend in the US tactical community, Chief Phil Hansen. Phil recently retired after serving as the chief of police for the Santa Maria, California Police Department. But prior to Santa Maria, Phil served as a captain for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, where he served for more than 36 years. During his tenure at LASD, he spent more than 24 years in full time tactical and emergency management positions, including nearly 20 years at the elite Special Enforcement Bureau, or SEB.

Phil has served as a board member for the National Tactical Officers association since 1991, including serving as the chairman of the board. He is a member of the executive committee for the California Post SWAT guidelines and has served as a board of inquiry member for LAPD and Oakland PD following high profile shootings.

Phil, thanks so much for being here today! I'm really excited to interview!

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, thank you, Jon! I'm really pleased to be here. It's an honor.

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with your early career? Like, let's go chronologically. Talk to me about when did you first become a deputy sheriff and why?

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, golly, we'll make it real quick here because it's trivia, but I was going to business school, Cal State Northridge at the time and wondering what I was going to do with my life. And I was working in a hardware store and lumberyard, and we hired off duty LAPD officers and I had some customers that were sheriff's deputies and we'd get talking and I was drawn to them.

I loved the camaraderie that they seemed to display, the sense of humor, the sense of composure and whatnot that they seemed to display. And there was something about it that really kind of drew me to it.

So I decided to become a reserve, actually, because my wife, bless her heart, and I'm still married 48 years later here. My wife said if I ever became a cop, she'd leave me. But that was obviously a bluff. Yeah, I talked her into the reserve thing anyway, so I decided to become reserve deputy sheriff, and I fell in love with it right away. I was reserved at West Hollywood sheriff station back before West Hollywood was a city, county strip down there in Hollywood. And I absolutely fell in love with it. And so I decided to go full time.

And so I went through the sheriff's academy again. I went through the reserve academy, of course, first time, and then the regular academy, and that was in 1978, February of 1978. And after graduating the sheriff's academy, went to men's central jail and La sheriff's department. You always start out with a custody assignment, and so I did a couple years at the men's central jail there and eventually went out to patrol.

Ended up being a field training officer at West Hollywood station again, and then promoted and became a patrol sergeant. Went to Lennox Sheriff's station, which was no longer exists, but it was down in the south central Los Angeles there, and very busy station. First year I worked there, we had 56 murders in one calendar year at that one station. So it was a busy place and at a busy time, too. And the late seventies, early eighties, apparently did a good job there and was recommended for a position at SCB.

And I ended up going to a SWAT school at SCB in 1986 and becoming a SWAT team leader at SCB, and had the good fortune to land there at a time where we had this incredible talent that was there to mentor us and had incredible peers like Sid Heal. Sid was one of my fellow team leaders, and he was actually my mentor sergeant. When I first got there, Sid had been there for a couple years before I got there.

And so that started out the whole direction on the tactical part of my career, if you will, spent 13 years as a team leader at SCB, 16 years as a sergeant, total. Cause I love being a sergeant. I love being a team leader there. I remember one time there were six team leaders there at SCB. The one with the least tenure at the bureau had eight years there. And there was a lieutenant's test being offered, and we all decided in unison not to take it, which really irritated the brass there. But we were also happy doing what we were doing.

And there was great balance at the unit at the time because of the level of experience that we had. But I did eventually take the lieutenant's exam, promote, went and worked emergency operations Bureau, patrol and then emergency operations Bureau, and then was transferred back to SCB as a lieutenant. I was the SWAT lieutenant there, the team commander for another six years. So just over 19 years at SCB.

Jon Becker: Phil, let's dig into your first stint at SCB. You got there as a sergeant.

Chief Phil Hansen: Correct.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about what's going on in the world. And what's going on at SCB at the time?

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, as far as SCB was concerned, we were just past the 84 Olympics or, you know, still gotta been the glow, the afterglow of that, if you will. There was a tremendous focus still on, I believe, with our team and, and across the street at LAPD as well.

I think there was a tremendous focus on HRT, on hostage rescue issues at that time, because that's what we focused on so much leading up to the 1984 Olympics. They were, you know, naturally, everybody was in fear that we'd have something along the lines of a Munich hostage takeover or something like that.

So hostage rescue was king at that time, and that drove tactics. And naturally that meant, usually, speed, you know, trying to get to the hostages and either eliminate the hostage takers or separate them from the hostages before they can be harmed, the hostages can be harmed. And so speed is at a premium, obviously, in hostage rescue.

Now, you mentioned what's going on. You ask what's going on in the outside world. We're now ramping up into, really, the height of the war on drugs at the same time, and, uh, the rock house era. So you had all these fortified locations selling drugs, tons of narco work out there, a lot of warrants being done, and a lot of people getting killed, a lot of officers getting killed on warrant services.

And I think we did what came natural at first. We tried to apply what we had learned in hostage rescue tactics to another theater, the war on drugs. So speed was at a premium, and I think it remains that way a lot of places today where it's all about speed, surprise, and overwhelming force, that kind of thing. And for lack of better, everybody wants to coin a new term for everything every couple of years, but I'll call it dynamic entry.

And by that, I mean rapid movement through a house to permit destruction of evidence or take people into custody, and hopefully take them by surprise, if you will. And we tried to apply that to drug warrants, and I think that was done on a broad basis across the country and resulted in many, many, many bad shootings and officer deaths. And by bad shootings, I mean sometimes shooting people that didn't need to be shot, shooting non compartment combatants, you know, that kind of thing. And it still manifests itself to this day where that's practiced.

And that's one of those things that the debate rages on, on that in some places. But I'm a firm believer in slowing things down, and I'm very slowing things down whenever you can. If you have a mission profile that demands speed, like a hostage rescue, then you should be proficient at speed. And you. You can apply that because, uh, because of what it is you're trying to achieve, and a hostage rescue, you're trying to save another human life.

And so in doing that, I am willing to take on more risk than I am to save a bag of dope. We've seen too many fine young officers, deputy sheriffs, agents killed chasing dope through a house or thinking that they have some tactical advantage because they're moving quickly.

The bottom line is you need for surprise. I mean, for speed to be effective, you need surprise. They go hand in hand. Speed's only really effective and safe if you have total surprise on the thing. Well, if you are complying in any way, shape, or form with knock and notice requirements, or even if you're just stymied at the front door for a little bit, you know, lots of times it takes a couple of shots with that Ramdez to get in the front door.

By the time you get to that back bedroom, somebody's had time to arm themselves. And it's phenomenal to me how many people don't seem to recognize that fact. And when I taught warrant service extensively, I'd usually ask the class, if I came banging on your door at 03:00 in the morning or 04:00 in the morning, how long would it take you to have a gun in your hand?

Jon Becker: Seconds.

Chief Phil Hansen: And, yeah, you're talking to a bunch of police. Usually it's a matter of seconds. And that's not even the paranoid ones. Right? So it doesn't take that long to get that. And you're cutting your – If you're moving quickly, it's harder to assess target areas. You're cutting your decision making time down along with the decision making time of your adversary, and that leads to bad decisions often.

And we found it was, I'm very proud to say that to get back to SCB history, we were among the first, I think, in the countries, certainly amongst the large teams, highly recognized teams, to really start to put the brakes on dynamics on warrant service. And we did much more. There's a whole menu of options. It's not just dynamic entry as opposed to contain and call out. You can do breach and hold, you know, breach the door, hold up there, or breach, and then back off to a good position to cover and call people out.

So you've got a breach force. You can do what we used to call limited penetration or movement to contact where you. You breach that door and then you take some of that room or some of that house until you feel that, okay, we've lost that element of surprise now.

And then you lock it down and call people to you from there, or you can survey a place and take them down when he goes away, perhaps, you know, but there are so many options out there, and I think it's very narrow minded to get locked into that dynamics all the time. And I can point to case after case after case where I believe officers were needlessly killed because they tried to fit. They tried to fit a dynamic movement style into something where they had no element of surprise.

Jon Becker: Well, I think it's important to put context on it, too. Right? Special tactics, law enforcement. Special tactics is 50 years old. And in the first ten years of it, twelve years of it, early seventies, LAPD 71. In the first ten years of it, it was really kind of a counterinsurgent mindset. And the early incidents were Texas Tower and counter sniper. Then you have Munich in 72. And that starts the evolution of modern hostage rescue and hostage taking as a strategy for terrorists. And so that brings in the 84 Olympics to the US. It brings a massive expansion of special tactics, but it also brings the evolution of hostage rescue as a discipline.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. And it was, as you know, Jon Post Munich, and you had military special operations team stand up with a primary focus on hostage rescue, GSG9, GIG, everything, Delta and all wonderful people, patriots, outstanding tacticians. You can't say enough about any of them. But I'll tell you what they don't do on a daily basis. They don't serve warrants, and they don't deal with the Constitution that we deal with. They don't deal with the Los Angeles Times the next morning. You know, it's a different theater of operations.

And if it's hostage rescue you're looking at, it's a different mission priority. The saving of a life versus the saving of evidence or, you know, a destructive, destructible, or non-destructible, you know, narcotics or guns or just taking somebody into custody. You know, simply taking somebody into custody is not the same as trying to save of the human life that's in immediate jeopardy. And so why apply the same movement styles in all those cases?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think, though, when you guys first inherited the problem, right? So you get there in 86, SCB is still developing special tactics, is still developing to some degree. It's the golden age of special tactics. It's the founding of the NTOA. It's all of the things that kind of drive modern thinking but you were all still figuring out tactics.

Chief Phil Hansen: Oh, absolutely.

Jon Becker: There was no – I interviewed Mike Hillman, and we talked about, you know, preparation, preparation for the 84 summer games and how they were. They were literally figuring out how, you know, how do we take down a bus and what happens if they go in an apartment, and how do we do that? And so I think it's easy to look back and go, well, in 86, you know, everything was dynamic, but you guys were constantly evolving. And I imagine between you being a sergeant and you being a lieutenant, even coming back to SCB, it changed.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. Well, as you know, at SCB, we have six teams within the team, within the weapons team detail. At SCB, there are six subteams, if you will, by colors, red team, blue team, that kind of thing. And obviously, we interact with one another. We back each other up when we send out a duty team for a barricaded suspect incident or something like that. It's usually a combination of two or three teams going out there to handle that thing, but there's one lead team, if you will, one handling team.

And so where I'm going with this is within the SCP community. There. There wasn't a unanimous decision to make a change on this, you know, going from dynamics to alternative methods of service. There was a big, make it, call it a lively discussion amongst us there at the time, and some not always good natured ribbing between the teams that wanted to go fast and the teams that wanted to go slow, you know, kind of thing.

But I'm proud to say I think the smart way, the more tactically sound way won out over time. And by the time I came back, and I was only gone three years, really, before I left as a sergeant. I was there as a team leader for 13 years.

By the time I, even before I left the bureau, had pretty much transitioned into this. Hey, we have a menu of options to choose from here. Let's pick what's safest, look at the overall mission objective, look at the physical characteristics of the target location, the building, and decide from a menu of options what's the safest way to achieve that mission while ensuring the safety of our personnel and non participants on the thing. And so it's an analytical process. You go through and you plan this thing. It's not just, okay, it's a warrant service.

So up the middle on three, it's something that you look at closely and you say, what do we think is going to ensure our safety and get the mission done at the same time? And that was being done before I left as a sergeant, really. Everybody had bought into it by that time. And then. So by the time I came back as a lieutenant, which was only three years later, it was very comfortable in that regard. And I think they're a premier. The bureau is a premier warrant service team because of the intelligent way that they look at that particular problem, which is your bread and butter.

You know, in terms of weapons teams, hostage rescues, even in a busy place like Los Angeles, you might get one a year, one or two, maybe. Maybe go a couple of years without one. Barricades are regular events, but they're much less frequent than high risk warrant service. You know, we do a couple hundred of those a year.

And so I think it's – They do an outstanding job of looking at each one individually and weighing all the options and saying what's the best way, given the suspects profile, weapons, known target location, fortifications, you know, all the above. What are we trying to achieve here? And then come up with the, you know, the safest way to get it done.

Jon Becker: Well, it's, you know, I think implicit in that. You know, the, one of my favorite Maslow sayings is the only tool you have is a hammer. Tend to view all your problems as nails, which, like I've always said, there's a corollary to that, which is if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: Because you don't have another tool.

Chief Phil Hansen: That's right.

Jon Becker: And I think that as you look at the evolution of the bureau and you look at the evolution of special tactics and, and the role that the NTOA played in that, really, a lot of what you guys were doing was buying a saw and a screwdriver. And, you know, you speak of it as a menu because you had a number of items on the menu.

Chief Phil Hansen: Right.

Jon Becker: And you guys were never satisfied with, you know, as somebody who's dealt with the team since 80, I mean, I've been related to SCB since 87.

Chief Phil Hansen: Right.

Jon Becker: The team is never satisfied with what it has. And it's constantly, how can we do this better? How can we improve this? And it's constantly, what else can we put on the menu?

Chief Phil Hansen: And that's, honestly, Jon, you just hit on something that makes it so much fun to work there. It's why people like me went there and spend 19 plus years there or more. In some cases, people spent up to 30 years there at that unit. It's invigorating to be in an environment where people are thinking and always looking for a better way to do things. And really, it's funny. I'm going to digress just for a second here, but I was interviewed one time by a writer, a journalist that was doing a piece on SCP for some magazine. It was like, I forget which one. It was one of the tactical magazines out there.

And I think they mostly went to military special operations teams, but they also did law enforcement. And I remember him asking me what the most important qualities. What did I look for in a SWAT candidate? And I said, well, that's easy. Character and intelligence. And he actually looked at me kind of funny, like he thought I was going to say, well, you got to be able to run a sub 4000, 10K, and then come back and push 400 pounds and then be able to shoot the certainty score or whatever.

And I, you know, I explained to him, I said, with respect to intelligence, we're problem solvers. Policemen, by nature are problem solvers. They're going out solving problems for the public at large out there. And when those patrol assets or detective assets get in a problem, they call the SWAT team to help them get out of a problem. And we go out there and we analyze things and we solve a problem. And so you've got to be a thinker. Is the one thing, the most important piece of equipment you have sits on top of your shoulders there.

And then the other thing I said was character, because I can teach you to move through a house. I can teach you to shoot and give me a little time. We can even get you in shape, you know? But I can't teach you to do the right thing when no one's looking.

So that's the culture you want, is you want a culture of thinkers and people that believe in the mission and want to go out there and do it right?

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's funny. I have the good fortune of working with a lot of the top units in the world, and I also have, because of the debrief, the ability to interview a lot of guys like you. And the one recurring theme in selection worldwide, I want smart guys. It's not, it's like you said, it's like you think, oh, you know, I want the guy that can bench, you know, 400 pounds. It is in talking to tactical leaders, especially leaders who are leading, you know, top tier units.

Chief Phil Hansen: Right.

Jon Becker: Give me smart guys.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: You know, I interviewed Lee Macmillan from, from LAPD, interviewed Mike Hillman. Like everybody said, hail give me smart guys. Because ultimately that is the challenge, right? You are putting them into a very complicated situation in a very short time frame. They better have a good processor.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. And I'll say this, Jon, real quick. Since we were discussing a certain period of time at SEB, like the mid eighties, those of us that were fortunate enough to come in at that time, you mentioned Lee McMillian. I would consider him a peer of my same kind of a timeframe. We overlapped quite a bit in our careers. I know Lee is still over there working, but our generation, if you will, this Sid Heal, Jack Ewell, myself that came in there as youngsters, we were able to be mentored by John Coleman and Ron McCarthy and Mike Hillman and people like that.

And you walked away from working with them with this desire to learn more and to teach it, too. They taught you that you had a responsibility to pass on what you would learn to the next generation, too. And, you know, Lee is a good example of that. It's just we were very fortunate to be privy to the insights of that group that were the real pioneers and SWAT, and had that tremendous passion about it.

I remember getting on an airplane. This would have been in the nineties, at the end of a long conference, I think was an NTOA conference on the east coast. And I've been teaching all week, and as you know very well, that's a tiring endeavor.

You know, I'm hammered at the end of a week of teaching out there, and I get on the plane and I'm sitting next to Ron McCarthy and who's a dear friend, and Ron starts going through the newspaper right away looking for articles about SWAT, police shootings and stuff. And he couldn't quit talking about it the whole way back. And it made me laugh, you know, I thought, you know, you got it in your blood. You know, even if you're just bone tired of, you have that desire to learn more and become better and then to share that with other people. And that's a huge part of leadership within that industry.

Jon Becker: I think it's a good opportunity for us to take a quick segue here, digression, and talk about NTOA, because, as you said, John Coleman was one of the guys that mentored you. I was also fortunate enough to spend time with John and, and be mentored by John. And I think it's important to put context on the founding of NTOA and kind of because you've had a very active role in NTOA kind of from the beginning.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes.

Jon Becker: And so talk to me about that. Talk to me about, like, the founding of it and that.

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, it's a wonderful story, really. Jon, I hope he, you know, he's been. He's advancing in age now or, you know, he's been out of the business for a while. And you and I talked about this before. People forget, unless it's memorialized and that we really give credit where credit it's due. And that's a name that should come up in every SWAT school, really.

John wrote the first textbook on SWAT, a guide to the development of special weapons and tactics teams by John Coleman. It was 1992. No, 1982. Yeah, I was gonna say 1982. Yes, I'm sorry. 1982. He wrote that textbook. And so you're, you know, you're talking very early on.

Jon Becker: SWAT’s ten years old.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yeah, SWAT’s ten years old. And so John writes this book, a hardcover book on this. And a year later, 1983, he starts the NTOA. And what John did and for our, for our listeners, you know, these are obviously the days of mass communication. You can write an email and send it out to 500 departments and people, and it's a ten minute exercise or something like that. John wrote letters because there was no computers back then, no personal computers or phones or even. He wrote letters to, like, 200 police agencies in this country. He wrote a letter to every agency could think of that could be large enough to have, potentially have a tactical team.

And he asked a question of them. Do you see the need for some association that could serve as a means of training and information exchange amongst tactical officers? And if so, would you be willing to join that organization and be a part of it? He did his own national survey on this out of his house.

Jon Becker: By mail.

Chief Phil Hansen: By mail.

Jon Becker: Handwritten.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep. Snail mail, handwritten. And he got an overwhelming response positively that, yes, this is something that needs to be done. And John formed the NTOA, and he was the sole director, founder director. His wife, Janice, who's a wonderful woman and a tremendous writer in her own right, was the editor of the magazine.

And John basically ran that association, John and Janice, for ten years and gave a national voice to tactical officers and gave us an opportunity to have a medium. These days, you can listen to a podcast, you can read magazines. You can find out what other people are doing. You can see an incident happen somewhere. Just bring it up on your computer and find out what was done in the early 1980s that just didn't exist. You needed a publication. You needed a hard publication, something to share.

Here's what's going on. Here's some incidents to read about. Here's some debriefs. Oh, wow! Here's what's training. John would put a training calendar not for NTOA, because at that time, NTOA didn't offer its own training other than the once a year annual conference. But he would ask, he would look a canvas for who's putting on classes in this country, and he would have a publisher training calendar in that magazine so that the people that were interested could, you know, could get out there and attend training.

So he was a tremendous driving force, and his earliest members, and he called them consultants, if you look at the first page of the magazine or like, people like Ron McCarthy and Mike Hillman and some of the old SCB team leaders, Charlie Araujo, some of these folks. And John really got that thing rolling. And then about ten years later, you got to remember, now John's a retired captain from the sheriff's department. He's running this big organization on his own, and it's getting bigger and more robust, and he's getting a little older and tired, and, you know, it's time to hand it off. It's like, I don't need another full time job doing this.

And so he handed it off to another gentleman that did some very good things in his own right, but it basically started to take on a different look, expanded to regional training courses. I think our first NTOA regional training course was in 1994, and I was one of the instructors at that. And as you know, it's grown today now to where NTOA is doing hundreds of courses every year and has a national presence in terms of policy formulation and things like that.

And it's important to mention here because, for instance, CATO is a wonderful state association for California, California association of Tactical Officers. NTOA was never meant to compete with state associations. We work in conjunction with one another. CATO does a fabulous job.

But at the time, there was no CATO. There were no state associations. And then as the state associations have become more robust, regional and state associations, NTOA, there's no reason to do local training in those areas because CATO can provide their own or whatever, Rocky Mountain tactical or Texas tactical or, you know, there's a number of Florida SWAT association. There's some very large, robust, first rate status state and regional associations.

So NTUA in those areas, they can focus on things of national interest and be a voice for the state associations. They try to have a very close relationship with the state associations and be a voice at the national level on things. And, you know, and one example is something like the national SWAT standards and things like that.

Jon Becker: Obviously, when NTOA starts, like there's only one interest nationwide in special tactics. That's the development of special tactics. And I learning what everybody's doing and what's working and not working. And I remember early, like, the n two ways magazine was almost like an intelligence report early on, right? Like, there were candid, open debriefs of, you know, we tried this and it didn't work.

And then we tried this, and, you know, it's, every article was groundbreaking, right? It was. I remember in 90, early nineties, I wrote a two part series for NTO on flashbangs. And it was the first thing that I'm aware of that had ever been published in a magazine. Talking about the legal aspects of using flashbacks. Like, it was just, it was insane how raw and new everything was.

And I credit John Coleman with the development of special tactics nationwide, because had he not formed the NTOA, you would have never had this kind of development that occurred. It would have been 30 years instead of ten. And so, yeah, I mean, Jon, when you look at the history of special tactics, John is an icon in that evolution.

And I think initially when it starts out, obviously, that's a single interest. As it develops, you start to notice there are regional interests, but the way Texas police is different than the way California police. And so their special tactics are different. I still to this day, do not understand why somebody would not be an NTOA member and also belong to their local association or even, even others. Like if you said, hey, what should I belong to?

As a young SWAT cop in California, what should I belong to? You should belong to CATO, you should belong to the NTOA. You should probably belong to TTPOA, the organizations that are publishing, that are teaching, that are advocating, you need to belong to, and you need to understand how other people are doing things.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. You hit it right on the head, Jon, because there are regional interests that can be handled by that regional association, regional training needs. As you rightly pointed out, Texas doesn't necessarily work the same way as we do in California. So it's completely appropriate that each state have their own association where they focus on those regional needs at the same time. We spent some time talking about this earlier already, how important it is to see what other people are doing and learn from each other.

And so that's where the NTOA can provide that national perspective, too. You know, you can be working in California and go, whoa, did you see this incident that they had in West Virginia here or something, and how this was handled? So I think it's important to be a member of both. Absolutely. And that's part of being, certainly if you're a leader, certainly because part of being a leader is a continuing educational process and you have to stay up on what's going on for the sake of your people and the sake of your mission.

Jon Becker: Completely agree. And I think to go back to one of the things you touched on with the NTOA NGO was the first one to develop national SWAT standards.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes. Let me address that real quick. The first state to have state SWAT guidelines was California, and I happen to have been on the executive committee on SWAT for post that promulgated those, along with Ken Hubbs from CATO.

Jon Becker: And Ken Hubbs, the founder of CATO.

Chief Phil Hansen: The founder of CATO, said Hale was sometimes in and out of that committee in different areas. John Coleman had a part in it. It was a fascinating experience because it was, it pitted us, the subject matter experts in some cases, against representatives on the committee from Cal chiefs of police and Cal sheriffs, whose, a lot of them, their primary interest was budgetary as opposed to, you know, pure SWot efficiency or tactical excellence, if you will.

Let's just put it like that. And as you can imagine, there were arguments about how much training time and what constitutes a team. And we forged some very good compromises on that to come up with the first iteration of the California SWAT guidelines.

And the reason they're called guidelines is because the guidelines post doesn't have to pay for if they make it a standard, there's some reimbursement that goes on between California post and the local agencies. So they make it a guideline, which is basically a standard that they don't have to pay for.

Jon Becker: Here, beat this standard. And if you don't, we're going to hold you to it, but we're not going to give you the money.

Chief Phil Hansen: What you're going to do is you're going to get sued in court and they'll say, why didn't you meet this post guideline? You know, so it's, it's really enforced by the civil courts and whatnot. But we, but we did the first guidelines and, and then a year later, NTOA promulgated the first national SWAT standards document, and I was on that committee that, that was involved in that as well and wrote those. And it was largely based on California's model because that was the first one in the country and there was a lot of great ideas in it.

And I tell you what, both of those documents were incredibly important, John, and a lot of people questioned at the time, well, who are you? NTOA to put out a standard that we're supposed to be meeting in West Virginia or whatever these other states. Our concern at the time, we debated this on the NTOA board for quite some time. Our concern was that, but if we didn't do it, somebody else was going to. That the federal government was going to require standards of some kind.

And we didn't want some graduate students from National Institute of Justice, NIJ, or somebody writing these things. We wanted actual SWAT practitioners to write these things. And so we felt it was our obligation to do that and get a reasonable thing on the books. And it has been largely accepted. A lot of states have actually adopted it as their standard, and the federal government recognizes it in a lot of ways. And it's – it was the right thing to do at the right time. It was important. And the, the California guidelines were super critical, too.

And like I said, a lot of chiefs were not happy with that. I took a lot of heat on a couple of panel discussions from some chiefs because they saw it just costing them money. Yeah, but, but what you had, John, before that was literally any chief of police in California could pick his half a dozen best buddies on the department, get them some bdus and some AR-15s, and say, that's my SWAT team.

And we were having horrific shootings. You know, you have a super high level of performance and pursuit of excellence by some teams, and then you could have teams like that that would just go in and we had some horrific shootings. And that's what the public's perception of SWAT, of course, is going to be what happens on those negative ones as often as not, you know, and it needed to be done. It really, we need to continually raise the bar in this endeavor.

Jon Becker: It's interesting because, you know, California has a history of making bad law. It's what we do.

Chief Phil Hansen: Exactly.

Jon Becker: We have a bad incident and then we go past stupid laws that we then can't enforce because they're too complicated. And we usually just make the situation worse. But you see, right now in law enforcement, California's past several standards, many of which have been drafted actually by anti law enforcement organizations.

So the AB-481 is a perfect example of where we're trying to regulate the use of military equipment by law enforcement. And one of the things that I really appreciated about the early post guidelines, early NTOA movements is it was proactive. It was, let's go establish, you even said it, let's go establish standards before somebody imposes them on us.

Chief Phil Hansen: Exactly.

Jon Becker: And I think that one of the mindsets that has changed over years is we've kind of moved away from, let's make proactive rules to, okay, we're not going to talk about it. We're not going to do anything. And I think what happens is you end up with rules. AB-481, which grew out of an ACLU report, which grew out of Radley Balco's book, it's bad law. Things are being called military equipment that aren't military equipment. They're trying to regulate things that are in no way, you know, dangerous. Bearcat being a perfect example. But I think that what you guys did early on with the SWAT guidelines and the NTOA by being proactive was prevent a lot of that bad legislation.

Chief Phil Hansen: I wholeheartedly agree. And it raised the professional bar. It really did. You know, one of the things it did, John, both documents, documents encouraged originalization, too, so that there were all these, prior to those documents, there were so many small standalone teams with half a dozen people on them calling themselves a SWAT team, and that really, they were ineffectual and they gave the whole discipline a bad look, you know, I mean, because of somebody reading the newspaper when they seed I six guys from a little town in the Central Valley of California or whatever, dressed in BDus with AR-15s and whatnot. And it says SWAT team, you know, does this or that or has bad shooting. That reflects on all of us. And what these documents did was raise the bar in terms of some training minimums, in terms of what constitutes a team, what kind of numbers that you need.

And we had some pretty good compromises on that. And it really encouraged regionalization, too. The public gets a better product out of it. You get a more professional product. And the other thing it's important to note is that the California guidelines were recently updated, revised.

I happen to be on that committee again that did those, along with Jack Yule from SCB and then NTOA, I think, is now on their fourth iteration of the guidelines. And we wrote from the get go, I happen to be the chairman of the board, I think, of NTOA at that time. When we wrote those, the original ones, was that this is going to be a living document. I know I was the chairman because I took a lot of heat for it.

Jon Becker: You remember people yelling at you?

Chief Phil Hansen: I remember writing an article explaining why we did it. But it's in its fourth iteration and it was designed from the get go to be a living document. We said, look, everybody calm down. If you didn't get input this time around, we're going to have another shot at this in two years or three years. And they've been very good about keeping up on that and revising it. Times change. Equipment changes so quickly.

You know, it's funny, the latest iteration of the California guidelines, when we were putting that together, we were talking about things we never would have dreamed of during the first one, like drones. You know, how we implement the use of drones and things like that. So it has to be updated regularly to be relevant. But the basic product is still there, and it's really quite good.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it's one of my favorite sayings. A friend of mine, Todd Mackler, says, I have a driver's license. My 17 year old daughter has a driver's license, and Mario Andretti has a driver's license. We're all drivers, but we don't all drive the same. And I think it is very seductive in special tactics to equate SWAT teams as SWAT teams. It's one thing, it's a monolith, and it isn't regionally. It isn't. You have full time teams. You have part time teams. You have completely different mission sets. You have very different skill sets. And without some kind of guidelines, some kind of regulation, everything's a SWAT team.

Chief Phil Hansen: That's a topic all in and of itself. You said something a little while ago about California, which any of us that are. I'm a native californian. I love the state, but we do. We're the goofiest state in the country. There's no two ways about it. But we also do some things right. Jon, and one thing I learned, I think I've taught SWAT schools in 31 states in this country and a few. A few other countries. And once I got out of this state, started teaching other places the importance of having a post and a good one, something like that, that had some minimal standards on things. And training became very apparent to me.

And I'll tell you a quick story. I was on a range one time. I won't say what state or whatever, but this young man had a gun. It was the biggest gun I've ever seen in my life. It was like a big double action 45 Smith thing or something. He needed a wheel on the thing to carry it around, and he kept. When the. I was just helping watch the line for safety purposes. And when the rangemaster would call for a double tap or whatever, he'd put him right in the ground, right in front of himself. Usually, you know, never hit. The target was bounce, and the rangemaster was going out of his mind.

So I said, let me talk to him. I'll take him aside. And this young man had. I looked. The first thing I noticed, he was wearing apparel. The gun was huge. It didn't look like it really fit his hand. But he also had gloves on that were taped, leather gloves that were taped with duct tape or electrical tape to his wrist. It just struck me as odd. I said, is that the gun that you carry normally in patrol? He goes, no, sir, it's my SWAT gun.

Then I said, okay, have you ever, do you shoot with those gloves, or do you wear those gloves? They're my SWAT gloves. And it started to dawn on me. Oh, boy, bless his heart. He was just doing what the guys at work did or whatever. But it was obvious to me that there was no real guidance for some people and that there was a time when they just picked people.

Like I said, a chief has a lot of autonomy in a city, even in place like California, and they could just pick their buddies and throw some bdus on them and have some rifles and say, and back in the day, that's my SWAT team with little or no training. And all of these things, these regulations that we have or guidelines at this point were really raised the bar. They were much needed. And a lot of that started with John Coleman and NTOA and starting to gel this thing together, you know, and exchange information.

Jon Becker: Yeah, 100%. I think John's role and the NTOAs role is easy to overlook and easy to forget to as that centralized source of information, especially now that information is ubiquitous. It's very easy to share things. But for the first 15 years of my career, if you didn't go to a debrief personally, the NTOA was the.

Chief Phil Hansen: The only source you were only way.

Jon Becker: Going to hear about an event that happened and what they're doing now.

Chief Phil Hansen: And I'm still a, what's called a director emeritus, which means I'm an old guy that gives occasional advice, but they have done a wonderful job of putting themselves in a position of recognition with the politicos in Washington and whatnot, so that when there is legislation coming out on a federal level that might affect SWAT teams and stuff, we're actually the go to resource for them where they want to have subject matter, expert input, and things like that. And that's important to have. If that's not there, then you're just left, you know, kind of left to float downstream and see what they come up with.

Jon Becker: So, and with politicians in the United States currently, it's going to be stupid. Oh, let's just call it what it is. Like they're not going to get it right.

Chief Phil Hansen: I won't argue.

Jon Becker: They're going to screw it up. Like, it's, that's, that's the thing that people forget. It's like, well, you know, let's not talk to the media. Well, if you don't talk to the media, only the other side is talking to the medieval, and the result is stupid law and bad policy.

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, no matter who's in charge, you know what, and you just hit on something if you don't, that's another place. The NTOA fills an important role is we'll get one of these high profile shootings sometimes, and they'll, they'll, the media will get a hold of NTOA, perhaps for a statement on that kind of thing.

And now you get a reasonable statement. You know, somebody's putting out something reasonable because if they're going to find somebody to talk to and if you shine them on, who knows who's going to be pontificating about what it is you did out there.

So I would rather trust my fate to some people that have a demonstrated understanding of what we do for a living and have experience in it. I think the NTOA fills a very vital role. And don't forget, there are many states that don't have a CATO or don't have a Florida SWAT association, and they're still very dependent on NTOA for a lot of their training. So it's a, you know, it's a very viable, strong organization that had not only an important historical role, but presently an important role as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah, there are, you know, there are, I would say, probably the majority of states that do not have a strong, right regional association. They might have a regional association. They may get together and train. They may share information, but they're not necessarily able to command national level instructors and bring the latest doctrine back to teams.

Chief Phil Hansen: Right. You know, just one quick example of a crossover I mentioned, I was on the revision committee for the California guidelines about three years ago now, and one of the things that the California Post wanted to include in the guidelines, the new ones, was a glossary, if you will. And we could have argued for two years about this word, that word, you know, what should be in there in terms of a tactical glossary, if you will. And I volunteered the NTOAs glossary, which was pretty dug unsubstantial. And it was funny because the coordinator from post says, will they let us use that?

And I said, that's what it's about. That's what we're here for, is to exchange it for. I said, I guarantee you can use it, but I will get the current chairman to sign off on it. NTOA Glossary now with one or two very superficial changes is contained in the California guidelines. Now, that's important because the more we work together, you know, we're all dependent on one another, and we need to speak the same language.

You know, it's one thing that the fire department's always, I'm not a big fan of the, I now make fun of firemen all the time, but that's one thing they do outshine us on, is interoperability between, you know, states, cities, companies. They speak a very common language and they work well together, and that's something we need to work on, too, in this industry.

Jon Becker: Well, and I think one thing that's important to understand is that information flows downward. And the, you know, from early in my career till now, the information has flown from those who have the most access. So those that have the most trained personnel, the most operations, the most access to information. La sheriffs, LAPD, share that information regionally. Right? They share it with all the agencies around. The La county sheriff trains the large majority of SWAT teams, not only in La county, but a lot of the surrounding counties.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely right.

Jon Becker: SCB is, is, you know, the primary training source for most SWAT teams in, in southern California. And so that information flows downward. And if you are in a major metropolitan area. Right. So if you're adjacent to, if you're in the county of Los Angeles, you have a full time SWAT team. You have two full time SWAT teams, LAPD and La Sheriff, who have 200 operations plus a piece and have an international profile that brings them access to all of the tactical units worldwide. So they have an amazing access of information. And if you're in La county, you are a beneficiary of that information.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: But if you are in a small county in Wisconsin, you're never going to have access to that information without the NTOA and without an association.

Chief Phil Hansen: You're right. And as an aside, as you know, NTOA does regional training, the national conference, but also hundreds of regional training courses, and many of those are taught, and certainly at the national conference by La sheriff, LAPD personnel. So that it does, it's another method to get some of those things that are happening here out to some of those places that wouldn't otherwise see it.

I mean, I taught, I couldn't tell you how many warrant service classes and things like that for NTUA over the years and different places. And it was like, wow, you know, you, when I would start talking about slowing it down, you'd think I was speaking in another language. But usually by the end of the week, they could see the thought process and the wisdom in it.

And so it's a great way to – It's still, as I said, the state associations are robust, and they're fabulous, and they're the best at what they do. Cato is a wonderful organization. They should work together as a team. You know, they're not in competition with one another. They just do different, slightly different things. But we're all trying to achieve the same goals, which in the end is.

Jon Becker: Is operator safety?

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: In the end, that, and that's, that's always been like, I, you know, going back early in my career, a lot of the knowledge that I gained early on was going to debriefs and, and it was sitting down and listening to teams talking about their ops and what went wrong. And, you know, so it created a culture for the business, and it instilled a culture in me that you have. You are a steward of information.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes.

Jon Becker: You have an obligation to share information when you have it. And the root of the debrief, it's the root of the lecture series that we've done. But it's easy to forget that, and it's easy to become focused on. It's my information and trying to monetize it or trying to control it, or I'm the only one that can teach it. And the net effect of that is usually somewhere downstream from that information flow. The river runs dry, and a small team in a small region doesn't get information that would have saved somebody's life, which to me is really a moral problem.

Chief Phil Hansen: I would agree wholeheartedly. I'm glad you used the word moral. That's once again, going back to the earlier days. That's something a lot of us learned from John and from Mike Hillman and Ron, people like that. That was our obligation as men, as SWAT officers to pass this on to others peers and those that come behind us.

And look at Sid, 160, some odd articles he wrote that were published in the tactical edge over the years, not to mention, and of course, his other articles in Cato magazines and other publications. Three books or four books. I've written over 40 articles on tactics and leadership and different subjects for the tactical edge. And sometimes Cato published some of my stuff, and that's to try to share with people and to try and share what people shared with me. You know, I don't think any of us have an original thought, you know?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I'm not convinced there is original thought anywhere, and I'm not convinced that anybody ever invents anything.

Chief Phil Hansen: We all got it from somebody. So I always, to tell you the truth, I find it offensive. And you put it right when people want to monetize it, or they say, well, I want to put my copyright on this and nobody else can. I think that's kind of sad, to tell you the truth. It shouldn't be.

Jon Becker:

That's funny, because I tell the story. I was really early in my career, I was probably 20, started 17. I'm probably 22, 23. And Sid, we hosted a flashbang class that Sid taught. And we get to the end, and Sid and I had been friends at that point a couple of years. We get the end of the class, and this is one is overheads, right? You had, you had actual overheads, right?

Chief Phil Hansen: I used to use them all. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Overhead projectors.

Chief Phil Hansen: And by the way, we used to make fun of Rob McCarthy when he showed up with his carousel, his slide carousel, you know, and we were using high tech stuff like overheads and then the first iterations of PowerPoint. But you get left in the dust pretty quick. At my age, I'm feeling pretty ancient.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's fair, but. So Sid's teaching this class, and we get to the end of the class, and a guy walks up and he says, hey, lieutenant. He says, yeah. He says, is there any way I copy your slides? Sid says, what do you mean? He gives your overheads? Is there any way to copy those? And, you know, I could buy the book from NTOA.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Because at that point, Sid had literally written the only flashbang manual that everybody was using nationwide. But he said, can I copy your slides? So he hands them to the guy, goes, yeah, go copy and bring it back. I looked at Sid and said, you know, you don't let the guy copy your information. He said, yeah, so, like, you put a lot into that. There's a lot of work. And I'm still young and, like, you know, naive, and I'm thinking, man, that guy's gonna go teach your class.

And which, of course, with Sid, nobody could ever do, but so he goes back, copies him, comes back, he says, thanks so much, you know, no problem. And I said, Sid, I don't understand why you'd let that guy copy the class. Like, he could just go teach the class and said, good. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, you never hoard information.

Chief Phil Hansen: No.

Jon Becker: Information keeps people alive. Don't ever hoard information. And it was such a profound moment for me because he was kind of moderately condescending when he said it. Like, I can't believe you would try to mod, you know, like you would even think that way.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it impacted me and forever has driven my view of information. Like you were, you were a steward of information that someone else gave you, right? You don't, you don't get to keep it. So let's, let's jump back just real quick because I want to pick up something else in your history. So you're at a CB as a lieutenant.

Chief Phil Hansen: So you're there a total of 19 years plus. I didn't quite make that 20 year plaque. I was about 19 and a half years when I transferred out.

Jon Becker: And then where'd you go from there?

Chief Phil Hansen: I went back to emergency operations bureau for a while. I spent about a total of four years there doing critical incident management on a county wide scale where SCB, it's a tactical scale and a single incident kind of thing. And at Eobden we were doing fires, floods, earthquakes, civil disturbance on a countywide scale, countywide mutual aid, large event planning like the Rose parade, terminal roses parade, or actually, I hate to say this, but probably the most poignant but also most valuable things I did, I planned for line of death funerals for deputy sheriffs, which there's a lot of planning that goes into that. You usually got about 5000 people that attend those.

So there's a lot that goes into something like that. And it has to be done in about three days usually. So. And you're there on that day of the event from 05:00 a.m., setting up the parking, you know, pattern and everything till I literally at the end of the day, stayed until the, you know, till the hole was filled in the ground. And I picked up water bottles and stuff out of the graveyard stuff before we left.

So difficult days, but very satisfying in terms of you felt like you did something for, for a family and for your department and the people that cared about this individual. And unlike a lot of that emergency management stuff, which is a lot of planning, but it never happens sometimes too, you know. So that was something that you really saw start to finish. And all those years, 20 years nearly of experience serving warrants and things like that, that comes into play and that sort of thing too, because you know how to put an operation together in short time and make it run, you know.

So anyway, I went there for a little bit. And then I, I was actually finishing up my master's degree at that time over at USC, and then I got promoted to captain and I spent a couple of years as a captain on the department.

Jon Becker: Oh, so you left SCB as a lieutenant?

Chief Phil Hansen: I left as a lieutenant.

Jon Becker: I thought you promoted and left.

Chief Phil Hansen: No, no, I left as lieutenant and then I was. I don't want to go into it, but I was. It was a rough time in my career has had. It was a time when there was some favoritism, some things going on in the department. People wanted to put friends places and stuff like that.

So without getting into that, it was a real, I will say this, it's probably one of the best articles I think I've written. It was called leading through career adversity. That's what I wrote and I'm proud to say, and I still have the email to this day. I saved it. I got a wonderful email from Siddhartha that said, phil, this is one of the best articles on leadership I've ever seen. This needs to be printed in the Marine Corps Gazette or whatever, but we all in the course of a career are going to have years that challenge us and that make us very upset.

And, you know, where you question your department, you question your happiness, it makes it hard to be a leader and to do your job. And what I found was that by refocusing on some other things like school and focusing on my people and getting my focus off myself and what I was not happy with on the part, you know, because it's funny, a lot of it had to do with when I was not happy worrying about myself.

And I said I figured out what the basic problem was. I need to be worried about my people more, not about myself. Here I worry about the mission, worry about your people. Find something else to consume your interest. And so I went back to school and everything, and it worked out real well. And I think people noticed that because a little leadership tip here, people know when you took a punch and they're going to watch you to see how you react. And I took a punch and I took it in stride and I just tried to better myself by going back to school and doing different things.

And then they really surprised me. They turned around, made me a captain and promoted me. So it was a tough couple of years in my career because I left a place SCB that I loved dearly and I would have wasn't forced, but it was an uncomfortable time because of some upper management leadership, things that were going on at the time, and I felt it was time to move on.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think it's, you know, one of the things I tell my kids is you only know how deep the well is when you go to the bottom of the well.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And those moments of adversity, those moments of darkness, those moments of looking inside are where you really find out what you're made of.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: And, and, you know, do you, do you, you know, take a punch, get on the ground, don't get back up and cry?

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: Or do you take a punch, move on in stride.

Chief Phil Hansen: And demonstrate leadership or blame everybody or be angry or be a non participant or say, I hate this place and all that? No, take the punch. Take it. Take it. Like I said, non gender specific. Take it like a man and, and, you know, go out and do your job and take care of your people and focus on the things that are most important. And real quick along those lines, define your, or redefine what winning is to you. We've all been taught since we were kids, John, that the good guys win in the end.

Well, I like to think that's true, and it's possible, but it's not going to manifest itself always in promotion or things like that. In other words, I've known a lot more, many more fine, fine men and women that retired, say, at the rank of lieutenant, that should have been captains, should have been commanders, but they never got that chance.

And you can be an exceptional administrator, exceptional tactical person, everything, but you won't always get the nod because sometimes you get confronted with people above you that your ethics don't line up and you're going to lose that battle because they outrank you and this kind of thing.

So, but the question is, so you're not going to win in terms of promotion, but here's where you win. You can look at yourself at the end of your career and say, I did the very best I could. I think I did what was right. And you're also going to win because once you retire, for all you guys out there that haven't retired yet, that nobody cares if you were a chief or a deputy or a lieutenant, that doesn't matter.

What matters is, were you a good person? You know, were you a contributor? Did you take care of your people? And the thing is, do you have a place of honor at that table amongst them? When you have a. When you're retired and you go in and there's a lot of honorable people that worked hard their career, and they say, hey, come on, over. Sit over.

You know, do you have a place, a welcome place at that table, or are you one of those guys? They look the other direction, you know, that's winning to me. Winning to me is looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, I did everything I could for my folks and knowing that wonderful people, I'm welcome amongst their company. So it doesn't always manifest itself in terms of promotion, though.

Jon Becker: So when you left, did you retire out of ub or…

Chief Phil Hansen: No, I got made captain, like I said. Much to my surprise, they promoted me to captain then, and they handed me a real interesting thing. I was kind of a sheriff. Baca actually said something to me that I was kind of proud of. He called me a mechanic on time because they would send me places where, when I went back to SCB, they were having problems as a lieutenant. They were having problems at the lieutenant level. They'd made a couple promotions that were sketchy and they needed to do some stuff.

And then I went to – When they promoted me to captain, they sent me to reserve forces Bureau, which the department had like 400. At first I thought, oh, they're putting me out to pasture here. Well, there's – Geez, what do we have? 800 reserves? 800 plus reserves on the department. 400 explorers, 36 community. What did they call them?

They're basically community groups, advisory councils, the Chinese Advisory Council, the korean advisory. You know, there was 36 of those, and that was all fell under my – Those 400 explorers. It was 800 reserves that all fell under my privy. And there was a scandal. What they didn't tell me was that there was a scandal about how some reserves, some friends of the sheriff type reserves were being trained and that kind of stuff, and post was about ready to drop the hammer on them.

So they gave me this thing to fix, basically. And honestly, Jon, this kind of leads almost into the Santa Maria experience. I'd rather, as a leader, I'd rather be handed a smoking hole in the ground than a highly oiled, perfectly operating machine.

Jon Becker: Give me the jalopy clunker. Don't hand me the new Ferrari.

Chief Phil Hansen: Exactly. You know, because a smoking hole in the ground, I can fix that. There's only one way I can take that, you know, but. And so they gave me this mess, and I cleaned it up as best I could, and it was flying pretty well there when I left. And so I eventually retired and was retired literally one year to the day. I did 36 years on the sheriff's department, retired one year to the day, and got a phone call asking if I wanted to come to Santa Maria and help rebuild that department. They'd gone through some crisis times themselves.

So once again, the smoking hole in the ground. And it actually, I told them I'd give them two years in Santa Maria, and I spent almost eight. It turned to out to be one of the greatest portions of my career, actually.

Jon Becker: So you, like, you do. You know, mechanic is a good term. You have a career history of being involved, being on review committees for shootings, helping to establish guidelines. You're in a unique position because you worked for a large agency with a full time, top tier tactical team, one of the top teams in the world, and led that unit, and then went to a smaller agency and had to rebuild a part time tactical team. I would love to talk through some of the kind of modern issues and special tactics with you.

Chief Phil Hansen: Oh, wonderful!

Jon Becker: And see what your thoughts are. Why don't we start with interagency relationships?

Chief Phil Hansen: You betcha. That's one of these things I harp on quite a bit. I actually did an article about it at one point. The importance of it. There's just not enough of us in this business, Jon. I mean, you've got. There's just not enough highly trained tactical personnel to go around if we have serious problems. And you're going to have serious problems. And I'll use LAPD and La sheriff as an example. Between the two units, you've got two basically hundred person SWAT teams there right across the street.

So you got a couple of hundred highly trained tactical operators. We rely on each other, those two teams, every few years. Every couple years, we get something where we, we need to look at our brothers and sisters across the street and say, hey, can you lend us a hand here?

When I was a lieutenant at SCB, Randy Simmons was killed over at D-Platoon. And I got a call in the middle of the night. I was the team commander. I get a call from Rich Rapoli, who was a deputy chief at LAPD. He wasn't a good friend of mine like Mike Hillman is. So I knew him. And I just, all I knew is, if I'm getting a phone call at three in the morning from Rich Repoli, this is not good news. My first thought was some deputy had gone barricade or something. They wanted us to handle it instead of them. And he gave me the heartbreaking news that Randy had been killed.

And I said, is this an ongoing event? He goes, yeah, it's done. And what he was asking is for us to take SWAT responsibility for the city of Los Angeles, for further notice while they kind of regrouped. And I said, absolutely, sir. That's one of the things I loved about my department, is I didn't have to ask any permission on that. I knew that it was going to be a go and I could make that decision. I said, you betcha. And I got the address of the thing and I said, I'll be there in 45 minutes or so. And I drove down there.

Tom, John Domenico, who, you know, grabbed a team from SCB and brought them over there. And we played a very small tactical backup role for them on the resolution of that incident. But more importantly, John, was the fact that we were there for him and they knew it. And that was February 7. This will be the ten year anniversary, I believe, coming up every February 7, I get a call from Ruben Lopez. Reuben's a lieutenant at D-Platoon. He's the Lee Macmillan's counterpart there. Every February 7, I get a call from Ruben thanking us for being there that day. I mean, it meant that much.

And then we took SWAT responsibility. During the subsequent funeral, we had a deputy killed, not a SWAT deputy, but a patrol deputy out in Lake Los Angeles area, in the north end of the county there in the desert, Steve Sorenson. And it was a horrible case where the suspect killed Steve and tied him to his truck and drug him for a ways, and then was out there hiding. He had holes dug out there. He was kind of a survivalist. And it was about several days of searching for this guy in a very large area out in the desert, rural.

And Mike Hillman was out there. We had not only our own air resources out there, but we had an LAPD, a star out there helping out whenever they could. And we ended up having something like 70 metro guys out there, too, helping with the larger containment from LAPD. Here's what I'm getting to here, and it's pretty simple. Point, though, is that I don't care how big your team is, you can always use help from, you know, there's always going to be something come, comes up that's going to require you to look for help from somewhere else.

And those that don't have a relationship, a pre existing relationship, they're just courting disaster. And I can point to several. I can point to several cases. I don't like the out people more or less, or out departments, but that ended in tragedy or could have ended in a much better fashion for victims or whatever, or had they just had some more resources out there. I will mention one the good guys shooting up in Sacramento, the electronic store that you might remember that shooting with the hostages up front.

I would just say, imagine how much. The SWAT officers there did a wonderful job. They did a wonderful job. They were brave. They did everything they could do with what they had. But imagine how that might have gone with additional long rifle teams and maybe a crisis entry team near the front of that location, not just coming from the back. You know, if you could hit that from a couple of sides.

And I spoke to the team leader after that, within a couple of days, and I said, did you ever consider calling the other big agency up near you there? And says, to tell you the truth, Phil, we never do anything with those guys. And I could give a dozen instances like that. You need to have people you can rely on, and you can't wait until the incident happens.

So the relationship we have with our, our friends across the street at LAPD now, you know, if we need them or them need they need us, or even if we haven't called them, we'll show up and it's. You don't have to say, hi, my name is Phil Hansen. I'm here for, you know, can I help you? Phil, how you doing? They know what our capabilities are, what we can do for them, and it'll either be, hey, can you do this for us or can you just stand by? We don't need you right now, but I'll get back to you here in a minute, you know, but to know that you've got people that you work with on a regular basis and have that relationship, that's huge.

And there's just not enough people in this business. I know you usually talk about significant tactical events over the course of your career. Mumbai, India. When you start looking at coordinated, simultaneous attacks, things like that, you're going to have to rely on other agencies to help in so many ways, and so you have to have those relationships built beforehand.

Jon Becker: Well, it's funny because I was raised by those two teams, right? It was D-Platoon and SCP were the two teams that I really got all my training from.

Chief Phil Hansen:

And in some things we do, like, night and day, night and day.

Jon Becker: And so it's. It's over the 37 years that I've worked with both teams, they do. They literally do things differently. They are Ford Chevy. Their movement patterns are completely different and not compatible. Like, you couldn't take three D-Platoon guys and stick them in a stack with SCP and have it make any sense at all. But when people ask, you know, what are the two teams, like, I always say it's like two brothers.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yeah.

Jon Becker: They're constantly making fun of each other. They're constantly striving to be better, but in the process, they're making each other better.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: D-Platoon is a much better team because of SCB's relationship with deep lieutenant. And vice versa.

Chief Phil Hansen: Vice versa.

Jon Becker: They challenge each other. And over the years, I've watched them evolve. One team would evolve a tactic and then the other team would. And again, totally different.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: But like brothers, you know? Yes, they'll make fun of each other and, yes, they. You know, they'll rib each other and.

Chief Phil Hansen: Like stepbrothers, the movie.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But no drum set. But at the same time, you know, if you hit one of them.

Chief Phil Hansen: Oh, yeah.

Jon Becker: Gotta help.

Chief Phil Hansen: You. Better stand by. Yeah.

Jon Becker: And I saw that with Sid's funeral.

Chief Phil Hansen: Right.

Jon Becker: Because, you know, I had the honor of planning Sid's funeral, and. And you talked about EOB earlier and EOB. I cannot say enough good things about EOB.

Chief Phil Hansen: Oh, that's wonderful!

Jon Becker: Like, both SCB and EOB, when the family asked me to plan the services, basically sat me down and said, what do you need? We'll make it happen. And deep Latoon, same thing. They're like, said, hey, we're putting together honor guard. They said, we will be there. And when they said, we will be there, they were all there with armor. It's just, you know, it is that. That bond, common bond, that not only makes them better, but. But when something catastrophic happens, they're there for each other.

Chief Phil Hansen: Absolutely. And, you know, for those that are considering that kind of relationship with another team, it doesn't. You brought up an important point. You don't have to change all your tactics. You don't have to. You know, we would not integrate each with each other on an entry team unless it was some. It would have to be a really strange deal, a huge hostage rescue thing of some kind. But in terms of. But you can give them a mission. You know, I'd be happy to give them a mission of any kind. I'll give you an example. A North Hollywood. The North Hollywood bank shootout. You know, we a team. Jack rolled a team out from SCB on that one to Lapden.

And remember, they thought there was another outstanding suspect. And a couple blocks, several blocks had to be searched. And so it was a bureau guys. SCB, can you take that side of the street? And we'll take this side of the street. You know, I mean, so you can mission task like that and be a tremendous help to one another or, Geez. At the end of the incident I told you about in Lake Los Angeles, we. We had ordered our bear. We hadn't got it yet. LAPD had their bear. This is before Bearcats.

And this guy was capping rounds at our people, and LAPD shows up with their bear. Roger Blackwell, one of their sergeants, drove the bear while our guys addressed the suspect and ended up killing him through the portholes and on the, on the bear. So, I mean, I don't care how big you are, you can use the help of a brother sometimes, you know, and that's. I have seen so many agencies. There was a tragedy in another state, and a couple officers were killed. And I was one of the people from NTOA that went back there to do some training for their team in the aftermath of it.

And what I had come to learn was that that particular team, they had a team commander that thought he knew it all, didn't want them interacting with any other teams. And basically, some of the stuff that was very basic that we were showing them, they go, is this new? Is this something brand new? I go, no, this has been around for a while. And they were not allowed to intermix with other teams and stuff, so they were really ignorant of some things that could have kept them alive. And that's sad. You see a lot of that, though. You really do.

Jon Becker: No, it is. I mean, ultimately, and again, going back to associations, that's the role they play, right? Is it gives you exposure to outside thinking and prevents isolationism? And, you know, I don't think it can be overstated, the importance of the teams knowing each other ahead of time.

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, like I said, from a command perspective, if you're the team commander, and I'll tell you, we had a shooting down in Hawaiian Gardens. Jesse Ortiz, one of our deputies, was killed. He was a gang deputy, and he was doing an investigation and was killed. And so we're down there searching this thing. It's 05:00 at night. It's the border of Orange county and Los Angeles county. There are a million police agencies. And I had all these Orange county agencies. There's probably ten agencies at least that came up and offered their help, which was much appreciated.

But if I don't know who they are and I don't know what their capabilities are, I'll tell you who I'm looking for. I'm looking for my guys at LAPD who I know what, what their. I know their level of discipline what their capabilities are. And that's who you're going to mission task out there.

Jon Becker: You know, hundred percent it is that. You know, it's like you said.

Chief Phil Hansen: It's not the time to introduce yourself.

Jon Becker: No. And the thing is like it's a known quantity.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: It's know the capabilities of the teams around you and, and have personal relationships. So when they show up, it's not, oh, hey, sir. Hey, sir. It's Phil and Lee.

Chief Phil Hansen: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Who've known each other a long time and know, okay, I can give you this whole part of this problem and I don't need to worry about it. Let's talk about kind of the justification, because there's a lot of pressure right now, one about militarization of law enforcement, which I also want to talk about. But there's a lot of pressure to get rid of SWAT teams. And SWAT teams are expensive, very expensive and complicated. So what are your thoughts on the ways to justify.

Chief Phil Hansen: This is something that I talked extensively with my team in Santa Maria about, because when I went up to Santa Maria, they didn't really have, have much of a team. They had a few handpicked friends with the old chief or whatever, and not really a selection process per se. And it was kind of an up the middle on three kind of a deal. And so we formed a new team. I wanted to have a team and I wanted it to be a top flight team.

And so we started out with the selection process, developed a PT test, developed a good selection process, and then got everybody through good qualified SWAT schools. But one of the first things I told them, and I would remind them of this about every six months at a training day, is that there's not enough work in that town. There's SWAT work to be done up there. It's a busy town. It's about 140,000 people now and 200 man department.

But there's not enough SWAT work to really justify the expense just based on barricades and warrants and that kind of thing. We could get the sheriff's department to do a lot of that stuff. And I told them, you've got to earn your, you've got to earn this team and you've got to earn it every day. In other words, I told them, I want, if you're going to be our SWAT team, you're going to have the best uniform appearance on the department. You're going to be leaders at briefing. You're going to take charge of incidents. You're going to go at briefing and teach, you know, other people, you're going to be the officers that when new officers come in and work at this department, they look at you and say, that guy or that gal squared away.

And that's what I want to make out of myself someday. I want to be like them. And they took that to heart. I had to get rid of one or two, you know, that weren't really willing to maintain that level of professionalism. You know, every now and again, one would get in trouble doing something off duty and make a kind of make an embarrassment or something, and they'd get let go so that they knew you were serious about it and.

But that's the team, John. It has to be more than just barricades and warrants. You know, it's not about just having the epaulet or the bureau pin or whatever little insignia that you have. So to me, it's about clearly demonstrating to others that you're a cut above, that you're a leader, you know, and that's a leadership factory. You know, what's nice, like with the sheriff's department in Los Angeles, finally, it took many years, but they finally recognized SCB for the leadership factory that it really is. And they promote.

Anytime those guys take a test, as long as they pass it, they're going to get promoted, usually because they know that's somebody that's going to go out there and take charge, train people, show these young guys some enthusiasm, you know, that kind of thing. And that's what you want. You want that team to be 30 leaders, if it's a 30 man team or whatever, and the people that you can depend on to do the job right, to treat other people right?

And that's a big part of it there, too, is treating other people right. You're not some SWAT that's too cool for your peers and everything else, you know, you treat people with dignity, including your fellow employees. And I expect a lot out of them. Otherwise, why have it? Like I said, I could, I could have the sheriff's department, I contract with them to come send a team, you know, I wouldn't be as happy with the results necessarily up there. You know, it takes longer for them to get there and all that kind of thing. They're a good team, but I'd like to have my own and know what I'm, you know, know what I have up there, you know, the unknown quantity, as you put it earlier. But they have to earn it on a day to day basis and be the best, you know.

Jon Becker: Well, when that's your view of the team, the team becomes kind of a cultural center of excellence for the agency.

Chief Phil Hansen: That's a great way to put it. Yes.

Jon Becker: Like, those are the guys who are going to implement new policy and are going to do training. And I think a lot of agencies miss that. The teams put themselves on an island because they become almost like an exclusive club. And so you have, like, you, you know, probably statistically speaking, an agency of a couple hundred people, the most knowledgeable person on firearms is probably on the SWAT team.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yep.

Jon Becker: The most knowledgeable tactical person is probably on the SWAT team. And if the team puts themselves on an island as a leader, you completely lose the ability to harness that knowledge.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes. I would go to briefings, Jon, I mentioned this, I think, in another segment that it's something that I felt I needed to do to let my personnel see me and hear from me personally, not just on email, and I'd go to briefings regularly and talk to them. And it pumped me up to do that. And I loved when I walked into a briefing room and I look, and here's one of the SWAT officers up there teaching a class.

We're doing a debrief, doing something to train his peers or her peers out there. And that's where the value is. And like I said, the best uniform appearance, you know, one year, this goes way back. Back at SCB, we used to. They're pretty much full time. It's all SWAT stuff now. But back in the day of the eighties, we used to do saturation patrol a day or two a week. You know, we'd go out to an area of the county where they were having a lot of shootings or whatever, and. And we'd throw folks in jail and as a team.

And my team was headed out to saturation patrol one night. And we stopped at a restaurant because one of Sid Heal's officers was promoting and leaving the unit, or one of his deputies. And so we just stopped by to wish him well on our way out to patrol. So we're dressed to go out and search cars and throw crooks in jail, but we stopped by this restaurant to say goodbye to this peer of ours, this fellow teammate that was on Sid's team. As luck would have it, there was a retirement, a sheriff's department of retirement going on that night at the same restaurant.

So there were a few hundred sheriff's employees there and a crowded room. So we're walking through to find Sid and his table back there. And I heard out the corner of my corner of my ear there, I heard somebody go, man, those guys look sharp. And somebody else said, oh, they must be sebast be. And I was – So that made me so proud. And I repeated that back at the bureau. That's what I expect out of your SWAT personnel, you know, because when you walk in and you look the part, you're physically fit, your uniform is tight, and you treat people with respect and treat them well and act in a professional manner.

Then paying all that money for the Bearcats and the vests and the MP-5s and the M-4s. And so everything else that's involved, then it pays for itself. When you have that kind of a response from culture, from your personnel.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! So, Phil, to conclude our time together, I'd like to run you through some just kind of rapid fire questions, okay. And short answer, whatever comes to mind. Top of your head. What do you think your most important habit is?

Chief Phil Hansen: My most important habit? Prayer. Yeah, I say my prayers all the time. It's funny, there's an Alan Jackson song, the older I get, and one of the lines is, the older I get, the longer I pray. I don't know why. It's just I got more to say or something. I guess I just got more to say. I say my prayers. It helps me order my life a little bit.

It helps me prioritize things, reminds me who I am in a relationship to what's around me. And it also was a way of, I trained hard. I trained my people hard. I did everything I could to get them ready for work and provide for them the equipment and the training they needed. And the way I could sleep at night is feeling that I did everything I could. It's in God's hands now, and he's not going to give us anything to do that we can't deal with. So. Yeah. Long answer to your short little no.

Jon Becker: That'S a good answer. What's the best book you've read on leadership?

Chief Phil Hansen: Ooh, that's hard to pick one. I'll tell you what, I'll give you a couple. I'll make it real fast for you because I know we probably have a time crunch here. There's a short book that I love. It's called the Contrarian's Guide to leadership. It's by a guy named Steven Sample. He was the president of USC for a long time. And it's a really good. It's a really good book on basic leadership traits and things like that.

For instance, there's a wonderful, wonderful chapter in it on active listening. The importance of listening and being a good listener, and listening to really listen to the problem and try and do something about it. And the reason it's called the Contrarians Guide. As he points out, it's kind of the leadership paradox thing I talked to you about once before. Leaders tend to think it's their job to send information all the time and not listen. But it's really even more important that you be able to listen to people so that you know what their problems are.

And, you know, you get different perspectives on how to solve these things, too. So listening is so contrarians guide to leadership by Stephen Sample. If you're more of an academic, there's one called leading change by James O'Toole. It's called leading change, an argument for values based leadership. It's really an excellent book about why leading for a cause, a noble cause, and having values in how you lead. It's not just about getting things done. It's about doing it for the right reasons in the right way, and stuff like that. That's an excellent book as well.

Jon Becker: We'll put those. We have a thing called the list.

Chief Phil Hansen: On our website, and there's one that's probably on there already. It's by a marine colonel or lieutenant colonel. The passion of command. I can't remember the….

Jon Becker: I think it is, but I'll make sure.

Chief Phil Hansen: It's probably on the list. But it's an excellent book as well.

Jon Becker: Got it. What's the most important thing for building an effective team?

Chief Phil Hansen: Trust. And I think trust is. And culture. I mean, building a culture, team culture. But a lot of that is based on trust with the leader. You keep breaking it down into the smaller pieces. You know, you develop that trust by listening, by being honest, you know, by taking care of your people and caring about them.

And, but, yeah, it's developing the culture of the team so that when the leader isn't standing over them, they're still going to do the right thing for the right reasons and try and achieve the mission, you know? And you build that as a leader by building trust with them. And, you know, honesty is the cornerstone of building those relationships and listening and to a degree, humility, and realizing that obligation that you owe to your team as well.

Jon Becker: What's your favorite online resource? Website? Podcast?

Chief Phil Hansen: I'm not a great guy to ask that one about because I'm still a guy that loves reading magazines.

Jon Becker: What's your favorite magazine?

Chief Phil Hansen: No, I love the tactical edge. I still look at Kato. I listen to, I listen to your podcast or watch them. And I listen to Marcus and the Cato broadcast. I read the Wall Street Journal, actually. It's funny, but it's so hard to find mass media with any news credibility and stuff. So I feel that that's a paper that still has some journalistic integrity. So I read that. Then I follow it up online and things. If it's something that I have an interest in.

Jon Becker: No, I completely agree with you. The thing with the Wall Street Journal is ultimately, they have a bias.

Chief Phil Hansen: Oh, yes.

Jon Becker: But their bias is all financial.

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes.

Jon Becker: And so, you know, that that's the angle. It's not, it's not. It's not political in the traditional sense of it.

Chief Phil Hansen: Well, they don't. I don't think they don't. They still have a degree of journalistic integrity. They will flavor it, but they won't lie about it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, exactly. They'll flavor it, but they won't change the ingredients. What's the most profound memory of your career?

Chief Phil Hansen: You know, I knew you were going to ask that one, and I had a real hard time. I still do. I'm going to say it's the same thing that happened many times, and that was the death of a police officer. Deputy Sheriff Jack Miller was a deputy sheriff. That was a narcotics deputy, and he was killed. War on drugs. We were talking about that before. Killed down in the Lenox area on a warrant service.

And his team had done a pick and ram on a barred front door, went in and Jack passed an open door going after a runner back when they would chase dope. And he got back shot from a suspect in the first bedroom there. I was on the entry team from SCB that went down then and cleared the house looking for the suspect. What they did, the team grabbed Jack, did an extraction, backed off, locked it down and called us.

So I'm on the team now that goes in. And you could see from the physical evidence what had occurred. We found the suspect dead around the corner in the room. An unfortunate part of a wonderful career that I've had is I've been at the scene of way too many. I've never counted them up. But deputies and officers that were killed in the line of duty at SCB, you know, we're the ones they called out when that happened, looking for the suspect. And that was another. Jack's thing, was another thing of why are we chasing through this house? You know, we talked about slowing down at length.

There's just time I could tell you a dozen stories or more easily about that, and went to too many of those. And then even as a. Even as an EOB lieutenant, I was usually out there at the scene handling the command post area, you know, when, when somebody was killed and then planning the funeral. So that's on the negative end of it. I've got wonderful, happy memories, too, but those are profound, and they stick with you.

And you and I were talking offline here a little while ago, and I'll repeat something that we said, and I think we both agree on. It's a tragedy. Anytime we lose a police officer, deputy sheriff, or agent in the line of duty, it magnifies that tragedy exponentially. If we fail to learn something from it and pass those lessons on to other people.

Jon Becker: I think that's a great place for us to stop. Phil, where can people get a hold of you if they want to?

Chief Phil Hansen: You know, I'm always. I'll throw out a couple numbers at you here.

Jon Becker: I could put it in the show notes, but you like, is it – Are you still publishing for NTOA? You still wrote for NTOA?

Chief Phil Hansen: Yes. I'm a director emeritus, and, you know, I quit teaching. I think I could still go out, teach warrant service class, but who wants to warrant service class from a 68 year old guy? You know, I like leadership stuff. I write on leadership. I write on the occasional tactical topic. I recently did a piece that talked extensively about slowing down a little bit when NTOA published an opinion on no knock warrants and that kind of thing. And I wrote a piece about the importance of looking at warrants from a different paradigm.

So I still write and stay involved with the NTOA. I would be happy to talk to anybody, help anybody about any time, if that's how you want to do it, put it in the notes or something.

Jon Becker: Yeah. What we can do is we'll put all your contact information that you want to share in the show notes.

Chief Phil Hansen: Sure, you bet.

Jon Becker: As well as your book recommendations. And as always, Phil, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here!

Chief Phil Hansen: It's an honor to be here, Jon, and anybody that's listening out there, I wish you all the best in your career. I hope you have a wonderful career like I did, and that you have. Enjoy a long and happy retirement.

Jon Becker: Thanks, buddy!

Chief Phil Hansen: Thank you!

Episode 8 – Toby Darby & Josh Wofford: Using Tactical Decision-Making Exercises to Improve Leadership

Jon Becker: 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!

My guests today are Lieutenants Toby Darby and Josh Wofford. Toby and Josh are both lieutenants in a Southern California police department.

Toby is a 27 year veteran of law enforcement with 20 years of tactical experience as an operator, a sergeant, and a lieutenant. He's also a board member for the California association of Tactical Officers.

Josh is an 18 year veteran of law enforcement with experience in patrol, homicide, street level crime, K9, and SWAT. Josh has a doctorate in applied leadership learning and organizational theory from Vanderbilt University. Josh is a black belt in brazilian jiu jitsu and a current SWAT commander.

Josh and Toby are responsible for creating the CATO decision making exercise, or DME program. And guys, I appreciate you being with me today on The Debrief to talk about it!

Toby Darby: Thanks for having us, Jon!

Josh Wofford: Thank you, Jon!

Jon Becker: So, Toby, why don't we start with you. Talk to me about your involvement with CATO. You're a board member with CATO. How did you first get involved with CATO?

Toby Darby: So through my career has been a lot with narcotics and SWAT, SWAT pretty much my whole career. And it wasn't until we were doing a SWAT competition, I think actually with Aardvark at RTAC and CATO had a booth. And at the time I was reading a lot of stuff from sit Heel field command, sound doctrine.

And I walked up to the booth and they were all like the founders of SWAT. There was Sid there, Tim Anderson, I think RK Miller was there, a bunch of people that were very influential at the time. And I'm like, hey, this is some good stuff, except someone needs to break this down for layman's terms, for stupid guys like me. And I would love to do that.

Now, with that, I was approached and then invited to be part of the strategic leadership program for CATO, which was a one and a half year program. Not realizing that going through this program, I thought it was just going to be something. I get some leadership training, but at the end of it, they're like, hey, welcome to CATO. And by the way, you now have all of these duties as well.

One of which they said, we have a board member position coming open, and we would like for you to apply for that and test for. And which I did. And ultimately, here I sit as a board member. So with that, you know, we now. I now facilitate a year and a half long program with CATO, with SLP.

I'm involved with CATO doing critical incident management training, and then now with this decision making exercise program that my partner and I, Josh, work with to take it and bring it, not only for people in California, but pretty much across the country and eventually, hopefully across the world.

Jon Becker: So give me the origin story for the DMEs first. Like, how did it start?

Toby Darby: So it started specifically for me. Like I told you, I was a sergeant at the time when I went into SLP, I was sitting in one of the class or the presentations in the strategic leisure program taught by Sid Heal. And Sid presented us with a problem, and that was a decision making exercise where he said, hey, this has just happened in your city. What are you guys going to do now? I was in a room with eight other sergeants and lieutenants and deputies, all of which have a lot of tactical experience, all of which I thought I did, too, until I was presented with this problem.

And I was told to make a decision on how I'm going to prioritize what I was going to do, what I was going to do, what was my thinking about doing it? And I was just thinking, hey, man, I'm just a SWAT cop. I know which door to kick and go downrange. And it's a surrounding call out, or it's a dynamic entry. And when I was presented with that, I realized, hey, there's a deficiency in my own expertise that I need to work on. So how can I start getting more of this experience by doing things like this?

Now, fast forward, I got that. Probably in 2017 or 18, COVID comes around. We have the George Floyd protest, we have the COVID incidents going on. And I'm brought on a CATO as a board member, and we're looking at ways to continue our training for our members.

And I remember walking into Josh's office one day, and I can tell something was wrong. And I go, hey, what's going on, partner? And he said, hey, I'm getting my doctorate degree now, and I need to find an organization or a corporation to do my doctorate capstone on. And I'm having a hard time doing that now.

At the time, I'm like, hey, this is a great opportunity to not only take a deep dive into CATO, but also this decision making exercise idea that we had at the time, and that got the ball rolling with Josh and I.

Jon Becker: So your perspective on it was a tactical one. Josh, you're in the process of doing a doctorate in organizational theory. Talk to me about that and how this kind of evolved.

Josh Wofford: I think the whole purpose behind the decision making exercises for me was to use them as a form to learn from. The decision making exercises allowed us to take a real event, a critical incident, but embed people in it in a way where it's ripe with the ambiguity. It's got all the uncertainty and the dilemmas that are present in a real incident.

We always grounded them in something real, not telling the participants that up front, but allowing them to walk through the incident, learn from each other, collaborate, and ultimately come to a resolution of how they would address it, and hopefully taking advantage of all that, that learning that was going on in the room through those conversations, through that collaboration, and setting them up that way.

Jon Becker: So, Toby, why don't you walk me through, like, how does a DME work? Give me the whole format. How many people, you know, what do you do?

Toby Darby: Yeah. And so this is great. And this is always still in the workings. I take a lot of the stuff as we do one DME, and it would be a, we say, DME class or session, we will assess whether it was successful or not and kind of bounce everything up. And he'll use all his research and say, hey, we might want to tweak it a little bit, but typically, we would have a tragic event that would occur, one that we think that a lot of leadership lessons or a lot of decision making ideas should be implemented and taught, and we will take that incident.

Now, it could be an incident like San Bernardino or borderline, or maybe it's just as simple as an incident that happened with patrol the night before that we can go back and get axon video body cam footage and play it out for the officers, for everybody, learn from.

So we'll get the incident and find out what is it we want to share or teach to our officers or sergeants or lieutenants. And with that concept not getting too far in the weeds, we typically just want to keep it simple, where, for instance, if we want to take one elements of the five characteristic of a crisis, say, hey, today we're going to learn about uncertainty.

And in uncertainty, we're going to play this out, and this is what's going to happen. You guys just had this incident happen. As you guys are briefing back to us, let us know where these elements of uncertainty is or anything such as, you know, the principles of war. Or maybe it is a policy issue that your department is having. And you can say, hey, we want to focus on this policy that we implemented five years ago, or our policy about pursuits. Let's talk about it as we're going through this.

So with that, we will usually break it up to two to three questions, two to three segments, so to speak, and then give them the first initial part of it. You know, you're on patrol when you see a suspicious individual standing at the corner of walk and don't walk. The suspect or the suspicious person appears to be a parolee. It's. We've been having a lot of burglaries in that area. What are you going to do?

And then typically, they'll break out into little sessions, discuss what their. Their plan of attack is, so to speak, come back and then share out. Now, at the very end of it, as they're going through all this, and they're all answering, by the way, and sometimes we'll get one group to disagree with another group and state why they did it, what they did.

We'll bring everybody back at the very end and say, well, you guys just played cognitively into a scenario which we now say it just happened, or it happened in Ventura county or it happened in San Bernardino, or it happened in Dallas. And with us today is this person who was there, and it's going to share out. So they got to play what they actually did with the actual scenario that occurred to see if their ideas worked or didn't work.

Jon Becker: So if I understand correctly, you're going to take a group of people. How many? Like, what's a good class size for DME?

Toby Darby: Say 15 to 20?

Josh Wofford: About 15 people.

Jon Becker: So we take the 15 people, we split them up into three groups of 5?

Josh Wofford: Usually about groups of 3. And that's only because we want participation from everybody involved. So we're hoping to rotate those share outs amongst the group so that each person gets an opportunity to speak, but that also provides buy in for the class, because they know if I'm going to address this DME, I'm going to be the one that's going to have the opportunity to speak.

And so I'm going to be engaged with my partners while I'm in that group, making sure that I understand what's going on, how I want to share this out. So it puts a little bit of social pressure on people to participate.

Jon Becker: Got it. So the three of us are in a group we get handed a set of facts. We break out into a breakout room. If it's online or physical room, we have a little discussion and then we come back and go, this is what I want. Or this is my. Depending on the question. We come back with our answer. We brief the group. Everybody briefs. There's a discussion about, well, Toby wanted to go to walk and don't walk, and Josh wanted to go to, you know, Main & Main. And then we play that out. And then now there's a. We get now a second evolution with more information. Is that.

Josh Wofford: Yeah, because you're trying. What you're trying to do is you're trying to explore the problem both individually and as a group. That way you come in with it, with all your assumptions about how you should deal with this incident. And then you talk to your partners about it. And either there's a conflict there or maybe it just adds to your thinking that's already on it. That way you come out now you can integrate those ideas, bring those out to the larger group and go through that process again.

And hopefully you're taking what you knew and adding that to what you just learned and then applying that to the problem. That way we're not getting stuck in a rut as far as our own thinking, our own assumptions, and applying to the same problem over and over again. It goes back to the corporate intellect.

So you have this room full of people. I may be in a group with a person that has 1000 call outs. If we're talking about a SWAT incident, maybe I only have five, but I get to get in a group with that person and come in with my own understanding of this event, but also balance those ideas off somebody that has a lot more experience than me.

So you have that idea of, I get that master apprentice relationship. But also, even though the split may not be equal as far as who's learning what he's still gonna learn, he or she's still gonna learn something from me. Right? Even if it's a small, small amount of knowledge, as opposed to the 80% that I'm learning from him.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I see. Where – if the group gets too big, then the most knowledgeable guy in the room is going to be the one that takes control of the group. By keeping the group size small, you force this interaction. And it isn't just, you know, Toby gets in and tells us, hey, no, you guys are wrong. It's this way. We actually have a discussion. How many times are we going to run that iteration before concluding and briefing the actual incident is that, like three iterations?

Toby Darby: I would say we've been successful with three. When you start getting past that, you start losing the audience and, you know, you want to actually, at that point, I'm like a kid at Christmas. I want to present the actual person who was there and say, this incident happened, and check out. Now we're going to be doing a debrief of what happened so that they can do it.

So three is about right. It's, you know, sometimes even with time constraints, too, they'll start getting in discussions. And if we have three, you know, written out, but we only get to two because of time constraints, we're good with that.

Because ultimately, when we see success in this DME is when, you know, for instance, on an active shooter, there's one group that says, I'm going to make an entry, and there's one group that says, we're not going to make an entry, we're to contain because we're not hearing these things. And then we get into topics such as priority of life, and we get into probability of success, and we start talking down the road on that stuff. And ultimately, at the end of the day, people walk away with those concepts. If we only did two, but if we got to three, great.

Jon Becker: What I like about this concept is it's so much of tactical decision making is paradigm based decision making, right? It's looking at a situation and applying your prior experiences and drawing inferences. So it strikes me that this is a way to share paradigms and for people to live through the event without having to live through the event. Josh, talk to me about the science of this. Like, how does this actually, from a learning theory standpoint, how does it work?

Josh Wofford: So it's a constructivist learning theory, which means that a lot of the learning is embedded in the social environment. And so we try to create a social environment where people are willing to talk, willing to address conflict, willing to challenge each other, but willing to build upon ideas. And the science behind it is first with that cognitive presence, which is part of the theory as far as giving them that triggering event that says, here's this event that happened, and here's the first portion of it. And this event's ripe with ambiguity. It has dilemmas embedded in it. Break out into your groups and let's talk about this.

And we do it in a way where they have to explore that they can't just come to the most time. They're not going to come to the table and be like, oh, I have the answer. Here's the perfect answer. For this, because with tactics, you're never going to have a perfect answer because it's too complex. There's no perfect answer.

So it's so complex. But that's what we want to happen because we want them to first come in, they're going to explore by themselves. When they first hear it, right? They're going to run it through their brain and go, okay, this is my understanding of how I would address this event.

But then they're going to have to bounce those ideas off their partners when they do that. That's when the learning takes place. That's when they're able to either challenge their own assumptions on it. They came in with this idea of how to address it. But now I have this 30 year vet, a SWAT over here, and he's saying, I've done these a lot. And my experience with this type of event is we do this and this is why now it's updated his thinking or her thinking on how to approach this event. And now they can take that and they can apply it to the rest of the room.

And hopefully that iteration occurs again where they're going through that, we're addressing them with a problem, that triggering event ripe with ambiguity. They're exploring it individually and as a group, they're taking those ideas and they're integrating that new thinking and applying it to the resolution to that problem.

Toby Darby: Right.

Josh Wofford: And that's the process that we're trying to get them to go through. And that's the definition as we used it in this problem. For the critical thinking aspect, you wrote.

Jon Becker: Your capstone project, which is, for all intents and purposes, a dissertation on the science of this, basically, right?

Josh Wofford: Yes.

Jon Becker: And like, I see a lot of. A lot of upsides here, being able to experience things and all that. How does, Toby, how does this help an agency to retain corporate knowledge, to share experiences with. With people that are maybe not ever had those experiences?

Toby Darby: So we see it in our agency right now. I think a lot of agencies see it across the country, and that is attrition, you know, with retirements or people either promoting out of a certain rank and then young officers promoting up the rank to, you know, whether it be field training officer, sergeant, lieutenant, captains. We see a lot of young supervisors, a lot of young managers. I remember I came on my field training officer was some 50 year old officer that was teaching me how police work was done.

Now we're doing it with officers who may have four to five years on the department because we're such a young agency with most agencies having the same problem. So I think with the DME thing, we have some certain agencies that have a lot of work and then certain agencies that don't – And that being said, if there are something we refer to as low frequency and high risk events, which tend to happen when Murphy pops his head up on a weekend graveyard where these officers or sergeants are going to be more likely working with very little seniority, you're able to now have that corporate knowledge taught to those officers.

So when you ask somebody to a sergeant, hey, how many officer involved shooting investigations have you been a part of? Or how many have you been in? And some may say, I've never even done one. But if you've done a decision making exercise cognitively, you've already done one. You've already experienced that.

So now you know what to do in the event, and you're actually used. You're able to take a modeling of what happened that was given during the DME and use it with your thought process. And we do this in our critical incident management class where we give them decision making exercises, but we also give them resources and tools that they can refer back to in the event they had that low frequency, high risk event to kind of trigger some of those things and anchor some of those things.

So, but the good thing about it also that we see is we're bringing in officers, sergeants, maybe even a watch commander into these DMEs. So you're going to have different levels of experience. You're going to have different levels of, obviously, roles and responsibilities. And when they're into that role and they're into that, the decision making group, and they're told to brief out on what their decision was.

The lieutenants can have a different perspective than the officer, but now they're also going to understand which each person's role is, so that when a sergeant or a lieutenant gets on the radio and says, you know, break, break, break, you know, one Lincoln 95, I have command of this incident. The officer is going to be like, oh, he's slowing things down right now.

So now I know what his role is, his or her role. So that's how they can get that corporate knowledge, share that corporate knowledge. But then again, this contemporary issues is not just in your specific agency. You could take it across the country or even across the world with incidents that make newsworthy events that have those tactical concepts that we can learn from.

Jon Becker: It's interesting as you talk through it. I played ice hockey as a kid through most of my childhood, and I had a coach that liked to create weird situations. Five on three scrimmages, you know, four on four. And he put us into these all. You know, we're pulling the goalie.

We're doing this during practices, and you didn't understand why he did it until you got to the game. And you're like, oh, we've seen this before. This strikes me as a way that we can scrimmage complicated multi thread events and let people experience that. Josh, like, is there like, an experiential learning theory or situational learning theory here that's in play while you're going through this?

Josh Wofford: Yeah, there is situational learning theory. It's that whole master apprentice perspective. It gives people the opportunity to see how the more experienced people do it. But there's also that learning going back and forth, even though it's gonna be weighted towards the apprentice.

The new officer watching, the more experienced officer, the more experienced officer still going to get a benefit from it. They're still going to learn, because there might be some kind of innovative idea that the less experienced officer has that the officer that's been around for a long time with the same assumptions.

Again, we're trying to challenge our own assumptions. We're trying to challenge our own truth by incorporating more perspectives into what we're doing. And just going back to what Toby said about that common operational perspective, again, when you've gone through these incidents as a management team, as a SWAT team, as a patrol group, again, you're starting to build that trust that comes with knowing what your partners are going to do and what they're capable of.

And when it comes to delegating tasks, when it comes to confronting these critical incidents, those are the things that you want to know. I want to know that Jon is capable of this because I'm going to delegate that task to him, and I'm going to trust him to do it.

I know Toby's good at this. I'm going to delegate that task to him because I've already been through this incident. Even though it was a decision making exercise, I've been through it. I know his expertise. I know what he's capable of. And so in the organizational context, that's what it builds.

Now, that doesn't really necessarily carry over to the classroom context where you have different agencies, but with the organizational context, you get that added benefit of that common ground, that operation.

Jon Becker: And it does in a mutual aid. Right? So if I'm working, you and I are working for adjacent cities. We both go through a DME together. We show up at the same scene. We now have a shared experience, even though it was a classroom experience, it's a real emotive experience where I can say, hey, this is just like the DME on. So you create a linguistic shorthand that allows you to communicate within your agency, outside of your agency that didn't exist.

Josh Wofford: Previously because we scrimmaged already. We had a scrimmage game.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I can say, hey, this is like that practice last week when we were five on three. Right. It allows us to communicate, and it allows me to know that you know what I'm talking about. Right. The one thing you see with very experienced teams, and I don't care whether it's in a tactical environment, in a work environment, what makes an experienced team effective frequently is the shorthands. Right? It's the linguistic shorthands. The fact that I know where he's going to go before he goes there. The problem is, there's no formal mechanism for us to teach that.

One of the things that I like about DMEs is you're creating an environment where we can take this exercise and put everybody in the agency through it. And they all have a common framework. As you said, they have a common operating picture.

Talk to me about the differences between. I could see doing this with a homogeneous group, you know, three guys, same agency, same team, but I can also see doing this with a heterogeneous or, you know, a diverse group. What's the differences and benefits with those two?

Josh Wofford: The difference is you have to focus a lot on the social presence aspect of this. So the social presence is just creating that environment where people are willing to communicate, where people are willing to challenge each other's ideas. And that's where Toby comes in, because he's usually the facilitator. I'm a facilitator also.

But Toby takes that lead, and we role, and his job is to make people feel comfortable talking, make people feel comfortable challenging each other's ideas. And, you know, acknowledging when somebody has a well thought out point or acknowledging conflict in the room and getting that cross conversation to happen, that's a big component of it. And that's where the theory works. Right?

You have the teaching presence, which is the facilitating, creating that environment, that social presence, which is necessary for that cognitive presence. The critical thinking aspect. Because with no talking, with no comfort, if people aren't challenging each other or if people aren't building on each other's ideas, you're not going to have that critical thinking aspect. And that's what Toby does a really good job at of embedding. Both online and in the classroom.

Jon Becker: So it's really this moment where it sounds like a lot of the benefit here is not only you're handing me your paradigms and I'm handing you mine, we're disagreeing about who you know which paradigm is correct. And it's admittedly an ambiguous situation. There is no, you know, there's no right answer to it. But it's this moment where I'm saying, you know, I use the analogy of, you know, the first guy that found a rattlesnake probably picked it up and got bit. If he doesn't share that information with the second guy that finds a rattlesnake, he also gets bit.

And if you look at, you know, tactical situations and you go to as many debriefs as we've all gone to, there is a recurring, there are recurring themes in those things, and the themes seem to pop up at every one. This strikes me as a way to wargame, picking up the snake, being able to. It's a rattlesnake, okay? We both know it's a rattlesnake.

I can now take a junior officer and put him through the rattlesnake exercise, and he knows not to pick it up. And he also knows what it is and can articulate to somebody else, say, don't touch the snake.

Josh Wofford: Yeah, and it goes a little bit further than that too, in the sense that, you know, we deal with confirmation bias and that's that cognitive limiting state where you, you're only going to gravitate towards information that already helps already is evidence of your current assumptions of how you would deal with something.

Jon Becker: You can see that in what we watch on the news.

Josh Wofford: What you watch on the news, right. So we gravitate towards things that are like us. Oh, that like minded people, this and that. And the only thing to do with that sometimes is to present your yourself with people that challenge you. So if I talk to you and say, hey, this is my idea on this, and you challenge me and go, hmm, I've been in business for a long time. I don't think I would do it that way. And this is why, right?

That's that metaphorical mirror to my thinking that I need so that I can bounce out of that cognitive limiting state of confirmation bias. If I don't have that in an environment, I'm just going to proceed down the same path. I'm going to keep on picking up the rattlesnake and getting bit and wondering.

Jon Becker: Every time why you got Bitde. Because that's part of you see it in society now where everybody watches their news channel, they listen to, they have their Facebook group, and they become so insular and isolated that then something happens and you look back and you're like, God, that was really stupid. How did that make sense? And what I like about this is it's transplatform, right? Like, you can do this online, you can do it in person, you can do it across the country. It gives you the ability to share that information and that critical thinking.

And although each group is going to be different, each group, you're going to get something. I mean, if you sat down in the same DME with two different groups, you'd walk away with different learning each time. But there'd probably be a base of similarity between the exercises, you know, interesting.

Toby Darby: Interesting with that is we don't repeat bad behavior. So we learn from incidents that went bad, and we come back and say, hey, I went through the DME and this was identified as probably not the best way to do it. I probably don't want to do it that way. Doesn't mean you probably will. You could do it that way. Another incident, but I probably won't do it that way.

So in one of our decision making exercises, we were challenging in each group and doing it in a safe environment and doing it very respectfully. One of the individuals was disagreeing about making an entry or containment. And we broke for lunch before we actually gave the actual debrief that happened.

And I asked, kind of like the guy who was overseeing everything for CATO in the class, and I said, hey, what are you thinking so far on how the class is going? And he says, this is really good stuff. I just hoped on the surveys, it doesn't say that fistfights broke out because people were disagreeing with each other. And I go, that's what we want. Not to the point where. Point where fistfights are breaking out, but we want them to disrespectfully disagree with each other so that they can kind of argue their points.

And we're seeing that with problems across the country. You know, if you interview or you do a team that's here in California and then compare it with the team back east is probably gonna have a different culture, different mindset, different tactic. But to bring those two groups in and give them that same problem, because it's all going to be the same problem. If it's a Texas tower or Vegas, if it's the incident, New Orleans or Christopher Dorner say, hey, this incident happened. How would you guys deal with it?

Ultimately we want to take it across the world and ask how other countries would deal with that same problem to learn different ideas. But also so with our giving climate, with the media, with our giving climate with the courts to look and say, hey, we keep doing things like this is because we've always done it that way. How can we improve upon that? And that's going to be done by, you know, not going dynamic on something that should be done as a surround, a call out of, but getting that message across the country by doing DMEs and sharing that type of stuff.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we deal with countries all over, teams all over the world. And the way that a team in Florida versus a team in Texas versus a team in New York, team in California, a team in Paris, France would solve problems is dramatically different. The way they talk about the problems is dramatically different.

Part of the reason that when Bataklon happened, we brought in Brih was to let our local teams see this is how a European team solves a problem. I mean, they're wearing way more armor. They're carrying way more armor. They're moving much more deliberately, which in that case worked because as you remember, they got shot a lot and only one guy got it in the hand.

But it is, we tend to be insular, we tend to, as you said, surround ourselves with like minded thinkers. And I think the combination of that with the fact that we punish pioneers now, right, if you deviate from the status quo in your thinking and it's wrong, we're going to prosecute you, we're going to persecute you, we're going to punish you and you're going to lose your job.

Whereas if you do what the status quo is, even if it's wrong, you're safer. I, and what I like here is it allows kind of explorational thinking where it's a safe environment to make a stupid statement or to ask a stupid question. Is that from a learning theory standpoint, is that kind of what you've seen play out?

Josh Wofford:Yeah, you're safe until you fall on the wrong side of history. So you continue with a tactic that maybe you've never been challenged on. So nobody's asked you why. So a lot of learning, right? We start out where we memorize things. Like, so I can give you Phil command or some other book and you can memorize.

The question is, have you comprehended it? Because that's the next step. Do you comprehend what the book is saying? After that, it's like, well, can you apply it. Can you apply the concepts that we find in sound doctrine and other books to a scenario, to a tactical engagement? And after you apply it, can you analyze it? Can you look at, okay, why did we do it that way? Can you explain to me why you do a certain tactic? This has come up with dynamic entries in the past and people will say, every warrant we do is dynamic.

And when you ask them why, a lot of times the answer is, that's the way we've always done it. It's safe, right? That's the way we've always done it. You hear that all the time. Until you're on the wrong side of history, where you're doing dynamic warrants and it doesn't fit the context, which is.

Jon Becker: Where we are now. I mean, it's – That is a current nationwide debate.

Josh Wofford: Yeah. And that's what we're trying to do with this is get people to the point where here's the incident, and yes, it's ambiguous, and yes, it's uncertain, and yes, you don't have all the information and that problem's embedded in. And then when they come out and they do that exploration again, that thinking both individually and as a group to go, okay, why do I want to do it this way? Why do I want to use this tactic?

And hopefully there's people there to sharpen that blade and say, I agree with you and give them the confidence that, yeah, that's the appropriate tactic. We would use this and that's why. Or, whoa, okay, we have a lot of experience with this. We wouldn't use that tactic. Let's talk through this. Let's challenge each other. Because it's one thing if you have two ideas and they're very close together. It's another thing if you're this far apart. That's when the dynamic.

Jon Becker: Non dynamic.

Josh Wofford: Yeah, that's when the discussion needs to happen. Like if me and Toby, a lot of times me and Toby will have a discussion and we'll be really close. I don't care what the final answer is because we're so close, probability wise, it's going to be a good decision. But when we're this far apart, that's when we need to stop and have that discussion. That's when that learning actually takes place. That's that critical thinking element that's really going to help you address the problem and learn in the process.

Toby Darby: Also in our profession, when we're going through that, if that sergeant or lieutenant or even officer never had that experience, in other words, never took part of a DME or never actually responded to an active shooter, they now have that tool that they can go back. And if they make a decision or they're, you know, let's just say we say indecisiveness is one of the biggest problems when it comes to critical incident management.

We all face it, right, because of people being uncertain about their outcomes or their circumstances in the situation. If we have that knowledge, they can go back and say, hey, the reason why I made this decision to go or not is because we went through this in a DME, and I saw that LAPD did the same thing and it worked for them in that one.

So they're able to go back and grab those experiences and share out and then have it when they get called on the carpet on why they made a certain decision. That's the reason why is because I have experience in a DME.

Jon Becker: So, Toby, it strikes me that a lot of what people are getting from the DME is the why to make a decision. And what gets lost in an environment where we are trying to pound 100 classes a year into guys heads is we teach them the technique. We don't teach them the why. And especially in your line of work, the why matters. Shooting somebody is either legal and constitutional or a crime. And the only thing that separates those two is the why. So, Josh, why does this teach the why?

Josh Wofford: Well, I think it teaches the why behind it, because it makes you articulate why you're doing something. You're not just taking the training and saying, I learned this in a class one day, or I read it in a book, and now I'm going to apply it. It gets down to why are you applying that specific tactic? That specific strategy, what is that embedded in? What's it grounded in? Why are you doing this versus something else? Where did you come to that conclusion? That's the best technique to use, and it's not only using the why, but it's using the when.

Like, what is the circumstance that dictates whether or not you use this tactic? And that's what we're trying to do with them when we embed them in the DME is, yes, you have this tactic, but that tactic also has to be applied in the correct circumstance. All circumstances are different and unique.

So making them go through that process of we use it over here, but now we've changed the circumstance. It's a different DME. What would you use now and why?

Jon Becker: You're shifting the problem slightly..

Toby Darby: And that's life. And that is a tactical incident. You have to be constantly shifting. You know, if the suspect comes out and gives up or it gives up the hostage, are you going to switch? You know, are you going to shift from getting ready to do a dynamic entry or now we have a barricade because we now have the hostage. You're constantly shifting.

And the challenge of doing that, I mean, with the concepts of principles before procedures and something we talk about, you know, explaining why you're going to do it, defining that end state to know what that is. And then from there you'll get to the when, the what, the where, the why, the I'm sorry, the how, how you're going to do it all. That's important by having that why.

In other words, if you are asked, you know, I'm going to send five officers in on a barricaded suspect who is, you know, armed with this gun. And we're talking about probability of success or priority of life. Why is it you're going to do that? Do we have at least a 51% chance of succeeding?

All that stuff is, it surfaces in that class, in that discussion. And you'll get some people in that class that start talking about tactics, you know, and they're sitting there talking and you'll see their hand go up in certain classrooms and you're like, oh, no, let's get away from the tactics. They're not about going left or right, but what are we going to do and why are we going to do it? I think that's a real.

Jon Becker: So it's really more at a strategic and operational level than at a tactical and technique level.

Josh Wofford:Yeah. It's critical incident management. This is not critical incident tactics and strategy. Right? We want people to look globally at the incident and say how they would apply things. And just going back to the why, when you establish a good why now you can delegate authority to different groups as you have command of the operation. Because they know the decisions I'm making are based on the why that the commander is giving me. So they have to know the why embedded in that. I think that's very important when you're talking about addressing a critical incident.

Jon Becker: One of the things I try to do leading an organization is when I make a decision, when I set a course to explain the reason behind my decision, right? To provide a commander's intent, but also to provide, you know, a clear logic to that intent, because there is that point. You know, I always use the analogy of teaching your kids, right? You can tell your kids, like, oh, in this circumstance, no, you have to tell the truth and saying, well, you know, they gave you too much change. You give it back. You teach your kid that lesson.

If you then follow that with give it back because you shouldn't take things that don't belong to you. You've now given that kid a lifetime paradigm that they can apply to other situations. Right? And that's kind of the difference between learning a technique and learning a tactic, is this is how you open the door? This is why you open the door.

Josh Wofford: Yeah. When you have, so, I mean, it doesn't matter if it's business, it doesn't matter if it's critical incident management. You start with a plan, right? No matter if it's a hasty plan or it's a plan that you thought about for a year, you start with that plan. But as soon as you make a decision, you're acting on that event, you're changing it, you're bringing complexity to it.

So now you're going to have to improvise because your plan maybe doesn't line up to what you had when you first started. And you go through that process of improvising those iterations, improvising again, changing, so that by the end of the whole incident, it looks nothing like the plan that you started out with.

But if you have that, why behind it? Everybody knows, like, where do we want to be with that end state? Doesn't matter if the things change, if circumstances change, we still know where we're going. So you can delegate that authority to your different people in the organization because they know the why behind what you're doing. They're going to get you to that end state.

Jon Becker: So talk to me like, let's go through the mechanics of it, of actually facilitating a DME. How do you pick an event? How do you pick a good event for a DME? What types of incidents are good?

Toby Darby: I think what we like to do is look for incidents that have some sort of conflict in our profession, maybe something that is getting some negativity in the news, something that recently happened where it's fresh in everybody's mind, so that when, you know, ultimately, if they see this, this on the news, they're going to say, hey, if that were to happen in our city or county, this is kind of how we would do it, and then you present them with that problem.

So once we have that, that issue that is presented, and it may be something too, we don't want to be going back and talking about incidents that happened in World War 2, World War 1, or whatever. Maybe we do, but we want to have stuff that's contemporary stuff that is applicable, because what happens is they're going to be able to see what their decisions are play out with the actual incident.

And maybe it's still in litigation. Maybe it's still being broadcasted on the news. Maybe it, you know, it affected somebody emotionally, psychologically from that agency because it was a neighboring agency. Or maybe, again, it just might be something that's in house and you were dealing with an increase of problems of people going fast during pursuits, or you're dealing with a problem of not reporting. Right?

So you can look at that and say, hey, we're gonna use a DME based on really hitting home with this policy to make sure that everybody understands that if we're gonna use a pit maneuver, this is the reasons why. So it depends on what the given climate is that we can decide to use those. And then again, too, sometimes it is also about availability of the presenters. And do we have that video, or do we have someone to come in and talk into our classes and say, we were there, this is what we experienced, and it becomes more real that way.

Jon Becker: What I think is interesting just to that regard is this is so inherently scalable that if we can get to the point that you've recorded these things, at least, that afterward debrief, this is something that you could write up, teach someone to facilitate, and now scale. Is that an accurate way to read that, Josh?

Josh Wofford: Yeah, because you can bring anything to the table. You can teach the facilitation, which we're already doing with some of our partners at CATO, because you bring them an event and you just explain them. We're looking for events that are uncertain, that have an element of chance to them, that are ambiguous, that create dilemmas for people. And we embed these in the decision making exercise, and we don't give all the information up front because we want people to have to go through that process. Just like if you were a critical incident manager of I don't have all the information.

I'm going to have to make a risky decision here because I don't know, probability wise, if this is going to work out, because I don't have all the information. And so we're taking them through that circle of, again, that triggering event, that ambiguous situation, that exploration, that integration of knowledge, and applying it to a problem. We can teach people to do that.

Again, this is not the old sage on the stage type format, where Toby gets up there and he just pontificates everything about tactics that everybody needs to know, and then they go out in the world and they apply it perfectly. No, we know we're all limited by our own understanding.

We're all limited by our resources and everything else. And so it's even better if you have a facilitator that is not Toby or me applying it, because they're going to come out with their own perspective, their own paradigm, and they're going to be able to take that into a new arena with new perspectives.

Jon Becker: Well, it's almost socratic, right? It's almost a socratic learning method where it's like, here's a problem. How do you figure out the problem? Rather than one of the things that I like about this versus just a straight debrief is a debrief. You hear how somebody else solved the problem, and if you take the lessons from the debrief and you go home and you discuss them in your team, with your circumstances, you can extend that learning.

This forces you to solve the problem first. You know, this is. This is. Here's the jigsaw puzzle. Put it together. Okay. Now, here's the picture, which. Which I think, from a learning theory standpoint, would be a much more effective way to learn.

Josh Wofford: And it puts you on the hot seat and not as bad as, like, you know, I know a lot of law schools, they teach the socratic method, where it's like, it's your day, you're on the hot seat. You're gonna be the one getting all the questions asked that day and asked to solve the problem.

Jon Becker: Been there, done that.

Josh Wofford: Yeah. It's you. Right? Right. It's you. This is a little bit safer where you have that safety of those three people so you can rely on your partners to go, hey, this is how I would approach this incident. What do you think? You're getting people to reach out, and Toby's going to say, no, that's a good idea, but I would also do this, or that's a bad idea. I think we should do this.

And you're hoping you have that kind of conflict, that disagreement, that conversation, and it allows people to do it in the safety of that three. But then you can't hide. You got to come out and you got to explain that to the group.

Jon Becker: Well, and what's interesting, I see where, like, one, you're going to start to develop, you know, a love language for the agency, where we establish a way to critique each other's events and. And challenge each other's thinking without it turning into a fistfight in the parking lot. You're also going to stress test the entire chain of command. If you do this right, because everybody that's involved in this problem now is going to have to come up with a solution.

And you're going to see, wow, you know, lieutenants Wofford and Darby really can't get along and they probably shouldn't be running incident together, or you're going to see, oh, my God, Toby and Josh are fantastic together. They're yin and yang for our agency. Those are the guys we want running the problem.

Josh Wofford: Yeah, that goes back to, if you're playing football right, when we, you know, whether it's the Buccaneers, the Rams, there's that common ground, that common operational perspective that those teams have where if you put a team of Pro bowlers against them, the pro Bowlers are probably going to lose.

Because Tom Brady knows his running back. He knows his receivers, he knows what receivers work well together. He knows what running backs can do, what you know, so that he has that common ground, that understanding. You bring that to the table in a management meeting, on a SWAT team, in a patrol group, that changes the dynamic of how you address these critical incidents.

All of a sudden you have trust in people, and it goes deeper than just that common ground because you need trust to delegate. And if you're not delegating, you're not addressing the incident in the most efficient way possible.

Jon Becker: That's interesting! It brings back a memory for me. I helped facilitate a command and control exercise with Sid, probably 20 years ago. And the agency brought it in. Their chief brought it in, said, hey, we want to run this. We want a real operation. We took a timeline that was an actual firestone event and ran it, and their command staff came apart. I mean, shouting matches in the room, this is ridiculous. This would never happen.

And the captain that was the incident commander walked out and had a tantrum and ended up being relieved by the chief at the exercise. And I remember saying to Sid, like, my God, that was horrible. He goes, that wasn't anywhere near as bad as it would have been if it had been an operation.

Toby Darby: Correct. And people's lives at risk as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it does create that, that kind of stress test where you really see the mettle of people in a very friendly environment. As far as the roles in the DME, what are the essential, who are the essential players here? Explain to me. We talked about the small group format. You have a facilitator. What's the facilitator's role? Kind of break that down for me.

Josh Wofford: So part of the theory, and again, is the community of inquiry theory. That's the theory that we're working with. And again, that's a theory that, based on talking to CATO, their leadership, and working with the virtual environment at the time, and Zoom was the best theory to apply to this.

So all theory is just a general way of approaching something, because we understand, like, this is how people learn in this context. With that comes an element called teaching presence, and that's the facilitator portion of it, where that's the job of, we're going to focus the discussion on this. In this case, it's a DME, right?

Once we focus that discussion, we're going to point out where people agree. Where people disagree, trying to keep that dialogue going both within the groups and the larger format. So we're trying to get that interactive, collaborative environment going so that the knowledge that's in people's heads is getting out into the open, so that everybody understands and learns.

It's not trying to win an argument or anything else. It's more about, we have a lot of experts in the room. That's the difference between adulthood and adult. When you're educating adults versus children, there's expertise in the room, right? Children, they're learning whatever you're giving to them. But we want to get that expertise that's in the room, out in the open, apply it to a problem and understand it. The facilitator's role is key to that, because without a good facilitator, you're not going to have that interaction, that social presence that leads to that cognitive presence, that critical thinking element.

Jon Becker: It's interesting! Years ago, we worked with a Sof unit, and their commander gave me kind of a. It was a tier one unit, and their commander kind of gave me a breakdown of what their planning cycle looked like, and it was a rank off. Planning. Everybody has a seat at the table. There is no rank. There is no, you know, you might have more experience than I do. Everybody has a voice.

And the rationale from that was, you harness all of the brain at the table. We don't allow rank structure or experience to override the one guy that raises his hand and goes, hey, did you ever think about this? I immediately implemented that in my business life and have a very specific example. I take our marketing materials and hand it to people that have nothing to do with sales.

One of our warehouse guys came walking in very sheepishly, and he handed me back to catalog, and he's like, did you intentionally misspell the company name? You're kidding, right? No. Right there on the COVID We'd misspelled our own name. It had gone through 20 sets of hands. And here's the one guy that's not in the forest that can go, hey, that tree looks wrong. And it feels like this is going to kind of create that environment almost unintentionally in the agency. Because if we've sat through DMEs together and we've challenged each other's thinking, it's going to affect our culture, isn't it? Yeah.

Josh Wofford: Because you want that deference to expertise, right? You don't want to. Just because you're an expert in one realm doesn't mean you're going to be an expert in another realm. So it's humbling, but you got to show deference to the people in the room that have the most expertise. Now, that could be a tactical guy or girl, or it could be a manager, right? Depending on what circumstance you find that in, you've got to gravitate towards the person with expertise in that realm.

The other part of it is, we've talked about this before, innovative ideas usually come from the outside. Outside can be whatever your perspective is. It can be outside command staff or it could be outside the organization. But those innovative ideas are usually going to come out of your core little element because a lot of times now you're just with your like minded people sharing the same ideas over and over again with no elements coming in that are going to challenge your ideas and have that metaphorical mirror again to your thinking that you need, or else you're just going to be subject to that confirmation bias, that cognitive limiting state.

Jon Becker: Well, you talk about cognitive limiting states. We've all had the experience of, you know, there's the gun guy, right? Every agency has the gun guy, and everybody marginalizes the gun guy as the gun kook. And what you do in the process of marginalizing the gun guy is literally take the most knowledgeable person on that subject and push them out of the tribe.

And it's easy to do because Toby knows way more about it than I do. And so I don't want Toby to challenge my thinking too much. So we're going to marginalize Toby. The problem is Toby's the guy we need at that incident. So it almost feels like it's going to kind of counter that. What, what have you seen in implementing this? What have you seen? The effect on the culture has been.

Toby Darby: So I saw specifically on one DME that we did for our SWAT team, we made it known. And the facilitator, the biggest part, I think, for the facilitator is to make sure it's a safe environment and to encourage the younger officers or whoever may be the less ranking officer or deputy to be the one to speak out and be the first one to kind of brief out to the group so they get them involved to break that. Hey, I'm just gonna sit in the back and let this person with the most experience do the whole job for me.

We saw that as we started having our younger SWAT guys or SWAT pups briefing back. We both looked at each other and we were like, oh, my gosh, this guy's got so much knowledge and experience. I didn't even know he was smart. And it identified that, and it actually boosted that person's ego, too, because we're like, I didn't know you were smart. And we went up and kind of talked to this guy, but the whole team saw that, so we were able to draw that out.

So then now everybody in the room got to see what that person's expertise is. And I don't want to get in the weeds and talking about highly reliable organizations, but we got to see what everybody's talents were, what their. And maybe it was a gun guy, maybe it was somebody who was really good, smart wise.

As you're saying these things reminds me of the Osama bin Laden raid when they took the rank off. We take rank off and planning and take the rank off and the debriefing in our teams. And we said, at the Osama bin Laden raid, they said, well, what next? And it was the youngest seal in the room, I think, is when I heard it said, we can crash a helicopter in the front yard. So they came up with a contingency plan for that. But it was that Seal who said that. And if they would have had just the admirals and then the, you know, the team leaders making the plan, they would have missed a lot of things.

So we saw a lot of benefit from that. I mean, there are times when you'll have people in a group, maybe, like you mentioned, with the command staff having that melting down, they disagree. Or you'll have. Sometimes everyone's like, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. I'll go with it. The facilitator needs to see that, identify that as they're walking around and listening to the different groups and then say, hey, listen, this is getting a little too easy, right?

So everyone's kind of agreeing with each other too much. So let's argue. We have a little form, and we have a form that we're going to provide to also that we'll give access to from our CATO website on how you can fill out, you know, your problem, but also say, hey, listen, have your visual aids.

So I'll put a picture up of where the problem is. Maybe it's a map, or maybe it's the front door of a house. Maybe it's like a big group area of, like a protest, but we'll have the visual aids. But then I'll have this little section on the side that says chaos. And when I start to see that, I'm like, let me throw some chaos in there. Oh, guys, by the way, this just happened.

And so now it's like, okay, well, let's see if I can get. Because I kind of see what these two are agreeing on, but I see a little hesitancy here. Let me see if I can find a little chaos section to throw it in there without getting too far into it to get some more discussion happening.

Josh Wofford: And on that organizational leadership side. Right? So, you know, when you find out that somebody's good at something, it builds trust, especially when it's in these repeated acts when you're doing a decision making exercise. I've noticed that Jon is good at this five times, because five times in this decision making exercise, he's articulated why he would do something.

My SWAT team leaders, I trust them. Why? I've worked with them for 15 years. I've seen them perform over and over again and perform well. We don't always get the opportunity to see that in our organization, with our people. But these decision making exercises expose us to people that maybe we never saw before.

So operationally, I can trust them. That means I can delegate to them. I can delegate authority to them and allow them to go off and do something, because I've seen, okay, this is not just based on. I'm not being risky here probability wise. I know that they're going to be able to go out and perform this and perform it well, because I've already seen it in a context within a classroom.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because people are so multidimensional that I've had experiences in my own organization where I'll assign something to somebody or we'll sit down and have a group discussion, and all of a sudden you realize, wow, Toby is a savant when it comes to picking shoes. And all of a sudden, now we've got a shoe problem. We got to find Toby.

And I would say my job as a CEO is to harness 100% of the processing power in the building, not to be the guy with the right answer, we got to get the right answer. It's not my job to have the right answer. It's my job to get the right answer. And the most likely way for me to get there is by harnessing all of the processing power. But if you don't even know it's there.

I mean, I've had so many experiences in my career where I've had a conversation with somebody in a meeting and thought, my God, that person's really good at that. And literally have transformed the organization. I mean, I've created jobs around skill sets that were revealed in kind of casual discussion where this person's like, oh, yeah, no, I know a lot about this. I always think back to the story of tactical diagramming. Sid creating tactical diagramming. That happened because of an argument with a scout on an operation where he's like, the kitchen's right here.

And Sid said, no, it's not. He's like, what do you mean? He's like, no, that's not the kitchen. The kitchen's over there. He's like, how do you know that? Well, because that's a gas supplying event. Well, how do you know it's a gas appliance? Well, I'm a contractor. That changed the way they scouted houses forever.

Toby Darby: We were having this discussion this morning about our team leaders and our team members, and the conversation came up, and it's like, you know, we have guys in our SWAT team that are 240 pounds of straight, you know, straight muscle. You know, purple belts, brown belts, and jiu jitsu. Shoot really well, teach post approved SWAT schools.

And then we look at other people who we recently started bringing on that have other great talents, and it may be we're looking for thinkers. That's what we want on our teams is the thinker part. But it may be something, too. With technology and the implementation of technology.

First of all, explosive breaching school is not easy to get through. You got to get that Cal Osha approval. That's not easy to go through. And if you get a guy that's really good at lifting weights and not saying that they're going to be the ones that couldn't complete this, but that's not a mongo joke. We have some talented, very smart guys, too, but you have those ones that are thinkers. We have drones now, right?

And the ones that maybe when you think about a person racing drones or an RC car, you're not thinking about the 280 pound muscle guy. You're thinking about somebody that just graduated high school and, you know, games all day long, they may be our great drone guy or our robot guy, or it may be somebody, too, with the explosive breaching, that they can do the mathematics and say, no, you're completely wrong on that. But that discussion came up this morning, and it's interesting that it gets brought up again.

Josh Wofford: And it goes back to, again, what we're talking about here. It's that critical thinking aspect. Why? Why are you picking this person for the SWAT team? I know they're big. I know they're strong. I know they're fast. And we have a lot of guys on our team that fit that, that mold, but they're also smart. We had the why behind it. We picked them for a reason.

And whenever you're putting people through a school or anything else, you want people to get past the surface and start telling me again, why? Why are you picking that person? What do they bring to the table that somebody else doesn't organizationally, whether it's a SWAT team, a business, or anything else that helps you to manage towards people's strengths? Because people ask me all the time, why did you put that person in that spot over there? Because he's the best person for it.

I know, but over here, he doesn't get along with this group. I know, but over here, that doesn't affect it. He's the most productive person in this role over here at this time, with the circumstances that we're facing right now, and that makes it for a better, more optimized organization. Doesn't matter if it's SWAT, doesn't matter if it's dispatched. Doesn't matter if it's a business.

Jon Becker: Yes, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's. I always say, like, you know, thoroughbred horses frequently bite their trainers. I run an organization of thoroughbred horses. A large part of my job is to keep them from biting each other because they're passionate, they're smart. They've thought through their side of the equation, the accounting and logistics argument. They're both very passionate about it.

And my job is to ultimately be the one that makes the decision, but also to give them both voice, because the minute I shut down one, I eliminate that. And it strikes me here that this is something that could be run throughout your organization. And the decision making might be tactical, but it might not. It could be a fire. Like, what kinds of, where do you find inspiration for DMEs? What are the kinds of things that you would look to?

Toby Darby: I would say that any incident that can potentially help us as a profession prevent being, you know, tragic event on the evening news prevent the loss of life of an officer or maybe somebody that's innocent, learning from past incidents and say, this happened and officers died because a decision wasn't made here because they were indecisive, or the wrong decision was made because they were shooting from the hip and not really using any of the why behind it.

And I know right now that we're. We're currently talking about with our other entities in our city, with the fire department and public works, and dealing with a large scale, citywide incident and sitting down and having those discussions where I'm able to go to public works a couple things, too. And kind of going back to what you're saying earlier, is now I have that face to face with that public works guy. He knows who I am, and I know who he or she is.

So if I need something, I can get that from him at that given time. Fire department two, they understand the roles and responsibilities. I'm now learning about what they're all about, what their talents are, what their capabilities are, having that discussion, breaking out into a group and then being able to solve a problem or give that insight to it. But any incident that could potentially affect our citizens, our profession, our officers innocent lives, anything.

And I kind of, when I start the class off, I explain how personally I was impacted by an incident that happened, that I looked. An emotional attachment, so to speak, is that I got a debrief of an incident that occurred at an agency where the incident commander on scene didn't really do what he or she should have been doing, and it ultimately led to the death of two additional officers because a decision wasn't made, and it impacted me.

And when I explain stuff to, like, how to facilitate this type of thing, look for those instances where there's an emotional attachment to somebody so they won't forget it. You know, I mean, we walk around, and we see, like, an outlet right there. And babies walk around, and they're thinking, okay, it's just an outlet. But it's not until you touch that outlet and get shocked that you realize, oh, crap, I'm not gonna touch that outlet again. What's the incidents that are happening in your city or county or across the world that are creating an emotional response in your agency or in our profession in a whole?

Jon Becker: Well, and you use the analogy of having kids, and I think anybody that has kids has had the baby proofing expedition of locking every cabinet and take, you know, oh, man, I didn't know I had, you know, poisoned that glow on the ground. And I think the same is true here. Like, this doesn't have to be a catastrophic event. This could be a close call. This could be body worn camera that an officer says, man, that almost went sideways on me. Great, let's take the body worn camera and instead of doing a 1 hour, two hour DME, let's do a ten minute DME with just the motor officers and watch this body worn camera and talk through. How could we do this differently?

Josh Wofford: It's just a way of thinking. It doesn't even have to be something that's big as a critical incident. I mean, think about a tactic on a SWAT team. You know, something, you traverse a hallway and somebody gets shot with sims. Okay, well, what happened? Or what's our problem? Well, somebody got shot in the hallway. Okay, let's talk about it. Let's first get in groups and explore. Like, why do you think this person got shot? Okay, let's integrate our ideas as far as, like, how could we prevent this in the future? It avoids the solutionitis too, that whole idea of, like, coming up with a solution before you've even explored the problem. Right?

Somebody will be like, gotta use a shield. Well, yeah, maybe that might be the tactic that you use, but that's something you should come to a conclusion on after you've done that problem exploration. Otherwise, the solution might not fit the problem. So it can be used in everyday life, whether it's a small group dealing with a business problem or a critical incident that we want to do a decision making exercise on.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it strikes me, when we went through ISO certification, which is quality control standard, the auditor sat down with me and said, are your customers happy to? Yeah, they are. Well, how do you know that? Well, because they tell us. Well, do you think they would tell you if they were unhappy? How do you measure it? And everything that we asked, it was like, how do you know? How do you know? How do you know?

And I finally said, like, God, we just like, what's the deal? What's with all the, how do you know? And he said, if you're not measuring it, you don't know it's happening. If you're not stress testing it, you don't know it exists.

And so it's interesting that this is a way to constantly, they say people do what's inspected, not what's expected. This is a way to force that process in ten minutes in a briefing, or over two and a half hours over a large critical incident. It's a way of thinking that I think, you know, is part of the reason that I wanted to have you guys on was I really, there's something here.

Josh Wofford: And it challenges the way you measure things, too. Like your measurement has to be aligned with what your goal is. So again, I don't have a problem with dynamic entries on warrants, but if there's been classes where it's a, you know, we do dynamic warrants on everything. Well, how are you measuring success? Well, we've never failed. Well, what does that mean? Well, we've taken the suspect into custody every single time. Have they shot back? No. So how are you measuring success? I don't care if someone does dynamic warrants, we use them. Right?Depending on the circumstance.

But it's, again, if you're measuring success because it worked every single time, well, you just haven't. You haven't experienced a failure yet. I think it was Matt Hughes, one of the UFC fighters, that said, if you're undefeated, you're just fighting the wrong people. Right. So you're always trying to challenge yourself, like, you know, am I really measuring, am I using the right measurement for the goal that I'm trying to reach?

Jon Becker: Well, and we do tend to default to measuring things that are directly measurable. Right. So we look at it and, you know, well, the SWAT team is qualified because they can all shoot a qualifying course that doesn't always pan out. The measurable is not always, you know, the directly measurable is not always the critical thing.

Josh Wofford: And define a great shooter. Is a great shooter somebody that's on a stagnant line, you know, on a range with nobody shooting back at them, or is a great shooter somebody that can address an adversary and win that conflict? So it's, again, how are we measuring success? How are we measuring failure? How are you measuring aptitude? That's really got to be a conversation also.

Jon Becker: I love that! So, guys, where can people learn more about DMEs and kind of how to do this?

Toby Darby: So a couple ways. One is that we do currently teach a critical incident management, critical incident leadership class where we give a lot of DMEs in the class, and we teach the people in the class on how they can facilitate a DME. Secondly is maybe there can be a link on this, on this show about where we can go to. Go to our CATO website where we'll have a section in there specifically on DMEs.

And then that it's going to have a format, a couple examples on, you know, DMEs that we've done in the past that shows the actual incident, the questions you can ask, the chaos points, the visual learning aids, I mean, if you're going to be using other things, have that stuff in the back of your presentation as you're putting it on to give you ideas on how you can make it best for your, for your DME.

But through that, read through some of those and then even have, I'll have a folder in there with different examples of real small patrol ones, maybe SWAT ones that you can use. But what I encourage you to do is if you do use this model, is to make it your own. Find an incident that happened that has impacted you or your agency or the country in our profession and implement that into your style.

Jon Becker: Josh, if we want to learn more about the learning theory here and the science behind this, what's the best vehicle to do that?

Josh Wofford: Simplest way. Go on Google scholar. Look up designing virtual learning environments for the California association of Tactical Officers. That'll give you the capstone. The capstone is about 72 pages, single space. It outlines exactly what me and Toby did on, on this project, how we did the DMEs, the theory behind it, all the literature, interviews with, with people that were, that took part in it, and that will give you a really robust understanding of how to approach the DMEs and what the value of them are.

Jon Becker: So we'll link to all of that in the show notes, including the CATO side. And if you guys can give us, you know, any, any other ideas you have as far as suggestions for reading all that, it'd be great. We'll just build it all out in the show notes and share it.

Guys, I can't thank you enough for being here. It was fantastic, and I learned a lot!

Toby Darby: Thanks so much for having us!

Josh Wofford: Yes, thank you!

Episode 18 – Inside the Breonna Taylor Case – Critical Incident Review with Sgt. John Mattingly

Jon Becker: Today's episode of the debrief will discuss the Breonna Taylor case, which has become a flashpoint in the movement to defund and reform law enforcement. There's obviously a great deal of press that has already occurred about this incident. Our goal is not to rehash everything that has been published. Rather, we're going to try to look at the case from the perspective of an individual officer whose life and career were destroyed by this case.

In preparation for this conversation, I read everything I could find about the case. I read the official reports, the news accounts, looked at every picture and video I could get my hands on, and talked to numerous people about the incident. Several things became clear during my investigation.

One, the media reports about the incident were wildly inaccurate initially, and although they have gradually become more accurate, they left most of us with a very inaccurate perception about what happened that night.

Two, that like any tragedy, it was not a single action or actor that created this situation. Rather, it was a complex chain of acts that resulted in the situation spiraling out of control.

Three, that although there were several specific things in Louisville that laid the foundation for this, it is not difficult to see how this could have happened to any police department in the United States in a similar situation.

As a result, our goal today is to try to gather lessons learned that may help other agencies and their officers to prevent this from happening to them, and to hopefully set the record straight on several misconceptions about the case.

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!

My guest today is John Mattingly. John is a retired sergeant from the Louisville Police Department who led the search warrant service at the home of Breonna Taylor on March 13th, 2020, and was shot in the leg by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, before returning fire with another officer, resulting in the death of Miss Taylor.

This event, of course, became a huge catalyst for protests, riots, lawsuits, death threats against the officers, and tragically, the shooting of two more officers while responding to the multi day civil unrest that followed. It has also led to three of the officers involved in obtaining the search warrant, as well as one of the officers involved in the raid being charged with federal crimes. John has recently written a book called 12 Seconds in the Dark that documents the facts of this case from his perspective and discuss the numerous issues that have not been discussed in the media. Jhon, thanks for being here.

I really appreciate you joining me today, man!

Sgt. John Mattingly: I'm glad to be here!

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with kind of your background and career, like, walk me through, you know, John's evolution as a cop.

Sgt. John Mattingly: All right. So I came on in June of 2000, and when I came on, I went naturally. Most cops to late watch or graveyard shift, midnight to eight, did that until 2005, September 2005. I went to what's called a flex unit. It's kind of like a narcotics unit inside of each of our, one of our eight divisions. And I did that until 2009, September 2009, so, right at four years.

And that's when I got promoted to sergeant. Wasn't going to take the test, but my boss at the time looked at me and she said, man, are you seeing all these people that are getting promoted? And I was like, yeah. She said, a bunch of idiots, aren't they? I'm like, heck, yeah, they are. She said, do you want to work for them or do you want to work with them? I went, good point. I guess I'll take the test. So I took it. I got promoted on September 11 of 2009 and went back to late watch for a year. And my body couldn't stand it because at that time, I was a little bit older. I didn't come on till I was 27.

So, you know, here I am, nine years in at this point, and kids running around the house, couldn't get any sleep. So I did that for a year. And then in 20, I guess, 2010, I went to detective sergeant position. Did that for a year and a half. We took everything except business, robberies and homicides. Everything else we did. Enjoyed it. Got to learn a lot, but at the same time, just wasn't my speed. I missed the adrenaline, missed the jump out on people, all that.

So I went back to the flex unit as a sergeant. That only lasted about six months. And the crime in Louisville just kept going up and up and up. And so they put together with a violent crime unit called Viper. And the guy who was starting that unit called me and said, hey, will you come be one of my sergeants?

And I liked the guy, but I didn't want to work for him. One of those guys. Yeah, super smart, but always let you know how smart he was, all that stuff. Yeah, great cop, but I was like, no, I'm good. He cussed me out, hung up the phone, had some of the guys that were gonna go to that unit that he'd kind of handpicked, kind of work on me, work on me, work on me.

So, a couple weeks later, he called me back. I said, okay, fine, I'll do it. So, went to do that, and from 2012 to the end of 2015, I did that. And best time of my career. It was the busiest, the hardest I've ever worked, but most fun I have had and just had more positive results. You know, it wasn't just dope. It was getting guns and murders and carjackers and all that stuff off the street almost in real time, because the guys that worked for me were.

I mean, they're much better detective than I ever was, and. And they knew how to round people up on social media. And within hours of shootings and homicides, we were grabbing these guys up. And so it was a good time. And then new command came in. The department kind of changed everything up in that unit wasn't what it was before. Turned into some kind of pr thing for the city. I said, this ain't me. I'm out. And I bounced from that unit, went back to a flex unit as a sergeant for about a year, and then I went to our major narcotics unit in 2017 and was there until the time of the incident in 2020.

Jon Becker: So, over the course of your career, how many, you know, you worked narcotics for quite a few years. How many warrants you think you served?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Oh, around 2000.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, I mean, this is an active narco unit that's doing a lot of warrants.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, I mean, there were days. There were days we were doing three and four warrants. You know, we just piggyback one off the other onto the next. Onto the next, and work, you know, 14, 16 hours. So very busy, very proactive. Good time.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the, you know, the incident. First, let's start with the warrant. Why did Louisville PD seek a warrant for Breonna Taylor's apartment?

Sgt. John Mattingly: All right, well, a new unit had been formed in January of 2020. It was called the place based investigation. It was from a pilot program out of Cincinnati that specifically targeted individuals within the city. Like, you would take somebody who had a bunch of complaints, there was a repeat offender who was a nuisance, and they would pinpoint that person, and that was going to be their only target until they wrapped up a good case on them and prosecuted. Then they would move to the next, unlike most units that have, you know, 10, 12 things going at one time, they were all the. The entire unit was going to focus on these one problems and just kind of knock them off one by one.

Jon Becker: Were those problems people based or place based would imply its location?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. Mainly community based. Now, come to find out, we think it was the mayor's way of gentrifying this community, because on Elliott Avenue, which is where the main target and where the two of the warrants were served that night, there were two residences left on this street that the city had not retained control over.

Jon Becker: So were they, like, imminent domain in the houses?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well, no, they were going in some of them imminent domain, but a lot of them they were using where you would go in. If you had more than three citations on that location, within six months, the city could actually come in and take your property, or at least they could shut it down until you went through court. They had bought most of the properties for about a dollar apiece, was what they were doing from these people. So they basically were strong armor them because it was in a lower income in community, and so you had a lot of poor people.

So these houses were 95% rental houses. So you had these landlords just renting to people, and. And the city would come in and go, oh, you had these violations, whether it be the gutters down, dope sold from the house, all these different things they could use to obtain these properties, we'll come to find out in 2018 or 2017. The city had had drawings already written up and done for this area where they were going to put in a fountain and new buildings and a walking area and all this stuff.

Jon Becker: All the standard gentrified yoga shop.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Exactly.

Jon Becker: You know, place that sells fancy ice cream.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Just totally changed this part of the communities. It was the goal, but they couldn't get rid of these two houses. They were pain in their side. And I've actually got a map that was given to me by somebody from the inside that showed all the X out houses they had in the two they needed, and it was the two that they happened to be doing these warrants on.

Jon Becker: Interesting!

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, very, very big coincidence. So the main target, Jamarcus Glover, he's a guy from Mississippi, had several felonies down there. At the time of this warrant, he had five or six open pending felony cases in Jefferson county, which is Louisville, all for drugs and guns. So he's a repeat offender? Repeat offender. Kept letting him out.

Well, in January of 2020, he got locked up. Some buddies of mine from another unit had done a warrant on the same house on Elliott. Got Jamarcus Glover. I think it was seven guns. Four of them were rifles, three pistols, some heroin, cocaine, different things like that. Breonna Taylor bailed him out of jail, and she used her address as his – When they pulled all the records for the Jamarcus Glover, everything came back to Breonna's house. His car was registered there, his phone was registered there. His bank account was at her house. She bailed him out and used that address as his. So everything pointed to Breonna Taylor's apartment.

Jon Becker: As maybe where he's living, or at least, you know, right adjacent to him, so to speak.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct. And during the course of this, this three month investigation, they have videos of him going in empty handed, coming out with packages, going straight to the track trap house on Elliot from her house on Springfield. They had po cams up on Elliot. They had trackers on his car, pings on his phone. So they knew that occasionally he was going to Breonna Taylor's house and then leaving.

There's a couple of times she actually drove him down to the trap house, and they have her on video down there. So that tied her to them. The whole purpose of going to her apartment that night wasn't for Jamarcus Glover. Like, like everybody says on the news, we. They knew where he was.

And again, this was originally signed as a no knock because of Jamarcus, because of his criminal history. And once they figured out he was not going to be at that location, due to the surveillance, when we were at the briefing that night, they said it signed as a no knock, but we're going to do a knock and announce because it no longer fits the parameters.

So in that case, they were doing the right thing because what they had presented to the judge no longer met those parameters anymore. And so they bumped it back to a knock and an ounce.

Jon Becker: So the idea of the no knock is basically, if in fact, it's the location where he is, he's probably armed.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct. He's run from the police before.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You're gonna go in quick and take him into custody.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay, let's go back for 1 second, though. So she, Breonna Taylor is his girlfriend at that at this point or?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Not in 2020. At this point, yeah. Off and on for about seven years, they've been boyfriend and girlfriend, broken up, gotten together. Broken up, gotten together.

Jon Becker: But there's, I mean, there's a relationship between the two of them that is.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well documented, still current. Yes.

Jon Becker: And he's using her address to, you know, to receive things and using it almost as a home address.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. Yeah. And that's typical in the drug trade. And, you know, a lot of your listeners will understand that, that these guys don't put things in their name. They put it in girlfriends, baby mamas, whoever's grandma's name. It doesn't matter. They use their location to spread out their drugs and money, because if the police hits one place, hopefully they'll miss the other spot.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And later, we found out from jail phone calls that Brianna was, in fact, holding Jamarcus Glover's

money that night and other drug dealers in their little organization. And JaMarcus Glover's girlfriend got mad at him. It's all on jail phone calls of, you know, why is she holding your money? He's like, well, she's holding everybody's money. It's just what she does.

So she was definitely tied into it. I don't think. I don't think she was out there slinging the dope herself, but I. But she knew of the organization. She knew what was going on.Jon Becker:

Yeah. I mean, like, best case scenario, she's just dirtbag adjacent.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And there was something about a rental car, too, right? Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: In 2017, she rented a car. A few days later, there was a body found in the trunk that had been shot. That case has never been solved. That person was tied to the organization of Jamarcus Glover, somebody they knew. When the police asked her about it, she just simply said, I don't know what happened to the car got stolen or so.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So you can see where if you're a judge and you're presented with this, with a warrant for her house, you know, with supporting affidavits, you're going to grant a search warrant to go search the house. Because worst case scenario, Jamarcus Glover's there. Best case scenario, you may find drugs, money, property. Etcetera. Okay. So it's a different unit that does the workup on this. It's the place based investigations unit that does the workup on this. When do you first get word of the warrant?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So this is kind of the tricky part. So in January, when they first began this case, at this point, I'd move from our major case division over to our parcel interdiction unit, where we took packages from UPS, FedEx. The lead detective came to me and said, hey, can you look up this address, 3003 Springfield, number four, and see if Jamarcus Glover has any packages coming there? Well, I knew from experience that even if he were having packages sent there, it's not going to be in his name. They always use some crazy fake names so they can have, you know, plausible deniability.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And if it shows up and the girl has it, she can go, this ain't mine. Look at the name on it. You have no idea whose it is. This happens all the time. And we've done several reverses that way where we've locked people up, or we've delivered the package and gone and done the warrant. So he comes to me and he says, hey, can you look up this address? I said, who's it through? He says, through the postal service.

I said, well, josh, we have zero connection with the postal service, because a couple years before I came to this unit, the postal inspector and LMPD got into a big, you know, p****** contest, to say it nicely, and I. And they took their ball and went home, and we no longer dealt with them. I didn't have any connections with them. Didn't even know him, never met him.

So when he came to me and said that, I said, I don't know who. I don't know anything about that, but I know who does. I knew the. The smaller department, Shively police department, which is one of the small ancillary departments around there. They had picked up with postal because they also had a little unit that went out and did this stuff.

So I reached out to him, text him right there while he's standing next to me, and I said, hey, do you have anything on Springfield in Jamarcus Glover's name? He said, man, I don't know about Springfield, but we do have a Jay Glover. I can't remember the first name that we just got a package off of. He said, I'll get back with you. I showed Josh the text, exchanged their phone numbers, thought I was done with it.

A couple weeks later, I'm at UPS pulling packages, and I see one of the detectives from Shively, and I said, hey, man, did you all ever figure out that. That thing I text you about last week about Glover, or a couple weeks ago? And he said, yeah, me and Kelly Goodlett, who was the other, the co lead on this case, he said, she called me.

We were talking about it. We were comparing vehicles of the two glovers, figured out it's a different glover. Theirs is like a Jason Glover, and this was JaMarcus Glover. So just kind of a weird coincidence, but a different glover. They knew that at that point. I said, cool, no problem. Not my case. Don't really care. Didn't mean that in a bad way, but we're so busy, don't have time to keep track of other people's cases.

The next day, I'm in the office. Josh is walking by me, and I stop him and say, hey, man, did you hear? They've got. It's a different glover. There's no packages. He said, yeah, man. Kelly told me. I was hoping to just do a rip reversal. Now we gotta write all these warrants. Sorry, dude. Went on our way. That's the last I thought I was gonna hear of it.

In March, 1 week of March, we get an email sent to all of narcotics saying, we've got a. A multi warrant, simultaneous that's coming up, that we. That we need bodies on manpower intensive. They sent out the addresses. Elliott Avenue. Elliott Avenue. Muhammad Ali. Another address down in our urban area, west end, where it's super ghetto. And then. Then they had the one on Springfield. What? This point, I had erased Springfield from my mind. And it also didn't have JaMarcus Glover's name on it, had Breonna Taylor's.

So I'm not putting two to two and two together at this point, because in parcel interdiction, we're doing 40, 50 warrants a week that I've got to go through and approve. And if it's not a case we're actively working, you just flush that info and you move to the next one. I'm not that smart, or I'd do something different. Be a cop. So when they send that out, I look at the addresses, and I'm like, man, I can help that night because it's overtime. Who doesn't like overtime?

But I don't want to be down the ghetto. I've done this for years. I've been down there so much. I don't want to dig through a nasty trap house. I don't want to deal with the crowds. I said, give me the. If you give me the apartment, I'll help out. And so their sergeant sent back and said, fine, you got it. So two weeks later, we come in for the brief, and that's when we go. And I see the no knock, no knock, and then knock and announce on the board for Springfield.

Jon Becker: So how many warrants were being simultaneously served that night?

Sgt. John Mattingly: They had five signed. They were going to do three at the same time as long as they had him in custody and then go to the next two, because one was, I think, mom's house and one or girlfriend's house, and then the actual baby mama's house.

Jon Becker: So. And this is arrest warrants and search warrants?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, simple search warrants.

Jon Becker: Simple search.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay, so the three locations that they decide they're gonna hit, two of them are on Elliott Elliot Avenue, and the other one is Breonna Taylor's apartment.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you get tasked with Taylor's apartment.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: So your warrant is a no knock.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Warrant signed that way. Yes.

Jon Becker: Signed as a no knock, which was done so that if Jamarcus Glover was there, you had the capability to go in and execute it. No knock. Correct. But at the point that you get handed the warrant, they've already determined that he's on Elliot.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And that's where his phone is pinging, and, like, you know, everything's pointing to. That's where he is.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. The phrase they used, I specifically remember this was, we're going after this house for documents and money. Possible dope. We don't think there's any there, but possible. They said she's a heavyset black female. Give her extra time to come to the door, because generally, on a knock and announce you're 10 seconds at the door, then you're going through.

So they asked us to give her extra time initially to keep the neighbors out of it because they were hoping she'd jump on the team. And I, you know, because she wasn't the target. You know, they were going after documents to tie Glover into this different organization where he had about five guys working for him.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The target of the investigation is Jamarcus Glover.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: She's just, you know, an acquaintance, peripheral. Yeah. Okay, so then you get. You get the warrant. They decide it's not gonna be a no knock. Who's serving the other two warrants?

Sgt. John Mattingly: SWAT. Serving both of those.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you SWAT hitting two locations simultaneously, and you guys are doing the third location.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct. We were on swatch frequency, so when they said, we're unmounting here and heading in, that's when we were moving in.

Jon Becker: Got it. Simultaneous, just to, you know, provide element a surprise and make sure somebody doesn't make a phone call, and evidence gets destroyed and all that. But your primary objective is simply evidence against Jamarcus?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. The goal was not even to lock her up. That was never relayed to us. That was never – Hey, we're getting her. She's going downtown. That's it. It was simply, get in there, let's find some evidence against Jamarcus, then we can tie her in and maybe get her to flip.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so talk to me about the team. You are assigned to execute this warrant.

Sgt. John Mattingly: There were seven of us. I know all the guys, obviously because they work in some facet in narcotics. One of the guys actually worked for me in parcel interdiction, so I'd serve, and he was with me in Viper. So we had served multiple, multiple warrants over the years together. There was another guy that used to work with me, but he was in the highway interdiction. We served some warrants together, not a lot.

And then I had a guy from a street platoon that I didn't serve many warrants with. I had occasionally, you know, here and there, because we were always plugging in bodies when you needed them. Had a guy from the play space unit that I'm not sure I've ever served a warrant with him. Maybe one, but I'm not even sure on that. Then we had a lieutenant who, you know, generally just doesn't come out for warrants, but with bodies needed, we had a lieutenant on scene.

Jon Becker: So seven guys, six different units. As a unit, these guys had never worked together.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: Like you worked with a couple of guys and a couple of guys in the unit might have worked with each other, but as a unit you are – this is the first time you are together.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. This isn't a team that normally went out and hit doors.

Jon Becker: Got it. And like, what's the experience level in this seven guys, you've got a couple thousand more. And you've been working a long time in narcotics. Is it a real wide variance in skillset?

Sgt. John Mattingly: It depends on how you put that there, because there's guys that have had many years on, but. And even some of them in narcotics, but they hadn't done a lot of dynamic entry warrants. So you still had, I think between the seven of us, there was probably about 140 years of experience out there, but in different areas. Like one guy had been a beat guy his first 21 years, and he'd only been in a specialty unit for a couple year and a half. Only done, man, one or two warrants that I know of.

So you had some guys that were pretty fresh to this. Not fresh to be in police officers, but fresh to being in this type of unit. And then other guys that had been in these units, but again, just hadn't worked. Hadn't worked together.

Jon Becker: Yeah, they had the experience, but they just hadn't had been. Had played the same team, so to speak. So in narcotics at this point in Louisville PD. And I suspect that this has changed now, but I mean, I hope it is. What is when you come into an arc unit? What kind of training are you getting?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well, I mean, this has been a complaint for years. I don't care if you're going to homicide, narcotics division, detective. There's not a lot of, you know, you go to the old guys like it used. When I first came on, the department was so old or filled with older guys, middle guys and young guys that you had all that experience to lean on. And even if you weren't leaning on them, if you did something wrong, they were reaching out to you, smacking you upside the head, telling you what you're doing wrong.

Well, as the department grew or not grew, as the department actually shrunk, but as time went on, the department got a lot younger, and as those old guys matriculated out, there wasn't a changing of the guard as far as, hey, we're bringing new guys in because we know these guys are, they're gone in six months.

So let's transfer this knowledge to the new guys. And every time a new crew came in, it was like recreating the wheel. So then you're, it's back to the basics, starting all over, re digging in. And the training just wasn't very good. I mean, you'd have, you know, send a guy to a week or two week narcotic school and that would be it.

Jon Becker: And in that school, he may do two days of high risk entries.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, yeah, it was. It's so much information in a week or two that you can't. You're not proficient at it.

Jon Becker: Well, and you and I talked about this earlier, but like, it's, you know, narcotics as you're working, it is, you know, 95% detective work.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And then there's this search warrant component.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. So you've got to be good at handling informants, surveillance on following people, and then you've got this facet at the end that the carrot at the end of the stick of doing your entry and doing your search warrant, collecting your evidence.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So you go to briefing the decisions made that it's not going to be a dynamic warrant. You're going to do a knock and announce. When do you first see the location?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So when we went to our second secondary location to meet up after the main brief, everybody goes to their different areas where they're going to be meeting up, met up with EMS, met up with the guys. And I said, hey, I'm going to go buy this location. Because the six of us that were out there, there was one guy on the eye who was watching the apartment that guy was part of the play space unit, so he knew what he was looking at. He knew what the investigation detail entailed. But us six over here knew nothing about it.

Jon Becker: And he's not leading the warrant you're leading.

Sgt. John Mattingly: I'm leading the warrant. He's simply the eye on it. Just tell us what's coming and going. You know, he knows what they look like in case they come in or out. So I'm like, man, I've got to go by and see this. You know, we don't have a true VO or verification officer, so I've got to at least go by and know what I'm going to, I don't want to hit the wrong door. You know, you don't want to do something stupid. So I go by and I'm on the phone with him, and he. He directs me into the location of where it's at.

So at least I got a vision of it. And these are eight plex apartments. You've got. They're actually 16 plex, but you've got in, they're split in two, and you've got four units on the bottom, four units on the top. If you're looking directly at the apartment, it's a breezeway inset with a metal staircase on the right. You've got two doors on the back wall and then a door on the right and a door on the left that are kind of looking at each other.

Jon Becker: So all four apartments on the bottom open into the same common breezeway area.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: And two doors are facing you as you're walking up. And two doors are on the sides.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. And her door was the one on the right as you're walking up underneath the staircase.

Jon Becker: Okay. So you have to go around the staircase.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well, it's kind of offset to the right. So the middle of the walkway kind of leads you to the left of it. You don't really have to go around it. You're walking right by.

Jon Becker: Yeah, you walk right past it. But when you. When you go to her door, it's kind of overhanging.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And it's overhung by the staircase.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you. You go drive by and have a look. And to go back. Are you given any maps of the location, any floor plans, any data in your briefing?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, it was pretty generic. It was like, you know, the main emphasis was on Jamarcus, Glover and Elliott on those locations. And then this was almost like a, like a secondary, like a side piece, if you would say. Yeah, it's like okay. We're also doing this, so go do it and see what you get.

Jon Becker: So SWAT had not scouted it. No place based investigation.

Sgt. John Mattingly: They didn't even know we were doing it.

Jon Becker: Interesting. Okay. And they were in a different briefing, I take it?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes. So SWAT briefs at their office. We briefed it together because they've got, I don't know, 35 guys. They were using 40 guys. We had 40 on our end. And there's conflicting reports. The guys in the unit say no. When we went with SWAT a couple weeks earlier to start this ball rolling, we told them about the location, tell them what was going on.

Apparently, that wasn't related to their commanders, so they're saying it wasn't told. So it was miscommunication from the start. That kind of started to snowball. And as we talk, you'll see there's just been. It was mistake after mistake.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, it's one of the things I said in the intro is, like, you know, the problem with all these kinds of things is never one big blunder.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Right. It's a chain of events of sometimes seemingly inconsequential decisions. And sometimes, you know, people taking bad action, sometimes people doing what they think is the right thing. But. But all of those little things add up to lay the groundwork. That's why I want to kind of, as we're walking through this, I want to talk through, like, okay, what about this? What about this?

So you go, you look at the location, drive by, figure out where the apartment is. The guy on the eye from the place. Place investigations, I'm assuming, is telling you like that, you know, that's the apartment.Sgt. John Mattingly:

Yeah. There was a heating cooling air van right in front of the breezeway. He said, when you get to that van, it's right there to the right. Bottom door on the right. So when I got there, I tapped my brakes. He said, that's it. So at least I knew what it looked like where we were going to.

Jon Becker: Got it. Is the apartment marked? Like, is there, like, an apartment number on it?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Number four.

Jon Becker: Okay. And did you notice anything else when you did your drive by?

Sgt. John Mattingly: I noticed the first time I noticed the bedroom light or the bedroom TV. You could see it flickering through her shades.

Jon Becker: So as you're looking at the front of the building, her apartment is on the front of the building.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct. And to the right of the breezeway.

Jon Becker: To the right of the breezeway. And you're looking at the outside of the building. What do you see as far as windows and doors and stuff?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So if we start at the breezeway. To the right of it there's a sliding glass door and there's a little small wooden type fence blocking that off or going around it.

Jon Becker: So like a little courtyard or a little garden kind of area?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Little bitty area.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And to the right of that is the secondary bedroom window. And then to the right of that is the main bedroom where the TV was on.

Jon Becker: Do you know that or do you know that now?

Sgt. John Mattingly: I know it now when I saw the TV flickering. And most apartments are laid out fairly similar. So in my mind I kind of put two and two together and thought, well, that's probably the master bedroom where they're watching TV.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Or where she is. Cause we were told no kids, no dogs, no boyfriends. That's the intel we had. Just her.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And you and I joked about that earlier. No house ever has kids, dogs or guns. But they all seem to have kids, dogs and guns. So to go back to the apartment, if. If you're looking at the front, you've got the secondary bedroom, primary bedroom, little courtyard kind of gardening area with the sliding glass doors. Just big windows. Like. Like sliding windows or normal windows on the two bedrooms?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, they're normal windows. Just that kind of go up.

Jon Becker: Got it. And those are covered with blinds, if I remember correctly.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: So you can't see in. You can just see that the TV's on.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. You knew the TV was on. You could see it flickering through the shades.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So then just to get one more detail about the layout of the apartment, when the front door opens to the apartment, you're looking straight down a hallway, if I remember correctly.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct. Yeah. About 30 ft down a hallway, you've got a. If you're looking through the door, the living room is on the right, the kitchenette is on the left. There's like a small dining room that leads into a small kitchen. Then there's a hallway right down the middle, a bathroom to the left, and then an insert inset to the right in that inset or the opening to both bedroom doors.

So the hallway is only about 3 ft wide, very narrow. And then at that first bedroom, the wall actually cuts inside, so it can give you concealment but not covered.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Sgt. John Mattingly: If that makes sense.

Jon Becker: But the two bedrooms are opening off of a common alcove like it's a wall until it dents in. And the two bedrooms both open off that common space.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay. So when you're looking down the hallway of the apartment, you know, we're standing at the front door, we look all the way down the hallway to the right and back is where her bedroom is.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay. All right. So then I – You do your scout. You have a quick look, go back stage. Then what happens?

Sgt. John Mattingly: SWAT calls and says they're in route. And then as they get close, we, you know, we line our cars up. We. We start down. And as we're pulling into the parking lot and circling around to unmount from our vehicles. I see a white Toyota sequoia sitting parked right behind the van. But it's nothing parallel to it is perpendicular, so it wasn't in a parking space. It's like somebody pulled up and jumped out.

And in my mind, I'm thinking, why don't I know this? You know, where was the eye on this? Did he fall asleep? Did he just miss it? Did he see where they went? And it was across the street? Inconsequential. I don't know. We weren't told. So I was a little upset, you know, a little ticked off about it. And I'll be. I'll be honest, I was a little. Not complacent. But when you do so many of these, it's kind of procedure. You know, you're just going through the motions. But when I saw that, the radar went up a little bit. Because I'm like, man, I don't know where if. Is this a threat?

Jon Becker: Yeah, that could be Jamarcus Glover, for all you know.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Where did they go? What apartment they go into? Because they're parked right in front of ours. So as I tell the guys, I'm gonna pull up to it and get out. They stayed back. They unmounted back, did the normal approach from, you know, 20, 30 ft back, whatever it was. I pulled up behind the car that was concealed by the van, my car washing. I get out, I look through the car.

I remember seeing a pink baby seat in the back and a bunch of trash. But nobody was in the vehicle. I circle around the front. I make my way through the breezeway. They come up behind me. I'm underneath the staircase at this point. And we've all in a stack as best we can. It's a very small area. So I've got one guy behind me. And then we're kind of split. I'm to the left of the door. Because the door swung from right to left as it opened up. So from the living room toward the kitchen.

Jon Becker: So the door swings into the left side. Right doorknob's on the right hand side.

Sgt. John Mattingly: As you approach it, and I'm on the left. And then we got the breacher on the right. And it was so small, the rest of the guys were on the right, kind of wrapped around the staircase.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. And just to this will probably become relevant in a second, but the car that's parked in front, I'm assuming that's the guy that's in the apartment upstairs picking up his kid.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: Okay, so we've got a guy who has pulled up and is going to pick up his daughter. Daughter?

Sgt. John Mattingly: I think it was a daughter. Yeah.

Jon Becker: The baby at the apartment up above.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Directly above Breonna Taylor.

Jon Becker: Yeah, like, right above where you are, which will come into play in a second here.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay. All right, so your stage at the door, what happens next?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So the initial thought was, let's just knock normal, like we're delivering a pizza or something, see if she can come to the door. Because they didn't want the neighbors involved. We'll do this discreetly. We'll get inside the apartment. We'll do our thing. We'll get out of.

Jon Becker: And you're in a neighborhood where the police hitting a house is going to be like neighborhood entertainment, I'm assuming. Yeah. And have a look.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes, but it's not as common as the area they're in down on Elliott. Okay, so this wasn't a predominantly black community. This wasn't a predominantly poor community. It was kind of. Kind of middle of the road. What, middle class?

Jon Becker: Lower middle class working families.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. And you had a mix of hispanic, black, white, all kind of interlaced in here. So the idea that, you know, the police were there isn't abnormal, but it's not as frequent as they're gonna see down on Elliott.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So you decide you're gonna knock, see what happens.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So we knock a couple times. I knocked a couple times, got no response. So at that point, I did the open hand. Police knock loud. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Police. Search warrant. Police. Search warrant. Come to the door. After the first knock, all of a sudden, I hear my lieutenant and Detective Hankinson address somebody tell them to get back in the apartment. Get back in the apartment. Well, I can't see what's above me because there's a concrete landing and I'm right below it.

But I know they're addressing somebody because I glance out of the corner of my eye, on my peripheral, and I see them engaging someone up top. This goes on. I just ignored in the beginning as they're conversing back and forth. This guy's arguing with him. For whatever reason, he didn't want to go back inside.

And so I knock a second time. Well, they're still going at it, and this has probably been 10 seconds at this point, which seems an eternity when you're at a door. And so I simply said, brett, let it go. Relax. And that wasn't anything on Brett. That was just simply saying. That was just the terminology that came out of my mouth.

Jon Becker: Relax.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Because I needed focus on the door and away from that was distracting people.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And so the guy went back in the apartment. We focused back on the door, continued knocking. About six cadences total of knock and announce. On the one right before the last one, the breacher nobles said, hold on, I think I heard something inside. So I stopped listening for a second, didn't hear anything. Yelled again, police. Search warrant. Didn't hear anything. Knocked one more time, yelled, police, search warrant. Looked back at my lieutenant, and he gave the nod to go ahead. And at this time, we've been at the door at least a minute, probably 45 seconds, but probably about a minute.

Jon Becker: Well, long enough for them to get out of bed, get dressed, and be in the hallway.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. With the gun.

Jon Becker: With a gun, yeah. That's about to come into play here, so. Okay, then what do you do?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So, Mike hits the door the first time, and he hit right on the deadboat, and. Which, you know, is a no no. And it didn't do anything. It dented the door a little bit, but that was it. And I remember somebody. Somebody in the background yelling, hey, my daughter hits harder than that. So everybody kind of laughed, as, you know. As you do.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Second time, he hit it. Hit it flush and almost knocked it open. I could see through to the living room. I could see the dead boat was bent. And I said, here we go. And he hit it a third time, and it flew open. With that time. I can see from right to left, I can see the couch. I can see the curtains on the window. I can see the wall. There was a picture on the wall. And I – From right to left, I'm slicing the pie. And I get to where the door frame on the left side of the door and the. The wall for the hall meet, I can no longer see anymore. Can't see down the hall. Can't see in the kitchen to the left. All I can see is the living room.

Everybody at this point, please. Search warrant. Police. Search warrant. Police. Search warrant. Now, this is pretty quick. You know, the. The cutting and slicing the pies, maybe 2 seconds.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Boom, boom, boom, boom. At that point, as soon as I step from left to right into the door frame and my gun light goes from right to left, I come up on the. I can see the end of this gun. I could see it was silver, and. But the first thing my mind did, as I'm turning right to left, I'm seeing two people, but they're overlapping. It's like one big blob at the end of this long hall. Long, dark hall. And you got the ambient light from the tv coming out of the room. Now you've got the. The law. The light from the hallway kind of coming in, giving a weird look. And then you've got our, you know, mounted our gun lights.

So as I'm going right to left, I'm going, man, something's not right here. My brain, even though this is super quick, my brain's thinking all these weird things, like, this is weird. Normally, people run, they hide, they try to escape, they give up, or they fight. But I've never had two people waiting at the end of a hallway just standing there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's weird.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So. And I knew in my mind, I assumed one was a guy and one was a girl because one was taller, one was shorter. But I couldn't make their face out. I couldn't have picked them out of a lineup, because my focus went right on that gun that was extended out. So if you're looking down the hall, Kenneth Walker's to the right, Breonna's to the left.

Jon Becker: So he's closer to the bedroom, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: He's. He's at that little insert, that little in cut that goes to both bedroom doors. As soon as I see the gun, I think, oh, crap. I mean, it was so quick. As soon as I saw the gun, the flash, the bang, the smack in the leg, I felt it. I returned four shots. It felt like it was simultaneous. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But evidently, there was enough of a gap in there for him to dive out of the way in this doorway.

When that happened, I went behind the door frame, and I came back out and shot where I thought he dove into. And what we didn't know at the time, and we know now, looking at the pictures, was Breonna Taylor tried to follow him into that door. And her feet where she was on the left side of the hall. If you're looking down the hall, her feet ended up on the right, actually past the threshold of where he ran into that little indention. And then she fell back against the wall.

So after I got shot, I felt my leg. After I got out of the way, I said, man, I've been hit. And I knew it was bad, because, you know, on the street, I've seen hundreds of people shot, and if it's just a through and through leg wound, there's a little blood, but it's not catastrophic, you know, it's not a lot. And as soon as I put my hand out of my leg, my palm was just soaked, and I thought, oh, man, this hit my femoral artery. So I yelled that out, man. I've been hitting my femoral.

And at that time, I go down, and miles kind of steps over me and a little bit on me, and he's returning fire down the hallway. And all this, again, is so quick, man. We can explain it, but unless you're there, the speed at which these things go is just tremendous.

Jon Becker: That's 12 seconds, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. From the time that door opened and he shot till it was complete silence was 12 seconds. And that's with three, four, four different people firing, people moving. You know, all this stuff happening. So, as I go down, miles steps up and shoots. I kind of zone out for just a half a second. Then I come to him, like, I can't sit here. I'm gonna get shot with crossfire.

So I get up, and I hobble out, and I go behind miles as he's firing. I go to the curb, and as I'm stepping off the curb, I forget about my leg, and I step down, and I fall between the cars. Well, simultaneously, miles is done shooting, and there's, like, maybe a half second, three quarter of a second, real quick break. And then I hear gunfire again, but it sounds different because it's no longer in this. In this inset, you know, down here.

Jon Becker: Where all the metal alcove, and.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, you're not getting the echo. You're not getting all that stuff. There was a different sound, and it was multiple guns, shots. I mean, just quick. And I thought. My mind, I thought, holy crap, they're still shooting at each other, you know, even though it's quick. That seemed like a lot of shots and come to find out, that was Brett moving to a secondary location, thinking we were getting assassinate the doorway. And, you know, he's firing through the. Through the windows, trying to get them to stop shooting.

So I instantly said, man, I need a tourniquet. Need a tourniquet. My lieutenant comes over, drags me back behind the sequoia, and he doesn't have a tourniquet on him. It's a lieutenant. Lucky they have guns on him. So he pulled his belt off. He tried to put it on. Mike nobles, the guy that was the breacher, had come out at this point, because when I came out, he was kind of stuck behind the stair between the stairway and the shots being fired, so he couldn't exit. He was kind of stuck up against the wall.

So at this point, he had arrived about the same time I got pulled out, and they stuck that leather belt on me and. And pulled it, and it wasn't working. You know, he was stepping on my leg, pulling. But the blood was just. It was just slipping off the leather. So that's a myth, guys. Don't try that. It does not work.

Jon Becker: You need a winless for a tourniquet to work.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes. And so right at that time, Tony James comes around the corner, and he has a tourniquet in his hand. The lieutenant takes it, puts it on, and, you know, thank God, at least he paid attention in tourniquet class, because that saved my life.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because it hits your femoral artery.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, yeah. Rip through it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So you end up having to have an entire section of about a five.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And a half hour surgery that took, I think, about six inches of the artery out. Took a vein out of my leg, replaced it with that. And I don't know what they call it. Not fusing. They call it something grafting. Yeah, grafted the vein in.

Jon Becker: Okay, so, at this point, Breonna Taylor's in the hallway. She's been shot six times, if I remember correctly. Five or six times.

Sgt. John Mattingly: It was five. They think the fifth one ricocheted off something and came out a different hole. So they said probably five, but they counted six since there was an extra hole.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Sgt. John Mattingly: They didn't have an entry.

Jon Becker: Do we know of those five rounds? It was.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Some of them were yours, one was mine. I think a leg, or I think was a leg, and the rest were miles. And they think his was the one that pierced her heart and killed her.

Jon Becker: Okay, so Kenneth Walker dives back into the bedroom. He fires a total of one shot.

Sgt. John Mattingly: That's it.

Jon Becker: And if I remember correctly, I mean, obviously, one of the inaccuracies in the reporting that has bothered me since I dug into this and read all the files is you hear it described as that he fired a warning shot, which, I mean, shooting you in the thigh is a pretty strenuous warning, but I guess you could qualify it if you really stretched it.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. He said he shot at the ground.

Jon Becker: His aim is very bad. Because he hit you very effectively in the thighs.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So he fires the shot and retreats into the bedroom. She's in the hallway, mortally wounded, attempts.

Sgt. John Mattingly: To follow, catches the rounds. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, she probably steps into the rounds as you guys are engaging. Right.

Sgt. John Mattingly: At least the first one, probably. And took her down if it was a leg shot.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So then you have Brett Hankinson goes to the side. He fires ten rounds through two different sets of windows.

Sgt. John Mattingly: It'll be in three total. Two sets of windows and the sliding door.

Jon Becker: Okay, so he starts at the sliding door, is basically putting rounds.

Sgt. John Mattingly: As he's walked, as he's moving down the building.

Jon Becker: Got it. Which is currently the subject of a federal indictment for wanton reckless endangerment. Right.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And civil rights violation, which, if convicted, is a life sentence.

Jon Becker: So the wanton reckless endangerment that underlies that, is that he was not presented with a target, but was simply firing through blinded windows.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Correct.

Jon Becker: Okay. And I mean, I think that, you know, obviously that one's going to play out, you know, in federal court.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And, yeah, the only positive hope that he has, I think, is that it already went through state court. The same. Basically the same charges, but on state level, and he was acquitted. And in Jefferson County, I thought there was no way, because we're a super liberal city.

And the amount of, naturally, the amount of coverage with the protests and everything that happened in the city, Washington, it was. It was nonstop for months and months and months, every day, every newscast. So everybody in the city knew about it. So it's hard to get an impartial jury on that. But thankfully, once they heard the evidence in court, they were within 2 hours acquitted him.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's very fortunate. I mean, obviously, this is. And we'll touch on this. This ends up being the biggest case probably in the world for an extended period of time, because it becomes a cause celeb that literally LeBron James. And there's a long litany of people that felt the need to comment on it. And I think that the accuracy. I would encourage our listeners to go look at the official report, look at all the photographs are online.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: The information is literally out there. You can read everything. You can read the statements. The New York Times did a kind of real time reenactment that shows positions. And I think that for a listener to this podcast, it's a good idea to go watch that, because if nothing else, it visualizes it for you. It's not, from what I'm seeing and what we've talked about, totally accurate, but it's close, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: All the facts leading up to and some of wrong, but the actual depictment of where the placement was of the bullets and everything's accurate.

Jon Becker: And so just to go back to the door. So there's, you know, your left side of the door, that a guy to your right side, which is Miles.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No. Well, the guy to the right was the ram.

Jon Becker: The ram.

Sgt. John Mattingly: The breacher was Mike.

Jon Becker: Mike.

Sgt. John Mattingly: As soon as he hit, he naturally backed out.

Jon Becker: So he breaches, and then Miles steps up next to you.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, he came up over my right shoulder. He was also on the right side. And he kind of, you know, can. How you kind of zipper in.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So as I turned left, he kind of was coming right, and he saw the flash. And Brett happened to be over his shoulder, you know, eager to get up there, trying to get their way in. And he saw the flash too. And when he did, that's when Brett realized, I can't get in the doorway. I knew John was shot, but I can't get in the doorway because Miles is there. So I'm going around the front.

Jon Becker: So he peels off.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay. So you get hit, turn, run, basically, in between two cars where you fall.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Miles continues to engage, and Brett runs around to the side and engages through the blinds. Then at some point, the shooting stops.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Then what happens?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So while they're working on me, I hear them yelling inside and on the radio and different things. I even remember at one point, Brett getting on the radio, saying, they got a long rifle, and I'm on my back, and they're doing the tourniquet.

And I remember yelling at him, going, no, it wasn't a rifle. It was a. It was a silver handgun. Because my mind. I mean, I just focused on it. There could have been a rifle there too. But I never even made it to Breonna Taylor. You know, once I hit that gun, my. I stopped. Yeah, because everything just happened.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because, well, he shot you.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. And so.

Jon Becker: Which has a whiff. Picking. You pay attention.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, it got my attention real quick. So while they're doing all that, Jamar or Kenneth Walker is inside. He doesn't call 911. You see on the news, all this. Oh, man. He called when he heard somebody banging his door. He called 911. And you hear him, somebody shot my girlfriend. All that. He didn't do make that call until six minutes after the shooting. He called his mom first.

Then there was a gap. Then he called 911, and then he called Breonna Taylor's mom. He didn't come out of the apartment for almost 17 minutes, even though he knew the police were out there, just refused to come out for whatever reason, scared, whatever. Whatever you want to label.

Jon Becker: Yeah. At that point, it's probably reasonable for him to be afraid. He just shot a police officer.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. So the only fact that throws all that into maybe a contentious point for those that said he didn't know it was the police and for what he said on that recorded call to 911 is the fact we know he called his mom first. And then we also had a courtesy officer that lived in that apartment that. That went to middle school and high school with Kenneth, knew – Knows Kenneth's mom. And when he heard the shots, he turned his radio on, heard an officer was down, put his uniform on, and came down to the scene.

By the time he got down there, Kenneth Walker's mom had shown up because he had called her. And she came up to this guy she knew naturally, and said, I don't know what's going on. Kenny called me and said, they're at the door. I said, who's at the door, baby? He said, it's the police. I gotta go, and hung up. So we don't know if that call was made prior to the incident or if that was the first call made after. But he was on the phone with her for, like, two and a half minutes.

So we know that wasn't if that was the second call made or the call after the shooting. That wasn't the extent of the conversation. So there was a third phone on scene that we don't have access to. The FBI has, for whatever reason, they won't give us to us. But I. It was on the bed. It was on the side of the bed on the table. And we don't know if that original call when we were banging at the door was made from there or if he told his mom that after the shooting. Not really sure.

Jon Becker: Got it. But he, you know, obviously after the fact, these things have a way of taking on kind of their own explanations. But best case scenario, from. From Kenneth Walker standpoint, he doesn't know it's the police and thinks that somebody is breaking down the door, which could be her ex boyfriend, could be whoever.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. I mean, evidently, a couple months prior to this, him and the ex or the ex boyfriend had come to the apartment asking if he was there. I guess he knew he was seeing him as well, and she was kind of seeing both guys, and so it was kind of a mess in that area. And Kenneth Walker, he wasn't the saint that the news paints him out to be when they downloaded his phone. He's selling pills and weed and holding up all these different guns, which guns by themselves aren't illegal, but if you're selling drugs, you can't have a gun.

Jon Becker: But he's legally. He's legally carrying.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right, right. Even though before legal carry. Even though before open carry was legal in Kentucky, you had to have a CCW to have a gun concealed. He was caught with one. They charged him. It was lowered to some. Some misdemeanor in court. And so that was never. That charge never stuck on his record, even though he had been caught with one illegally prior to this.

Jon Becker: Got it. But he has a CCW. He did at the time. I mean, not that it matters because he's in an apartment and could legally possess a gun in an apartment. Okay. So then they. It's one of the things that is troubling when you watch the video is like, you guys had EMS staged with you, but it doesn't seem like they were with you because you were down on the ground.Sgt. John Mattingly:

Yeah, I'm not a long time. We still don't know what happened there. When I first pulled up to ems, I pulled up, and I looked up, and two very young EmS workers, and I thought, oh, crap, man. My kid. I mean, look, he's young as my kids. And the driver was a black guy. The passenger is a white guy. The driver, when I pulled up, had headphones on, and I honked my horn. They didn't hear me. I got my light out, shined. It finally got their attention. He rode the window down. He couldn't get his headphones off. They were stuck in his braids. The white kid's over there watching something on his phone. Totally zoned out.

And I said, man, you guys here for us? And he said, yeah. And I said, hopefully, we won't be long. You'll be on your way. And I left and went over to Mike nobles and said, man, I hope them guys ain't got to save our life, because I don't know if they know what they're doing. And it's just kind of the odds of it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One of those ironic moments that seem to always exist in these situations. So at the point that. That they put the tourniquet on you, is the video of that public, like, that was released, the body worn camera.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: That is released, which I think I would encourage people to watch because it. It is certainly. And we'll talk about training and preparation, but it is. It's troubling. The. The level of medical care that you are receiving with a femoral artery. I watched it several times. I'm deeply troubled on your behalf. When the guy that's putting a bandage on you says, I don't know what to do with this. I can only imagine what was going through your brain at that point.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Because, well, the main thing going through my brain was, okay, they got the tourniquet on. I'm good. I care less about a bandage. You know, whatever. It's blood, it's already there. Putting that bandage on ain't going to change much. But my concern was, I thought I'd been either shot twice or the bulletin ricocheted off. Something went up, because the pain wasn't where I was shot. It was up in my groin, in my lower back. So I was like, man, check. Check this out. Because by the time the camera starts, the tourniquet was already on.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So we'd been out there for a few minutes, and I remember saying, get a knife cut higher to make sure you got high enough. Yeah, that's what I kept saying. Just make sure you're high enough. You're over the. If there's two wounds, make sure you're above the second one.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And so they cut it, and he said, man, I can't find anything. Well, I guess it was just the nerve endings that had been damaged when the. When it went through, because, again, where the. Where it went in and came out, there wasn't much pain. It was. It was the different area. So it was really weird. But, yeah, even the tourniquet thing, man, if there's cops that are listening to this, again, complacency. And it wasn't on purpose on this one, on my behalf. When I came out from the brief, had two flat tires on my car. The car behind me had a couple flat tires. So somebody come to our parking lot and pop some tires.

Jon Becker: Police cars.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So I went in, found a pool cardinal while I was transferring all my stuff. I mean, it is just pouring rain, so I'm in a hurry. Moving. Moving gear, moving equipment. And when my vest wasn't on, I always took my tourniquet out and threw it in my glove box because I thought, well, if I'm going down the road or whatever reason, at least I can get it quick instead of my vest in the trunk or backseat. Well, when I moved stuff, I totally forgot to get my tourniquet. I was in a hurry and just messed up, so I couldn't save my own life if somebody else didn't have a tourniquet.

Jon Becker: Which fortunately, somebody did.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. Okay, so then they transport you to the hospital, right? You get kind of basic medical. They, you know, what do you end up having to have as far as surgeries go? And what happens then?

Sgt. John Mattingly: What was like I said, a five hour surgery. I went in at 230 or two, woke up at 730 in the morning. I remember, open my eyes and was like, the first thing came to my mind. I don't know why. I looked at the nurse and said, what blood type am I? Because I wouldn't have known what to tell them on that either. You know, we didn't have the patches on us. We didn't have any of that stuff. So she told me.

And then when my wife came in, I didn't know if anybody else had been shot. The bad guys, I knew none of the good guys had been. And I looked her and said, man, was anybody else shot? And she said, yeah. I went, who? And she said, a female. And, man, my heart just sank because I knew the female didn't fire the shot. I know the taller of the two did, and it was probably the male, so. And, you know, it's every cop's worst nightmare. You don't want to. You don't want to put a bullet where it's not, where it doesn't belong. You don't want to shoot an innocent person.

And in this case, she was innocent. You know, as far as she didn't shoot the police. You know, maybe her lifestyle wasn't pure, but that's most people. So she didn't deserve to get shot. She didn't deserve to die. But, you know, the situation was just a total tragic, tragic event.

Jon Becker: I think one of the things that made me want to sit down with you was when I first started to investigate this and started reading all the files and everything else, you know, it's portrayed that, you know, it's seven racist cops, you know, shooting some, shooting an unarmed black female in her home, you know, in her bed. And, you know, these situations are never as bad as they are presented, and they're never as good as they're presented.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: It's always – The truth is always gray.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And as I started to dig into this, there were several things that. That made me want to sit down and talk to you. And one of them was the fact that you've said kind of from the beginning that she didn't have to die and she shouldn't have died. And this is, this is a tragedy.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well, I think kind of her whole life was kind of, you know, we get on people saying, quit being a victim. Quit being a victim. But she was kind of a victim her whole life. Dad's been in prison her whole life. Mom didn't raise her. Grandma did. Grandma died. She kind of got reunited with her mom, it seems like, at the end.

But these girls are the typical targets for these guys to take advantage of, to use. They can sniff them out somehow, and they just, these girls are attracted to the bad boys that are going to, quote, take care of them and love them and do all this stuff. And it appears that she was stuck in that kind of, that cycle because that's how she was raised. And so victim on that end and then victim on the end where instead of this boyfriend saying, stay in here and call 911, I think somebody's kicking our door down. No, come out with me in the hall.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: You know, and then instead of rendering medical aid or letting the police come in and render medical aid, didn't do it. You know, one of his statements on, I think, good morning America, he was like, oh, as she went down, I held her in my arms and held her as she passed away. He didn't have any blood on him.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. That's clearly not true.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And then when he comes out, he blames her for shooting. No, she shot. So, you know, this guy is not a guy of integrity or somebody that we want to believe or hang your hat on yet. That's what's happened here.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it's just unfortunate timing. Right? Like this. This is, I said to several people, like, as I investigated this, certainly there's blame to go around all over the place here. Right. And like, all these things there, there are numerous people that made catastrophically bad decisions that led to this whole thing, and they were seemingly insignificant decisions at the time. Right?

But what I think is worth noting here is, from the beginning of this thing, it took on a life of its own. It was, it went from a news story that Louisville police killed an unarmed black woman in her home to LeBron James is talking about it. And it is the top story in every newscast. And it just began to accelerate and accelerate and accelerate.

And you could see that at some point, the facts weren't going to matter anymore. Like, it was just, you know, you had, you had plaintiff's attorneys show up that were immense, you know, immediately shaking the city down. And then you have all the civil unrest that breaks out. And, and in the process, you know, the facts. I'm not gonna say the facts don't matter, but the facts, you know, I said in the intro, like, the initial reporting is very inaccurate. It becomes more accurate over time.

By the time you get to the New York Times recreation and some of those things, like, you've gotten a pretty accurate. Like, you hear the reports and they're pretty accurate. The problem is that the initial story is what sticks. And the initial story is, you know, seven racist white cops.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Oh, man.

Jon Becker: Shoot a poor, unwarrant black.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, yeah. The big tragedy in this was that, that a lot of the unrest could have been avoided, I think, had the truth just been put out. Because look at the four. Four of the things. There was more, but the four main things initially put out by Kamala Harris, by LeBron James, by Cardi B, like one of Cardi B's post had over 17 million views or likes on it about us that were full lies. They said we had the wrong address, which isn't true. Everything on the warrant had her address on it. Her social, her car, her description. They said she was asleep in bed. She was not asleep in bed. She may have been asleep before we got there, but the incident didn't occur. They made it sound like we walked in and assassinated her.

Jon Becker: That's exactly what I thought when I first.

Sgt. John Mattingly: People still believe that. I get. People hit me up online all the time with crazy stuff.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And how could you sneak into this person's house and kill him in bed? I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, they said we didn't knock. It announced. Well, that's been disproven as well. They said Jamarcus Glover had been in custody for 10 hours, so there was no need for us to even go there because we were looking. It was an arrest warrant for him. Well, neither of those things are true. He wasn't in custody yet, and it wasn't an arrest warrant.

So once all those facts got put out and nobody rebutted them, that had a position of authority, you know, naturally people think, oh, well, the news ain't lying to me, though. Must be true.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. And I think. I think that that kind of transition us, like, I would encourage anybody that listens to this podcast to actually go and look at the report and do the homework. Like, before you make a decision on anything that's happened here, read your book, which I think is, you know, is pretty right down the middle. I actually expected it to be more partisan since it's your book and this. You know, you were one of the victims of this thing, right?

Like, obviously, Breonna Taylor lost her life, and that's terrible. And I'm not gonna minimize that in any way, shape, or form because, you know, as you said, she didn't deserve that. But this thing wrecked everybody's lives. And I think that, you know, if you read your book and you understand how many times you moved your family and how many times your kids were threatened and, you know, all of the things that happened, I think what made me initially want to sit down with you is like, this guy is every narc sergeant I've ever known.

There was nothing in the execution of this search warrant that was any different than you would see anywhere in the United States a narcotics team doing. Right? And so, like, I. The big thing that I want our listeners to take away is the lessons learned here. Right? It is the kind of cautionary tale of this situation.

And I would encourage people to look at the press coverage, look at your book, look at the official reports, and understand the fallout that occurred because this thing took on its own life and managed to just destroy everybody in its path in the process.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. And if I could add, you know, we as police officers, we get pretty calloused. You know, 20 years of people saying they're gonna kill you or fighting you or hating you, spitting on you, whatever, you get kind of used to it. You don't like it, but you're used to people saying ugly, nasty, mean things, but your family isn't.

When you've got, you know, young adults as your kids and one that's still in elementary and then a wife and parents and everybody that's getting all these threats and then having the FBI come to you and say, yes, there's been a hit taken out on you and your family, get out of town.

You know, that kind of rattles everybody's world because even if you're seasoned in it, when that happens, you go, man, this is like a movie. Are you kidding me? Now we've got in the middle of the night, get up and move. You know what's happening here.

And then at the same time, when fortunately, I had a guy in our department, Tom Chardine, who's retired now, but he was over our dignitary protection team, and he fought so hard for us to get a security detail because the department didn't want to do that, knowing there was an active hit placed out on us, knowing the FBI said, it's good we're investigating. They were like, we don't really have the manpower. We don't want to do it.

And fortunately, he fought and, you know, there's still some good people, you know, in command, but. And he was one of them. And so I'll forever be indebted to him for that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because, I mean, the city washes their hands of this thing instantly, as quickly as they possibly can. You have the chief of police and the mayor running from it.

Sgt. John Mattingly: I talked to the mayor the day after I got shot. He came in. I talked to the police chief the night of, and then the day after he came and saw me, and I talked to one other person on the command staff after that. And other than that, nobody from the chief's office I've talked to this entire time.

Jon Becker: So you're laying in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound and that was the support you received?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, it wasn't one of those, you know, when you leave, you got the guys lined up cheering out of that. Nah, it was me and my wife and two buddies from work.

Jon Becker: That's horrifying. Let's talk about. So you, you ultimately heal. How long does it take you to get kind of back to normal from the gunshot wound?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Man, I got back fairly quick. I rehabbed hard.

Jon Becker: Leg didn't break right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, no. Fortunately, I had a wallet in my pocket that kind of deflected it because it was right at the femur bone. It was right at the hoe is. And the doctor said, that's good. It still hits your femoral artery, but if the bone had shattered and then hit it, it would have drawn up in your pelvis and, you know, there's nothing you could have done about it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I just recently interviewed Jordan Robison, who was shot in San Bernardino, and that was exactly what happened. His femur shattered and I didn't realize. Your femur is constantly under tension and it slammed it up.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Into, you know, pelvic area. Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: So I guess I was fortunate in that area.

Jon Becker: Yes. So ballistic wallet paid off?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes. So my legs still numb, but overall things are pretty good. I held fairly quickly, you know, pushed it, pushed it, pushed it. Because I want to go back. I told my wife in the hospital, so I'm going back. I'm going to do a warrant. First thing I'm going to do when I get back, it's like falling off a bike. I'm getting back off.

Yeah. Unfortunately, you know, with the circumstances, that was impossible. They didn't, they didn't want me to come back. So when I rehabbed and came back. And the day I came back, they were like, oh, you're transferred to the property room. And I, you know, as a form of, quote, punishment since they couldn't legally do anything to me.

Jon Becker: Well, and so you guys are all in legal jeopardy initially. Right? Like the DA is going to, the attorney general's looking at it. Potentially everybody's going to have charges filed against him.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Ultimately, it's only Brett Hankerson that gets state charges filed.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right, correct.

Jon Becker: Which is reckless, you know, want endangerment charges.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: But the day the district attorney. Yeah. Doesn't file on ondemand, either of you.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. Yeah. The attorney general didn't. And people were in an uproar. Uproar over that because they don't understand the system. You know, you only file charges where there's probable cause, you know, where a crime has been committed. And when they looked at the statute, looked at the circumstances, they were like, well, we didn't charge Kenneth Walker, and we're not charging them for self defense. You know, do we have Castle doctrine for him? Do we have self defense for them since they're police officers? So people were mad about that.

But, you know, I am grateful for the attorney general, who's a black man in Kentucky who stood his ground. And, you know, you had Beyonce writing him saying, oh, you got to do this, or we're going to do something about it. You had 50, I think, 56 members of Congress in Senate writing, saying, we need to get locked up and all that. And he stood his ground. And, you know, for a politician to do that, it's rare these days.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure. Well, none of the other politicians in town did, so.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Not at all.

Jon Becker: Bonus credit the AG. So then at what point did you realize this thing is spiraling out of control?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. So when it first happened, you know, like I said, I asked my wife, and I'll crap here. A white cop shoots an unarmed black female, this ain't gonna be good.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: But then it was. It was March 13th. And again, I forgot to say this. When we served the warrant, it was a Friday night or Friday morning, early full moon, Friday 13th. And I'm like, oh, man.

Jon Becker: Yeah, here we go.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. All the stars were aligned. So, Covid, the shutdown for the nation was on the 13 march. That's when the president came in and said, you know, we're shutting a lot of things down. The state did as well. So I thought, in the back of my mind, I thought, maybe we'll go without much press coverage on this because they're so consumed with this Covid thing. And that was the case for at least a month. Then Ahmaud Arbery got shot.

Well, Ben Crump went down on the Ahmaud Arbery case. Well, when he did, the attorney for Breonna Taylor's family, a female there, had gone when she went through law school, had done her internship for him. And so she reached out to him and said, hey, our clients not getting any national attention. And this is her words, our clients not getting any national attention. Can you do something for us? Well, he went, what circumstances? Told him, oh, ding, ding, ding, money. Sure I can. No problem.

So his big statement was, if you run for Ahmaud, run for Bree. Cause they were doing some two mile run or whatever it was in his remembrance. And so things started picking up then, because before that, it was her family and a few people, maybe 15, 20 people, you know, a couple times a week, making a fuss, but not a big deal.

Then after a mod happened and it started getting national news because of that, then you could feel the tension in the city start to pick up. Then it went from 20 people to 50 people to 100 people to 200 people. And as time went on, the crowd grew each day for this little protest.

Now, Louisville's always had the reputation of not being. Didn't really have the heart to do big protests. You know, we'd hear, oh, it's coming in three percenters, and these people or whoever come in and be a handful of people. You're like, I was kind of let down. So I was thinking, well, maybe this won't really catch on, because this is Louisville. You know, we're a liberal city, but things. These things just don't happen here.

And when it started building up, though, and more and more people started happening, and then the death threats just started coming in like crazy. I reached out to our president of our city council, who's a retired cop, who trained me in the academy, who trained me how to do these warrants, who taught the narcotics class I went through. I reached out to him and said, man, can you do something about this? Here's what they're saying. And I laid out all the. All the lies, and I said, here's the truths. And I laid all those out.

And I said, the mayor's too big of a coward to say anything. He said, he is. I'll do a press conference next week and get the facts out. Perfect. I got a black city council president who's got some clout in the community, who's a former cop, who's gonna help me out here, right? That's what I thought. So that never came through. Matter of fact, he end up getting on tv a few weeks later talking about, we served a no knock warrant. We did it all wrong. And all this stuff, I'm like, that's not even the case. We did not serve a no knock warrant.

So that fell through and things kept building. And then you had, you know, the pinnacle. George Floyd. So you had this horrible trifecta. Breonna Taylor in March, Maude Aubrey in April, George Floyd in May. And once that happened, the city just exploded.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Then it just, you know, and I think everybody knows the story from there. It takes off. So, like, let's talk about the cautionary tale here. Let's talk about lessons learned. And there are several things that stick out to me, and I just want to kind of walk through with you. Let's start with training, right? So we've got. We have an ad hoc team of seven guys that have never served a warrant as a team together. Your. Your narcotics training, that there's no formal. Like, nobody's been through a SWAT school.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No.

Jon Becker: When was the last time before this event that you had received any kind of entry training? Formal entry training?

Sgt. John Mattingly: 2017.

Jon Becker: So three years.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, almost three years.

Jon Becker: Almost three years. And. And who was that training from?

Sgt. John Mattingly: It was from SWAT.

Jon Becker: Is that – Is the culture in the organization that there's a positive relationship between narcotics and SWAT, or is it a tense relationship or. What's that?

Sgt. John Mattingly: I would say it's neutral. It's not tense. It's not, you know, there's no. There's no animosity. We had some SWAT guys in narcotics, and we would call them if we needed something to go, hey, can you reach out and, you know, get this done for us? And they would, but, yeah, there was no tension there. It's just. SWAT's just different. That's the only way I can describe it. You know, they're a different alpha breed than the rest of cops, usually, and so they do their training. They kind of keep things almost to themselves, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's kind of secretive.

And so if they had to train us, they probably didn't want to, but they did. But, you know, and some of that falls on us as leaders. We could have done our own training, and we didn't because we figured, man, if we're doing three or four warrants a week, why do we need to train if we're doing live action training?

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're good. We're doing it all the time.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. I've done 2000 nothing. I mean, I've been shot at, but nobody's died, nobody's gotten hurt. You know, here we go. And ultimately, that complacency or that lack of being proactive in training, you know, put us where we're at today.

Jon Becker: Well, I just. One thing I should have hit early in, but, like, prior to this, you've had in your career no force complaints filed against you, right. You never shot anybody.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No.

Jon Becker: You've never been shot.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And if I remember correctly, I think your only sustained discipline was a late report or something.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yep. That was it.

Jon Becker: You got a letter in your personnel file.

Sgt. John Mattingly: That's it.

Jon Becker: So, you know. There's not. You don't have a long history of. Of negative discipline that, you know, this often in these situations, you know, you look back over the history of somebody and it's like, oh, this guy had 15 force complaints.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Like, how did his bosses not see this guy?

Jon Becker: Yeah, exactly. You, like, you watch. You watch the train wreck develop over the course of ten years. One of the things with this that struck me is how. How that's not the case here.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. No, I mean, and this ain't. This isn't me being cocky, but people wanted me to work for him because I did what they asked. You know, we worked hard, we got results, and. And the guys enjoyed working for me. It seemed like. So there wasn't any issues. Like, I didn't have any tension with upper command. You know, there was none of that. It was just. I came to work, did my job, went home.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Until this day. And then, you know, that's that. So how regularly, while you're in narcotics, does your team train? Just 2017, and then that's kind of it. Do you have a regular training day?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Well, what they started, I'm trying to think when they started it, and it went on for about six months and it kind of fizzled out. Was once a month they wanted to do some type of training. So I think one month we had the district attorneys come in and talk about how they wanted warrants done. One month we had maybe a vehicle takedown training, but most of it was classroom stuff, not hands on. This is what we're doing. And that wasn't a tack house. It wasn't stuff like that.

Jon Becker: And then there's no formal process for anybody to go through SWAT training or.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, no. Yeah, you can't. If you're not in SWAT, you can't submit and go to SWAT training.

Jon Becker: How often do you guys do you shoot? How often do you qualify?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Twice a year.

Jon Becker: Is that the only time you shoot?

Sgt. John Mattingly: That's it, yeah. As a team or as. Yeah. Unless you do it on your own. Are unfortunately our. At least at the time. I don't know if it's changed. Our range wasn't available to us because when they weren't doing recruits or doing regular qualifications, they were written it out to other people.

Jon Becker: So if you wanted to shoot, you had to go to, like, a public range, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. No ammo. Wouldn't give that up because it's too expensive. So it was. It was either you did it on your own or you didn't do it.

Jon Becker: Got it. Did you do it on your own or you didn't do it?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Not much.

Jon Becker: Got it. So let's talk about equipment. So you've got only handguns, right? Everybody's in soft armor, I'm assuming.

Sgt. John Mattingly: I had plates.

Jon Becker: You had plates. You said guns. Gun lights?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: No optics on your weapons.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Not allowed.

Jon Becker: Not allowed. And no long guns.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Not allowed either. Used to be able to have a long gun. We used to have one long gun, one shotgun, and then pistols on every entry. And without explanation. They wouldn't tell us why. I think. My personal opinion, I think SWAT didn't want them so they could. This is when they were pushing their full time team so they could say, no, we need to come in and do all the warrants. Not positive on that because nobody would give us an answer. You know, it's kind of like a kid when you tell them no.

Why? Well, because I said, yeah, well, sometimes you need to know the why. And I think this was one. We're risking our life. Give. At least give me the why. Help me understand so I can relate to my guys. But that was never the case.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And so you took a shield with you. Well, you didn't. One of your guys took a shield.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: Talk to me about that.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, that was a mistake on my part. As I'm out messing with my car in the lot in the rain, one of the guys who had worked. I've worked with him off and on for years. He was a canine guy most of the time. But now he's doing this, he says, hey, sergeant, I got a shield. Do you want to bring it? I was like, sure.

And then I went on and did my thing. We, none of us that made entry at night have been trained on a shield. I don't know where he got the shield. I don't know if somebody left in his car, if he borrowed it from. So I have no idea. But I said, sure, bring the shield. So then by the time all these other things go on and we get on scene, I'm the first one up. He comes at some point in behind me. I forgot about the shield. Totally forgot about it because in 2000, warrants, I think I've used a shield twice. And that was for, to keep pit bulls back.

So unless you're in SWAT, you don't get trained on the shield either. And so it's, it was a mistake. I would love to have had it and hopefully would hit the shield, not me, but again, not trained on it. So I'm not sure how effective that would have been either.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a fair point. Let's talk about tactics for a minute. So at this point in time, it's 2019…

Sgt. John Mattingly: 2020.

Jon Becker: So 2020, March 2020, a lot of teams have begun to move to a contain and call out approach, research warrants, at least on the coasts, including ours. So your SWAT team had moved to that approach.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, they implemented that.

Jon Becker: And did they use that on the other warrants that they served?

Sgt. John Mattingly: I'm not sure. I think some people said they did. Yeah, I know they didn't go through the door.

Jon Becker: Yeah. The video looks like…

Sgt. John Mattingly: I'm not sure if they banged the door or knocked the door and banged first sometime they did that. I know. But I don't know if on that one in particular. I think when they pulled up, some people ran in and so they knew the police were there and they called them out. That's what I think happened.

Jon Becker: So the SWAT is using contain and call out, but narcotics is.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, not at all.

Jon Becker: So everything you do is dynamic, either….

Sgt. John Mattingly: Dynamic or taking people off at other locations. Welcome back.

Jon Becker: Yeah, taking vehicles down and those kinds of things. Was there any discussion? Did you remember at that point about containing call out?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No. It was never even a suggestion to us. It was never, hey, SWAT's doing this, maybe you ought to think about it. Or SWAT never came to us and said, hey, now, I do know. The retired SWAT commander reached out at one point after this event and said, man, I told the chief in 2019 or 18 or whatever it was, it was somewhere close to that. Before he retired, he said, I told the chief that we had to have you all in, do training, get you all up to date on what we're doing. And he said, no, the budget and time don't allow for it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Penny smart. Tele dumb.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So I mean, and at that point it had been two years plus since you guys had trained with the SWAT team. So even if they're doing it, that, that tactic, there's no organizational, institutional knowledge being passed back and forth, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: There's no, there's no sop on it. There's no nothing.

Jon Becker: Is, is there a culture in the organization of debrief and paying attention to mistakes and lessons learned?

Sgt. John Mattingly: SWAT’s great at it. But the narc units, the impact units, no.

Jon Becker: So when you guys did a warrant, did you have like you normally would do a warrant? Was there, you know, sit down kind of after action? Hey, we shouldn't do this. We should think about doing this.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, in the early days, I'm talking years ago, it was brought up, it's mentioned, or maybe they said we should or you need to. But it's never been a practice. If somebody royally screwed up on something, you talked about it. But, but like you said, it's, there's always something. No, no, n op is perfect and we should have been addressing those. And maybe if we've been addressing those all along we would have come to the point. We looked at each other and said maybe we need to do this containment and call out because you, you know, we keep messing up here and there and eventually it's going to catch up to us. And it did well.

Jon Becker: And, but in the 2000 that you did, you know, prior to that you hadn't had that many close calls, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, just one, one shooting that I was going through the door on, that.

Jon Becker: Was it that those around that would pass you past your head if I remember correctly? Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty close call.

Sgt. John Mattingly: It was. I got cut up from it.

Jon Becker: But, but other than that you have 2000 repetitions of this working?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Like, yeah, the only thing, only issues we ever had were dogs that we had to put down. Other than that humans usually complied, ran, did something. Yeah, we were just, you know, fortunate.

Jon Becker: Now let's talk about knock and announce. You're banging on the door. Do you have any kind of PA system?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No.

Jon Becker: No loudspeakers? No. You know, nothing that would wake up the neighborhood and make sure everybody's paying attention?

Sgt. John Mattingly: No. And I think I talked to you about this earlier mistake, another mistake we made that we had just let fall by the wayside. I can't remember honestly the last time we did it. It used to be common practice that every time we served a warrant because we were in plain clothes. Now obviously our vest said police big on them. We were probably more recognizable than a guy in a dark blue suit with one little badge. You know, it said, police. We had guns. You know, you knew who we were.

But we used to always have a marked car pull up out front, and as we were knocking, they would hit their lights and sirens, minimum lights every once in a while, tooth or siren a couple of times, just to let the neighborhood know also that these bangs are here, these yells, you're here. Don't worry, it's all right. It's the police. But to also inform the people inside. And we had let that slip, and I think it could have made a big difference here.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, I think that as I read through the facts of this, obviously, we'll never know what was in Kenneth Walker's mind. Right. And unless we can somehow get access to whatever exchange happened between him and his family, we'll never know whether he believed it was the police before he fired. His behavior, to me, does not look like a guy who was there to shoot it out with the police. Usually if the guy's going to shoot out with the police, he stands at the door and there's a gunfight, he fires one around and runs away.

So in the back of my brain, there is always this kind of. Maybe he legitimately thought it was her ex boyfriend or something like that. Obviously, once he fires the round and gets fired back, he realizes he's engaged the police at a minimum. At that point, he knows whether he knew before that. But the fact that there wasn't a PA system, there wasn't any kind of, you know, there weren't – there wasn't a marked unit out front. Certainly weakened the knock and notice aspect.

And I think one of the lessons learned is, you know, what we see a lot of teams out here do is they will use a really loud loudspeaker. And actually, when they do a containing call out, they will record the audio on the opposite side of the house and demonstrate. Yeah, no, I hear the audio and, you know, again, any of these things, any one of these things may not have changed the situation.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: The question is, if you're looking at this going forward, how many of these things can you, can you do.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: To just decrease likelihood.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Or at the very least that way, if it gets out any negative way, all the lies you can go. No, man. Here's, here's, like you said, here's a recording of them saying police. You know, we didn't have any of that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And in this case, there were. There was. The guy upstairs knew the police were there and said that he heard the knocking notice.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: There's one other that, like, I think if I remember correctly, one other that said they did and then kind of recounted that as time went on.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. So the guy downstairs, I think his last name is nagby or nether be something like that. The one that when. When Hankinson shot it went through. Through Breonna Taylor's apartment and into the apartment where this other couple lived. And what he told the first investigator on scene that took statements was, I heard you all knocking at the door and yelling, I thought you were there for me. As I was coming to the door. That's when the shots started ringing out, and that's when it came through my wall and we just dove on the ground.

So he knew. He heard us yelling. I'm not sure if he could verify police because he wouldn't go that far because, you know, a week later they sued us. And then he totally shut down.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Cause Hankison's rounds, just to put this story, if you picture the apartment running down sideways, there's another apartment that's basically right behind that one.

Sgt. John Mattingly: The kitchen wall. The kitchen wall connects them.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Common kitchen wall. Hankison's rounds go through the kitchen, through Breonna Taylor's kitchen, into the neighboring kitchen.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And through their sliding glass door.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So if you look at the pictures online, you'll see that the shattered sliding glass door, you'll see pictures of rounds in clocks and chairs and all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, you can see where he would not necessarily be all that friendly after taking rounds in his apartment. But there were no other people that came forward and said that they heard that it was the police.

Sgt. John Mattingly: No, matter of fact, their main witness, she's a protester, got on. She's been on a couple of the different documentaries saying, oh, I didn't hear the police. Not, they didn't knock it, they didn't announce, they didn't do all this stuff. And she's the one that their attorney propped up as their. Their prime witness.

And I've got a recording of her on her Facebook where she was live on there talking. And she said, all you people mad at me? She said, I couldn't even heard the police if I wanted to. I was two buildings away. And I'm thinking, yet she was the prime witness, you know, saying that we didn't announce. So that's what you're dealing with.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure. So then from a obviously medical response is. Is troubling. I mean, fortunately, you know, they saved your life. We're thankful for that. But there was, EMS was staged at a point that they. What does it take them ten minutes to get there?

Sgt. John Mattingly: It should have taken. It took him about ten. It should take him like less than a minute.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So they're playing video games quarter mile away. Yeah, playing video games, watching TV.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And then your teammates. And I'm using air quotes when I say the word teammates, your coworkers. Nice. Are not obviously trained. One of them is trained in how to put a tourniquet on. But when you see the video, you can see that the guys, they don't even know what to do with the compression bandage. Was there a policy in the agency of teaching any kind of TCCC?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So we had CPR and first aid training every two years. And it's – I don't want to say it's a joke, but it's not taken real serious. You come to class, you do your 8 hours, you go home, and if you're paying attention, you're kind of paying attention. If you're not, you're not, which is on you. If you're not, because it's your life at stake. But that's just the reality of it. You know, tape gets played or video gets started. The instructor walks out of the room. You watch the first date thing. They come back in. You practice on somebody once or twice, you're done. It's kind of. It's pretty lame.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And obviously was necessary.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: You know, unfortunately didn't have a worse outcome for you, but that was not for lack of trying. What about in the agency? Talk to me about the role of the narcotics units versus the SWAT team. It's full time SWAT team. And then you have more than one narcotics unit, right?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, we had. Let's see, you have your major case unit. You've got your interdiction unit. And then at one point, we had three street squads. I think at this time we only had two. And then you had the place based investigation unit, which really wasn't narcotics, but it fell under the guise of how they had reorganized some things. So basically four narcotics units.

Jon Becker: But narco, from a chain of command standpoint, is on a completely different chain of command from SWAT.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yes.

Jon Becker: And there's not a regular engagement taking place for culture swap or like, hey, we're doing this and try this. Got it. One more topic for gear. Talk to me about body worn cameras because it was a very controversial subject. What was the agency's policy at this point on bodyborne cameras?

Sgt. John Mattingly: So if you were in the narcotics unit, and you didn't work off duty, you didn't have to have them. That was mainly for protection of some of the detectives that may have worked semi undercover stuff or plain clothes.

But mainly it was for informant reasons, because the cameras are open records, and to get a civilian to be able to retract them correctly or, you know, block out certain parts, it was. It hadn't been fine tuned, and they didn't want defense attorneys getting a hold of these cameras and diamond out the other informants that were rattin their clients out.

A couple of the guys had them. The. The guy on the highway, he had it, didn't have it on. And then a couple guys that worked off duty had it, but they weren't. Again, they weren't required to have him on at this time. So they may have had him, but they weren't required to be operating them.

Jon Becker: At this time retrospectively.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Oh, wish we'd had it. I would. I would do anything to have that footage.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think it's funny because you and I talked about this, and, like, when body worn cameras first came out, I was not a fan. Not me. I'm like, you know, this is just going to be used to put cops in jail and, you know, everybody's going to Monday morning quarterback the event and all that. You know, over the last ten years, as they become more in vogue, you quickly realize in situations like this that it's never as bad as the plaintiff's attorney makes it out to be.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And no matter what the video is, it's. It's better.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Yeah, no, I wish. You know, if there's departments out there, they're on the fence, man. Go for it, because I think. I think there's some stat out there. This is like 90% of the complaints that come in when guys are wearing body worn cameras are debunked because you know the truths right here on your shoulder. You can't change the footage. And people just lie or in there, in their tense situations dealing with the police, maybe they construed a death, something totally different, kind of like, you know, the different statements of that night that people saw through their lens, different things than what actually happened.

Jon Becker: One, even the guys involved in the event, I mean, you guys all had kind of slightly different.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. However your body reacts physiologically, you know, is going to be different than the guy next to you.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. You may have audio auditory exclusion, you may have visual exclusion. You may. You know, it certainly have tunnel vision.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Because, you know, it's terrifying. Let's. For a last topic, let's talk about the agency's response publicly. So there's a lot of kind of debate about transparency in law enforcement. And, you know, I've had several friends that are chiefs that have implemented very aggressive release policies where the body worn camera is released almost immediately.

Mostly big agencies, LAPD, La Sheriff have gone to that, where it's like, here's what happened. Here's the body wearing camera. Here's all the data we have. It seemed to me that the approach taken by Louisville PD was to circle the wagons and hide. There was not a lot of public comment. There was very little disclosure of information initially.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah. Even to. Even to Breonna Taylor's family. They were frustrated because they could not get any answers either. And I understand that. I'd have been ticked off if I were them, too, because they kept requesting the same stuff and maybe had. Had they been given the information or they could have diffused some of this because still they'd have been mad. You know, they'd have been sad, they've been tragic, all that stuff.

But at the same time, maybe that. That deep anger that was put out and the emotions that kicked in with everybody and I believe a lot of the people were. Thought they were doing the right thing, you know, as far as. As pushing back against the police, because again, at this point, nothing had been debunked. And. And just a couple months in the defense attorney or the defense civil attorney had deposed the mayor and instead of him going under oath and tell him what happened, we are. We were all deposed man. They grilled us for days.

But then when it was his turn, they turn around, settle the case. You know, two days after they said they were going to depose him and settles it for $12 million. Did not get the approval of city council. Anything over a million was supposed to get their approval. Did it on a Sunday night when nobody knew what was going on.

So I can see from the outside looking in that we look guilty. You know, city gives them $12 million, they never say no. It was the right house. They never said no. She wasn't in her bed. They never say no. He was already. He wasn't in custody. All these things. They never said any of this stuff. Instead, they let these rumors fly. Things were leaked from inside the department on one of the guys from a. A sexual abuse complaint from twelve, 10, 12 years earlier that was found. He was cleared on and it was supposed to been destroyed and those after those records, after two or three years and somebody leaked it to the press.

And so that put mud on the case as well. That was never come out by the department. Go, oh ho ho. That he was cleared on that. There was nothing there. So all these little things kind of just, they just kept compounding and building up to the point where anybody from the outside looking in, even other police officers, even people in our own department didn't know the truth. And months later, and, you know, they're out there facing all these protesters and stuff, not knowing what they're fighting for.

And so that was very frustrating and made you want to beat your head on a wall because you knew the truth, you knew they had the truth. And for whatever reason we talked earlier that, you know, they distanced themselves because they don't want to take responsibility for it. If they can pawn it off on somebody down on a lower level, why not? And I think that's what took place here because the mayor had already had her on his platform saying, we need justice for Breonna Taylor and if I could fire the police, I would, but they're protected under law and, you know, all these things.

So he had already dug his heels in the sand on what side he was going to be on and just was not going to put the truth out. And our chief at the time, and probably now I'm sure it's hadn't changed. He didn't run the department. Everything went through the mayor's office. Every string that was pulled was by the deputy mayor. And just a yes man period.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And at some point, you know, it's like we were talking about earlier, at some point it is easier for the politicians to burn everybody in the incident.

Sgt. John Mattingly: You're just a number. No matter, no matter what kind of work you've done over your career, no matter, no negativity, all that. It doesn't matter if you're a liability to them at this point, whether it's legit liability or just this made up, you know, thing that happened, they'll just cut you loose, they'll let you hang out to drive.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So if you were and you are now teaching, you know, fortunately you went out, wrote a book, put your own story out there because it wasn't going to get out otherwise. But when you are interacting with young narcotics units and young cops, what, what is your counsel to them as to how not to end up?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Man, it's a lot of things, like for years and this was just kind of common practice and we talke dearlier about what common practice will get you, right? You know, if things you get in this rut and things don't change, we don't develop, we don't, we don't continue to learn and make, evolve, then we're going to be in trouble. And that's kind of what happened here. We stuck to all the old plans of here. You walk in, I know nothing about the case, here's this warrant, go serve it.

So instead of sitting here and me going, hold on, pump the brakes, give me some background on this, give me some more information on, let me dig into it myself a little bit. Didn't take place. And if you're putting your name on it, and maybe not on the warrant, but our names on the, on the catch sheet for, you know, for everything else after that warrant sign, then maybe you want to put a little bit of your own blood, sweat and tears into it beforehand and not after the fact, because it's much easier to divert and avoid stuff than it is to try to fix it.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I mean, it's challenging because the, you know, you're working with people, you have to trust them. But in this case, I mean, we have federal charges filed against the three officers that got the warrant.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And part of the federal charges are that they falsified their affidavit.

Sgt. John Mattingly: And it was so unnecessary too, because the wording in the warrant said that the postal inspector said that he, Jamarcus Clover, was getting packages in his name. They didn't need that. They've got him on video going in empty handed, coming out with those boxes, going straight to the trap house. All they had to do was take a little bit of extra time and explain how this works in the narcotics world.

And it's the same probable cause, if not even stronger, because who's to say he's not getting shoes through the mail there? Yeah, you know, we don't know. And they don't know what he got to that day, but at least that puts him in a category of, this is the typical way narcotics dealers do things, and this is what he did. That with all the other information would have been, would have been strong enough.

And I don't know if lack of experience, because again, you had these guys who, one guy in that whole unit had done warrants, the rest of them had been jump out people in a different platoon that, when they, when they created this unit, pulled them over. And now you've got them doing a three month investigation with five warrants and pole cams and trackers, man, they're probably barely keeping their head above water, to be honest. I mean, this is all new to them, and you're throwing this on them.

And then at the same time, you've got the mayor's office coming in every week with three of the people from the chief's office getting updates on this case. There's a little pressure to get something done. So then you've got these younger detectives going. Well, let's make this warrant sound really good, because what's it going to matter, right? Who's going to know or what's going to hurt?

Well, it's one of those things that, you know, when the veils uncovered and you got this lie, it makes everything look bad. And, and between, between that and the shots coming in from outside and the. And the statements from the, the ten year old sexual assault, all those things put together, they spun it in a way that made us look like the most corrupt copse, you know, in America.

Jon Becker: Well, and you're falling into a time, you know, between Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, where we're looking for that.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right. White people are the devil. Hunting down black people.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And cops. Right. Like, it's. It's. We. We obviously, at that point, defund police is a thing, and we are right.

Sgt. John Mattingly: In the middle of an election cycle.

Jon Becker: Yeah, absolutely.

Sgt. John Mattingly: There's zero politician on either side that's gonna stand up for you.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sgt. John Mattingly: You know, I reached out to both of my senators, both Republicans. Both of them were like, nope, sorry, good luck. You're on your own.

Jon Becker: Yeah. At some point, you're so toxic that they can't touch. It's just, it isn't worth the political risk to them. Is there anything else you think that. That guys listening. I mean, obviously, we talked about training. We talked about kind of prep. Is there anything else that you think that guys need?

Sgt. John Mattingly: Yeah, just complacency. It's so easy, man. When you. When you do this repeatedly. And this is anything in life, I don't care what it is, you get just somewhat complacent. And you've got to be your own barometer and self check. Or your buddies, you know, we talk about checking on your buddies for mental health, and if you see them drinking or you see them going astray, whatever, check them. It's no different here.

And that's why probably debriefs are so important because that does kind of refocus you every time you do an op instead of coming in and. All right, good. Let's go have dinner. You know, and then we move on to the next one and then we may repeat the same mistake over and over and over. It never gets corrected. But then when things do go right 2000 times, you don't expect them to go wrong on this easy one and they just do. Because you do let your guard down some. You can't. It's human nature.

Jon Becker: When in the end there is no easy one.

Sgt. John Mattingly: That's true. Just like there's no. There's no routine call.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. In the same way there's no routine call. There is no easy one. I think, you know, I'm so appreciative. You came and sat down with me and I think, you know, I wrote an article a while back on a police shooting and I said, you know, just because a tragedy occurs doesn't mean an injustice does.

Sgt. John Mattingly: Right.

Jon Becker: And in this case, certainly Breonna Taylor deserved better than she got. And we'll see what the federal court system has to say about, you know, the warrant and what took place afterwards. But I was talking to somebody recently about this and I said, the great irony of the Breonna Taylor case is that the two guys that shot Breonna Taylor were the only ones that were acting constitutionally right. And to me that is the tragedy of this is in the end, you're an arc sergeant doing your job and you got run over by a national train. And I'm sorry for that.

Sgt. John Mattingly: I appreciate it! Real quick. One of the other things that I tell these guys when I talk is you've got to be your own voice. You got to fight for yourself harder than anybody else because nobody's going to fight for you like you will because so many times here on the street, what are we willing to do? You hear the gunfire, you run toward it. You're willing to fight people for your partner, you're willing to take a bullet for a stranger. But then when you're off the job and they come at you like they did us, what do most cops do? They just cower down. They don't know what to do, you know, they just, they just go into turtle mode and, and you just take that beating.

And at some point and, and preferably early on, even if you've got the gag order on you like we did, there's ways to get stuff out. You got to be creative and think outside the box and get it out there because the city's not going to do it for you. Your department may not do it for you. Some will, some won't. Your upper chain of command probably really won't because they got to worry about their own jobs.

So you've got to figure out ways to fight for yourself and get. Get the truth out. And it's not easy, and people will. Riddick. I've taken so much ridicule and hate, and. And people have told me, look, man, just. Just disappear. Just go away. I'm like, no, it's not about me anymore. My stuff's done. You know, Kenneth Walker's not getting charged. I'm not getting any money. This, you know, I've had to move. I've lost money. I've downgraded everything. Whatever, I'm over that. That's in the past. But now there's all these cops coming after me.

That, like you said, could be me next week. It doesn't matter if you're patrol, if you're SWAT, if you're narcotics. We're all making runs that could potentially, in a brief second, flip into something that could be national news, and you're not prepared for it. I don't care how much you think you're prepared for it. You're just not. And so, you know, get out there and just fight for yourself.

Jon Becker: Love that! I think that's a great place for us to stop. John, thank you so much for doing this, buddy, man!

Sgt. John Mattingly: Thanks, Jon! Appreciate it!

Episode 23 – 2017 Vegas Attack: Handling a Mass Casualty Incident – Dr. Kevin Menes

Jon Becker: My guest today is Dr. Kevin Menes. Kevin is an emergency room physician and tactical team doctor who led a team that managed to treat and save hundreds of patients following the active sniper attack in Las Vegas on October 1st, 2017.

Kevin's insights into the Las Vegas attack are unique and offer us clear lessons learned in preparing for mass casualties. Too often, active shooter preparation ends at the tactical level and fails to consider the effect on all involved agencies.

This discussion with Kevin clearly shows that saving lives after a mass killing event is dependent upon the preparation and training for all of the responding organizations.

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!

Kevin, I appreciate you being here today! It's great to sit down with you!

Dr. Kevin Menes: Thank you for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with kind of your personal bio? Because I think it's important to give context to your role in the story. So where'd you go to medical school? Kind of give me the 30 seconds speech on Kevin's childhood and life history.

Dr. Kevin Menes: So born here in Los Angeles to two Filipino immigrant parents who ended up going to college at University of California, Riverside, also known as the University of California, rejected at the time, because if you couldn't make it to UCLA, you could make it to UC Riverside. I don't think that's the case now, but that's where I had gone. Graduated from medical school, worked for the government as a scientist for a year at Los Alamos National Laboratory before then coming back here to Loma Linda, and I went to medical school at Loma Linda.

Normally, medical school is a four year degree, but I made it a five year degree. And when you make it a five year degree and you end up at the bottom of your med school class, you don't necessarily get your pick of where you want to go.

And at that time, emergency medicine was the most competitive specialty. When that year that I graduated, and so I had thought that I had a spot at, you know, La County USC, where I'd done a couple of rotations at. To me, it was the epitome of trauma and emergency medicine at the time.

That's where I wanted to go, but I ended up in Detroit, and it was the biggest opportunity I have ever had. And I trained under some of the best ER doctors in the business, many of which people never will ever know because, you know, they don't write papers, they're not famous, not world famous by any means, but they taught me a lot about what emergency medicine or what an ER doctor should do. Sort of the, like, accountability stuff and teamwork, doing the best you can with what you have.

Those were lessons that I learned that aren't necessarily taught as lectures, but I learned from those people there and then I was also working at the trauma center on the east side of Detroit, which saw more gunshot wounds than, I think, most any trauma center during that time, that year, those years I was there, I think we were only beat out by Flint, Michigan. And Detroit was the murder capita of the United States of America. But surrounding murders are also the number of attempted murders. And those are opportunities as doctors to try to save a patient.

So I got a lot of hands on experience in that arena. And it really opened my eyes to just handling catastrophic situations in a very short amount of time. And I thought I was prepared to get out when I got out. And I think I was from a mechanical standpoint. I mean, I could do the work, but there was so much more you learn, I think once you get out, I think that's in any profession, right? You go through schooling, but when you're out on the job, you sort of learn and you learn more. And I ended up coming from Detroit and moving to Las Vegas, where I ended up working and somehow found myself working the night that the shooting had occurred.

Jon Becker: So talk to me about in the Vegas area there, like LA has. I think you said 17 different trauma centers in Vegas. There are a total of two. That accurate?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, that's. Yeah, it's the, I think there's 9 million plus people in Los Angeles. When I was looking up statistics in Las Vegas, it's about 2 million. And there are about 17 level one and two trauma centers in the Los Angeles area. And there are two level one slash two trauma centers in Las Vegas. And the way that a trauma center works is level one. And two have an in house trauma surgeon. So that means in the hospital, there is a trauma surgeon ready to take a patient, stabilize patient, take them to the operating room, where all the magic happens.

Jon Becker: Is that 24/7?

Dr. Kevin Menes: 24/7. 365. That means at most, in the Los Angeles area, you can take 17 patients within the golden hour, you know, whatever time period the golden hour is on that victim to the operating room. To perform what we call damage control surgery, which is getting the bleeding to stop so that they can somehow stabilize and survive this injury.

In the ER, we just prolong their life. We get them, usually 1ft gets into through death's door. One foot's in the casket, and all we do is we take 1ft out, get them to the operating room. Sometimes both feet are in, sometimes we can get both feet out. But that's our job. In the ER, the trauma surgeons really are the ones who stop the bleeding and save the life, because without that surgery, you know, the victim doesn't make it.

So, yeah, there's, you know, at one point in time in LA, you can take 17 patients. Theoretically, you can take 17 patients into the operating room on the first go around. So, you know, mass casualty incident is anything where you're having an incident where there are more victims than what can be handled, and different types of mass casualties have different types of timelines. You take somebody who's been shot with a bullet, and it hits them and nicks their heart, they have a very short window that you can save them. You take that same injury and you nick the kidney, and that patient has a bit more time.

So if you're talking about a penetrating mass casualty incident where a few or hundred or hundreds of gunshot victims occur, take your city that you live in, count the number of trauma centers, that's how many you're gonna be able to take to the operating room on the first go around. And that is the nightmare that every single emergency doctor and trauma surgeon secretly has, but never says.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because if there are two trauma surgeons working at any given point and you have three gunshot victims, if you can't keep them alive long enough to get them on the table with a trauma surgeon, they're gonna die.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Going to die.

Jon Becker: Yes. Yeah. I had this explained to me by a soft medic who I think put it best. He said, when, when, when something happens, you get shot. There's a certain amount of time until you're going to die, and that that time might be 5 seconds or that time might be an hour. And he said, my job, as he said, you know, the job of any Tac medic is to take, let's say you have an hour and turn that hour into 2 hours or into an hour and a half.

He said, my job as a soft medic, and they do a lot more advanced life saving stuff. He said, if you're in Afghanistan, is to turn that hour into 12 hours or 11 hours and do everything I can. To keep you alive long enough that I can get you to a trauma surgeon who in some cases is going to be in Ramstein air base. They're going to med evacuate you a long distance.

And I think that's one of the common misconceptions is that the emergency doc is the guy that's going to save your life, bring you back, but in the end, he's going to hand you off to somebody else who's going to have to do, whether it's surgery or whatever, to, to fix the, the underlying problem.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. The. It is a misconception. And, you know, those soft medics, those guys are doing all that out of a backpack.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Right. You know, amazing work. Oh, it's crazy what they do out of. And, you know, we are in hospital environment and we have a lot more help, a lot more equipment. It's expected that we could do more, but, you know, there's always a rate limiting factor, and that rate limiting factor is the number of doctors that are available to do the resuscitations. And then how do you keep those same patients alive while you wait for surgery? And that's a, you know, that's a whole nother topic that we can delve into.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because, I mean, as you're explaining that, I'm thinking, okay, so you've got, you've got, let's say there's one doctor, one surgeon. That one surgeon, if the surgery takes an hour, he can treat a patient an hour and, you know, assuming, you know, cleaning and all the stuff that he has to do, he can treat a patient an hour. If it's a 30 minutes surgery, he can treat two patients. But if you've got ten patients, you've got to keep them all alive long enough that he's going to be able to, you know, they're going to be alive when they hit the table to give him a chance to actually long term save their lives.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. So that means while he's taking care of that one, the other nine, the ER doctor has to keep alive. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So you're the ER doc's the one that's juggling the chainsaws and ultimately handing them one at a time to the trauma search.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Hopefully keeping all the chainsaws in the air at the same time.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So I want to, before we talk about the actual event, I want to go back a minute because you had an interest in mass casualty events and in this type of medicine that you kind of described as starting in Detroit. So walk me through when you become interested in mass casualty events and this kind of event.

Dr. Kevin Menes: So I started in Detroit in 2005, and the Super Bowl came into town soon after that. I was a first year ER resident, and this is soon after 911. So the Super Bowl was one of the prime terrorist targets, and there was a lot of preparedness going out ahead of time to make sure that the hospitals were ready to handle anything that could come their way.

And so the medical directors, the doctors in Detroit, were the ones who had come up with these ideas. And emergency medicine started in Detroit. It wasn't really a specialty until, you know, much later, but some of the first ER doctors started off in and created the specialty in a place called Detroit receiving.

And it was, you know, doctors who had graduated with surgery as surgeons. Some of them graduated as medicine doctors. Just this hodgepodge of physicians who gravitated towards, you know, stabilizing and taking care of, you know, sick, sick patients. And so I eventually found this out. And since these were the guys who had come up with the plans, me as this brand new first year ER doctor, listening to these plans of how we were going to handle this huge flow of patients, now, I'm not gonna question it. You know, who am I to judge?

I mean, these guys are what I want to be, you know? Fast forward, I finished my training. Nothing happened. Well, fast forward, nothing happened during the Super Bowl, and I move out to Las Vegas, and I had gotten into a shooting in the ER, and because of that shooting, I ended up volunteering to be a doc for the SWAT team in Las Vegas. And I had met some amazing people there.

And one of the men who I had met was a gentleman by the name of Chuck Collingwood. Chuck was one of the early guys who was in Delta and was very, very intelligent in the tactical arena, which I knew very little about. But as an ER doctor working for, volunteering for the team, we're there to save their life if they get shot. And so he turned around and said, hey, doc, I got to take you shooting one day. And I said, okay.

And that's how they always would try to pay us back. They would try to give us skills and things that we didn't know. I told him, look, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. I mean, I have a rifle that can shoot distance, but I don't know how to use it at all. He's like, I could teach you that stuff. And I said, okay, but I really don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to read the reticle. He's like, no, I could do that for you. He goes, we'll go up onto this ridge line and we'll shoot down at these targets I've set up in the valley. And he would regularly go up there, or he would go up there into the ridge and shoot down at these targets because he was one of the snipers.

And that day it clicked. I had asked, well, if you can shoot from that target, and you could teach me, a guy who knows nothing about shooting down, how to shoot down into target, what would happen if somebody got into one of these hotels and shot down at, you know, everybody during New Year's Eve? New Year's Eve? And he went into this lecture off the top of his head about elevated platform shooting. My mind was blown.

And in that short time period there, I knew that we as a medical community were not prepared. I heard, you know, what the greatest minds in emergency medicine in Detroit had come up with for, you know, to be ready for the Super Bowl, and it wasn't going to handle this. And that is, you know, that's the prevailing thought across the United States. This is how you run mass casualties. And so I started to, look, what could we do to potentially be ready for something like this? And that's how my journey began. It really started there, and it was sort of a frantic search before, you know, before the brown stuff hit the fan.

Jon Becker: So I think one of the things that we forget with mass casualty and you and I talked about was, you know, there are two trauma centers in Las Vegas at the time. Those two trauma centers are getting patients at different times. You know, somebody's in a car crash, somebody gets shot. So at any given .1 of them may be tied up and the other one might not be, or one of them may be, you know, have two patients stacked up and one might not be.

But there's a differential between when all of those cases are happening and the timing of them all with a mass casualty event. You know, if you think about the golden hour that they talk about and, you know, like you and I talked about, it's not always an hour. It might be 30 seconds or it might be three days. But, you know, whatever that golden amount of time is, in a normal trauma situation, everybody's clock starts at a different time. And so your hour may start five minutes before a trauma surgeon frees up with a mass casualty. Everybody's clock starts at exactly the same time.

So if you have two doctors, you have two people you can treat, two surgeons, you have two people you can take into the ER right now, but everybody else is waiting and burning that golden hour while those two people are on the table.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, it's, I call it time until death. I started to notice when I was in Detroit that there was this pattern. I started to develop this pattern that I can guesstimate between when you got shot and how much time it would take before you would, you would tank or you would head downhill. And then when you resuscitate the patient, you bring them back up. You can kind of watch the slow trickle that happens afterwards and there was another time period associated with that.

So over the years of just being seeing a lot of these injuries, I developed this mental portfolio or mental idea of time until death. You get shot here. This is how much, how much time you're going to have before you die. And I can tell you all the places that will get you killed in your time until death to be in seconds or instantaneous.

And then I can tell you the ones that are in between and I can time it pretty closely. But in a mass casualty, when you're talking about these time until deaths, Vegas, for example, you know, 1100 rounds were shot in about, you know, over a thousand rounds were shot in eleven minute span. So everybody's time until death started at the same time, within minutes of each other. So even if you add that extra someone shot at time zero and someone shot at time eleven, everybody is injured at the same time. And how are you?

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's a negligible difference for purposes of the flow into the ER. You know, everybody gets to chick fil a at exactly the same time. It's, you know, everybody's lunch hour starts at minute one. Yeah.

Dr. Kevin Menes: So it would be, you know, 500 people deciding to go to one chick fil a at 12:00 at the same time.

Jon Becker: To take this analogy a step further, there's only two operators of the chick fil a, right? You have two surgeons that are available.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Okay, so let's, so that gets you interested in this and you start to research this and do your own homework. Why don't we start with the day of the event? What, what are you doing? Where are you? Give me kind of background story.

Dr. Kevin Menes: So I'm a night guy, so I work at night, night shifts, weekend nights. And my normal work week was Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday for most people. That's insane. First off, I mean, you don't, why would you work every weekend and why would you work at night? And there was. It worked for my family schedule that I was off during the week, but there was also. That's when all the good stuff happened, was on the weekends of the population of Vegas ebbs and flows with the weekend. You know, we're a weekend city, and, you know, all the good stuff happens then, so all the action happens then, too. And if action was going to happen, I wanted to be there.

Jon Becker: You're the doctor equivalent of a guy that worked graveyards in the ghetto.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And you're actively seeking trouble. You're looking for the stuff that everybody else is afraid of.

Dr. Kevin Menes: There's that element to it. And I think part of it is you want to be able to test your mettle. Can you do it? I always say this. I don't like when people are injured, but I don't like when people are dying, but if they're dying, I want to be there. And being there on those weekends was the opportunity to potentially be there.

And so my typical schedule is either Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. And depending. If I did too many of those days, my wife would be very mad. I'd be out with the SWAT team, doing whatever they were doing. And then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I was. I was at work, and that was a Sunday night, and it had been actually a pretty slow night.

My shifts were 08:00 p to 06;00 a, so I had come in at eight, and, you know, I had seen a couple of patients, but. And our overlap for nights is there are four docks that start. There's a 04:00 p.m. to 02:00 a.m. shift, then a 06:00 p.m. to 04:00 a.m. and then an 08:00 to 06:00 and a 10:00 to 08:00.

So there's four docs at overnight, and the two docs who would come in before me were already prepping to go home. They're like, this is, you know, you and you and jaywalk James Walker. They were one of the other docs I was working with at night. Good friend of mine, amazing ER doctor, lifesaver. They were the other two docs. Dr. Flores, another good friend of mine, amazing ER doctor also, and Dr. Tang, who was – He had just actually graduated from residency in July, and this happened in October, so he'd been out for four months.

Jon Becker: Oh, boy.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. So, again, amazing ER doctor couldn't have done it without him. But the four of us were scheduled to overlap overnight, and Flores and Tang were already talking about wrapping up and going home because they're like, yeah, you and Jay walk and see all these people. You can handle the, you know, whatever we're dealing with.

And the Flores and Tang had been setting up to go home, and just at that point in time, there was this call overhead, because that's how they would call docs. They would say, er doctor to bed 40. And we didn't carry phones, we didn't carry pagers. You just get called by that and you knew that somebody was dying in bed 40 and you needed to get there. You never said stat, never said anything, those things. But that call overhead was menace to tell you now. So why were you calling me? And why do we need to get to the radio and why now? So I take off running.

Jon Becker: Get telemedicine, or?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, telling the telemedicine. So I get over to the radio and just that. That as I'm listening to the radio, I'm hearing or the radio call comes as, you know, prepare for mass casualty, multiple shooting victims. That's it. And I turn around and there's an officer who is standing right behind me, unrelated case. And I can see him looking into his lapel mic, kind of listening to his earpiece. And you can tell he's taking in a radio transmission. And once he's done, he kind of looks up at me. I lock eyes with him and I say, hey, is this real? He goes, yeah, man.

And in that point in time, I knew, well, you know, this is it, you know, all of those. All that time you had thought about this, you're going to have to make that decision now. And so we started to get things moving. I had told the secretaries, hey, get every operating room open, call all the surgeons, get them going here to the hospital now. Get all the staff, anybody who's in the operating room, because that's really our rate limiting factor. Right? Or we had talked about that. You have one. We had one trauma surgeon in house. We had four Er docs in house.

So that's four resuscitations at one time, one or case at one time. And that's the maximum amount that we should be capable of doing. But if you can get everybody else in, you could potentially save more.

Jon Becker: So, because how many, like, how many trauma surgeons are there that are affiliated with the hospital? How many can you put your hands on in an hour?

Dr. Kevin Menes: I think there are. I think in the group at the time, there was maybe seven. And trauma surgeons have to, even when you're on second call. So the other thing is, there is a someone who's in house, and there's always a backup call. So backup call has to be in within 30 minutes. So most of the time you live less than 30 minutes away. So you can get in at about 15.

So if you make that call soon enough, you can get the operating rooms open pretty quickly. And that's the call. First call we had made. And I told the nurses, clear out all of these areas because I had already, you know, again, talking with chuck over the years, there's this. The way that mass casualties are taught is you take a tag, put it on the patient. In triage, you tear off all the other colors except for the one you want to leave on.

So if they're a red tag, you tear off yellow and green and you leave the red tag on them. If they're green, you tell you leave it as is. Or if they're yellow, you pull off the green. And red is the most serious, yellow is the next serious, and green is the, you know, the not so serious wounds. So that's how it's taught in school.

But I knew that number one, that isn't the best way to differentiate this big group. Better way to do it is red, orange, yellow and green, meaning red is the worst. Red is where they're going to die in the first few minutes. Orange is the next group who's going to die. Yellow is the next group who's going to die after that.

And then the greens are all the people who aren't going to die no matter what you do. So instead of using a tag system. What I had thought about in pre planning was instead dividing the different parts of the ER into a red, orange, yellow section and then the green section. And so that area, station one, the main area, was going to be where all the red tags were going to be.

So I told them, the secretary, get everybody on the. Get all the doctors in house, and I told the nurses, clear all these beds out. And then I took off running, and I took off running because I wanted to get down to my car and get my own police radio. So get down to my car, open up the back, pull out my radio, and I turned it on. And now I'm listening, you know, in real time, just the radio traffic that's coming across, and it's chaos, you know, pure chaos. Everybody is just saying so much over the radio.

And, you know, I started deciphering out words and the things that I wanted to know was what was the scale of what we were dealing with and what should I expect on the receiving end and I heard concert. So concerts are thousands of people and I heard automatic gunfire. And you take those two together, so you got thousands of people and you're going to shoot a, I mean, you could shoot an automatic pistol at somebody, but if you're going to choose, you know, to hurt people, you probably use something more like an AK.

So I'm thinking if you're thinking worst case scenario, rifle caliber rounds into crowds of thousands and, you know, it was, you know, the nightmare that we as doctors, you know, never want to experience. And I found myself, you know, having to stare at that and you don't have chance to think about it. It's time to work. You just got to put your head down and. But it made me realize that that's what we were about to deal with.

And so I made my way back up the ER past the driveway where I knew where you go. We were going to take all the victims and do the triage at. And I left. I get up the ambulance hallway, get into the next station, which is station two, where all the orange tags were going to go. And I told the nurses, ivies and everybody let me know when they're going to crash. And, you know, word trickles pretty quickly through the ER when something big happens, you know, when a gunshot wound comes in, you'll always see, like nurses from far ends of the ER or staff work their way towards where all the action's happening because you want to watch and see how things go.

It's, to me, it's interesting. And, you know, being a student before, I know the draw that it has to be even near when a life is being saved. And so they knew what was going on and the, I guess, types of cases and things we've done before. I didn't have to say much, but they trusted me and they heard what I said and I just kept moving on. I didn't tell them that they were going to be, they were going to take the second sickest patients, but they, you know, they heard what I, we were going to do.

I went over to the next station, which is station four, and I told them same thing. Ivys and everybody call me when they're crashing. And that was where we were going to put the yellow tags, then moved over to the green tag section. I told them the exact same thing.

And then there was a couple of areas that had these private rooms, which are rooms that had closed doors. And I told the nurses, don't use those rooms because I was concerned, because we were going so far off of the beaten path that if somebody had died behind one of those doors, they would have blamed all of the things that we had done as the cause, root cause for that.

And at the same time, you just can't see people once the door closes. So we were giving up real estate in order to be able to see everything that was going on, because it's not very big department, but within eyesight, you can see. You can see things happen faster. And so I had made my loop through. I had told somewhere along the way, I'd asked them to bring all the gurneys and wheelchairs out to the ambulance bay.

And so I came back out into the ambulance bay, had my radio in one hand, and I'm listening to the transmissions. The staff who weren't ready to take the resuscitations, who are EKG techs or laboratory techs, people who weren't our housekeepers, they were out there with us, ready to move all of these patients to wherever they needed to go. And it was eerily silent, I remember. So over the years, I had watched that show emergency, the one that was filmed here in LA as a kid, where the ER doctor would meet the paramedics out in the ambulance bay for all the cases. And I thought, well, that's what ER doctors do. I guess I should do that, too. If I ever became an ER doctor, I would do that all the time.

And what it did was it gave me this few seconds, because most of the time, you're just supposed to sit in the room where the case is coming, wait for the case to come to you. Then you'd hear what's going on, and then you'd start working. I would go out to the ambulance bay, cut that little time in between short, get a little bit of what's going on, have an idea, even do part of an exam already.

So I had 5, 10 seconds to start thinking about what I was going to do before I even hit the room. And then once I hit, hit the room with the patient, wed be off and running. So for years, I had been out in the ambulance bay doing that. And so I know the sound that you hear when the ambulances come, and its always this, like, ambulance wailing away in the distance. And it kind of, you can hear it get louder and louder. It holds as it clears the intersection, then it gets louder, and then it holds. It clears another intersection, so you can kind of guess where you're at.

And I remember this wasn't that sound because you'd hear the high pitched whale and the low pitched whale at the same time. Most of the time, it's either high or low, right, when it's a single siren. And at that. And it was loud. It was really loud. Much louder than normal, but still distant. I don't know how to describe loud but distant, but that's, like, muffled. But it was also high and low pitched.

And at that point in time, I realized that, you know, it wasn't one. There were a bunch of sirens coming our way. Little did I know at that time that a good friend of mine who was a medic, he had been a transport medic, eventually became a paramedic with one of the departments. He had been at the scene where all of the victims had self extricated to.

So all of the victims actually ran away from the scene and ended up on this one, the farthest northwest corner of the venue, and his one truck. He knew that he was. There was no way he can handle all these victims. So there's two things wrapped up into that that I think are really key that I teach when I travel and I talk about this.

Number one, the two heroes that night were those who were there at the venue and why I say that is most people in this dog eat dog world where it's every man for himself and take care of yourself first. When people were getting shot right next to them, instead of running for cover on their own, they would pick up these victims and move them off of the x towards this, you know, casualty collection point, right? And so all of this, the victims who or the victims who had chance were moved from that scene far before, you know, EMS can get in.

So another thing about these sort of mass casualties are shootings, right? Imagine if a shooting happens in a mall. EMS is unarmed, so they do not go into scene hot because scene safety first, right? So police have to clear it, and then EMS has to come in back, backfill behind them. And then take the victims out. That time period is time taken out of time until death. Right? It's subtracted from resuscitation time. It's time that we have to save the patient.

So those heroes that night who despite, you know, bullets cracking over their head, the snapping, you know, they're hearing in their ear, knowing that they're being shot at, watching people next to them dropping and dying, they pick them up under gun fire and run with them to the, that area. And then what ended up happening at that casualty collection point? Because they knew they were overwhelmed. They ended up hijack. They convinced every vehicle at that intersection to become a makeshift ambulance.

And so behind the initial police vehicles. So I can't remember how many police vehicles ended up coming. Those were the ones who made up the sound of the sirens. All the other vehicles behind them, the pickup trucks, the limos, they were. That they were the part of the silent parade of, you know, victims who made it to the hospital in that amount of time where we could potentially, you know, save them.

So I'm sitting there, I'm hearing this whale of sirens coming, and as they pull up, the first vehicle pulls up, and it's a police vehicle. He tries to get out. I slam his door shut and I tell him, just stay in. When we get all these patients out, I'm going to tap your car and you go. I look through his driver's side, I look through his window, and there's two in the front seat. I opened up the back seat, and there's two on the floorboards, two on the back seat. And I looked at all of them and I knew they were dead.

And there was more police vehicles right behind him. And I just knew at that point in time, this is, you know, this is the real thing. And how in the world am I supposed to do this? And, yeah, I've been doing this triage system for a long time. I've been kind of developing this idea of what to do, but is it really going to work?

And, you know, there's no real time to second guess what you're going to do. You just, you know, again, I think pre preparing for difficult situations makes it so that the hurdle for actually making the decision when it comes is just. It's split second. I don't even think the idea crossed my mind, to be honest. When that occurred, I already knew we were going to do it.

There's no other option because the systems that are out there, which are salt and start, there's no way they would have differentiated those patients. So doors opened up. I'm like, station one, station two, station four, you know, rapid track. That's what I would tell the staff that corresponded to red, orange, yellow, green in my book, but they didn't have to know that. They knew where those areas were in the ER.

So I'm opening up the door, I look at the wounds, you know, station two, that one goes to station one that wasn't goes station four. And they just – They keep coming, they keep coming. The pickup trucks come, and I pop up onto the back of the bed. I look inside, and there's like 15 people in there. And I'm thinking, how am I supposed to triage all these people? And again, I can't say this enough, but the people there were the true heroes that night, because even being shot themselves, they would be, doc, this is the one you need to take care of first. They did my job for me. They pulled out that red tag. Who needed to go to station one. We'd grab that one, move, move them out, and then I would triage the rest of them.

So, you know, the pickup trucks, the first one was the scariest, but, you know, once I got through that one, I was like, okay. And then the other ones came, and I was like, okay, I can do this again. It wasn't a isolated incident. This was every single vehicle. You know, all of those people, you know, we're willing to sacrifice being first in line, to have somebody else skip the line because they needed it first. And then the first limo came, and I was like, oh, this is not good.

And I remember looking into the limo was dark. Same thing, doc. This is the one. And you'd see this body getting past, like, crowd surf through the limousine up to the front, and, you know, we would take that one, station one to the red tags.

And then I had to work on everybody else. And so we're triaging, and I'm mentally counting in the back of my head, my adds going, and I'm like, okay, I have this and that and this and this. I know that Flores, Walker and tang are inside. They're doing this. They're probably going to get overwhelmed soon. Sure enough, just at that point, you know, one of the nurses comes out and says, hey, menace, they need you inside. They're behind.

And I looked at Deb. You seen what I've been doing, right? And she goes, yeah. I said, do you think you can do this? And she. She gave me one of those, like, hard swallows and a nod. I don't think she ever said yes. I think that was the extent of it. And, you know, I was going to commit her to, you know, to having PTSD because she would second guess every decision that she would make in the future from this.

And, you know, fast forward, spoiler alert. I mean, she did an amazing job and triaged more patients than I did over the next couple of hours. But in that first brief flurry, I don't know how long I was out. There could have been 10. I've heard anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. Most of the people I've talked to said about 10. I think we triaged about 100 people in that short amount of time.

Jon Becker: So how many total did you see that night? How many total did your hospital see that night?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So the official number is 215. I think the real numbers far north of that, there are a lot of people who walked out, a lot of people who weren't registered. These are people who got graze wounds. But, you know, I think the real numbers north of 300, and that's just the consensus of everybody I've talked to. You know, you go room to room and they're like, yeah, this many, this many, this many. When you add it up.

Jon Becker: It's, you know, close to 300.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, over 300 of those.

Jon Becker: 300 that showed up. Ballpark, what was the split between red, orange, yellow and green?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So I can't tell you the exact percentage, but red, orange, yellow are all your sick ones. I think we did over 100 of those at night.

Jon Becker: How many showed up DOA at the hospital?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So 10 showed up DOA.

Jon Becker: And did those cause you see roughly 100 their red orange green or red orange yellow? 10 show up DOA. Of the 100 that show up that are not dead when they get there, how many die by the time the night's over?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So of all the ones who made it to the hospital, we had 16 total deaths. So 10 were those DOAs like those ones I told you in the first police vehicle, there were four that we, as the ER, had stabilized and resuscitated. But they're pouring blood out of their chest wound so fast. And this was at a time where a typical thoracic gunshot wound, like a really bad one. Thoracotomy would be an hour plus surgery.

Jon Becker: Thoracotomy is opening up the chest.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, opening up the entire chest and trying to patch the holes. So. Right, that's heart, that's aorta, that's lungs. I mean, all the important stuff, that's the. A box of a target. Right? Those injuries. The trauma surgeons knew at that point in time, they were overwhelmed. They couldn't take care of them. So four of them, they determined, were. When we were just gonna. They were gonna let them go. So that's four.

And then one was found to be brain dead even. You know, a couple of days later, they were stabilized, but they were. They were found to be brain dead because of the wound to the brain. And one died in the operating room when they couldn't control.

Jon Becker: So out of 100 patients, 6 of whom, as the ten weren't treated?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. Well, we. I still so one of the things that it's taught is black tags should just be sent immediately to the morgue. And I knew that the triage system I was doing, you know, it had its limitations, and one of them was, you were working fast, and you might be wrong, and when you're the filling a pulse, you might miss something.

So, you know, if two docs thought the same thing, then you. You know, then the patient really is dead. So if I thought it was dead, I'd still send him back for another guy to look at. And so we sent everybody back. And so, yeah, ten still were DOA that that day.

Jon Becker: Got it. And then. So the rest of them, you treat. I mean, after you're doing the triage, the nurse takes over for triage. Where do you go from there?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So Flores, Walker, and Tang are in one, and they're frantically resuscitating. I jump in and try to stabilize patients, too, and I go from room to room, and I'm working on the initial resuscitations. Intubate, chest tubes, blood. Intubate, chest tubes, blood, airway, breathing, circulation. Airway, breathing, circulation. And I'm cycling through every single patient, you know, as you're going down the line, trying to pick out the ones that look sickest to you and working on those next.

And I remember coming out of one of the rooms, and there were three GSWs to the head all together at one area, and Flores and Walker were standing right next to them, and I was like, hey, what are you guys waiting for? And they were like, we're waiting for drugs. Because when, even though you have an injury to your head, you might still fight getting the breathing tube put in. And if you're just fighting breathing the tube, then you can't go to CAT scan either, because you'll probably move, and it won't be helpful.

So we needed to put them to sleep and get them stabilized for the neurosurgeons to make it into help them. And they were waiting for drugs. I was like, that's what you're waiting for, right? They're like, yeah. I turn around the corner, get to where the pyxis machine is, which is, you know, this machine where you put your fingerprint, and then you can pull drugs out for the nurses. And the nurse is frantically trying to get drugs out, and she opens it up, and there's only, like, two or three vials of these meds, and they're in station one alone. I don't know, 50, you know, red tags in there.

So I knew we were in trouble and in pre planning, I thought about a lot of things, and I thought about a lot of contingencies and had plans for a lot of those things, I did not think about that. I did not have a contingency plan for that.

And I remember coming around the corner, and I looked right at that moment, I heard this voice. And it was the same voice that I had heard when I had ducked under the bullets and that shooting when I was brand new attending and almost got me a voice that told me to duck. It was the same voice that said, just ask. And I believe that it was God speaking to me.

And I thought, just ask who? And the ER pharmacist. So we have a pharmacist who works in the ER, helps the nurses grab drugs, do all these things. She walked right in front of me just at that moment in time, and I looked at her. And over the years, because of the relationships that you developed, just being. Trying to save patience, and you don't normally you have to go in and put an order before something happens, in the computer.

But, when you develop this rapport or trust, and even though you're going off of what the normal algorithm is, if you've proven yourself and you don't throw anybody under the bus, meaning if you ask for a verbal order and you're wrong, you still sign it. You don't ever. You know, I remember there was a – One of the lessons I had learned in residency was there was a resident who had asked the nurse for a verbal order. It turned out that the resident had actually ordered the wrong drug in a situation that had caused a bad outcome. And the resident would not sign the order, and the nurses would never write a. Do a verbal order for that.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah. Because he left him hanging out to dry.

Dr. Kevin Menes: And so I knew at from a early, you know, from a young age, as an ER doc, don't ever do that, right? You're accountable for the words that come out of your mouth and everything that you do. You have to stand by it. So think about before you do something. And because the staff trusted me, I could throw out these orders which were, you know, not the textbook stuff, and then they would work down the line and they'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Next time you just ask, and we'll do what you ask.

And so I asked her. I asked the pharmacist, hey, can you go down to the stockroom and grab every single one of this, this, this and this drug? And she goes, okay, what do you want me to do? With them. And I said, just pass them to everybody. And for those who don't know, I mean, that is probably the most illegal thing you can do. Yeah.

Jon Becker: You're literally handing out narcotics.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. And paralytics and things that are just highly dangerous. And the nurses were having these drugs in their pocket, but cutting out the step of having to go to a pyxis machine, put your fingerprint and all the other things you have to do. We were doing split second resuscitations, you know, because we can go back to back to back to back as everything was there.

And one of the other things that I thought about, I remembered at that point in time was I thought, well, if we needed blood, we should have it ready. And so I turned to one of the nurses, and I said, hey, can you get all the blood out of the blood bank?

And so she passed it off to one of the other nurses, and that nurse went to the blood bank, asked them for blood, and the blood bank said, well, where's your order for the blood? And in not so many words, she goes, do you see what's going on here? And the tech poked their head out of the. Cause the window for the lab is, like, hidden, you know, off in a way that they can't really see. The ER, they poked their head out, saw the chaos that was going on, and next thing you know, every box or every unit of blood was coming through this little window. And so we had pre staged all of the drugs, all the blood, and that's how we, you know, we were res

uscitating people at just, like, breakneck speed, because everything we needed was there. So I had gone through one, I had stabilized everyone in one, and then they. Walker, I'm sorry. That. So going back to those three GSLs of the head at that point in time, Walker said he was going to intubate them. And I told him, okay, to him, and then get him out of here, go to CT, and then go to the ICU so that they can wait for the neurosurgeons.

And that two things, it opened up real estate for us because of small ER. And you imagine three beds, that's three more patients that can come in on gurneys so that we could do resuscitations. And so they opened up those three areas so that we can take in more victims. And that became part of our little algorithm, what we were going to do that night.

But after I left there, I remember heading back out into the hallway, and one of the nurses flagged me down from station two. Where all the orange tags were. And she was like, man, it's over here. And I get over there and these two were shot in the chest.

And I remember, I remember her grabbing. I told her, grab me a thoracotomy tray, which is, you know, surgeons are supposed to do thoracotomies in the operating room under sterile conditions, full gown, all that stuff. In an emergency situation, you do it in the ER with minimal sterility because it's choice of life and death. And you have like, a less than 1% chance of surviving when we open up your chest, you know, at bedside.

But I wasn't going to open their chest. I was going to put chest tubes in. And I needed that thoracotomy tray to have enough tools to work on two patients at the same time. So I tube both of them. I intubate and put them both on the ventilator. And then I put in four chest tubes on the two of them.

And then I tell the nurse, how many units of blood I want on each. And then I walk away and turn around and go to the next one. And I work on that next one. And I go and work on the next one. And I work on the next one. And I'm cycling through two while, you know, the other three yard docs are still in one with these sicker red tags. We get through one, I end up circling back around. And now I'm just doing these loops looking for people who are dying, knowing that I have it, you know, sectioned off by color, knowing that yellow is going to die soon.

So I go through yellow, come to green, go to red, help out in red a little bit, go back to orange. But everybody in orange had been stabilized. Knowing that yellow was going to go next. Some point in stabilizing the oranges, we run out of chest tubes, and so we switch to the intubation tubes.

So I'd stick the tubes that go down the throat, put those in the chest, inflate the balloon, and it holds it inside the chest. And it's almost a standard et tube or, I'm sorry, standard chest tube, but it kind of holds itself in place. But that was kind of some of the ideas that had come out, you know, I had thought about over the years. I get over to yellow as the yellows start to crash and the guys are still in one, stabilizing the patients.

And one of the nurses goes, hey, menace, I need you to stabilize. I need this. I need your help on this one. I need help. And then another one's like, no, no, no, I need your help on this one. And then I need your help on this one. And at that point in time, everybody's yellow tag patients were crashing at the same time. So I said, okay, bring them all over here. And so we brought them together. I stood in the center. It was me, my scribe, who wasn't doing any charting. She was holding a bag full of equipment and a respiratory therapist.

And then I told the nurses, are you ready? Push the drugs, idente them, listen to see if they needed chest tubes. And then we'd hang blood. And then I would go all in a circle and I put all of those patients on a ventilator. You know, in that time it took me to do it.

At that point in time, the respiratory therapist looked at me and she said, we don't have enough ventilators to get all these patients on a vent. I said, it's okay, you know, we can just grab some tubing. And she goes, what do you mean it's okay? And what are you going to do with tubing? And so a ventilator is a machine that breathes for you. And when you're in a coma or we put you in a medically induced coma, the machine acts like your diaphragm does and breathes for you so that you can stay alive and your body can rest.

So happened that one of the doctors who had trained, who had graduated a year before me in Detroit, had done a study with one of my attendings, Dr. Babcock, and they had came up with this idea that in a disaster you can put multiple patients on a single ventilator. If you just multiply the amount of air you'll give by four.

So if there's four people on there, you just, you just multiply it times four. So typically you give somebody 500 CC's or 500 oxygen or air per cycle. That means if you set your ventilator to 2000, you can potentially keep four people alive on one ventilator. If you split the tubing. That's a study that they had come up with using balloons. Never been tried on people.

Jon Becker: Oh boy!

Dr. Kevin Menes: So, you know, in pre planning, I was like, oh, I know about this study, four sounds crazy. Maybe I'll do two. So the idea was to do two on event until we ran out of vents and then go to four. And so I remember I told the respiratory therapists that and they kind of looked at me puzzlingly. But when I circled back around later, two of the patients that I had put on a ventilator because they were shot in the neck and they were choking, were on a split vent.

And so it was the first time that it had been, you know, a theoretical study had been done in real life. Fast forward to 2020, as COVID came along and we were hearing rumors that Italy was running out of ventilators, there was a frantic search to figure out what could be done at that point in time. And Dr. Babcock released this, you know, video on YouTube about it, what she did. And I think the video is still out there. And then they were contacted by, you know, the administration, and they've developed a theoretical plan on how to split event, you know, what to do for COVID with split vents.

And so, yeah, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time on that day. They were lecturing about their, their study. And most of the time, that was, you know, when you're working, you know, six days, seven days a week, you come to lecture, to take a nap, you know, for 4 hours. And I don't know why at that moment in time, I happened to hear that part of the lecture, and I never forgot it. And, you know, I put it to. We put it to use that night.

And so that was all the yellow tag patients. We'd circle back around. But about at that time was when we had stabilized, you know, most of the patients. I had my last big resuscitation just about that time, as you know, the ER doctors started to show up and help out. I mean, the trauma surgeons had already been there. And we're taking patients to the operating room.

But as ER docs, we don't take call. You know, we don't carry pagers. And so it took, one of my friends told me that he got there about almost 2 hours after the shooting started because just getting the call, feeling the call, and then having to make it through all of the roadblocks between his house and the hospital. A normal commute that takes 25 minutes took, you know, took much longer.

But, you know, at that point in time, we had gotten our head up above, a little bit above water. And then we still had, you know, a lot of patients that we had to deal with. And there were a lot of patients that had to go through the CAT scan. And we developed this sort of conveyor. Well, it was a system that Henry Ford would have been proud of. I mean, we put a bunch of patients in line ready to go into the CAT scan. We put them on the CT, scan them from head to toe, pull them off the CAT scan and wheel them off the table and move. And they just scanned all of these patients from head to toe, looking for the wounds that were stable. But somehow we knew the bullet was in theme, and they had cycled through, I don't know, something like 100 CTs in an hour.

Jon Becker: Wow!

Dr. Kevin Menes: I mean, it's just an unbelievable number. When. And again, I think a lot of this, when people ask me, like, how were you successful? Or how do you do the things that you did, the things that you did that night, I think a lot of it is formed in just the fact that trust, working together for years, always backing up your people and being responsible, making good choices, because no one wants to be with a loser. You make bad choices, they stop wanting to listen to you, but you make good choices and you build this trust.

And so I asked them to do things that were not of the norm, and, you know, they did it, and in an amazing fashion. So we ended up getting all those patients through the cat scan, and then there were a lot of people who were shot through the extremities. And, you know, extremity injuries are not as life threatening. You know, the arteries, you know, the femoral artery is about the size of a pinky. So the chance of hitting the femoral artery in a gunshot wound in the leg is very small.

So we know we had time on some of these, especially if it wasn't hit directly, you know, if you're missing it, your chances of hitting it were pretty low. So those – A lot of those injuries were green tag victims, and we needed to know if they had an open fracture, needed to stay in the hospital.

Jon Becker: So if you. That night, if you came into the hospital with a gunshot wound in the leg, you were probably getting green tagged. Unless it was fomory bleed.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yes.

Jon Becker: That's kind of insane. A gunshot wound to the leg sends you to the waiting room.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah.

Jon Becker: That gives you the magnitude of the problem.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. It…

Jon Becker: There's a gunshot wound to the. To the leg on any other Sunday night in the trauma center has a trauma team working on you.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah. Like, most typical criteria for gunshot wound above the knees, above the knees or closer than the elbow is a high level gunshot wound because those are the biggest part of the artery in the leg, right?

Jon Becker: Yeah. Femoral and brachial artery.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, femoral and brachial. And I can count on my hand the number of femoral and actual femoral and brachial injuries had happened that night. And so, yeah, I can count on one hand and so the rest of those other injuries, we needed to make sure they didn't have an open fracture. And we had two PAs who were on with us that night, and they were – I tasked them to do the green tags and I told them, look, if this is early on in, the night before the gunshots had come, I told them, if you think it's an open fracture, they need an x-ray. If not, and they have a distal pulse, meaning you can feel the heart beating, you know, the pulse, like at the foot or at the wrist, you can assume that it missed the artery.

And if you don't think they have an open fracture, antibiotics, tetanus shot, pain meds, and get them out, because we need the room. And so those guys did amazing work. And psych, because the green tags are actually going to be your biggest section. And they can take up more, more real estate if they are. And so they ended up moving all of those patients out. And that's how they, you know, the. They took care of more patients than we did as the docs.

Jon Becker: And when you say moving them out, you mean sending them home?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Sending them home, yeah, getting them home.

Jon Becker: So you have a gunshot wound to the leg and you are being discharged from the hospital.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yes, I know. You know, contrary to what happens in the movies, yeah.

Jon Becker: It's just insane to think, like, oh, yeah, now you shot in the leg. Yeah, you're good. Go ahead and go home. Well, here's an antibiotic. And, you know, go see your normal GP tomorrow and get your gun. Get the bullet dug out of your leg.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Well, oftentimes, I mean, in the movies, you dig out the bullet. In real life, we leave them. So.

Jon Becker: And then just send them to a surgeon to remove it or just leave it.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Or you just leave it. You know, some people walk around with bullets inside their body for the rest of their life, and if it's superficial enough, the body will eventually kind of pocket it and then push it towards the skin. And you'll hear about people who push out shrapnel or push out bullets, you know, years down the line.

And so, yeah, there is no need to dig it out. You just leave it in. It's tough. Technically sterile. It's hot. It was a hot piece of metal that went in you. And so you give them a bit of antibiotics to make sure it doesn't get infected. And, you know, they, you know, you. They get better over time.

So, yeah, the gunshot wounds to the extremities, those are – Our PA has did an amazing job moving those patients out. And that's where you – When the incoming team would come in, they would help with those and some of the other stuff and all the other stuff, too. You know, it wasn't just that, but that was where the big bulk of the. The victims were at – So one of the slow parts was of it was getting an x-ray and then finding out if they had an open fracture and then getting them out.

So I approached one of the hierarchy with a crazy plan of getting a radiologist. So a doctor who reads x-rays, who normally sits in a dark room somewhere in the hospital, or you can actually do it remotely, aka, you can do it from your house in your pajamas on a really nice computer and computer screen, you can read x-rays from home.

But either way, we had a radiologist come in that night, walk around with an x-ray attack on a machine, shoot the x-ray, read the x-ray, say that the bone wasn't broken, prescriptions were given, and that patient was out. And so we cycled through those patients really quickly, too.

Jon Becker: And so how long did it take for you guys to cycle through to the point that it got stable, like where you're thinking about going home?

Dr. Kevin Menes: So I didn't go home. You know, I was thinking the entire time that, you know, the boys were still working on trying to take care of the – This threat, the gunman who was either holed up in wherever he was, or my last radio transmissions were, you know, active shooter at Tropicana, active shooter at New York, active shooter, you know, at Monte Carlo.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, like every active shooter, there's multiple shooters.

Dr. Kevin Menes: There's multiple shooters because everybody had left the scene with a bulletin, then they would call 911 the second they get into the hotel. And it got called as an active shooter in all those different scenarios. There's no way to know that at the time. And I heard that transmission before cutting out my radio. When the victims, sometime in the night, I can't remember, but pretty early. So I knew that they were probably going to be dealing with a Mumbai style attack, you know, and we would have. They would have to be working for hours.

So in my mind, I was looking to get out of the ER and go to help them. And about, I think it was about 04:34 o'clock, 04:30, I think is when I finally left. But about 04:00 is when I thought that we were starting to. We'd get to that point. And I quickly wrapped up, and I was told by everybody else there, by the time day shift came, you couldn't tell except for the blood that lingered. You couldn't have told how many patients had just come through the ER that night.

Jon Becker: So 10 hours, 8 hours, 7 hours, 22 minutes, and 22 seconds, they cleared 100 patients and sent them home, stabilized them, performed surgery.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Well, they were. I mean, the surgery team continue to do so. I mean, we do the stabilization process in the ER, and, I mean, we create problems for everybody else because, you know, what we stabilize becomes a, you know, ours going down the river to….

Jon Becker: The neurosurgeons and the trauma surgeons and orthopedic surgeons and everybody else.

Dr. Kevin Menes: So everyone that we stabilize, they had, you know, days of work, months of work down the line. So our part was done. Their part where they had taken to the operating room, let them heal, take them back. You know, that was. That was days and weeks. But we had cleared. We had done all the resuscitations in about that time. So by the time day shift had come, yeah, there was. They told me there was nothing.

Jon Becker: All right, so, doc, I mean, obviously, you've had extremely unique experience through this event. You've seen kind of the worst case scenario for trauma medicine and also worst case scenario for first responders. Our end user, you know, our listener, is a tactical operator. He's a tactical medic. He's a, he's a, you know, police captain. He's, he's, you know, firefighter. He's somebody who is on the upstream from you, from the hospital. I'd love to talk about some of the lessons learned from this thing and things that, not only from a personal leadership skill development, but also you're now teaching all over the country to physicians and tactical teams and other stuff, some of the things that you're telling these agencies.

So why don't we start with one of the first things that stuck out to me as you were describing this is instead of waiting for paramedics, instead of having tactical medics dealing with people, one of the points that you highlighted was that one of the EMTs that got there started flagging down cars and putting patients into them. That seems kind of counterintuitive. We've been more and more pushing towards tactical medicine and putting tourniquets on and trying to stabilize people and then transporting. And it almost seemed to be the opposite here, that a lot of these people survived because they got to the hospital quickly. Help me understand that.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Okay. This is a very loaded question with a lot of facets, so I'm going to answer that question, and it's not the 100% biblical truth in every scenario. There's no such one thing as a single algorithm. That's. I'm going to preface that. And there's no one way to do things.

There's some general rules in that the farther you are from a trauma center, the more you have to do in the field. And a lot of this, what we call scoop and run, came from my training in Detroit, where that, that's the, that is how things are done there. You know, they'd scoop people from the scene. Whatever they can do in the ambulance is what gets done before you get to the ER, and then you, you have to work on them from there. So that's kind of the first sort of hard, fast rule. Not hard fast, but sort of fluid rule.

Another rule is there's this idea that, well, the research out there is that, you know, the most survivable wounds when looking at the trauma data are from extremity injuries. Right. And that's extrapolated from the fact that in the military, you know, they wear helmets and body armor. And so some of the injuries that they would experience, they could experience in the battlefield isn't necessarily the same that happens in the civilian sector. So you can't take these hard, fast stances and say, this is the only way to do things right. You have to be more fluid than that.

And so in this scenario in Vegas, with a trauma center that close and the torso and headshots being way more deadly than the extremity injuries, what you, you, you're essentially saying is the scoop and run allowed us to be able to save those torso and head injuries. And I 100% agree. And that was something that I saw in the events leading up to this, like Aurora, Colorado, where the police officers scooped and ran the victims because the scene was not safe and fire couldn't get into the scene, and so they cut the time down to the ER.

And, you know, some people survived because of that. So you have to extrapolate that to a scenario where you can get thousands of people. Then how do you handle, you know, that many, like what we did in that short amount of time with that, you know, the time until death all starting at the same time. So that's kind of the borders I would give you to that answer. But again, there's never a hard and fast rule.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So, like you said a lot there, but if you're dealing with the mass casualty situation, somebody who obviously has a torso or head wound is at a much greater risk than somebody with an extremity wound. Somebody with an extremity wound is easier to stabilize. So if you are choosing between who you're going to scoop and run on, scoop the guy with the chest or head wound and tourniquet the guy with the extremity wound.

But ideally, if you are close enough to transport, it's not a bad idea to get them moving towards the hospital, because that may be the time you save by taking them to the hospital may be greater than the time you gain by stabilizing them.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, and, well, I think Orlando really changed that, because the two medics who were on scene that day, instead of taking one victim per ambulance, they filled their ambulance with any victim they could. So you take your torso injury and your extremity injury at the same time, and then you let the hospital sort it out on your own.

Jon Becker: Before this event, had you, as a hospital, ever done a mass casualty drill with the police department?

Dr. Kevin Menes: No.

Jon Becker: It strikes me that that is, if nothing else, an opportunity for agencies to really shake down the process and think about, you know. Cause it's a different problem. So just look at the drugs as a perfect example of where, like, there's never an instance in a normal hospital that you're gonna run around and just pull all the drugs out of the safe. But here, it makes perfect sense. But if nobody has thought about that stuff beforehand, how do you do that? Do you advocate, agent, like, when you're working with doctors and hospitals, do you encourage them to wargame these kinds of things?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yeah, you know, we would. We would do that during a barricade pretty often, right? You're sitting in a barricade. It's 99.9%, you know, sitting and waiting, .1%, you know, sheer terror. Sure. Terror, you know, or like a hostage rescue. Right. The same thing. You know, it's even longer. And then for that split second where you're. You're doing something. So in the time in between while, you know, if. If it. If allowed to, we would. I would talk with the guys or afterwards, you know, that next week, you know, I would have try to pick their brains. Hey, what were you thinking? Why did you do this? Oh, okay, then how can we solve that problem?

So I got, you know, this great education on, I think it's difficult to make difficult decisions, but it's more difficult to make the slight, nuanced decisions that you have to make in the tactical arena. And it's even harder to make those when you're having to do it in real time. So learning to see how they work through their problems and coming up with a solution and then sort of cataloging all those different solutions.

And then in the future, when another similar solution came up, I'd be like, oh, yeah, they're probably going to do this. Sure enough, they came pretty close to doing that. Right. Because it's the, you come up with these scenarios and you just, you have a couple of solutions for that type of problem.

Jon Becker: But how can a police department get their hospitals and get their doctors engaged? Like, like, what's the best strategy? If you're chief of police in Laverne, California, how do you get your local hospital to care about this?

Dr. Kevin Menes: I think the unfortunate truth is it's when something happens, is when people ask that question, there's, I don't think there's much accountability when afterwards nobody asks the question, well, why weren't you guys even thinking about this? Right. And you can always make that distinction.

Well, the hospital does this, the doctor, the agent, the law enforcement does this. EMs and fire do this. There are a bunch of hands, but nobody ever talks to each other. Right. You know, there's very few handshakes that go across amongst each other. You know, they work in separate environments. So, yeah, unfortunately, often it's just when something does happen, then you see the cracks and then oftentimes those are just discounted as well. There's nothing we could have done.

Jon Becker: Yeah. This is a frequent problem in my world, right? Because, like, part of my day job is helping agencies to prepare for disasters, right. Whether it's a mass casualty event or, you know, terrorism attack or something along those lines. That is a big part of what we do. And, you know, I always tell agencies, the day you go through the training and get the gear is the most prepared you will be until the next time you reset your program. Because the learning curve, or mass casualty events is a vertical line followed by a diagonal line, right?

There's no, like, it's not maintained. It's not, you know, you learn it and then you maintain those capabilities. Unless, you know, unless it's inspected, it doesn't exist. And I can tell you, in the last 40 years, I have helped the same agencies prepare for riots five or six different times. And every time it started with, hey, what do we do about riot control?

And the same is true for, you know, mass hemorrhage control stuff. It's true for medic bags, it's true for a variety of things. I think that if it isn't something that somebody is tasked with doing and they are constantly tickling. Right?

Once a year, you get together with the hospital, once a quarter, you get together with the ER docs. It is very difficult to maintain that capability until the event happens. What is it about your preparation and the preparation of your coworkers that you think allowed you guys to perform at such a high level?

Dr. Kevin Menes: I think there's. I'll start with the team aspect of that. First, when you're in an inner city, high volume emergency department, it automatically selects for itself who wants to continue to work in that environment, right? Yeah, there is a small subset of people who are, who come back for more each time and enjoy the thrill of, you know, just pure chaos and busyness. So most who don't, who can't handle that leave that environment.

So that automatically selected four staff and docs who wanted to be, who were used to being busy. Now, this, that night was, you know, 10, 15 times that amount. But I, you know, the staff who was there were just amazing, you know, the nurses, some of them were under a year and, you know, but they kept coming back for more.

And I think that plus, you know, forging relationships, trust, you know, that sort of accountability that when you ask for something and even if you're wrong, you don't back out of, you know, taking responsibility for it is what slowly builds trust and cohesion amongst, amongst teammates in, in that type of environment.

So, I mean, I've never taken any leadership classes. I don't really read books on leadership. I don't know all the buzzwords on leadership. I just know what I needed to keep my department running. And those are one of the, that was kind of the important things that I always thought me as a doctor could bring to the team is, is always backing up, you know, my staff and, and never throwing them out under the bus.

And so that paid dividends whenever I needed to, you know, veer off of the beaten path. And there were so many times before that where that occurred. And so that's sort of the team aspect now, the individual aspect where I think, you know, you have to, you have to push past what's comfortable as often as possible. And we do that in training, you know, whenever you train.

And, I mean, I don't have dedicated pt time, you know, cut out of my shift. I don't get, you know, chance to work out. If I wanted to work out and exercise, it was added to my already busy workday. So being able to run through an emergency department the entire night was. I mean, that part was something that I had to do on my off time or getting to that level of something I'd have to do on my off time.

And so, and that's everybody's choice. It's hard enough to go to work and finish your job, you know, if you want to strive for. I mean, I looked at the guys who I worked with on the SWAT team and I wanted to get to their level of fitness. I never got to it, but I wanted to. I wish I could. I wish I had the time to, but, you know, I tried my best to keep up, you know, or get, just get to kind of somewhere near that.

And then there's this feeling you get when, when you're in ER, doc, and there are a lot of patients and everybody's dying. It's this feeling of drowning. Everything around you is falling apart and you inoculate yourself to this sort of stress by picking at it one at a time and getting to the point where what used to drown you doesn't drown you anymore. So you make it harder and then you make it even harder than that and then you make it harder.

So in training, we would be given twelve beds that we were responsible for. So that's twelve patients. And then that soon became doubled up for each bed when I was there. And so 24 patients, I would just start picking up even more patients after that. I'd pick up the patients that my attending would be responsible for. So I got used to this feeling of drowning in impatience and still trying to keep everything straight. And I kept that. I sort of, I kept that level of or that drive continuing on as it was intending. So.

Jon Becker: So you intentionally seek discomfort?

Dr. Kevin Menes: Yes. I think, you know, we talk about it, but, you know, I can tell you that when I'd come back from vacation, I hadn't worked for a couple, like a week. If I took a week off with the family, I could feel when I wasn't at that level again, and then I would strive to get back up there. And it was this level of discomfort that, you know, you're not always the nicest guy on the back end of it. And your customer service sure isn't four stars or five stars, but, you know, can you save one, you know, one really sick victim and then maybe two at the same time? Maybe even three? How about four? And while you're carrying all these other patients.

So this level of discomfort was something that I constantly strive to achieve because, number one, it fed my add. Number two, it was fun to keep myself going at that level. In that fun as in it fed my add meaning. I was constantly thinking and moving. Then number three on the back end, you're able to do something that is, even when you first started, you knew you couldn't do. So I think those are sort of the personal things separate from the team that everybody that I tried to touch.

Jon Becker: Kevin, I think that's a great place for us to stop. I so appreciate you doing this with me and, you know, amazing performance. There's a lot of people that are live because of what you guys did, and I should be very proud of that.

Dr. Kevin Menes: Thank you for having me! Thank you for giving us a chance to share our story!

Jon Becker: My pleasure, brother! Thank you!

Episode 26 – Hostage Rescue In A Trailer Home – Hastings, MN – South Metro SWAT

Jon Becker: On July 2nd, 2020, patrol officers attempted to contact a suspect about moving an illegally parked automobile at the Three Rivers Mobile home park in Hastings, Minnesota. As officers spoke to the suspect's wife and two of his four children, the suspect locked and barricaded the door to his trailer with his other two children inside.

Over the course of the next 15 hours in sweltering Heat, the South Metro SWAT team, in conjunction with Washington County SWAT and Ramsey County SWAT, attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the crisis as the suspect's mental state deteriorated.

Although they were able to obtain one of the two children, it started to become clear that a tactical intervention would be necessary. My guests today are Adam Tschida, Daniel Salmey, and Jeff Hanson from South Metro SWAT to discuss the case, their successful HRT intervention, and the lessons learned from a very challenging rescue.

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!

Guys, thanks for being here with me today!

Adam Tschida: Well, thanks for having us!

Jon Becker: So, Adam, why don't we start with you? Give me the context. Talk to me about the team first.

Adam Tschida: Sure. Okay. The three of us are part of the south metro SWAT team in Minnesota, and that is a multi jurisdictional team, kind of in the southern part of the twin Cities metro area. Our team provides tactical services for eleven different municipalities across two counties. There's roughly 1000 sq. miles in about 350,000 population in that area. The team has at any given time, around 50 tactical members. 15 of those are on the C and T side of the house, and then 35 of those team members are on the tactical side of the equation.

Jon Becker: For this operation what were each of the roles for the three guys here?

Adam Tschida: Sure. Yeah, I was the team commander for this operation and a pretty new team commander. I was promoted to that role, I think, like February or March of 2020, and this took place in July of 2020. And there was all kinds of stuff happening in February, March, April, May of 2020. I mean, it was a very busy time with COVID and civil unrest and that sort of stuff. So that was kind of my welcome to being a commander.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's baptism by fire, I think is the technical term.

Adam Tschida: Yeah, I think that's what it was. Yep. Exactly.

Jon Becker: Daniel, your role?

Daniel Salmey: So, during this operation, I was the one of the team leaders, the senior team leader on our team, and I was also the first team leader on scene.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Jeff Hanson: And I was an assistant commander overseeing the crisis negotiation team.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so why don't we start with, like, how the day sets up?Give me the background on the event.

Adam Tschida: Sure. The event that we're going to talk about, took place on July 2nd. The. It actually kind of got its start the day before on July 1st. And what ended up happening was park staff in a mobile home park in Hastings, Minnesota, located an abandoned vehicle that they wanted to address. And Hastings. Hastings is one of the cities that South Metro SWAT provides tactical service for. It's a small river town about 30 miles south and east of St. Paul. Population of maybe 20,000 people. Roughly 30 sworn officers work there.

And so on July 1st, the mobile home park staff went out to an abandoned lot and found kind of this junk vehicle and made contact with the owner. The owner of that vehicle would ultimately end up being our suspect on July 2nd. The next day, they told him, remove the vehicle. Get it out of here. If you don't move it, we'll move it for you. And then they left.

On the morning of July 2nd, the park staff again went out to that lot. The vehicle was still there, and they made contact with the suspect once again, and then informed him, you didn't move the vehicle. So we have a tow truck on the way. That made him very upset. He made a number of threats to park staff, including, like, hopping in that piece of junk vehicle, driving it off the cement blocks it was on, and then running them over. So park staff left the area.

Jon Becker: Ran the park staff over.

Adam Tschida: He threatened to run them over.

Jon Becker: Okay. Like, got it.

Adam Tschida: Get out of here. Don't take my vehicle. I'm gonna run you over with it if you try to do that sort of thing. And so they left. The park staff left the area, called 911, and ultimately, two Hastings police officers, a patrol sergeant, and a patrol officer responded out to deal with that.

Jon Becker: Got it. So what happens when patrol gets there?

Adam Tschida: Sure. Patrol received a little bit of background information from the park staff. Some of the key information was that they believed the suspect had an active court order preventing him from being at that residence and also preventing him from having any contact with his wife, who was a resident of that home. They made quick contact with the park staff.

When they arrived, the patrol officers made brief contact with the park staff when they arrived, and then approached the house and knocked on the door to deal with this disturbance and then also investigate the violation of this order for protection.

Jon Becker: And what was the response when they knocked on the door?

Adam Tschida: So they knocked on the door, and the protected party, the female, the wife of our suspect, came to the door. She answered the door. The first officer, it was a short, kind of maybe a three step up flight of stairs, and then a very small landing on the front door of this trailer house.

So the officer was kind of halfway up those stairs, and the female answered the door. The officer asked the female to come out of the door, and then there was a couple juveniles right by her. So that officer directed them to come out as well, which they all, all did. The female walked out. The two juveniles exited about.

At that time, that officer spotted another juvenile. It turned out to be about a four year old boy. And then he asked if the boy could come out. They talked to them in the front yard, figure out what was going on, that sort of thing. Well, as he was trying to have the boy come out, the suspect came into view and started to grab his son, grabbed a boy, pulled him back and pushed the door shut. The officers tried to force entry into that, into that front door, and the door slammed shut.

One of the officers observed what he thought was like a baseball bat or a pipe or something, also kind of dropped behind that door as they were trying to force it open, leading them to believe that this suspect just barricaded the door.

Jon Becker: Yeah, like literally barricade. I mean, we talk about barricades as a concept. This is like literally barricade, you know, barring the door.

Adam Tschida: Exactly. And immediately, like, shut the door, pipe is down and the door's not opening back up. And so there's a dialogue then kind of shouting back and forth between the officers and our suspect at that time. Very quickly after that door was slammed shut, the suspect started shouting out, you know, I got a gun. I'm gonna shoot you. Get out. You know, get back away from the house, that sort of thing.

And so one officer backed away from the front door and kind of moved to the north and west of the trailer and got behind a couple of cars. And then the sergeant moved kind of to the north and east of the trailer, where there's a garden shed and several trees. While he was doing that, while the sergeant was moving that direction, he instructed the wife, the female, the adult female, and the two children that actually made it out of the house to walk around a little bit further north to get behind.

There's another trailer there. I mean, they're kind of stacked in there, so they moved around to a position behind that trailer. So at that point, we had patrol officer to the north and east and the sergeant kind of, or to the northwest, and then the sergeant kind of to the northeast behind that garden shed.

Jon Becker: Why don't we, like, describe the trailer for me? I mean, it's, I'm picturing kind of as a single wide, double double wide, like, you know, on blocks. Give me a kind of image in my brain.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. So it. Your image in your brain is. Is about what it is. I mean, it is a kind of a normal looking trailer. Single wide trailer. Like I mentioned a minute ago, it's elevated. So about three flight, three stairs in a flight of stairs up to the front door. That would. The door that the officers originally made contact in was the. Considered the front of the trailer, and that would later be the one side of the house for our – For the tactical purposes of, you know, working through this.

The one side of the house faced north. Just off the one side of the house was this garden shed that would also kind of play in to the mission later as a kind of a jump off point and a piece of COVID for a couple of our teams. There were a couple of vehicles, two vehicles, I think, in the small little driveway, you know, normal windows around the trailer, a couple small ones where there's kitchen and bathroom and bedrooms, that sort of thing. Very noteworthy, though, is the master bedroom was to the far back of the house.

So if we were looking at the house at the one side of the bedroom is all the way to the left. So, like, the two side of the house. Is that checking out? Is that making sense in your head?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Adam Tschida: Okay.

Jon Becker: Yeah, just for anybody that uses. I mean, there's. There are other ways to number, but it's. It's going clockwise around the house. One side being the front, two being, you know, if you're picturing a square, the left side, three being the back side, four being the right side.

Adam Tschida: Exactly.

Jon Becker: So he's basically, you know, the front door is roughly in the middle of the one side.

Adam Tschida: Closer. Closer to the – What would be, like the one four corner. So closer to the right side.

Jon Becker: So close to the right side.

Adam Tschida: Yep. And as I mentioned, like, the master bedroom, far back. So two. The two side of the house.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Solid two side.

Adam Tschida: Yep.

Jon Becker: Is it going from the one side to the three side on the two side?

Adam Tschida: The whole thing. So it's the full width yep.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Adam Tschida: On the back side of the house is. Is another entry door, a pull out, more of like a fire escape, sort of unused back door. That door is very close to the two three corner. So close to that bedroom. Immediately inside that door, if you hang a right, you're in the master bedroom.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Adam Tschida: Sort of deal.

Jon Becker: I feel like that might be foreshadowing.

Adam Tschida: That might be. We might be going. Yeah. So that's kind of the layout in kind of the middle of this trailer park. Small, little kind of private streets. We ended up setting up our command post later, just north of the trailer park in this cabinet shop or a woodworking building that had a big parking lot. And then also a little bit of foreshadowing, had a kind of a work area, office area that was air conditioned that we were able to rehab in later. That's kind of the lay of the land out there, so.

Jon Becker: Okay, so suspect bear, kids that are. You've got patrol officers have the wife, two kids. At this point, we know that there is at least a third kid who's, you know, roughly four years old, basically a toddler.

Adam Tschida: Yeah.

Jon Becker: Right. What intel does patrol get from the suspect at this point? You know about the suspect?

Adam Tschida: Yeah. So they very quickly determined that in addition to the four year old boy that's inside, there's a twelve year old girl inside, a daughter and son of this couple. Okay, so two kids out, two kids inside, along with the suspect. They also – While the sergeant was standing near that garden shed and the trees, the suspect was yelling out at them.

At one point, the suspect pulled back some curtains or drapes and pointed a handgun. Or what? The sergeant, it looked like he was pointing a handgun right out at him. The sergeant then moved from where he was back around to that next trailer to the north, where the female and the two other juveniles were. So he backed up a little bit further. When the sergeant walked around and reunited with the wife and the other kids, she had walked out of the home with her phone. She called the suspect and handed the phone to the sergeant.

There was an interaction back and forth between the sergeant and the suspect at that time. The suspect was upset about this court order. He wanted a new court date, and he advised the sergeant that he basically either wanted a new court date or he was going to start killing police officers. It is especially noteworthy during that phone conversation, the sergeant heard in the background what he believed to be the racking of a handgun, like a slide on a handgun after. And the suspect hung up the phone at that point pretty quickly after threatening to kill the police officers. The racking of the handgun sound.

Once the phone was hung up, the sergeant aired that information to the other patrol officers on scene, and the wife said, he doesn't have a gun. We don't have a gun in the house, and that sort of thing. And so that's kind of what we were working with.

Jon Becker: Any firearms registered at the house?

Adam Tschida: No. Nope. So. And that was the information we had. And I, and about at that time, the sergeant made the determination to call SWAT. We were paged out pretty much immediately following that phone conversation. The page went out, and then with that came a request for me to give that sergeant a call, and I was, I received about the same information that I just shared here. I mean, that's kind of what we were walking into.

Jon Becker: Got it. How long does it take you guys to get on scene and get set up?

Adam Tschida: It takes a while. I mean, we're coming from the, you know, four corners of different counties, and the, and the way that works, the way that looks is we check in on the air because we're, we're coming from all sorts of different places. And so we manage our check in procedures and roll call on the air and then also assignments for grabbing vehicles and pieces of equipment. So that's all done over the air.

Jon Becker: The team. Does the team have take home cars or you're in povs?

Adam Tschida: Very few of the team members have take home vehicles, and if they do, it's not because of their assignment on SWAT.

Jon Becker: It's because of some other assignment that.

Adam Tschida: Gets them a take home car investigations or narcs or something like that.

Jon Becker: Got it. So the guys are carrying a limited amount of personal gear in their, in their personal cars to arrive on scene, and that's why somebody needs to go get the team gear and the armor and get it all there.

Adam Tschida: Exactly. Exactly. And we, you know, we, we try to try to make that as efficient as possible, but that, it just takes time. And so typically, it's, at least in the first SWAT personnel on scene are there very quickly because they're working. You know, if they're SWAT folks are of work in patrol, they're, more often than not, they hear the calls, they're monitoring what's going on in neighboring jurisdictions, and they're heading that direction anyways.

But for the folks that are off when they're not working, it takes a while. I mean, it's an hour plus before we're on scene and fully operational in something like this. And in this case, it was absolutely that long before we were there.

Jon Becker: Okay, so as – So first SWAT personnel arrive on scene, I'm assuming start feeding information to the rest of the team or the radio as you guys are coming in. What else do you learn before the team is there and fully assembled?

Adam Tschida: Yeah. And I can kind of turn. Turn it over to Dan here. Dan was. I was a little bit further out than Dan. I lived the opposite direction. And as soon as we got the page of, I called Dan and gave him a heads up, and I knew he would beat me there. And so Dan was first on scene, made contact with patrol, and kind of took the reins until I got there. Dan, if you want to kind of fill in that part of it.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, no problem. So this call comes out. I was at home on my day off, so I threw all my equipment. I actually had it at my house, which is unusual for me. I usually keep my stuff at my police department, which is a five minute drive from my house. So I had all my stuff. I also had part of our armored bearcat that I was working on that threw that all in my truck, started heading down there in my personal vehicle, pulled up, and I arrived at that woodworking place. That's where we were told to go. Stage is at that woodworking place.

So I pulled up there, and I grabbed a hold of. I think at the time, he was a commander. Got a hold of the commander with Hastings, kind of got the rundown, which is the same stuff that Adam just shared with us. Basically. We have a suspect. He's barricaded in a trailer home. There's two kids inside. He's talking like he has a weapon. He's making threats that he's going to start killing cops. So with that information, I started grabbing the first five or six operators that show up and seeing again most of them were people that were already on duty. I grabbed them. I grabbed one of our other team leaders that showed up just shortly after I did.

And I said, hey, take these five SWAT operators, start heading over the house. I need you to set up on the house, and I need you guys to be the crisis entry screen the immediate action team should something go bad here from us setting up and taking over to whatever. So that's what they did. They. They grabbed the gear. They put the gear on. I kind of. I filled them in on exactly what was going on, said, hey, it sounds like this guy has a gun, and he's making threats to kill cops. So find a good spot, get close to that door, be ready to get in there. If we need you to get in.

Jon Becker: There, does parole have a patrol? Obviously has a perimeter at this point. So you're going to move into the patrol's perimeter.

Daniel Salmey: Correct.

Jon Becker: With an immediate action team or a crisis entry team just in case he starts shooting the kids or does something else, correct?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. So that's what they did. They moved up also shortly, early on in this whole response, two of our snipers had also showed up and seen, and they independently deployed, one of them to the northeast and one of them to the northwest, kind of in those patrol positions that were initially set up. They found good positions and got really good eyes on the windows on the one side. The rest of the perimeter was supplemented with patrol at that time just because we were waiting for other operators to get there.

Also, initially, our armored bearcat had arrived, but per command with the Hastings police department, they did not want that bearcat to be driven out to the property yet. So that kind of threw a wrench against what we normally do, how we normally operate. We have found that that armor, that piece of armor is usually a problem solver more than a problem maker.

Normally, our bread and butter is to take that thing and park it in the front lawn of a house and start making some commands. And usually we gain some compliance and things are over well before they start that didn't happen in this call. The. The piece of armor did not go out unseen right away.

Jon Becker: And that was a commander's decision, I'm assuming, like a patrol commander or.

Daniel Salmey: It was an incident commander. So how we operate will, an incident commander is usually somebody high up with the municipality that we're working in, and then someone like Adam, our team commander, he'll become a tactical commander, and he will work ideas off of the incident commander. It's the incident commander that basically makes all the choices about how tactical operations proceed. Given suggestions from our tactical command or from the boots on the ground like me, I'll say something to Adam. Adam will relate to incident command, and then, yes, just go ahead and do that, or, no, don't.

Jon Becker: So you'll come up with a brilliant idea, and Adam's job is to go sell it to somebody who doesn't understand what he's talking about.

Daniel Salmey: Adam is an excellent salesman.

Adam Tschida: Yes, that is. That is exactly how it goes.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I wish I could tell you that. You're in your unique. You're not. Okay. So you. You get there, you get a crisis entry team staged. Has the guy at this point threatened the kids at all?

Adam Tschida: No, no, he's only threatening to kill cops.

Jon Becker: I mean, the kids.

Adam Tschida: Yeah.

Jon Becker: The kids are at this point at best captives and at worst hostages.

Adam Tschida: Yep.

Jon Becker: But he's not yet, you know, made an actual threat against the kid, correct?

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Yeah. And that remains that way for. For some time. I mean, Jeff's negotiators spend a bunch of time, you know, talking back and forth, and it's hours before he actually specifically mentions the kids or harming the kids.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Jeff Hanson: But important to note that he did refuse to let. The requests were made for him to let the kids out and he refused that request.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So the kids are captives at this point. And, I mean, there's always the employee, you know, there's always that line between captive and hostage. And when it's a relative, it's a little harder. Like, if it's a third party, it's pretty easy to, to denote them as a hostage with your own kids. There's always that question of, is he just not letting the kids go or is he actually willing to harm the kids?

And obviously, there's an implicit threat always because the kids are being held, but it's always a line that's, that's good to, to look at. And obviously, in this case, at some point, that's going to shift, so.

Adam Tschida: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, Dan, you're, you're there. You got a crisis entry team stage. What's next?

Daniel Salmey:vSo shortly after they're already deployed out there, they find their spot. They actually set up on that shed on the north, east side of the one side, kind of the trailer home. So they're already out there. Adam gets unseen, takes over command. Tactical command tells me, start, grab, grab the next group of guys that are showing up and start forming a deliberate action entry plan. So that way we can switch you out with that team that's already out there. You guys are already practiced how you're going to get through there, through the door. You've done the footwork, you know what you're doing. So start working on that.

So I grabbed, it just so happened that the people that showed up next were all kind of more senior operators on our team. I grabbed them, kind of drew out a glass house floor plan that we got from the wife through CNT which the timing of that was perfect. We drew a glass house out on the pavement of this business and started working our reps of, you know, entry through the one side, entry through the three side. Barricaded or not barricaded or how we're going to get through the door, known unknown locations. We probably did 50 reps of entry before we actually went out on scene.

Jon Becker: Got it. And at this point, C and T has arrived, and you guys are working intel with the wife, and I'm assuming a complete intel package on everything you can find out on them.

Jeff Hanson: Yeah. And this one was a little bit unique, a given the timeframe. We were July 2nd, Thursday budding up to 4 July. My immediate concern was, we're not going to get enough people there that we need for CNT. Luckily, we got nine, and the call came out. The page came out at 11:41 a.m. and by 01:10, we were interviewing the wife and the daughter. So it really, timing wise, worked out great. And response wise, we lucked out.

Jon Becker: Got it. And just to kind of set context, it's Minnesota, but it's summertime in Minnesota, which I'm assuming is a balmy, ugly, hot and humid day. But what's our weather like?

Daniel Salmey: The heat index is at 96 degrees. It is super humid. Like, ungodly humid for scandinavian folks up north.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I live in California. Anything above 25% is reprehensible. So I can only imagine if you guys consider it humid. It's probably pretty ugly.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. For July 2nd, 2020, the historical is, um. The air temperature is at 89 degrees. It's at 52% humidity, the dew points at 70, and the heat index is 96.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah, that's just super yucky, sticky, sweaty, hot, ugly.

Adam Tschida: And Dan. Dan alluded to it, but he. He said he was working on part of the bearcat, what he was doing for us. Dan is a pretty handy guy, and we have a hydraulic ram on the front of our bearcat. Well, he took that, the ram piece, and he welded small, little triangular teeth on the backside of it so that as we are pulling back out of a door or a window, we can catch the drapes or the door or whatever.

So, in this heat, before Dan received the page and headed to Hastings, he was working with a welder in his shop, kind of setting the tone for how hot and sweaty he's going to be for the rest of the day.

Jon Becker: Yeah, Dan's about to have an ugly day.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Right.

Jon Becker: All right, so you take your. Your deliberate action team, draw glass house on the ground. You rehearse it 50 times. What is the next movement in the case?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. So, once I felt confident that we ran through every possible scenario we could think of for making a deliberate entry, I went and told Adam that, hey, we're good to go. And, you know, he had so, hey, he had those conversations with incident command, but basically, we got green lighted to go out there and switch out with that. That team that was already staged out there almost immediately.

To do that, we initially had jumped into what we have. We call it our jump out van. It's just a white van with some side steps on it, open back area, so you can transport people to and from places pretty quickly. We jumped in that thing. We started heading out there. We arrived to, it would be the west. So off the four side of the trailer.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Daniel Salmey: We arrived on the west side of the trailer. We started walking up, and as I'm approaching this trailer with my team, I'm looking at it as the first time I've seen eyes on this trailer since I've been on scene, or at least in staging. And I'm like, there's just no way that we. That we don't have our armored vehicle up there. We can't get physically close enough where the seconds are going to matter. For me, I can't get close enough to get to the door and stand in a safe spot without wasting time to get to the door to get it open.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And anything in that area that you would normally regard as cover is really just concealment because they're all trailer homes and made of aluminum foil.

Daniel Salmey: Correct. So as I'm walking up with my team and I'm seeing this, I'm like, no, this thing's got to come up. So I tell Adam, I said, hey, I need the bear cat. Go, bear cat.

Jon Becker: Go sell the bearcat, adam.

Daniel Salmey: Go sell that.

Adam Tschida: Yep, exactly.

Daniel Salmey: And that, you know, and that's what Adam does. He goes and sells it. And sure enough, our, our bearcat comes pulling up from the west. We jump into it. And initially I pulled it up right off of the one four corner by where those two cars are parked. There's like, a little parking pad right there. I pulled it up right on the one one four corner. We weren't there for very long before I was like, this is not the right spot.

I told Adam, I said, we're going to have to move this thing. I need to get it right off the door on the one side. We're going to pull it right up to the door. That those couple stairs leading up into the house. On the one side, there was a railing that went towards the foreside of those stairs. We would had to have gone around the railing. It would have taken more time again, I'm trying to get closer, not farther away. I'm trying to eliminate those seconds. I need to get into that house if I have to.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Daniel Salmey: So I tell Adam, hey, we're moving, we're going to move it. We're going to nose it up perpendicular on the one side. We're going to put the ram 3ft from the door. Okay. As we're doing that maneuver, thankfully, we have an explosive breaching capability in our team. But at the time of this call, we only had one certified breacher left on our team just through attrition, through people leaving and stuff.

So thankfully, we had. Adam had made some phone calls initially and asked for one of our partner or assistance agencies, Washington County SWAT. We asked for a couple of their explosive breachers to come to scene so that we had people for placing and firing the in explosive breach.

So as we're moving the Bearcat to the one side, we take two of their explosive breachers and we add them to our team. We end up getting the Bearcat on the one side again, like 3ft, the Rams, like 3ft off the door. And that's basically where that piece of armor sat through the duration of this entire call with my team while we were out there.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. So is the guy talking to C and T at this point?

Jeff Hanson: He is, yep. Interestingly, this guy wanted to talk to us often and for a long time. And on top of that, we had his wife and daughter, as I said, before being debriefed. So we had a ton of really good information and we had direct contact with him.

Jon Becker: What's he saying?

Jeff Hanson: You know, he's making demands for that court date in which we tried to reach out and get. Get him one. And then it was, you know, just pleading his case with us, telling us he did nothing wrong, that we were there harassing him. He wanted us to go away, so on and so forth, and then started making some demands that, well, backing up. The weather is so hot, the tactical side cut power right away, which he didn't have air conditioner, and he's now in a tin trailer at 96 degrees.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think when we were kids, we called that an easy bake oven.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jeff Hanson: So it started to heat up quickly and motivated him to make some demands for us to turn it back on. He used the fact that his cell phone was dying to turn it back on, turn the power back on, and tactical side ended up delivering a cell phone to him instead of turning the power on, which he didn't. Take kindly and threw that out the window.

Jon Becker: I mean, to be fair, he had a pretty good negotiation tactic, and you guys really didn't play along very nice by trying to deliver a cellphone.

Jeff Hanson: Right, right.

Jon Becker: That was a creative argument, at least.

Jeff Hanson: Yes. But, yeah, he was talking to us, and he talked to us consistently for almost 13 hours.

Jon Becker: Is he lucid? Like, I mean, does he sound crazy? Is he, you know?

Jeff Hanson: Yeah, I would say at that time he was, but extremely upset. So not rational. But.

Jon Becker: But he doesn't think he's Jesus or Adolf Hitler.

Jeff Hanson: No. Nope.

Jon Becker: Yep. Got it.

Daniel Salmey: And while he's talking to CNT on the phone, he's also coming to the windows on the one side, screaming at us out on the front lawn to multiple times. And, you know, I'm airing information that he's yelling at us. And, you know, Adam's getting this intel from both me on the radio, hey. Saying this and this and this. And then he's also getting it from CNT at the same time. So, like, the communications kind of bouncing back and forth to Adam, who's relaying it up to instant command.

Jon Becker: But you can't see him when he's screaming at you.

Daniel Salmey: Oh, no. He comes to the window. We can see him several times.

Jon Becker: Oh, okay. That's convenient. All right, so then we're baking away in the easy bake oven. You guys are standing outside in terrible weather, and guys, I'm assuming, are starting to get a little hot and sticky and uncomfy.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. To make matters worse, our piece of armor, the air conditioner, decided to not work anymore on top of everything else.

Jon Becker: So we're having competitive easy bake ovens. Yeah. And yours is painted black.

Daniel Salmey: Yes.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, great.

Daniel Salmey: Painted black and roasting. So it isn't too long before concerns are. Are being raised. At my level, at the team leader level with my team watching these guys just stop sweating.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Daniel Salmey: Starting to cramp. I mean, we're drinking so much water. There's a mountain of water bottles piling up next to the bearcat. But nobody's sweating anymore. People are starting to get headaches.

Jon Becker: Yeah, we're working our way towards dehydration rapidly or heat stroke.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, it's. It's getting. It's getting bad. It's getting so bad. To the point that I had taken one of our most senior, our team leader medic. We have four medics that are attached to our team from our area ambulance service. Full time with our team or not. Our team's not full time, but full time. Attached to our team. And the most senior guy, the team leader at the time, was with me. And I remember distinctly looking at him and telling him like, this is, this is a problem. Right?

As I'm looking at these guys, specifically looking at one of our operators who's probably the largest, most muscular guy in our team, just completely just, he's going down fast. Like, you can just see it happening in his eyes and his body and his mannerisms. He's not sweating, he has a headache, he's slumping over. You know, it's, it's a problem. I remember looking at him saying, this is a problem. Right. Just confirming in my head because I'm thinking it and he's like, this is going to be a bad problem.

Jon Becker: So what time of day is that?

Daniel Salmey: This is probably. I think I start talking to Adam about this probably 02:33 o'clock. I mean, this is.

Jon Becker: Yeah, we're not, we're getting to peak heat.

Daniel Salmey: Yes. And we're not. We weren't out there very long, but it did not, it did not take very long. You know, for these, this heat to set in. It didn't take long at all. So I'm telling him, hey, we need to get switched out. I'm thinking in my head that this needs to happen sooner.

There's, you know, not to foresight on some lessons learned, but, you know, this is something that we probably didn't do the greatest job on. I know I didn't do the greatest job on kind of managing this heat with my team. I walked away with this. Very lucky that I didn't lose somebody.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. And Dan is, I mean, he's hard on himself. We're all hard on ourselves. Looking back at it, you know, he said he didn't do a good job, didn't relay the information. The information was getting to me. I just was too much stuff going on. I needed more help in the command post and wasn't smart enough to ask for it.

And so the request for another team was delayed longer than it should have been. And he's right. I was just looking at some notes here. It was getting into mid afternoon and finally I made that call for a second team, our Washington County SWAT team, which neighbors us to the east. But the point is, it was, we were behind. We were behind on the heat. And once you're behind, we just never got back. You can't. Even if you rehab the guys that have been out there, you don't bounce fully back to. I mean, it takes a day or two to bounce back from that kind of heat exposure.

And so, finally, I think the phone call for that mutual aid request was right around 04:00 in the afternoon. And that also, I mean, everybody listening to this knows you don't just make that call and poof, you have a team. It takes them a while.

Jon Becker: You start to clock on their 1 hour response.

Adam Tschida: Exactly. And that's what it was. And so that was, it was kind of status quo for that portion of this operation. The south metro SWAT folks were out there suffering in the heat, pretty consistently engaging back and forth, talking with the suspect, CNT ongoing, but really kind of on a merry go round. Like, we're not making progress. We're nothing getting anywhere. And we kind of held that position until.

And you mentioned it before, until something did change where the suspect finally mentioned the kids in a way that caught our attention. And Jeff was the one fielding this information and heard that come in, so I can let him kind of allude to that. We held kind of this position until that happened, and then we had to have some tough conversations on what we wanted to do.

Jon Becker: Jeff, what. At what point, you know, Adam referenced this, but what did the suspect say that that moved his status, in your mind, to more dangerous to his kids?

Jeff Hanson: Well, he actually stopped talking to us on the phone for a little bit, at which point we sent a negotiator up in the bearcat and tried to do some verbal communication with him over the loudspeaker, which enticed him to reestablish phone contact with us. But what really turned, what caught our attention is he had threatened to shoot the gas meter and blow up the trailer house if we wouldn't leave. And then he was making mention, or this is the first time he mentioned his kids as being hostages.

Jon Becker: Okay, so he's threatened to kill everybody, and he's now mentioning the kids as hostages. And he's now positioned himself as a hostage to, like, squarely moved into the hostage taker willing to kill the kid's box.

Jeff Hanson: Correct. And what amped it up even more is that he then put us on a five minute timer.

Jon Becker: Oh, boy! So he basically says, you have five minutes to what? Leave. Release everybody that's in prison in Pakistan. What does he want you to do? Cause they all have, you know.

Jeff Hanson: We had five minutes to leave, or I believe it was turn the power on.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Adam Tschida: So that did change things. And I don't remember if we turned the power back on at that time. Or not. We turned it back on and off throughout the afternoon. Each time we cnT would work out a deal for something in return, we turn the power back on. And he did not follow through with whatever his end of the demand was.

But when Jeff came to me with this information, this shift where, and you phrased it perfectly, Jon, we very squarely moved from barricade, maybe just keeping the kids in there into hostage land. Right? We stepped across that line with these comments clearly. And that was a very significant shift in our thinking. And we immediately relayed that to incident command.

And I clearly remember Jeff and I talking with the Hastings police chief saying just that we are now this has changed and we have a decision to make. And the decision was whether or not to command initiate a rescue or not. Basically, yeah.

Jon Becker: Do you go deliberate action or do you continue to stand by with an immediate action team stage? How many operators do you have at this point that are there?

Adam Tschida: Low twenties, probably.

Jon Becker: So we got a five man, four or five man. Immediate response or immediate action team?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. So my team I had, it was myself and six operators, but one was a driver of the Bearcat and then a medic. So seven. Seven operators and medic. And then that immediate action team that had been on the shed that I deployed out when I got on scene, they had gone around the house, around the trailers. And they're set up on that three side door now on the backside. So they never left off scene. They just move their position. So they are also baking in the heat in the back.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. They're. You're in the bearcat convection oven and they're in the outdoor oven.

Daniel Salmey: Correct.

Jon Becker: Got it. So you have two, basically have two five or six man elements now that are staged on the one side and three side. So if you want to go deliberate action, you have the ability to do that. If you need to go immediate action, you have the ability to do that, correct?

Adam Tschida: Yeah, yeah. And so, so we have that conversation with incident command. And the result, the feeling at that time was that we were still our best chance of getting the kids out safely, we still believed was through negotiation we had. And hearing this, you know, he put us on a timer. He put us, he said he's going to blow up the gas line outside the house. That seems like those facts make this a pretty black and white decision.

And the thing is, we are in a big fat bucket of gray. I mean, these aren't black and white decisions. And so we went back and forth and trusted people, trusted advisors, kind of issuing or giving their opinions. That's the decision we ended up at. So we did not initiate a deliberate rescue and continued working through negotiations.

Jon Becker: I think it's easy, like in these situations, retrospectively, you can go, oh, well, you have that information. Why do you take deliberate action? And I think that anybody that's been involved in these situations understands there's so much nuance in communication in physical circumstance that is conveying and CNT and all the operators. And just like it is that totality of the circumstances that goes, no, it's 49% gray, not 51% gray.

Adam Tschida: Yeah.

Jeff Hanson: I vividly remember thinking as we're working through this with the Hastings police chief, that, no, this guy's gonna keep talking just based on his demeanor, how he was responding to our negotiators and things.

Jon Becker: Like that, and what happens next.

Adam Tschida: Sure. So the five minute. That five minute time limit comes and goes. That time elapses, and it. We continue on. We continue on with kind of what we had been doing for the afternoon. But about at that time, Washington county is starting to finally get on scene. And so we are briefing them. They are running through deliberate action reps.

By that time, one of the Washington county assistant commanders, we had. We had taken over part of that cabinet shop, part of the air conditioned area. And rather than working out in the hot parking lot, one of the assistant commanders with Washington county had actually taped out a floor plan in there. So they were working up there.

And then we started kind of that wholesale line change where we were going to pull south Metro SWAT off the line, rehab them, and Washington county would take over. And that happened. I mean, that went smoothly. But Dan can speak to a little bit of what that looked like back at the command post, because I say it went smoothly.

It went as smoothly as this big crap sandwich of a bunch of super hot heat, heat, illness, suffering, SWAT team members peeling gear off and trying to hydrate and rehab can go. And Dan does a great job explaining kind of what that looked like. I was in the command post for a lot of it, but he was front and center for kind of what that switch out looked like.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. So Washington county was all ready to go. They showed up out there to relieve us. You know, one of the first positions that we wanted to switch out was the driver, the bearcat. Now, I talked about my team members, you know, complaining about not sweating. And when I say complaining, they're just informing. Informing me that they're not sweating anymore. They're informing me that they're having headaches. And they're cramped up. They're not complaining to me, Evan.

Jon Becker: Yeah, they're just. They're just making you aware of their readiness and how it's beginning to decline.

Daniel Salmey: So they're telling me all this. My driver that I had up there had told me, you know, I'm. I have a headache, and I can't feel my legs. He had told me that probably a half an hour prior to this whole changeover happened. And I told him, I said, hey, I just need you to hang in for 30 more minutes. We'll get you out of there. 30 minutes, man. That's all I need.

But when it came time to pull him out of that driver's seat, we had to go in the Bearcat and physically pull him out of the driver's seat. He could not feel his legs anymore. He could not move his legs anymore. It took us, you know, three operators to get him out of the seat. Two of the Washington county fresh guys went in there to help do this, thankfully, partly because one of them was going to jump in the seat.

So that way, we weren't without an ability to break in that front door if we needed to. And then our medic was right there, the one I referenced earlier. But that that situation was bad. We had to carry him into the vehicle to get him back to staging. He could not walk. I got the rest of my guys switched out, put him in the car. We got back to staging, and thankfully, and I got a credit Hastings fire for probably taking most of the lead on this, they had gone through some pretty significant. I mean, I wasn't expecting to have so much support when I got back, because this not usually what happens in these things.

You know, we're not usually to this bad of a degree, but somebody somewhere, thank God, recognized it and set up a pretty decent rehab center with, you know, we had a bunch of medic rigs there. There was a greyhound bus with air conditioning running there. There was food, there was water, there was Gatorade. There was all this stuff there waiting for us. We just needed to get there.

So we got back to the staging area. We walked into this main kind of office, air conditioned area, this woodworking business. And the thing that stands out most to me is how significant it was that I'm watching my guys go in, I'm following them in. I'm the last one in, last one in the vehicle, first one out, last one in the. In the office to make sure everyone's getting in there and getting checked out.

But I remember there being a bunch of firefighters there and they were helping my operators pull their gear off because they couldn't physically lift their arms above their head anymore. And then they were shuffling him into this room and there was a medic there, like a. A medic that was just kind of doing an assessment, a quick assessment, and it was like, you need to go here or you need to go there. Here was you're getting an IV and you're going to sit here and we're going to push some fluids into you. We're going to give you some water. In the second year, you're going to start eating the other ones. You're going to go here and I'm going to monitor your heart rate and stuff for a little bit. And then you're going to go in the greyhound bus. And, you know, I'm just looking back on my notes here, but I think we had a whole box of IVs, which is about twelve operators got a full IV. Like a big iv.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Daniel Salmey: Three were transported to the hospital because of heat exhaustion. And then the rest of us that didn't get an iv ended up just getting monitored for a while. And then we got put into that greyhound bus where we got some food and stuff. So not the most pleasant scene to see, for sure, but super thankful that, you know, whoever set that up, that means that, hands down, I think, mitigated some severe risk to the team.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Which, I mean, that very easily could have been one of your guys dying from heat exhaustion or heat stroke. So. Okay, so you guys are sitting in the wood shop, sitting in the greyhound bus, sitting in the hospital, rehabbing, drinking Gatorade, getting iv's. And the sheriff's department.

Adam Tschida: Washington County SWAT, arrived on scene and conducted that switch out. And their team is very similar to our team. It's a countywide team, multi jurisdictional. The team members are made up of city police officers and then also sheriff's deputies from that neighboring jurisdiction. So that switch has happened. Dan's group is rehabbing and this is where we CNT has been, as Jeff has explained, kind of throughout this has been on the phone, text messaging, even up at the Bearcat, face to face with the suspect throughout the afternoon. He now starts making, he's made all kinds of demands. Right?

Jon Becker: They always do. One of my favorite SWAT commanders, Kevin Cyr from RCMP, when I interviewed him, said, we get on scene and they always want us to release prisoners in Russia and do these things. I, you know, his, my response is always like, I can get pizza.

Adam Tschida: Right. Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: So Jeff is trying to negotiate a pizza, probably, right?

Adam Tschida: Yeah.

Jeff Hanson: Well, this turns out to be a cat.

Adam Tschida: Yeah, this is, yeah, this is. Speaking of just crazy demands, this was a good one. So, so the suspect is he kind of as, as this thing shakes out, he is. Becomes very, very concerned for the welfare of this cat in the trailer. Far more concerned about this cat than his two children. And so he works out a deal to lower his daughter, the twelve year old girl, out of one of the windows of the trailer where she'd be holding this cat. His daughter would then walk over to the garden shed and secure the cat in the garden shed.

And then I be allowed to return to the trailer. He would raise her back up, bring her back into the trailer and then we would move on, move on with our lives here. We would continue what we were doing because he was worried when officers came into the trailer that we would somehow hurt or kill his cat. And so that arrangement was made. Jeff's negotiator said, yep, that sounds good. Let's do that.

Well, in the meantime, we're relaying that information to Washington County SWAT that's up in position to see this whole thing shake out. And that's what happens. So he opens up the, the window, he lowers this girl down, she's holding the cat. And two Washington county operators were in position by that garden shed, kind of by those trees, and they see her start moving that direction. Those two operators broke from cover ran right between the garden shed and the trailer house and scooped her up and get her out of there.

And when we talk about this and we presented this different times, I call special attention to those two guys. And this is kind of the way I explain it. You know, we, in our world, in our society, we throw around the word hero, like all the time. You just see in the example I use, you know, you have some, some lady pull over the side of the road and like move the turtle, a snapping turtle from the middle of the road to the ditch. And the local newspaper does a write up on this hero.

Jon Becker: That hero.

Adam Tschida: Yeah, right. Never mind that she, you know, almost caused a 15 car pile up because she pulled over in a dumb spot or something like that. But that, but she's called a hero. These two guys, the two, the two gentlemen from Washington county, like they did some hero stuff there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure.

Adam Tschida: This guy threatened to kill police officers. He pointed out, you know, handgun. They heard a racking of a slide on the phone and they ran right past him. They broke cover from where they were scooped up this little girl and ran right past the suspect and got her out of there to safety.

Jon Becker: How did he lower her down? Does he have her on a rope or how does he physically do it?

Adam Tschida: That is a good question, to be honest with you. I don't know. And in the videos that I've seen, I don't know that that was captured.

Jon Becker: So they don't have to cut her off of something or they just s***** her up and run.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. She was kind of in, out in space. So in no man's land between the trailer and where that shed was, I'm thinking he just kind of with his arms, lowered her out of that window.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Adam Tschida: But to be honest, I'm not exactly sure.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And was dumb enough to think that you guys were going to give her back, which is awesome. And Jeff, that was a great job, lying to him like that and saying, sure, we'll send her back.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Well, that. That created a pretty unique opportunity. So he was under the impression she was coming back and then she didn't, and so he lost his mind. The suspect, he was pretty mad at us for not keeping up our end of the bargain. And like I just said, that created a unique opportunity for Jeff, and I'll turn it over to him because he can kind of explain the tap dance in ballet.

Jeff Hanson: Yeah. And maybe it's important to add just a little bit of context on how we got to a cat. What would generally happen is he would, the suspect would dip down and say, okay, you guys are going to kill me today. You are going to come in here and kill me today. I'm going to kill as many as you. And that would be, you know, a low point in our negotiations. That's what caused him concern about the cat, that when we come in, that we're going to hurt the cat.

So just to add some context on how we got to this cat negotiation that took an awful long time to make it happen. Once we did, the negotiator on the phone that did all the work did not know that tactical was going to snap, s***** up the girl, and shame on me for not telling him that. But it created a really good, I guess, for lack of a better term, a time to transition out teams. We generally, in the negotiation world, don't ever transfer, switch out a negotiator.

Once you get a negotiator, you're stuck with them. And that's just the way it is. This had gone on for so long, and I was just getting the feeling that the negotiator was getting sick of dealing with this guy's ups and downs.

Jon Becker: Yeah, he's getting frustrated himself, right?

Jeff Hanson: Yeah. And so now the suspect is just raging, at which point, I thought it would be a really good idea to switch out negotiators. Cause he didn't care who he was talking to. He just wanted to yell at somebody.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jeff Hanson: Thankfully, Washington county negotiators were there, and that was their introduction to this suspect. Him screaming at them on the phone.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Adam Tschida: And so this is about just to kind of reset our timeline here. This rescue where we grabbed the girl was about. At 10:00 p.m. so about 2200 hours, she's out of the equation. So now we have the suspect and the four year old boy, Jeff, has conducted that swap between Washington county and South metro.

So Washington county is now primary in negotiations. And I'm also starting to make arrangements for a third team to come. South Metro SWAT, the folks that were rehabbed and ready to deploy back out. We're starting to work some of that to give the Washington county operators a chance to come back, get their gear off, get into some air conditioning, and that sort of thing. But we also, like, there wasn't necessarily an end in sight on this thing yet.

And so I made a request for a third team to head our direction, and that was the. The Ramsey County SWAT team. And so they border our service area to the north. Again, very similar makeup, multi jurisdictional team. Ramsey county is the county that the St. Paul police Department or the city of St. Paul is in, and then the kind of first ring suburbs around St. Paul.

So they're en route, and it is around, I don't know, 1130 ish, maybe around midnight. By the time they get on scene, I brief them up, and they start working a deliberate rescue plan, and then we. And then we start really talking about conducting a deliberate rescue on this matter.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Because how long have we been going now?

Jeff Hanson: At that time, I would say nine or 10 hours, 9 hours. Active, ongoing negotiations for over 9 hours.

Jon Becker: Okay. And then is his mental state beginning to deteriorate, or is it staying pretty.

Jeff Hanson: Consistent when tactical snatched up his daughter? I don't feel like we ever got him back to a baseline.

Jon Becker: Got it. Yeah. Still absolutely the right decision, because you just reduced your problem by. I mean, if you count the cat, you've reduced your problems by two thirds. If you don't count the cat, then you've reduced your problem by half.

Jeff Hanson: I don't think we counted the cat.

Adam Tschida: But maybe we should have.

Jon Becker: I wouldn't have. Yeah. I personally would have threatened the cat, offered to trade the cat for the kid, you know?

Adam Tschida: So that's where we are. Washington. A mix and match of Washington county and south metro are downrange on the trailer. Ramsey county has arrived on scene, and Jeff and I and the Washington county commander, along with the Ramsey county commander, sit down with incident command.

And this is what we go through. We've been out here. We just alluded to it hours and hours and hours, and kind of lay out the points for making the decision to conduct a deliberate rescue. And these were those points initially when he first referred to the. The kids as hostages and put us on that timeline we talked about. And we felt that our biggest chance for success was still through negotiation.

Well, we have been through countless more hours, countless more negotiations, more deals, more working with this man, and he has not followed through with anything. That opinion had shifted from believing that we could still negotiate. That boy out to feeling like we are just not going to get there through negotiations. So that was one factor.

The second factor that played into this decision was that shortly after he lost his mind and became very upset with us for scooping up that girl, he kind of disappeared. And so we had had very consistent contact with the suspect over the phone, at the window and that sort of thing throughout the whole duration of this event.

In addition, we would, on a pretty regular basis, see the hostages. We'd see the girl in the window, or Jeff's negotiators would hear them in the background on the phone. And so shortly after the girl was rescued, we no longer saw the boy.

Jon Becker: Oh, boy!

Adam Tschida: So it was. And that time was growing to, like a couple hours since we had last been able to verify the welfare of the boy. So he's not talking. We haven't. We don't know his status. We know the suspect was very mad, and we haven't seen the boy, really since. And then the third factor and the final factor that that played into this was that we were ready. We were ready to conduct a deliberate rescue. Ramsey county was briefed up. They repped out the deliberate rescue plan. South metro SWAT, their component of the rescue, they were good to go.

And then Washington County's parts and pieces of it were also ready, but we were not going to stay ready for long. South Metro SWAT was getting to the end of their operational period. We were going to have to stand down and just be done. We were taxed. Washington county got there a couple hours after us, but they were out online through some of the hottest hours of the day, and they weren't far behind us.

And so we were ready to go then, but we weren't going to maintain that status for real long, and we were going to need to call in more resources, which, like I mentioned before, it's not as simple as hitting the button and having them stand in front of you.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure.

Adam Tschida: It's ours.

Jon Becker: Well, and there's, and there's a brief up curve where everybody's got to figure out what's going on and, you know, and then you got to swap people out. So, Dan, at this point, like, in your brain, you got three teams involved now, right. You know, and yours is a multi jurisdictional team. So, I mean, you know, we're talking five, six agencies. How do you see the actual tactical execution of a deliberate plan going with, like, like, who is doing what?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, so I had talked to Adam when this came to fruition where we were, where we are talking about actually hitting the button and doing this. So it was, it was, this was the plan. The plan was, I was back in the Bearcat with my team on the one side. Ramsey county was their part of the deliberate action that they were working on was getting into that three side door. That was their portion of the deliberate action.

So they were ready to do that. So they were going to go on the three side. We were going to go on the one side, and then they were going to take the bedroom in the back, and we were going to take everything up front.

Jon Becker: Now, when you say front and back, by do you mean that you're taking the master bedroom or they're taking the master bedroom? You're taking the rest of the trailer?

Daniel Salmey: So they were going to take the master bedroom, that one that's on the two side that goes from the one side to the three side.

Jon Becker: Yep.

Daniel Salmey: As far away from the one side door as possible. They were going to eat up that whole thing because that was a very likely place that our hostage would be.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Daniel Salmey: We were going to take basically everything else in the trailer.

Jon Becker: Yep.

Daniel Salmey: The front of the trailer, towards the foreside, the middle of the trailer, which was a living area and a kitchen. That was going to be our space to own when this went down. On top of all those things, we had a couple other things built in with this deliberate action plan. We had two brake and rake teams on two different windows.

One of them was on the window on the two side going into the bedroom. One of them was on a window, another window, but on the one side into the bedroom. So you get two different looks at that bedroom.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So you're basically, you know, if you think of it as it's the bedroom is affected. You know, it's like the end of the. It's the one two corner and the two three corner. You're breaking windows on the one side and the two side, which is basically two thirds of the exposures.

Daniel Salmey: Correct.

Jon Becker: And entering from the three side.

Daniel Salmey: Yes.

Jon Becker: And making entry.

Daniel Salmey: Correct.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Daniel Salmey: On top of all that, we had planned to deploy a couple of flash springs on the outside of the residence, one on the one side by my team, another one on the four side by another team, and another bearcat that arrived on scene from another agency.

And then the final piece of this whole thing was through CNT, through their work. And I'll let Jeff kind of speak to this once I mention it, but we were going to try to ruse him to the foreside of the trailer to try and separate him from the kidney.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Daniel Salmey: Jeff, if you want to fill in. Kind of what that looked like.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jeff Hanson: We had. Throughout the day, he had made requests to speak to a particular female. I can't remember the exact relationship. I think it was a friend of his. Obviously, we weren't going to bring her on site, so we put a female negotiator in the bearcat on the loudspeaker, because we couldn't reestablish phone contact with him, and we believed he was in the back of the trailer.

So prior to them making entry, the bearcat pulled up and this female pretended to be that person he was requesting to talk to, trying to draw him to the. The front of the trailer, though the. Would it be a foresight?

Daniel Salmey: Yep.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: Got it. All right, so. And what's the. What's the team on the four side? What?

Daniel Salmey: So that team is – It's – They're in a bearcat.

Jon Becker: What agency is it? Sorry.

Daniel Salmey: That was South Metro.

Jon Becker: Oh, because that was also. So that's. That's you guys and then one side. You guys.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, correct.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay.

Daniel Salmey: The two ladder teams were mostly Washington County SWAT operators. And then the Ramsey county team that had just shown up was the three side entry. Deliberate entry.

Jon Becker: At these three, I mean, do you guys train together pretty regularly?

Adam Tschida: Not regularly, but we have. And our relationship with Washington county is. That's a closer relationship than us and Ramsey periodically, yes. We train together. Our team in Washington county have run a joint basic SWAT together for many years. And they are our closest team. It's not a monthly training that we're working together, but it's a time or two a year where we're at least seeing faces, shaking hands, doing some reps and stuff.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But when they show up, you're not walking up and saying, hi, my name's Adam.

Adam Tschida: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Just that the huge importance of those, you know, those relationships. Right? But even with us training together, this is still, you have parts and pieces of three different teams coming at this thing.

And I think, and one of the things worth noting here, too, is that, you know, on a hostage rescue, in a perfect hostage rescue, which sounds just silly to say because there's nothing perfect about them, you have your immediate action team, your crisis entry team on site ready to go, and then you have all your elements of the deliberate rescue plan, those operators repping that out together, and then they switch.

And so everybody that is ready to conduct that deliberate rescue has just done it. They communicated it. They briefed it. They kind of hashed out the little nuances of it, and then they move into position and then they're ready to conduct that rescue.

Jon Becker: And did you guys run reps with these teams? Did you have a chance to do that?

Adam Tschida: That was never going to happen here. I mean, that just the way the number of personnel we had on scene and just the breakdown of this, this situation, there was not going to be that wholesale change out. And so to get everybody to conduct this deliberate rescue on the same sheet of music was. It was no small task.

Jon Becker: No. That's crazy when you basically, I mean, I think that the best thing you could do at that point is to bifurcate the problem. Right? We're going in here in this direction. You're going here in that direction and try to deconflict fields of fire as much as you possibly can. But, yeah, this is ambitious.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. And I think we. It went, the entry went well, and I think a big part of that was just a testament to the professionalism and the ability of the guys and gals out there doing it. But I think on the front end, what we ended up doing was when the plan was in place, I ended up calling each, each leader of each component of this that was out at the trailer and going through the whole plan with them and then their specific piece.

Once those phone calls were done, I got on the air and briefed it through the whole thing again, rehashing the plan in its entirety, the overview and then each component, what their assignment was going to do, what their assignment was going to be. And then finally I did a roll call for each leader of each component and had them brief it back on the air.

Jon Becker: Oh, that's fantastic!

Adam Tschida: So, so what that did and that. I think that's why it worked.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Common operating picture for everybody.

Adam Tschida: Exactly. Because they heard it once from me on the phone, they heard it once on the air, and then everybody heard it again when the. The Tl's or the – Those leaders of those respective groups briefed it back.

Jon Becker: Out of curiosity, in the brief back, was there any point that somebody said something that was not correct?

Adam Tschida: I don't think so.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, I don't. I don't think there was. There was, I think, one time where one very small correction was made, but it was. It was so minute that I just recall you correcting one person and It wasn't something that, even if it wasn't caught, it wouldn't have wrecked.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I'm going to the one corner. No, you're going. I'm going to the one side. No, you're going to the four side. It was like, you know, small dog puppy.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Adam Tschida: So once that was done, it was. The directive was, like Jeff just said, to initiate this. We were hoping to draw the suspect to that. To the four side window furthest away from where we believe that young boy was probably in. In the back bedroom, the two side bedroom. We wanted that separation. Well, he never came.

And so I, we realized, well, that this just doesn't seem like this is going to happen. He's just not going to come to that window. And so I turned command and control over to the team leader for the Ramsey county team. They were our primary entry team. They were going into that three side door immediately hooking a right and getting into that bedroom.

And so that team leader took over command and control and ultimately initiated that rescue. Ramsey county came in the three side door simultaneous to Dan's team coming into the one side, and then those port teams in through the windows.

Jon Becker: Mechanical breach, explosive breach.

Daniel Salmey: Everything was mechanical. The windows, the doors, everything was mechanical. My door on the one side, we use the Bearcat ram because that was the door, if you recall where we saw.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it was barred.

Daniel Salmey: It was barred.

Jon Becker: Okay, so you smash it with the Bearcat ram.

Daniel Salmey: Correct.

Jon Becker: To affect your entry, which certainly. Probably shakes the trailer impressively.

Daniel Salmey: And while this is all going down, there's a flashback that goes off on the one side from my team and then one from the four side.

Jon Becker: Again, this is a pretty overwhelming experience.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. And we talked about an explosive breach on that three side door and talked at length with it, about it with Ramsey county commander and then the team leader that's going to be running that team. And they were very comfortable and very confident on. We had some intel on that door and what it looked like and materials, and it was an outward pull door. And they had worked. They had repped those doors out in training, trailer park doors that pull out, and they were very confident in setting a pick, setting a hoolie, popping that door and getting in, and it. And they got through the door fast. I've watched the body cam footage of that portion of this many times, and it. It was efficient. I mean, it worked well. So, yeah, to answer your question, mechanical all the way around.

Jon Becker: Okay. So they push the big red button and what happens?

Adam Tschida: Yeah. So everybody moves in, kind of as it was laid out in the plan. Ramsey county makes entry in the three side, gets in and locates both suspect and juvenile, the four year old boy in that bedroom, they're both on the bed. A number of the Ramsey county operators address the suspect, get hands on him right away, and then the others, you know, they grab the boy, get separation, and kind of exfil him out that three side doors, carry him out, and get him out of there.

While that is happening, Dan's element is clearing the front side of the house, kind of working from the fore, the four side back down towards Ramsey county, and the residence is cleared. The suspect wasn't real compliant. I mean, he kind of fought a little bit with the tactical folks in there, but they ended up taking him into custody and then. And then carrying him out as well.

Jon Becker: What's interesting about this as a hostage rescue, is so often the hostage rescue ends with the guy being shot. This is one of the few that I can remember in recent times where you have a no kidding HRT with it, with a tactical intervention that just ends in a fistfight. And the guy going to custody, that's. I mean, it's a testament to the discipline of the operators to not go in and kill him, right? Yeah, it would have been very easy to go in and kill him. Did he, in fact, have a weapon in the trailer?

Adam Tschida: The detectives later did a search warrant, and they found it was a toy pistol. A toy gun. So he…

Jon Becker: So he would have been killed for a toy gun?

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: That's really, I mean, that is. That is impressive all the way around. Nobody, you know, no conflicting fields of fire. Nobody fires a shot that they don't have to suspect goes. So often the narrative with SWAT teams is, oh, you know, they're so violent and they just go in and they just want to go in and kill people and rough things up. And like, this is a perfect example of where, you know, that that isn't the case.

Adam Tschida: Right. Yeah. Yep.

Jon Becker: So let's talk. You know, obviously, this is, this is a huge success. You, you guys s***** victory out of the jaws of, you know, heat induced defeat. Let's talk through lessons learned. What do you, what are the things that, you know, you take away from this and go, we could have done this better?

Adam Tschida: Yeah, I, I think. I think that's, it's twofold. And when we talk about this incident with other folks in the tactical community, the emphasis on having relationships with people that do what you do. And so, and so in our world, that means other SWAT teams. Right. That have similar capabilities, similar philosophies and just are willing to come and help when, when an incident is, is too big for your team to handle.

And the fact of the matter is, like, there is going to be that incident, right. No matter how big your team is, you're going to run into something that's just too big for your team to handle on its own. Like I said, at the onset of this, our team is roughly 50 operators large. You know, Washington county is very similar in size, and Ramsey is, too. I mean, that's a lot of personnel. And this was, and this taxed us almost to the limit. And so to have that relationship established ahead of time is a huge takeaway from this.

And I think it is also worth noting, one of the words I use there is relationship. That doesn't mean that you simply have a team identified, that you're going to have your dispatcher look up a phone number for their commander and I and give them a call when you need help. It means that you know them. It means that you're not doing the introduction that you alluded to John at the command bus when they're, they're out there, you know. Hey, I'm Adam, you know, d*** glad to meet you. Now let's try to work this thing.

Jon Becker: Nice to meet you. Let's go do a multi port integrated hostage rescue. Four year old.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. It means that you have, you have their number in your cell phone. It means you know a little bit about them and their team that you have trained together. You have talked through some philosophy stuff. You sat at a conference, your state association or NTOA, and had a beer with them into the evening and discussed shop. You know, it's having that relationship.

So I think that's a huge takeaway from this. I think the other big takeaway is that having that relationship is fine. You need it. It's very important. But you also have to be smart enough to know when to make that call and ask for help. You know, we got behind on this one. We were lucky that it worked out the way it did.

You know, Dan did such a good job of explaining what type of condition his guys were in when they came offline. They were having firefighters pull their gear off. A few minutes before those firefighters pulled their gear off, they were standing in front of a trailer where it was very likely they were going to have to make the biggest, quickest decision in their life. Very literally, life and death situ. A life and death decision.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah, 100%.

Adam Tschida: And they. And they were so fatigued and so hot. And that was a miss. That was a fail, a huge fail on my part. I was hearing the information and I wasn't requesting help soon enough. And I think one of the things that Jon, you and I talked about this call last week, and one of the, one of the phrases you used I think is so worthwhile mentioning here, it's the idea of, like, now we got it. That idea of, nah, nah, we got it. We just have to. In law enforcement and specifically SWAT, like, that's just gotta get out of our vernacular.

We are so ready as a profession to offer help. You know, on patrol, you'll be, you know, listening to another precinct or a neighboring agency and they have a big call come out and you start floating that way because you're just waiting to be asked or you just want to go. We're so good at offering help and giving help, and we are so bad at asking for it or accepting it. The nah, we got it. That almost cost us dearly in this incident. It didn't. Like I said, we got away with it. But that philosophy for people listening to this, and I know, and the people listening to this have all said that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because you talk to tactical guys, right? And everybody, I mean, we're. Look, we're all alpha males. We all want to solve our own problems. None of us want to take help. And yet every tactical operator is a contingency planner. Right? They think constantly about, okay, what if this happens? And what if this happens? And how do we do that?

And yet somehow, when it comes to asking and receiving help, we have this giant block that prohibits us, you know, and it's – And this block is not just in this situation. It's, oh, we're in a shooting and I'm emotionally traumatized and I need to talk to somebody. No, no, no. I got it.

And it's just, I think if you were to say, what is the Achilles heel of SWat teams? I got it. Is the Achilles heel of SWAT teams and of operators that so often leads to catastrophe and so often leads to guys committing suicide and guys, you know, refusing to take help. And I think it's a really valid point. I really do think it's a personality defect that every alpha male has.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: That they're just not, you know, so, I mean, one of the things I love when we first talked about this, and part of the reason I wanted to do this debrief with you guys is you own this from the first 37, I had known you for 30 seconds and you're like, no, I really screwed this up. And it's so often now with debriefs, they've become hero stories. And this is certainly a heroic story, but that's not where the gain in listening to a debrief comes from. Right? It's the lessons. So asking for help, obviously. Big one. What else?

Adam Tschida: Those were the big ones for me. I think Dan and I have talked about some, like, missed opportunity parts and pieces throughout the afternoon. He can, he can hit on that. And those are valid and certainly worth worth mentioning.

Jon Becker: What did you miss down?

Daniel Salmey: So one of the, I had mentioned before that he constantly was coming to the window while he was talking to CNT would come in the window and start shouting at us and then go back inside. And he come in the window and starts shouting at us, go back inside.

One of the tactical options that I was considering at the bearcat when I'm sitting there was, man, when he comes to the window, do we just lasso him or grab him and hold onto him and then hit the button and go and just hold him?

Jon Becker: Hold on. Physically grab him?

Daniel Salmey: Just physically grab him. Hold him. It would certainly be at a very high risk to our operators to do something like that. But the goal here is to save the four year old boy and the twelve year old.

Jon Becker: Well, and I mean, obviously, if he's coming to the window, there's also the Sierra option, right? Yes. Which in this case, is challenging, yes, because we don't know for sure he has a gun and he's not imminently threatening. And, you know, like, I live in California, that would be murder in California, in Texas, that would be considered a viable text, you know, viable option. But, you know, Minnesota's kind of between the two. Right? Like, I think it's, it certainly had to be going through your brain. But, I mean, what do you do? Right?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, more, more things on my level is when that, that five minute countdown happened my team was still at the bearcat. Granted, we were in rough shape. You know, I, we were in very bad shape. But I thought to myself, do I go with a five minute? I mean, they told, they told us in the air, he just gave a five minute warning that he's going to blow us all up.

And I was, do I, do I initiate it here on the ground, not even asking permission? Because I certainly could do that. Sure, I could do that, but I didn't because I wasn't, you know, obviously information's golden, right? You, you don't have all the information. With that one sentence, he gave a five minute warning. You don't have all the information. It's not like a gunshot that went off, so I didn't go.

Jon Becker: Do you think that the fatigue played any part in that decision? Like, do you think that, because obviously, you know, five minute comes and goes and, and there's been a lot of discussion, and there's always a lot of discussion about ultimatums because, you know, it's – Is the guy a promise keeper? Right? Is he somebody, I mean, this guy is not a promise keeper. He has not done anything that he said he was going to do. He's nothing. You know, he's lied the whole time. Right?

So he's not a promise keeper, but yet he's made a timeline. And it's like if, if at five, you know, at 459, you hear, you know, a shot. Well, yeah. So that's got to be weighing on you. And do you think that the fatigue and, and the situation helped drive that decision? Or was it just we do not have enough information to initiate?

Daniel Salmey: No, I think the fatigue, for sure. Washington definitely in my mind when I made the decision not to do that, because, I mean, I was looking at my, my guys and this whole now we got it stuff, you know, I was asking them and constantly asking them because I was getting so concerned for their welfare, you know, hey, man, you good.

Adam Tschida: Yeah.

Daniel Salmey: Yeah, I'm good. You know, and one of the things I learned from the situation is you can't go up to a SWAT operator and that's been in the heat for 4 and a half, 5 hours near heat exhaustion, and ask them if they're good because they're going to say yes. And they're going to lie to your.

Jon Becker: Face because it just goes back to what we were just talking about. Right. Like, no, I got it. I got it. And when he passes out, he will still be saying, I got correct. Yeah. And I think that is one of the challenges of leadership is frequently as a leader, you're having to make very difficult decisions and you're having to impose your will. Right? Because none of the guys want to pull off. They all want to save the kid. And they've been working this problem and they want to see it through to resolution. But I think that is one of the challenges, especially the tactical commander, of being the one that goes, no, you're leaving. And it's difficult. It's a difficult decision.

Adam Tschida: Right. Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it's a recurring theme in debriefs. I will tell you, in all the events that we've done, all the debriefs that I've been to, it is a recurring theme of the tactical commander having to just go, you're leaving, and then deal with the consequences downstream.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: Anything else you can think of, Dan?

Daniel Salmey: Yeah. Just a word of the wise. If you are going to decide to weld a bunch of stuff on your bearcat ram before a 96 degree heat index SWAT call, it's probably a bad idea.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that's certainly proven that. Jeff, from your perspective, from a C and T perspective, what are the four lessons learned?

Jeff Hanson: You know, I think for me there's – There was probably three takeaways. One is the communication piece. We're. We're laser focused on being effective communicators from CMT to tactical. But that's got to work both ways in order for it to be a complete success. Leaving. Leaving the team in the dark on what our intentions were. Again, we got away with it, but I should have informed them a little bit better than what I did.

Jon Becker: You mean when you say keeping the team in the arc, you mean the CNT team, correct. Yeah. So the girl being snatched up, the CNT team did not know they were not prepared for.

Jeff Hanson: Correct.

Jon Becker: Which maybe undermines their credibility with the suspect and creates a little drama.

Jeff Hanson: At the very least, it allows them just a couple of minutes to make up a rebuttal instead of being as shocked as, I mean, the primary negotiator was, it was, it was comical in hindsight because he was as shocked as the suspect was.

Another takeaway is for us not to have the attitude that we're not going to change out teams, we're not going to change out a primary negotiator. You get what you get. You can't request a new one. And that's something we should have been training on. On how are we going to. Ways to introduce another negotiator, ways to incorporate another team. It's just something we hadn't done before.

And then third is it's so rare that we get an act of ongoing negotiation with a suspect who wants to negotiate and just how much manpower on the CNT side of things that can absorb. I mean, we had nine people there and they were chewed up real quick with primary negotiators, secondary negotiator, two people to interview, other family members showing up. So that really emphasized that for me is that when we're in an act of an ongoing negotiation, nine negotiators isn't too much.

And it's funny because when you talk about it, people are like, holy cow, nine negotiators. What did you do with everyone?

Jon Becker: Yeah. You know, as I'm going through this, like there, there really, I mean, other than maybe a bathroom, there is nothing smaller than a single wide trailer home for a hostage. You know, this for an HRT, this is as small as an HRT gets next to like a garden shed or a bathroom.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: And as you're listing this through, we got, what, three or four. Three. Three SWAT teams involved.

Adam Tschida: Three. Three teams.

Jon Becker: Three teams involved. Nine negotiators hit, you know, firefighters galore. I mean, it's like 100 people.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. And it wasn't too many.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It wasn't enough.

Adam Tschida: Right? Yeah, yeah, we needed them.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's really interesting because you think like, one guy in a trailer, how much personnel and teams tend to think like, oh, yeah, no, we're good. We can do a hostage rescue. And it's like, I mean, here you've got close to 100 people to rescue one hostage from one guy in a single wide trailer.

Adam Tschida: Right.

Jon Becker: That gives you an, admittedly heat conditions and other things that drove it. But just the utter complexity of even, you know, a quote unquote simple hostage rescue as though that were a thing. I think that's a really valid point, is that you've really got to think about your personnel and you've got to raise the flag early.

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Because people are ready to help. We all are. I mean, if the shoes on the other foot, you know, you know, you'd go and help your neighboring team. You just want to be asked, like, we're ready. Ask us. We'll be on the way. Like I said a few minutes ago, you just got to be smart enough to recognize when to ask, because the help will come. It will come. It'll come like crazy. If you have those relationships established, you just, you have to ask.

Jon Becker: I think that's a really good place for us to stop. Guys, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it, and it was really enlightening.=!

Adam Tschida: Yeah. Thanks for having us!

Jon Becker: Thank you!

Episode 17 – Training & Tech – The NTOA – Thor Eells & Don Kester

Jon Becker: 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!

My guests today are Thor Eells and Don Kester from the National Tactical Officers association, or NTOA, which is the largest tactical organization in the United States.

Thor is a retired commander from the Colorado Springs, Colorado Police Department, where he served for 30 years, the majority of which was in tactical response, including serving as a SWAT operator, a SWAT team leader, and a team commander. Thor is currently the executive director for NTOA. After serving many years as a board member and as a trainer.

Don has retired from the Pima County Sheriff's Department in Arizona, where he served as a SWAT team leader, a SWAT team operator, a team sergeant, the training director, and a SWAT team commander, eventually retiring as a division commander and captain. Don is currently the training and education director for the NTOA after many years of service as a trainer and a board member.

Guys, thanks for joining me today!

Thor Eells: Thank you for the invitation! We appreciate it!

Don Kester: Thank you, Jon!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with your personal backgrounds, because I think it's good to give context to kind of the current face of the NTOA. So, Thor, give me your career background.

Thor Eells: Well, I spent 30 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Came on when I was in my mid twenties. I had been a paramedic for six years prior to becoming a police officer and was attracted to the profession by the diversity of things that you could do within policing.

And I was drawn to that while in the academy, our department had different subspecialties. Come to the academy, give a little briefing on what narcotics does, homicide does, etcetera. And tactical was one of those presentations and saw that, and I thought, well, I know exactly what I want to do when I have the opportunity to do it.

But our agency was one in which you had to. Upon graduation of the academy, you went to patrol. You served a minimum of four years in patrol before you were even eligible to test to go into what was called TEU tactical enforcement unit, which is what was the name assigned to our SWAT team, full time team. Very few openings ever came about because it was such a desired assignment. And yet that was my goal.

So I progressed through my career, eventually was able to test, got into the team, spent my time in the team as an operator. We ended up with a chief that came in and decided that believed that mandatory rotation was necessary and specialty units so that you could take that knowledge and share it throughout the department. Ended up being somewhat short lived, but unfortunately, at that time, I was one of the senior people on the team.

So I was going to be one of the first out, decided I would promote instead of promoted, but was able to come back later as a team leader and team commander. Eventually, as I progressed and promoted, became the commander of our specialized enforcement division. And so I spent the bulk of my career in tactical operations in some capacity or another. Over those 30 years.

Jon Becker: We also spent a bunch of time training. Right?

Thor Eells: A lot of time training. I was very fortunate that early in my career met some people, the Ron McCarthy's and a few others, as I was attending training and for whatever reason they felt I might have some promise as an instructor and so was able to be brought into the fold and began training in a variety of disciplines. Less lethal, basic, SWAT, intermediate, advanced SWAT, HRT, all those types of courses while I was still an actual operator, had some practical, real world experience that I could apply.

And then as I moved beyond that, more into the leadership roles, the supervisory roles, started teaching those disciplines as well. So probably spent a good 20 plus, maybe 25 plus years as a trainer within the tactical community.

Jon Becker: What about you, Don?

Don Kester: My career really mirrors Thor's in many ways. I spent about 24 years with the Pima County Sheriff's department, which is down in Tucson, Arizona, about 1600 employees. I'm one of those folks that had a blessed, charmed career with really no complaints.

I was spoiled, I'll admit it now. I started off in patrol as well, was then in traffic for a couple years and as a traffic investigator, and during that time I was selected to the SWAT team. Our SWAT team had a full time element and a part time element, and so I started that in the early nineties and continued on.

I started off in the sniper role, did that for a few years, was selected as a team leader, eventually got promoted, was a team sergeant and was a sergeant in patrol, but then was soon thereafter signed as our training director for the entire department, did that role for quite a few years while still remaining on SWAT, and then eventually became our full time SWAT sergeant and eventually our full time SWAT commander as a lieutenant for several years, and then I retired as a division commander at the rank of captain from the sheriff's department.

I like Thor, started off with the less lethal, the chemical agents, the flash, sound, diversionary devices. That's really what got me going in the tactical instruction community. And then over the years, that just grew and grew and grew into almost anything related to the tactical world. But I loved it. I enjoyed it.

We were busy team lots and lots of missions, had a great time, and it truly changed who I became as a person and as a law enforcement officer. And SWAT was my world in many ways, and that's what taught me, along with other things. But the primary leadership lessons that I then tried to at least implement throughout my career and to this day, because it really, our team was very progressive, and it was a leadership factory in many ways. It was just one lesson after another.

So not only internally within our agency and the team, I should say, but at the same time as when I was dealing and meeting and spending time with the SIDs, the Rons, the Mike Hillmans, the John Colemans, and that group. And it really, in many ways, made me who I am today. But it was a blessed career, very busy career, fortunate to be involved in a lot of different types of missions and a lot of experiences that I try to just apply those to the teaching world now and share those experiences, particularly those of what didn't go so well, and let people learn from my mistakes.

Jon Becker: When you're currently the training director for NTOA, right?

Don Kester: I am the training director for the NTOA. I took that position when I retired from the sheriff's department. Before that, I actually am the longest running instructor for the NTOA to this day. And so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I spent several years as the Les Lethal section chair for the NTOA, and then I was on the board of directors for the NTOA for about seven years as well. And then when I became the director of training and education is when I stepped down from the board.

Jon Becker: What about you, Thor? When did you first become involved with NTOA?

Thor Eells: 1995 is when I became an instructor with the NTOA. Initially, much like Don, was instructing a variety of disciplines, which also, I think, had a tremendous impact on me. You know, I had the beneficiary of, was the beneficiary of learning as I was instructing, you know, being around people that was able to share experiences and different philosophies with me while I was, I was teaching, but I had a hunger and a thirst that drove me to continue to be really actively participating within the NTOA and any opportunity that I could volunteer for a role, whether it was instruction or otherwise.

Being on committees, I took, and eventually later on, I, like Don, became a board member. I was also on the board for about seven years and served, I think, about the last two years as the chairman of the board, trying to provide some guidance based upon my experiences and the influences of, you know, many of the planck holders that we spoke about.

And eventually, when it came time to retire, it was very fortuitous for me that the position came open. I was actually looking to maybe continue my career within law enforcement as a chief of a smaller agency or doing something in a leadership role there. When the executive director position came open, and I was able to slide into that, you know, I was very, very fortunate for that opportunity.

Jon Becker: What do you see the current mission of the NTOA is?

Thor Eells: Well, I don't think it's changed. I'm very proud in that we have tried to hold true to the fundamental principle that John put forth 40 years ago now in that we are going to focus on training, education, and professionalism to enhance SWAT and to save lives, and that is our guiding principle. We very much keep that in mind when we're making decisions that we think are likely or potentially going to have an impression on the law enforcement world preston.

Jon Becker: What do you see the role of the NToA? There are a lot of voices in the tactical community now between state associations and private training organizations. Obviously, the NTOA is the largest, not only the national organization, but the largest organization. What do you see the role of the NTOA being, like, the responsibility of it to the community?

Thor Eells: Well, I think we, if I were to pick a word, I would say is a resource. So we try to do our very best, make a very concerted effort to gather information. We're listening. We try and balance some humility with our own degrees of competence and understanding, but in recognizing that we are certainly not the know all, be all, end all, but through that recognition, we are very actively and continuously seeking information. We are looking to try and identify what are people's needs. How can we in any way, shape or form, address and or meet those needs, and then how do we share that?

So we try to be mindful that, yeah, there are regional issues, regional problems, state by state, as different legislators or decision makers make various changes to the course of business and daily activity type of thing. But there are lessons to be learned in that, that we can then try and share, communicate elsewhere. We can assimilate that information, disseminate it, and hopefully through all of that, again, remaining true to John's vision, which is help people not have to reinvent the wheel.

And so I think that's still very much our primary role, is to assist people in that, in meeting their individual needs, departmental needs, those types of things.

Jon Becker: Do you see the NTOA as competitive with state organizations?

Thor Eells: Well, I would hope not. I mean, I can tell you that it's certainly not my desire for that to be the case. And in my communication with my colleagues, my peers that are on the board, certainly with Don as our training director, we are very mindful that we don't want to be competitive. And I know that under our tenure, we have made an effort to try and ensure that we have a relationship with the states, that this is a two way flow of communication.

What can we do to help you? We're certainly not afraid to ask for help or input from others. You know, what are we missing? Are we not looking at things the right way? We try to do that, but I think in doing that, we have, with some of our relationships that are more advanced and developed just because of personal relationships or knowledge, done a very good job of finding out where our niche is, so to speak. What can we really do to help state associations, and what can we do to not hinder their abilities to grow and be successful individually?

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's always struck me, I've heard people say they're competitive associations and there is not an overabundance of good training. That's always my argument. It's not like we have 500 good training options every day you can go to. There is a dearth of good training. And I don't understand why somebody wouldn't belong to both the NTOA and their local association, their state association, because the perspectives are different.

The quality of, you know, the variety of training is different. Like, what are your thoughts? I mean, I'm assuming while you belong to NTOA, you probably also belong to RMTA or mountain states when you're in Colorado.

Thor Eells: Right. And you're absolutely correct. And that is really, quite honestly, our philosophy is we recognize that we have a unique and fortunate opportunity to see things from a national level. I mean, we operate from California to Florida, and, you know, all the spaces in between, and there are different perspectives, and it affords us an opportunity to see things through different lenses.

But at the end of the day, we are not looking to compete. What we're looking to do is enhance, to really be a benefit to those that are out there, to be that added resource. As an example of that. I know that Don, as our training director, one of the benefits that I, when I was younger, always thought was unique and helpful from the NTOA.

And Don continues this today. But when we send several instructors to a class, we try and intentionally, we deliberately send two different instructors from different areas. They're not from the same department, the same area. Somebody might have local perspective and experience and understanding, but then we'll bring or partner them with someone that comes from a different region, a different area that may have a different perspective, so that we are able to really expose those that are in attendance to different ways of thinking, different ways of problem solving, and gaining appreciation, that there are frequently more than one ways to address problems.

So it's a very deliberate effort to expand knowledge, experience, exposure, those types of things. And that's what we really wanted try and continue to accomplish with our state partners.

Don Kester: And, Jon, we really do try to support those state associations. In fact, in our classes, we encourage attendees at our courses to be members of state associations, multiple state associations, as well as the NTOA, to attend those state association conferences if at all possible. And we also support those associations when they do have their, their annual conferences.

The NTOA oftentimes will send an instructor or two and provide free training at the conference on behalf of the state association. And we work that out with the state association each time. And many of the states take advantage of that on a yearly basis. So usually we will send instructors to 13 to 14 state conferences in a year, where we provide the instructors, we pay the instructors, the associations help us out with the expenses of travel, but we cover the instructors and many of those expenses as well.

So that's a resource that is available to them. You'll see Thor and I and others at many of the state associations sitting in classes, trying to learn, trying to keep cultivating those relationships as well. So we, certainly, I can tell you, don't view it as a competition. There are things the state associations can do better than we can, and there are things that we probably have some advantages on at that national level. So we understand that we try to coordinate with them and want to continue that.

Jon Becker:

I think that, you know, it's always struck me that there's a very local aspect to law enforcement, right? It is possibly the most local thing you can do yet, like any political thing, and it's a government service. There's a local perspective, there's a state perspective, and there's a national perspective.

And I think that you guys are in a unique position because in dealing with all the state associations and in states that don't have an association into a is the state association. You have a unique perspective on policing nationally, and I'd like to kind of discuss some contemporary topics with you guys to get your perspective nationally. Why don't we start with police reform?

And this kind of, you know, it seems like the move to police reform and defunding police may have, have hit its nadir and were starting to swing back the other way. But what is your perspective, Thor, on kind of this national movement towards police reform?

Thor Eells: Well, I think it is still evolving. I don't think that it has lost as much momentum as some people might believe. And my reasoning for that is each time we have a police incident that achieves national media attention, it tends to restock those fires and calls for police reform. And so I think that is still a movement that is evolving as we speak.

But I do think that what has happened in a positive sense is that it's not quite as emotional. And they're beginning to recognize that there are more moving parts to this than perhaps were originally forecasted or understood. And by that crime is on the rise. Violent crime in particular is on the rise in communities around the country that jumped into reform without really fully appreciating the unintended consequences of that quote unquote reform.

And I think what we've begin to perhaps appreciate a little bit more is that this reform that has been proposed in many respects is more punitive and in almost all cases tends to be post-incident driven. So really nothing has been done, done or proposed or at least accepted upon proposal to be proactive and to do something to prevent some of these incidents from taking place.

And so when we look at some of the incidents that have taken place that have received a lot of scrutiny and judgment and second guessing, we're beginning to recognize that there are potentially training issues, there are leadership issues, and those are some of the things that we need to be more mindful of and focused on if we want to really try and have a positive impact on policing as it's delivered to the communities throughout this country.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think so much of the police reform movement is reactionary, angry. One bad incident turns into, well, we need to eliminate all of this. And I think one of the important roles that the NTOA plays is opposing that. Don, talk to me about how the NTOA serves as an information source to kind of oppose that narrative.

Don Kester: Well, police reform really is a very complex topic, and it's very broad. And I think to really dive into the topic of police reform, you have to first start by defining what part of police reform are we going to discuss? And so if it's like Thor mentioned, you know, the punitive aspect, we know that that is setting law enforcement back years, if not decades.

If folks want to talk about police reform in the sense of how do we make law enforcement better, which might not be all about restrictions and curtailing activities. It might be, but it oftentimes is more about how can we make law enforcement better, then we would strongly support that. And so one of the ways we address that publicly and with the state associations and the media and other entities, first and foremost, is be honest. And we've taken the mantra that we're not going to try to defend the indefensible.

And I think that has been a challenge with law enforcement historically, where we do as a, as a profession, there have been times, let's face it, where the profession, the industry has tried to defend things that there really was no defense for. So that's one of the messages we really emphasize and push out is let's have some honest, useful, productive conversations and let's look at what we're doing now and where we can improve.

So the NTOA is really trying to drive that, along with other groups, to focus on what is true police reform, meaning what's going to make us better. And, you know, some of those other negative aspects of it, they'll sort themselves out over time. One of the things we're doing is developing new programs. We're focusing on the concept of emotional intelligence. We're focusing on the concept of brain science and leadership and professionalism.

And when we talk to groups, media, whomever it might be, those are the things we really hit on. And we tell them sometimes, yeah, law enforcement made some mistakes in these areas, these incidents, whatever it might be. But what you're proposing isn't going to solve anything. It's not going to change anything. If we really want to change law enforcement, then there's certain things we need to do, and law enforcement does need to get better. We do a lot of things well, we do a lot of things not so well, but we can do everything better and improve.

And so we're really trying to take it from the strategic standpoint and say, how is it that we're training law enforcement? What can be changed? Because in many ways, training of law enforcement is decades behind the times. We're trying to look at policy issues and see how can we truly improve policy training and education to enhance law enforcement, to avoid these types of problems.

So we're excited about where we're going and what we see as the future. But of course, we can't do it alone. We have to have the buy in and the support of everybody in the state, associations and things like that. And the feedback has been great, but we're excited to get some of these new initiatives launched and really make them a much bigger part of the conversation and a much bigger part of the process of the evolution of law enforcement, because we feel, while we all have great intentions and things, we do a great job in the profession, there are things we can do to get better.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you raise an interesting point, which is so often when an incident happens, the response of law enforcement is one of two. It's either trying to defend something that is very difficult to defend with a straight face, or the corollary to that is not defending something that is completely defensible. And because there isn't an organized messaging platform, law enforcement, media response is based on a local agency, and that agency may have a fantastic PIO, but the majority of them don't.

And so you have a professional media organization that is attacking an agency in a lot of cases, and an amateur PIO who is trying to respond to reporters who do this for a living. It's a difficult balance, because anytime law enforcement defends something that is really not defensible, they lose credibility. Anytime they don't defend something that is, then the narrative is allowed to run rampant.

And the example that I know we discussed it at breakfast is the Breonna Taylor case, where everything that's running around all the media initially is wrong. You have the vice president, now vice president, United States, saying that they hit the wrong house, which is 100% not true. You had people saying that she was shot in her bed. You had all these things, and yet you didn't have a coordinated response to go. Here are the facts. Thor, what role can the NTOA play in kind of countering that messaging and helping agencies to deal with this?

Thor Eells: I think the best thing that we can do is assist with awareness in how they are responding. Should they be unfortunate enough to find themselves in the midst of that type of scenario? And so you said it very, very well, in that if we do something that's bad and we try and defend it, we lose credibility, no doubt.

I mean, the American public is not stupid. They can look at something and recognize that was wrong. The corollary to it that you mentioned is you have an incident that unfolds that is defensible and yet is not defended vigorously. The same consequence is applied, which is you lose credibility. That's true because they believe that your silence is, in fact, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. And so that's just the end state. So it's a lose lose if we continue to approach these incidents the same way.

So you look at Breonna Taylor, and you're absolutely correct. I mean, it's really a showcase of a multitude of poor decisions in how that information could have been refuted and been more vigorously corrected. And I've said this for a while, that one of the things that is hurting the profession right now is that the silence from American law enforcement leadership is deafening.

Jon Becker: Yes, it is.

Thor Eells: And so it begs the question, well, why is that? I mean, who was in the best position to really vigorously defend what took place in Louisville, Kentucky, with Breonna Taylor? Well, quite honestly and quite bluntly, it was the chief of police.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Thor Eells: But through a variety of, for a variety of reasons, police chiefs in America have been effectively silenced because of their at will status and their vulnerability to be removed at will if they don't get in lockstep with what a political narrative and or track is going to be taken on something. So you mentioned, you know, our vice president incorrectly sharing information about where the warrant was served, and there's no correction of that.

And in fact, what you have is the mayor then makes a comment that really does nothing but add fuel to the fire and doesn't correct it. And the sheriff or the chieftain has been told you're not to say a word. This is the pathway that we're going to take.

And so I think the best that we can do is when we have these conversations, is to share that information, to create that awareness. And we're not passing judgment, believe me, on political ideologies or things of that nature. We're simply saying that you have to evaluate the circumstances that you find yourself in and begin to do sort of a pro and con analysis. You know, what's the cost benefit factor here?

And the analogy that I tend to draw or apply is many people remember years ago when it became very, very common to file frivolous lawsuits against major private corporations because they would always settle. It was less expensive to simply settle. Well, eventually somebody raised their hand and said, do you realize that the number of settlements that we are making out of a need to be expedient is actually our net cost? Is this? And it was far worse.

Well, I think the same thing is applying to law enforcement is that as we continue to just roll over and not defend those things that should be defended as being lawful and correct, albeit difficult, is having a cost. It is tearing the fabric of trust between the American public and their law enforcement providers, which is serving no one.

Well, it's certainly arguably, at least among the quote unquote experts, a contributory factor to our increase in crime in this country. So we need to have greater awareness that these incidents need to be addressed one way or the other. Either acknowledge the mistake or acknowledge that we didn't do wrong.

Jon Becker: Well, you know, you raise a really interesting point, because a lot of the problem is the politicization of American law enforcement. Law enforcement is not a political function.

Thor Eells: It wasn't intended to be. Correct.

Jon Becker: It wasn't intended to be. And sheriffs are elected, and that is, it gives the people the ability to pick their law enforcement leader. But law enforcement in and of itself is an executive function that should be agnostic to politics.

Thor Eells: Correct. In fact, it's part of the reasons that when you look at some of the challenges that we have today is our forefathers wanted American law enforcement to be fractured. We didn't want a single law enforcement entity that could potentially then become corrupted and tyrannical, tyrannical and violate the rights of the American people.

So as a result of that, we have over 18,000 different police departments. We have over 3000 different sheriff's departments, and we have potentially an untold number of federal law enforcement. We have tribal law enforcement. We have thousands and thousands of agencies in the country that have thousands of different policies, procedures, training, standards, etcetera.

And it adds to the complexity of this whole reform. Where do you start? Who are we reforming? Because it's not a one size fits all. There's not a single answer that's going to address the diversity, which certainly has its pros, but it also creates certain complexities that we're facing.

Jon Becker: Now I think it's interesting because the forefathers didn't trust government. If I learned anything in con law and in reading the federalist papers, they were not trying to create an efficient government. They were trying to prevent efficiency in government and ensure that nobody got an opportunity to accumulate power because it corrupts people.

And ultimately their fear was a tyrannical, centralized federal government because that's what they fled. And so they intentionally separated powers. They intentionally created a federalist system. They intentionally paralyzed government. You know, people that have not read the constitution carefully think that it gives you rights. It does not give you rights. The constitution prevents the government from taking rights.

And so much of what is happening in American law enforcement right now is this idea, like, we'll push them all together. We'll make centralized things and we'll give more power to the federal government. And that was exactly what the founding fathers were afraid of happening.

So I think that one of the things that we need to do is we need to eliminate this politicization of law enforcement. We need to have our politicians stop saying, well, the FBI is corrupt or the LAPD is corrupt. People take inappropriate actions and need to be, those actions need to be remedied. But a rogue FBI agent is not reflective of the entire FBI. You know, a George Floyd does not mean we burn the whole police department to the ground, nor does it mean we vilify everybody.

But, you know, you raise an additional point, which is there aren't national standards, and it's problematic. And part of it is the complexity of it. You know, the smallest rural police department in Mississippi is never going to hold the standards that the NYPD or LAPD can because of funding, because of personnel.

But in the tactical community, there aren't national standards. Some states have standards, some don't. And the NTOA played a big role in the creation of a national standard. So talk to me about that. Like, where did the national standards idea come from originally?

Thor Eells: Well, it evolved out of what was originally proposed through the NTOA as our quote, unquote, best practices. And eventually the conversation took place. And this was when Don was on the board and I was on the board and speaking to some bright folks, Sid Heal being one of them, and recognizing that best practices, quite honestly, really wasn't enough. It's like the person that you want to go to the gym type of thing, you know, you say, well, we want everyone to be more cardiovascularly Fitzhe. And you put a challenge out there.

Well, the only people that go to run and get cardiovascular fit were the ones that were running to begin with. And so the best.

Jon Becker: Yeah, the fit ones, right?

Thor Eells: So the best practices, while certainly noble in its foundation, really wasn't enough to incentivize folks to work towards. And Sid being the savant that he was so well educated in looking at trade associations and how they achieved professionalization, and he's the one that shared this with me. And I went out and then started reading and educating myself, and I thought, well, you know, this is really brilliant. You look at, you know, how did medicine get where it is today? How did the bar association get where it is today?

And, you know, Sid would ask. His first thing was, well, who dictates the curriculum of medical schools? It's not the United States government, CMA. It's the American Medical association. They decided what was going to be the curriculum to become an MD or a do in this country. It's the medical associations that have determined what the standards will be. You will take X number of hours of education and et cetera, et cetera, do residencies, the whole nine yards. They do that. And then you pass your boards, which are set by the association. Same thing with the bar, with attorneys and med or, excuse me, law schools.

And you begin to look at that and think, well, you know, that really does make sense. I mean, you can either write your own story or someone will write it for you, and it may not be the one you like. And that resonated with us.

And so, as the board, we said, and Sid was really the one that encouraged us to adopt the leadership role. We were in a unique position as the national association with the opportunity to work cooperatively with the California association of Tactical Officers, CATO, Florida SWAT association, and some of the others, and reach out and bring the thinkers, the practitioners from their respective regions and create a committee so that it is a national perspective.

We consider folks from small, medium, large agencies, small, medium, large teams, full time teams, collateral duty teams, municipal, county, state, federal teams. Bring all of those together, and then let's have the conversation on what should minimum standards be. What can we all agree on are the minimums that SWAT teams need to be able to do? And I can tell you that one of the folks that had a profound impact on me was chief Mike Hillman.

So Chief Hillman was approached by FEMA post Hurricane Katrina when they wanted to type SWAT teams so that it could be like the fire resources, you know, if you need certain number of engines, they pump so many gallons of water, etcetera.

But we would do the same thing with teams. We'd have everything from type one, which would be the most robust, hostage rescue capable teams with, you know, certain number of operators and armored vehicles, et cetera, all the way down to a type four team, which would be, you know, four guys in dark t shirts that were one size too small, but they all had hunting rifles and baseball caps and Oakley sunglasses.

We got together and we thought, well, that's not possible one, because you're missing the cornerstone for that, which is, how do you define SWAT capability? You might have a warrant service team, but that's not necessarily a SWAT team or a dignitary protection team or a fugitive apprehension team or things like that. They're not SWAT teams.

So you had to define, you know, what will SWAT teams do? What are their minimum mission capabilities. And that's where we started. And then from that, and with the input of these committees and these representatives from all across the country, we were able to develop what we believed would be helpful to our profession of what a SWAT team can do at what levels, with different typings, different capabilities.

And I think, I would like to think, anyway, that this has been extremely helpful in serving as a roadmap or as a template for teams to improve either their ability to gain access to training hours, to purchase certain equipment, to sign interagency agreements with others where they're lacking, but certain capabilities.

But a sister agency might have that, and that's really what we've worked towards with the national standard. And it's meant to be just a bare bones minimum. I mean, it's certainly not a dictate. We don't have the authority to mandate people meet these. But at the end of the day, what drives any kind of change, just like in the legal or the medical field, is your risk of liability. That if you're not doing these minimums that the profession is requiring of practitioners, then you expose yourself to liability, not just financial, but certainly public goodwill and other things. And we've tried to step into that was what was a void and provide that.

Jon Becker: That's a huge void. And, you know, one of our mutual friends, Todd Mackler, years ago, told me an analogy I use all the time. He said, I have a driver's license. My 17 year old daughter has a driver's license, and Mario Andretti has a driver's license. We're all drivers. We don't all drive the same.

And I think one of the challenges with the modern tactical environment is you do have a, not only a wide range of agency size and agency capability, ranging from, for lack of a better term, a tier one law enforcement resource, whether that's NYPD, ESU, or LA sheriffs or whoever, all the way down to a part time small regional team. You're trying to regulate behavior from 60 man full time team that does 200 ops a year to 6 man part time team that does 6 ops a year.

And then to make it worse, the mission sets. It's almost a matrix where you have team size and mission set. And the mission sets vary from simple narcotic search warrant to complex, coordinated terrorist attack or hostage rescue. Don, from a training standpoint, how do we address that? Do you think the NTOA has established a national standard? What do you think the best approach is from a training standpoint, to try and equalize some of that?

Don Kester: Jon, that's a complex question, and I don't know that it's got a direct answer. I think that is certainly one of the challenges in training law enforcement because you've got the challenge of the small team, the big team, the medium sized team, the regional team, collateral duty full time, and they all have their own complexities that come with it.

So I don't know that there's one specific answer. I do know that the standardization has to play a key role in that. Standardization of policies as much as possible. Standardizations of training, standardizations of equipment, things that, frankly, are lacking in the SWAT community.

One way to address that, particularly for some of the smaller or midsize teams, is the concept of regionalization. We're forming that multi jurisdictional SWAT team. And I personally think there's a, there's a lot of misinformation out there about regional teams. And I think they get a bad rap. Some, you know, there's teams out there that are some of the biggest SWAT teams in America that are not maybe as high speed as, as they should be, just like there's the smallest teams in America that are not as high speed as they should be. The same goes for regional teams.

But I do truly believe that some of the most capable and competent teams in America are, in fact, regional teams. And I don't think most in the, in the tactical community see that and are aware of that because they only see what they see in their very local small bubble.

You know, if you're here in a small area of California and you've got teams that you, you know, you know, are maybe higher quality and those that aren't as high quality, but that's all you know, because that's what you deal with. That's what you work with on a daily basis. But that doesn't mean that's the same case in the state next door or on the other side of the country.

And so regionalization has actually proven to be quite effective for, for a variety of reasons. One is that it does eliminate lot of SWAT teams. And by eliminate, I mean we can take eight teams and make them into one. Now where we've eliminated seven SWAT teams in the country that had seven different policies, seven different training standards, seven different selection standards, seven different budgets, and on and on and on.

Now we have one team that, again, you sort through your personnel and you work through those logistics, but now you may have a very large tier one team that is one of the most well equipped in the country, and there are regional teams out there that are some of the most well equipped in the country, and they have the personnel. They've got 50 or 60 bodies, and they're doing 200 missions a year, but people don't really hear about those.

And so I think that regionalization leads to more standardization, and it leads to an ability to more properly train because of more people, better budgets, more exposure, maybe around the country or in your region at a minimum. So there's some different ways to go about it. But I think regionalization does play a key role.

Now, that being said, it's not for everybody. And the biggest challenge is not generally the operators and the SWAT teams. The biggest challenge to effective regionalization is administrators and politics. As you brought up earlier, you know, there shouldn't be a lot of politics in law enforcement, but one of our challenges is many of the police agencies out there. They want a SWAT team, or they want to say they have a SWAT team, and they call themselves a SWAT team, but they may not necessarily truly be or have a SWAT team.

And so you have to get the Chiefs and the sheriffs to work together and agree to form a regional concept and a regional team and realize that I'm not giving up my SWAT team. I now have one team that is much larger, much more competent, much better equipped, and much better funded. And any of those chiefs can call that team, and that team belongs to all of them. But you have to get the politics and the egos out of the way.

And generally, looking across the country, in my experiences, those organizations that have been able to put together a high quality, high functioning regional team, that regionalization has expanded to air units, motor units, k nine units, and on and on and on.

And frankly, that just makes sense for policing in America. Having over 20,000 agencies, all duplicating efforts, all trained to do the same thing just on different scales, if we continue with that, we will never eliminate many of the problems with law enforcement. Just that sheer number of agencies creates many of these problems. Regionalization, particularly in the tactical community, does help address these issues.

Jon Becker: I think you're right. It's the double edged sword of fractionating government. You avoid centralized, tyrannical government, but you create an inefficiency. And especially when you get into municipal departments. Small cities may not even have one SWAT call out a year, and so it's not uncommon, in my experience, in dealing with teams all over the country to find a team that trains quarterly and has three operations a year, but is prepared to engage whatever mission they get.

And I think when you look at an agency like that, that has one or two SWAT callouts a year. They would be much better committing a single body to a full time team. I used analogy years ago of like medicine, but if you go into a small town, there's not a brain surgeon. There might not even be an orthopedic surgeon. There's a general practitioner doctor, and he's good at basic life support, but you don't want him to perform brain surgery on you.

To some degree, tactical operations are the brain surgery of law enforcement, and it's challenging to maintain the very high level of specialization that you need to be able to effectively do a hostage rescue or an explosive breach or any of the high risk operations. When you are a small agency and you don't have that kind of op tempo, it's like expecting going into a small town in the middle of the country and expecting to get absolute top tier medical care. It's not going to happen well and.

Don Kester: Logically, Jon, it just doesn't make sense for many of the agencies that have SWAT teams. There's no logic to having that SWAT team. It doesn't make sense financially. It's misleading to the public. We're setting our personnel up for failure as leaders within the organization, and you can't properly equip the team. You can't properly train the team.

You're not going to have enough missions to, number one, justify their existence, but number two, maintain that competency level versus if we combined resources and work together in many, many locations in this country, we would be doing a much better service to our personnel, our agencies, and the citizens of the country.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that is a role that needs a national voice. Right. There needs to be a national voice that is speaking to that, not only in the form of SWAT standards, but in the form of providing a unified voice, which I think is a role the NTOA does and can play in these situations is, you know, if you're a small agency that doesn't have the expertise or you're an agency that gets into trouble or has a bad incident, it strikes me that the NTOA is the place that those agencies can turn to get direct access to true subject matter expertise. Is that true, Thor?

Thor Eells: Absolutely. It's one of the things that we have really made a concerted effort to share that information, that we are there for that exact reason. So when we do speak about regionalization and encourage multi multi-jurisdictional approach and sharing of resources to accomplish mission capability, that's one of the things that we try and support.

So our efforts are in that we feel a responsibility that if we're going to set forth standards, we have a fiduciary duty to also support the agency's abilities to reach those standards. We can't just leave this void between we want you to operate at this level and you're at this level. You figure out how to build the bridge.

Our approach to it is that if we're going to set forth that, we're going to provide you with the bridge. Whether you choose to cross it ultimately is up to you, but it absolutely is something that needs to be done. I mean, the byproduct of agencies not doing that or engaging in some of the misguided decisions that Don spoke to, where you allow ego or politics or otherwise to interfere with making a, a really objective, rational decision on need and or capability is that unfortunately, the american public does not discern the difference between a high level, high functioning tactical team in this country from areas that don't have that. They simply see the title squad officer did X, Y or Z.

And in many cases, that is driving bad case law. It's driving a loss of confidence in our ability, in our capabilities, and, you know, a multitude of negative consequences result thereof. And so it's really important for us at the NTOA to create this awareness. With regard to the communities, tactical communities, I'm referring to now about asking these practitioners to pause and really have an objective internal analysis. And you think about after action reports.

So we strongly encourage and for many, many years have told teams, you know, when you finish a mission, you sit down and you have an after action, and it should be very objective. It should be brutally honest. You're looking for your strengths, your weaknesses and means to either bolster or correct.

The same thing has to happen with regard to just your overall function within an agency for the citizens of your community. And that's what our standards are really designed to do, is to ask people to say relative to these standards, where do we honestly and objectively fit? And if we're at a four and we want to be a three or we're at a three and we want to be a one, how do you accomplish that?

Well, we'll help you with that. We'll share policies, we'll share procedures. We have a multi-jurisdictional section chair. So we have folks that have that experience, that have that direct, intimate knowledge of, you know, what are the obstacles that you're likely to encounter? How do you overcome that? And we'll share all of that. I mean, none of this is considered, you know, state secrets or anything that we're going to keep guarded. We want everybody to be successful.

Jon Becker: But I think we have. We've politically driven law enforcement away from self reflection. We have driven law enforcement away from after action. It's interesting, you know, I remember in law school, they talked about subsequent remedial measures and how if a business does something after the fact to fix a mistake that they made, that you can't introduce, that you can't come back and go, well, Ford's brakes didn't work because Ford redesigned their brakes.

Because the policy disincentive of telling Ford that if you change it, we're going to punish you for it is terrible. Yet in law enforcement, just in the time that I've done this coming up on four decades, the amount of introspection I have seen in teams has gone through the floor.

Like, I can remember early in my career, going to debriefs and seeing heated discussions and candid self, you know, self flogging of, we really screwed this up. We can't do this. There was a policy of kind of holding each other accountable. And what we now see is kind of a move towards the opposite. You know, when you attend a debrief, the debrief is a hero story, and anything that went wrong is not discussed.

One of the things that – The first question I ask when we do our lecture series is, what went wrong on your operation? And if the answer is nothing, there's no point in us having a debrief. Cause we're not gonna learn anything. Dawn, over the time, have you noticed that trend? Do you see that happening?

Don Kester: I do. It is becoming more and more frequent, and I'm not really sure why. I mean, I have my personal opinions on that, but we're not being as honest with ourselves as a profession as I think we need to be. And we can be, and I think I said it earlier, we have to improve. Law enforcement has to change. And if we think politics doesn't affect us, then we're living in a world that doesn't exist, because it does. And I'm not saying it's right. It just is what it is. We have to work around that. We have to improve the way we do things.

And I think the most frustrating part that I see looking at incidents and working on cases and working with SWAT teams around the country and then working with legislators and you name it, is that the reality is most of the problems in law enforcement can be pretty easily fixed. They really can be. If you start breaking it down to what the bigger issues are. They're fixable. It's just, do we have the right people in the right places with the guts to move forward and fix it? You know, Thor hit out an important point earlier. You know, most chiefs are at will, so their hands are somewhat tied.

Now, certainly not all chiefs, and certainly some chiefs don't care about that and they do the right thing, but many are hand strung by that. And again, I think that's the frustrating part, is we can fix our problems if we focused on emotional intelligence, and we truly bought into emotional intelligence and we paid the money and we took it serious, like many other industries, many law enforcement problems would go away.

Jon Becker: But in order to do that, we have to be willing to be introspective. And more importantly, as a society, we have to be willing to allow you to make a mistake and recover from it. You know, one of the things that I tell people is any of the forefathers of modern tactics would be fired in their second or third year, maybe, except for Mike Helmand, would be fired in their second or third year in a police department.

Now, because they were aggressive, they were hard charging, and they made mistakes. And that's why they're Graybeards now, was because they made mistakes. We as a society are moving towards this mindset that if you're willing to lie and deny till the very end, we'll keep you. But if you make a mistake, we're going to crucify you for it. Well, the net effect is we're getting people who are either really good liars or people who will not take responsibility for their actions.

And so what's happening is we're breeding a generation of managers, naughty generation of leaders. And I think that's kind of what you're saying is you're not breeding people that go, hey, wait a minute, I screwed this up. I need to fix it.

Don Kester: There is a leadership vacuum in law enforcement. There's some absolutely phenomenal leaders, but there is definitely a need for enhanced leadership in law enforcement. And that's because of a lot of reasons. There's a lot of factors that feed into that, but it is having an impact on the profession, and it really ties the hands of the profession, and it makes it difficult to move forward and do the things we're all talking about. We all would like to see, without leadership, nothing's going to happen without leadership.

Jon Becker: But if you don't get on the scale every morning, you're getting fat, period. Right? Like, if you are not introspecting and looking at yourself, you are not getting stronger as an organization. And I think that the problem for law enforcement is that gradual erosion of leadership, that gradual erosion of knowledge, that gradual erosion of introspection leads to society. I mean, again, you know, law enforcement polices at the consent of the people.

The net effect is if law enforcement is gradually getting worse and is not introspecting and is not owning their mistakes, what happens is what is happening in California, which is we make stupid a** laws to try to fix a problem. We're like, oh, I don't like that. Let's just throw out the whole thing. And the next thing you know, we have AB-481 and we're trying to get rid of canines. And you know, and I think a lot of that is the legislators don't know what they're talking about. But, also a lot of his law enforcement isn't helping them to get smart. What are your thoughts, Thor?

Thor Eells: Well, I couldn't agree more. I think the societal norms have been evolving and not necessarily in a positive direction. You know, I think, as I alluded to earlier, the silence from law enforcement regarding our profession has been this endorsement of our lack of professionalism, albeit unintended. It's the consequence of that we have to find a way to find our voice and be heard. I do agree that much of the legislative efforts are potentially as a result of being uninformed.

Well, some of that we own responsibility for. Who is going to inform them and help them make informed decisions with regard to laws or otherwise. Having said that, I also would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge there have been a lot of good faith efforts where folks have tried to share information, and it's just being willfully ignored.

This politicization of policing has, I think, reached a level of toxicity. Unquestionably. It is doing far, far more harm than it is good. That has to be righted. There needs to be, we need to find a way that we can create. Some separation for chiefs, for leaders, sheriffs, to be somewhat insulated from misguided efforts so that we can do the right things for the right reasons. I think there's an impediment to that right now, but the downward spiral that we find ourselves in right now is, is consequential.

Again, as I say, when you just look at crime, you look at recruitment, you look at retention, all of those are a direct result of some of these societal influences. Politics, bad laws being passed, the punitive approach to this, the criticism that's in many cases unfounded, but no effort to correct, is having a compounding effect on where we are with policing. And it's going to take a herculean effort to reverse what really right now is almost a tsunami of change, not necessarily for the better with the profession, but it, as Don mentioned, is kind of a complex answer.

I mean, it's not just chief standing up and saying something or sheriffs. It's a multiple pronged approach. I think the media bears tremendous responsibility for much of the false information that is shared, and they're not called on that, and they need to be because as the, you know, the fourth tier of our government system, you know, you talked about the separation of powers between judiciary, executive, legislative, et cetera.

You know, they used to always argue or say that the press is the fourth to hold everybody accountable. Well, originally that was, in fact the case, but it was under the premise that people would be honorable and truthful.

Well, that isn't the case. You have a problem. And I would submit that in many cases, the media is not fulfilling their responsibility of being objective in the sharing of information for people to make informed decisions. So until we can correct that, I think we're going to be swimming upstream as well.

But having said that, you know, in the end, the best that we can do and what we're trying to do is stay active, share objective information, continue to encourage people, despite the pressures of not having that introspective encouragement, to engage in it anyway and have the courage to act on it, because there is a lot of incentive right now where the less is more in law enforcement, the less I do, the less likely I am to find myself in a situation that I have to explain and or defend that is not serving anyone well, not the profession, not the public.

And so we'll have to continue to really try and get people's compasses realigned and encourage them to do the right things for the right reasons. And that isn't always easy. But we're not in this for the easy way out. We're in it to do the right thing, and that is continue to fight the good fight.

Jon Becker: One of the things that I think is necessary for that, though, is courage. Right? It takes a courageous approach, and change comes from swimming upstream. Right? And, you know, recently not, you know, not that long ago, the NTOA issued a policy statement about no-knock warrants that was received in some sectors with a shrug and, oh, yeah, I. And in others with a violent, you know, you got to be kidding me. Reaction. Talk to me about one, what, what the policy statement said and why you chose to engage that fight right now.

Thor Eells: Well, the current circumstances was the trigger for why we chose to get back out there, but this time to elevate the directness of the message. So it was sort of an iteration where we had best practices and now we had standards. The same type of elevation in. We have been discouraging dynamic entry, which was the inexplicit association with no knock. They were attached at the hip through a course of evolution over a number of years from when this really became kind of a primary tactic in the eighties, the war on drugs, to current day scenarios.

And we looked at that, and historically, you know, going back literally to the 1980s, Mike Hillman, in that era of people were telling people, hey, no knocks aren't for every single mission. Dynamic entry is not for every single mission. So it wasn't nothing new in terms of our position, but we went back and we looked and said, okay, for years we've been teaching decision making based upon our priorities of life. Hostages, innocent citizens, law enforcement, suspects, and really shouldn't be on the chart.

But in some cases, people have applied evidence to sort of de emphasize or at least better clarify evidence is at the bottom. Evidence is the least of your considerations. You should not for any reason whatsoever, be in unnecessarily endangering these human life because you want to get evidence.

And so obviously, a number of high profile incidents surrounding the quote unquote no knock prompted us to go back and take a hard look at where do we stand on this and why, and what have we been teaching so that we're not speaking out of both sides of our mouth, so to speak. And in looking at what we realized is what has transpired over a period of time. Is this misunderstanding in why we serve warrants and what the mission objective is relative to what your safety priorities are? And they were being misapplied if you really looked at the mission objective.

So that's the purpose of the warrant and why you're there relative to the safety that is there. We could not with good conscience support no knock warrants. I mean, there were already the legal exceptions that allowed you to forego a knock and announce, if necessary, based on exigency that was occurring.

And the other tactics that have become available to teams over time that are tested made more sense. The primary premise under no knock is that you're hoping through the utilization of that no knock exception, that you're able to achieve surprise.

And then second component sometimes is speed. Although I would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that there are teams that have been using no knock simply to forego the knock and announce requirement. But they're not necessarily making entry. But the real foundation for the no knock is, well, we're hoping that it allows us some surprise, some opportunity for some movement, for some sort of tactical utilization that we achieve surprise.

We're either better positioned or these types of things. Well, hope is not a tactic. And to hang our hat on that is doing a disservice to the men and women doing a very dangerous job. And some would maybe counter, well, without that, it's dangerous.

Well, I'm not going to say that they're all wrong, but it begs the question again, when you look at the analysis and how teams throughout this country, very experienced, very tenured, very busy teams, have been able to accomplish the exact same kind of missions and never use a no knock versus those that are doing them as a matter of routine.

I mean, there's an agency that was using a no knock warrant to retrieve a pit bull puppy that had been taken in a theft slash robbery. You know, that's why we felt we have a responsibility for the good of the profession as a whole. To say that no knock warrants really have sort of outlived their usefulness, in a sense for the safety of all involved.

Jon Becker: So it's, you know, these things, these concepts tend to get conflated together, right? A no knock exception is a legal concept on a warrant that says you do not have to provide knock in notice before making entry, right? Because the constitution requires knock and notice and obviously requires a search warrant to enter somebody's home requires knock and notice as part of that search warrant, unless there is a specific exception granted by the judge, who is the only one that can say that.

But then beyond that legal concept, there's also a tactical question or a tactics question of are you going to knock and wait? And if you knock and wait, then what are you doing next? You see all over the country multiple strategies being employed there.

Some are give knock a notice and don't enter, just contain and call out. You see limited penetration where they are doing knock and notice and breaking down the door, but then withdrawing and waiting and trying to engage the homeowner in a conversation, again with Nye to moving out or true dynamic entry, whether you knock and notice or you don't knock and notice, whether it's no knock or, or knock and notice, dynamic tactics of entering the building rapidly, clearing the house quickly.

And I think that one of the things that you see the media currently conflating is those two concepts. Breonna Taylor had a no knock warrant, but they used dynamic tactics after providing knock and notice. And so is the NTOA's position directed towards the use of no knock warrants or is it directed towards dynamic tactics for search warrants?

Thor Eells: That's a great question. And really what we're wanting to discourage is that entry component, because with the utilization of the no knock frequently then coupled with the dynamic tactics, is this is the part that's counter to what we instructed is you are taking a situation where we are the conduit for compressing time and opportunity for decision making. That's counter to our instruction. It's counter to what we teach is why would we want to compress time both for suspects to make decision making on what their activities are going to be as well as us?

So now we have to assess more under a compressed timeframe that we can created. And now the consequences are in the current climate that we work, if we make a mistake, it isn't. And you alluded to this earlier when you're talking, we now live in a climate where we are criminalizing mistakes. When I was a young officer, some of the mistakes that I made, if I were to make today, I could very well be indicted and criminally charged for.

Jon Becker: Oh, for sure.

Thor Eells: So that has changed and we have a responsibility say, well, why create that circumstance? Why put yourself in those positions? I mean, if you, you know, we're going to speak very bluntly here. You look at the incident that generated a lot of national attention around no Knox other than Breonna was the incident that took place in Minneapolis.

Now, by the letter of the law, what the Minneapolis Police Department SWAT team did there was absolutely legal. They followed all the statutory requirements that the state required with regard to the acquisition of the warrant, the manner in which the warrant was served, those things. And yet you look at then what was the fallout of that? And I'm not passing any judgment on that. I'm just simply saying, you know, you look at what took place on a national level and what it resulted in in many states prohibiting any kind of no knock warrant, their legislators reacted immediately.

So it's another example of a national issue that, you know, originally, ten years ago that would have been a local issue, but everything receives national attention now, and there's often national responses to that. And so we felt that we had this responsibility to differentiate.

A no knock exception is exactly that. It is a legal exception versus a tactic of dynamic movement. And where somewhere along the line, those two became one in the same. If you said no knock people's minds. That meant, you know, people are making entry, their hair's on fire, we're going from front to back in the least amount of time, that type of thing.

But the one thing that I think is also not frequently stressed is there is a knock and an ounce requirement, but there's actually a third leg to that stool, which is wait a reasonable period of time. So not only do you need a knock and announce, the stipulations are that you await a reasonable period of time. Reasonable period of time, obviously being somewhat subjective, based on the time of day that it's being served, the, you know, sides of the structure that it's being served at, all those other types of things.

But timeliness of your waiting is weighted. And many agencies have expressed to us, well, we don't make entry, but we use the no knock so that there's no risk of having to face suppression hearings on did we wait a reasonable period of time to do X, Y and Z? We don't have to answer to did we knock and announce? Well, yeah, we did.

But, you know, you look at Breonna Taylor, one of the contested topics there was, did they knock and announce? Did they announce themselves in a way that could be understood, that type of thing? Well, some agents are saying, well, by having the no knock exception, we don't even have to deal with that. We understand that, and we're not disavowing that. That could be helpful.

What we're really taking a hard stand on is that the entry movement there is fraught with high risk and relative to the safety priorities that we have been for decades teaching, that far outweighs this mission objective of what the warrant's there for.

Jon Becker: It's funny, because if you listen to most SWAT teams talk about the mission of a SWAT team, it is to slow the event down, give the guy time to make a good decision, negotiate, try and slow everything down. But then that same team will turn around and argue that, you know, you have to use dynamic tactics on warrants, so you have speed, surprise and violence of action.

And I interviewed Phil Hanson, who's one of your board members and one of our joint mentors for, you know, many years. And Phil, I asked him about the origin of those tactics because Phil was around when that all started. And he said, you know, the thing is, it all started with hostage rescue. All of our training was rooted in hostage rescue, which is, you know, speed and surprise and violence of action really matters in hostage rescue. You have to get there quickly. And he said, so that was what we built the team's tactics around, and then we just applied that to dynamic, you know, to search warrants.

And he said, at some point, we realized that we were compressing time in a way that wasn't to our advantage. If the goal is to use time to your advantage, it was not working. I think Sid Heal put it best years ago. He and I had a discussion about it, and he said, you know, the problem with. With dynamic search warrants is you're taking a guy who has made so many bad life decisions that when he had time to think about it, that the sheriff is knocking down his door with a SWAT team, and now you're going to give him 30 seconds to make a decision that may not yield the right decision. And, you know, it's, I think this tension is an interesting question that I'm not sure what the right resolution is. Don, what do you think?

Don Kester: Well, I think this points out one of the maybe failings historically of law enforcement is to truly understand the definition of the terminology that we use when people talk about speed, surprise, and violence of action, which we don't condone the use of that term. I haven't for years, and hopefully people aren't using that anymore.

But if we look at the definition of violence of action, it basically is an unrestricted use of force. It's a military term. I don't know of any law enforcement agency or officer in the United States that is allowed to operate under those circumstances. None of us, even in a hostage rescue, violence of action, by definition, doesn't apply to civilian law enforcement in the United States.

So we really have to do a better job of understanding the definitions of the terminology we use, and we're starting to do that. I want to go back to your previous question, because it was a great question about, are we trying to address the tactics associated historically with no knock warrants, or is it the use of the no knock warrant? And Thor hit it all on the head. But I will say it does go beyond that. And what I mean by that is we at the NTOA do strongly feel that anything that is accomplished with the use of a no knock warrant can be accomplished safely and effectively with the use of a knock and announce warrant.

And so, while, like Thor mentioned, we do acknowledge that there are teams that use a knock, a no knock, but they're not making that immediate entry. We understand that. We get that. We understand their philosophy. However, a counter to that is that we can still accomplish everything using the knock and announce. So is it worth it for us to put ourselves in the situation to have to deal with the whole no knock issue whatsoever.

And I say that we know we can do it with a knock and announce piece of paper because thousands of teams throughout the United States have been doing it since their inception. There are teams that were created in the 1970s, extremely active teams, that have never served a no knock warrant. And they do. They apply, they apply the safety priorities and the tactics and they do great.

And there are teams that serve hundreds of warrants a year, some of the biggest teams in America, and they have not done no knock warrants for 30 years. The vast majority of SWAT teams in America do not conduct no knock warrants based on anecdotal evidence conversations.

Jon Becker: Now, when you're saying that, you mean using the no knock exception or using dynamic tactics.

Don Kester: Using the no knock exception even.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Don Kester: And so now people, of course, are going to say, well, where's the numbers? Those numbers don't exist. What we do find, though, first of all, I want to just emphasize that the feedback when that position paper was put out by the n, two, a, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive from law enforcement. In fact, the general response was, two general responses.

One was, why are you guys putting this out? Doesn't everybody know this? And number two was, it's about time you guys pushed this issue and finally took a stand on it. So the overall reaction, even from state associations, was extremely positive. Am I going to say every agency, every SWAT operator and every association completely was on board? No, that, that absolutely is not the case. But it's very regional.

And in fact, some of those I can give you, I won't mention areas and names, but a couple regions where they historically do serve no knock warrants. And they had a little bit of an issue when this position paper came out, have completely changed their tune. Now for a variety of reasons.

One, they've been educated and trained because that's one of the challenges we have seen is teams that really, or personnel that really fight this issue, and they don't want to sit and have a discussion about the no knock, you know, that conversation. They've never done it any other way. They don't know how you accomplish what you accomplish with a knock and announce warrant. Yet hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of warrants have been conducted by SWAT teams using knock and announce warrants, and very safely, very soundly.

And so we've seen a huge education boom on that issue. And that's been good to see. We're proud of that. We're happy with that. We are more than willing to have those discussions with anybody. We understand, you know, we're not a governing body, but we felt it was time to take that stance, to, again, try to improve things. Don't set ourselves up for failure. Don't set our people up for failure.

And let's take the whole no knock thing out of the equation, because we can do everything we're doing with a no knock. We can do with a knock and announce. And now we've dealt with this issue and it goes away.

Jon Becker: So what about the argument? And I've heard, you know, people that were opposed to the paper and came back and argued it, their argument is, you know, Breonna Taylor's a perfect example of what happens when you knock a notice and then enter with dynamic tactics. Right? They knock notice. They had time to get out of bed, arm themselves, and then shoot Jonathan Mattingly when he made entry. So, you know, would you not have been better off in that case with a no knock execution and a dynamic execution? What are your thoughts on that argument?

Don Kester: Well, I'll speak and say that I don't support that argument. Could it have happened? Yeah, and I don't discount it either, but I would much rather them get up, arm themselves, and come to wherever they want to come to. And if they are going to fire around, I would rather not be in the house when that's happening. In certainly most situations, it also comes down to what resources are being used. It comes down to training, comes down to education, experience, comes down to who is doing the mission.

And I'm not worried about, personally, I'm not so worried about what people are doing inside a house when I go serve that warrant. If I'm going to do the knock and announce, I'm going to breach the door. When I decide to breach the door, I'm going to wait as long as I decide to wait. And it might be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, it might be 45 seconds. Every situation is different, but we definitely want to take all of that into consideration.

But we would rather engage all of those folks from outside the house. Anything can happen on any mission at any time. We understand that there's no perfect solution to this, and we're not saying there's a perfect solution. Are people going to get in shootings with knock and announce? Absolutely.

But we're in a much more defensible position, generally, physically, from a safety perspective, and legally, and from a societal perspective. In that public perception. It's a very big, complex picture. We're trying to put teams in the most defensible position they can possibly be in. That includes safety, physical safety, legal and public perception.

Taking out, knowing that we can accomplish the same mission very safely without the use of a no knock warrant, while at the same time we're taking out the legal issues and we're taking out the public perception issues, is a win, win-win for everybody.

Thor Eells: And one other thing that I might add to that is that our approach to the no knock component of this and what we're trying to do is really have teams and operators actively engage in risk management. So when the mission is presented, immediately begin looking at what is our mission objective. How does that correlate to the safety priorities with regard to the manner in which we choose to accomplish the mission objective?

So if we're given the warrant, and our primary mission objective is to secure the residents for the purpose of detectives being able to find evidence, paper evidence, money, receipts, records, things of that nature, you understand that that mission objective with regard to the safety priorities is at the very bottom. We're not going to unnecessarily endanger the lives of those above it.

And so how do you achieve that? You begin to consider your warrant service options, take down away knock and announce with a breach and no entry, limited penetration, contain and call out the all these options that are available, and you engage in the risk mitigation. You know, if we do this, what are the potential positives, what are the negatives? And you eventually arrive at your course of action, where through that process, you have mitigated risk.

To the degree that we can control, we fully understand we don't control suspect behavior, things of that nature, and we appreciate that. But there are things that are within our control that we can mitigate risk based upon the safety priorities, the priorities of life relative to mission objective. And that's where, as I mentioned earlier, we frequently find that mission objective is superseding the safety of the operators, the public, etcetera. And that's when we find ourselves on the receiving end of the criticism that is currently being discussed.

Jon Becker: Well, and I think it's also where you find yourself in the position of trading an officer's life for a bag of dope.

Thor Eells: Absolutely. And when you ask relative, you know, law enforcement practitioners, how much is one of your detectives lives worth? Or an officer, deputy or otherwise, they'll say, well, there's nothing out there in the world that is worth their life. And then you showcase these examples of, well, why are we doing this then? I mean, and there's this always this pregnant pause where you sort of catch them off guard as to. Well, yeah, I guess that is sort of difficult to explain.

So, you know, I just want to underscore that, you know, our position on this is relative to, we want to encourage people to be actively participating in risk mitigation to the fullest extent possible for their own safety, for the safety of their teammates, for the public, because that is what we absolutely need.

Jon Becker: I think that's a really good place for us to stop. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today!

Thor Eells: Thank you! We greatly appreciate the opportunity!

Don Kester: Thank you, Jon!

Episode 10 – Dana Vilander: Tactical Medicine and Ropes Work in Modern Tactical Teams

Jon Becker: 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!

My guest today is Dana Vilander. Dana spent 32 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, working 26 of those years in the elite Special Enforcement Bureau, or SEB, first as a K9 for four years, then as a SWAT operator for four years, and finally as a tactical medic with emergency services division for 18 years.

Because of his unique experiences and very broad skillset, Dana has trained with and provided training to some of the most elite military and law enforcement units in the world, working in tactical combat casualty care, as well as rural operations, vertical access and rope, and high angle rescue work.

Dana, thanks so much for joining me today on The Debrief!

Dana Vilander: Thanks for having me, Jon!

Jon Becker: First, let's kind of walk through your career path because it's kind of a unique one. You've worked kind of both sides of the tactical world. So why don't we go back to the beginning?

Dana Vilander: Oh, to the very beginning, yeah. Okay, well, that's a good one. In college, I actually met a PJ who just got. Now, this is in the late seventies, and we discussed it and it really fascinated me what PJ's were doing at that time. I don't know if he was in Vietnam or not, but he inspired me to delve into it. And when I went to the recruiter's office, it wasn't the pathway that they have today where they have a pipeline to prepare you for the testing and stuff like that. So that part of it didn't appeal to me, but it was always in the back of my mind.

So in 1982, I enlisted in the Air Force reserve as a security policeman. And what's interesting is in that unit was an LA sheriff's deputy. There were a number of deputies and police officers that were in the unit. And that deputy at the time just happened to be Jack Ewell.

Jon Becker: Oh, man!

Dana Vilander: So that's where we met. Was in the air force reserve back about 1982/83.

Jon Becker: It's like saying, yeah, I met this guy named Babe Ruth, and he's like, hey, you want to hit baseballs?

Dana Vilander: Yeah. So he encouraged me to apply to the sheriff's department set me up on a ride along in Firestone park with Vic Rodriguez and his partner. I believe it was John Hogue, who died a few months after that in a shooting. But I was really happy. I wanted to do that. So chose the sheriff's department. I applied to LAPD, Long Beach PD, Sheriff's department, all at the same time. The sheriffs picked me up first, and I'm glad they did. I had a blessed career while working patrol. Had some interaction with the special enforcement Bureau, but not a lot.

But I knew that was where I wanted to go because when I initially came on the department, they had a unit called the emergency Services detail, which was essentially a civilian equivalent of the PJ's. So I was in the reserves until 1990. May of 1990, I tested for SEB itself, SED for the SWAT side, and I was encouraged to try out for canine as well. So I tried out for K9 during that time. Saddam Hussein invaded Karoit in August of 1990. And if I had still been in the reserves, I probably wouldn't have got to the special enforcement Bureau.

So it was kind of fortuitous that I got out in May because the unit did go to Kuwait. And K9 picked me up in January 91 and went through SWAT school, got the K9, had countless operations like you do as a K9 handler. And some years, it was about four years, I went over to the SED. So the SWAT side. John Ajay, who passed in 1998, he and I did a body swap. He wanted to come over K9. I wanted to go to SWAT. That was one of my goals, was to go to SWAT and worked my way up through the teams. I was actively involved in the sniper program, entry team member.

And in 1998, I tested again for the emergency services detail, or ESD, and was chosen to go there. So in 1998, went through paramedic school, which is the first thing you have to do. And from there, mountain rescue training and then dive training and spent the next 18 years there. Hoist operator, crew chief on air rescue five, and search and rescue, medic, recovery diver, SWAT medic.

Jon Becker: So talk – maybe for those that don't know, La sheriff's ESD. Kind of give us a thumbnail sketch of the unit of.

Dana Vilander: So when I got there, it was an 18 man unit. You had three sergeants, 15 deputies, deputy paramedics. So everybody had to go to paramedic school. And you had all this training and experience. And at the time, we would have five guys on a shift, basically. So you had two in air five working as helicopter rescue medics.

And then the other guys were on the ground driving Angeles crest, Azusa Canyon to Hunga Canyon. You know, you were up in the mountains and if a SWAT activation happened, then you just drive out of the mountains to wherever the SWAT activation was. And so you worked intimately with the volunteer search and rescue teams for LA county and you pretty much were busy all the time. They had a unique schedule. It was a 72 hours on schedule, three days on, six days off.

And I can remember the longest shift I had was 70 hours of being awake for 70 hours, just going from call to call to call, which is great.

Jon Becker: So I think one of the things that's unique about ESD is it's got this multi mission profile. Right? Like, how do those missions silo out? Give me like the kind of, you know, they've got a rescue, obviously, search and rescue mission. What else does ESD do?

Dana Vilander: Well, the tactical medics on every SWAT operation and SWAT operations basically were the king. So if you were – Well, if you're actively involved in a search and rescue mission, say on the ground, they would just have to call guys in to cover the SWAT mission. But if you were just out patrolling, like I said, on Ansar's crest or something like that, and a SWAT mission came in, you'd have to respond to the SWAT call.

And that was pretty much the primary function because when I first got there, if you think about warrant services and some of the barricades where the entry team wants to pull the front door, the front hardened door off the house, it was ESD that would do that. We had the only truck that had a huge boat cleat on the front of the truck and somebody would go up with the big fish hook like this, with the cables attached and hook them to the front door.

And then we would tie it off real fast and then drive back and pull the door off the house. And that was one of our missions for barricades. But more particularly on the warrants, the early morning warrants, that was a real common thing we were used for. And then we're there, obviously, as medics.

Jon Becker: But then there's also a dive component to ESD. Right?

Dana Vilander: Right. So the history of ESD. Let me do that real quick. So the special enforcement bureau or the special enforcement details started in 1958. It was basically like a saturation patrol team of guys. You had to be over 6ft to be in the unit at the time. So real policemen. So it was a gun squad? Yeah, pretty much.

So in 1966, Sheriff pitcher started, created the emergency services detail. And the job was to have active duty deputies up in the mountains on search and rescue missions. And the unit with Frank Waldron was the sergeant and the, basically the founder of the unit. They picked up the recovery diving.

So anybody that goes missing, any object evidence, anything like that, planes in the ocean, if they need to be recovered, it was ESD's job to dive on those things. So typically it was in lakes, pitch black water, no visibility whatsoever for evidence and dead bodies.

Jon Becker: Feeling your way around.

Dana Vilander: Feeling your way around. Exactly. But we would also be out at Catalina, around Catalina island, and then also around San Clemente island. So San Clemente island is actually a piece of LA county and the waters around it. You know, you have a lot of active scuba divers, fishermen, things like that. So if a scuba diver went missing or died off of San Clemente Island, ESD would do the scuba dive death investigation of that, which they still do today. They do all the dive accidents or dive death investigations out of the special ESD.

Jon Becker: So, I mean, that's a pretty, especially for a law enforcement unit, that's a pretty broad skill set. You've got a dive component, you've got, you know, ropes and high angle rescue combined with tactical, you know, combat casualty care.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: All in, all in one unit.

Dana Vilander: Right. So it does take a lot, but luckily, I mean, retraining, constant training, but luckily, like with, let's just say, air rescue five, you're using all of those skills on an almost daily basis. When you, when you load the helicopter, you have your dive gear, you have your medic gear, you have your rope rescue gear, and you have your SWAT gear that all goes in the helicopter and goes with you wherever you go.

The only thing you don't have is tanks because tanks are rather heavy, you know, and so they. But those are staged around the county. So if a dive came up with the operation, you'd change into your wetsuit while flying to the, to pick up your tanks or flying to the dive scene and just make it happen like that.

Jon Becker: So a big component of ESD is kind of the tactical medic thing early in your career. Talk to me about what that was like. What was the, you know, at some point, TCCC becomes a thing, right? Prior to that, what was the strategy?

Dana Vilander: That's a good question, because there's a real good history of SEB in a book. I don't know if you've seen it by John Coleman, but the history of that is there. And basically, in the ESD were more like first aiders than anything. Else. They started going to paramedic school in the early seventies when La county initiated the first paramedic institute. So they were getting the paramedic training, but still they were doing basic, more like basic first aid. They could do IV's and things like that.

So when they integrated with sed in, I want to say it was 1970 to 71, they were still kind of in a first aid mode. Roll into the eighties. There's a lot of doctors around the country who were interested in the tactical world, and rich Carmona was one.

Jon Becker: Rich Carmona, eventually surgeon General Rich Carmona.

Dana Vilander: Yes, that rich Carmona out of Pima County, Arizona. He has an interesting career. So the development of, and they called it TEMS, or tactical emergency medical skills at the time was still more like first aid. You could do your paramedic skills, but the tactical component really hadn't gotten hold yet. So fast forward to 1996. I'm sorry. So, 1989, NTOA and Rich Carmona and SEB, they hosted the first actual NTOA Tems course in the country.

And then next year, it was held in Pima county in 1990. So those are kind of the beginnings right there. Through the early nineties into about the time I came into the unit, they started a tactical EMT program, but it was still kind of a medic, first aid kind of a course.

Jon Becker: Yeah, not a lot of it. It's MT.

Dana Vilander: We're not moving. We're not there. To the TCCC yet. Yeah, TCCC, as a concept started in 1996 with…

Jon Becker: Black Hawk down.

Dana Vilander: Well, 1993 was Black Hawk down, Battle of the Red Sea, and 18 dead and 73 wounded. And Frank Butler, John Hagman. And then there was another doctor out of the military with the last name of Butler. They wrote this paper, and what they did was they did a retrospective studies back to World War 2, Korea. What are the patterns of injury? What are the patterns of preventable death?

And when they looked at what happened in Mogadishu, they're saying that there was a correlation there so that you could die from getting shot in an extremity within two to three minutes if nothing is done for it. And my first EMT class back in 1978 at college, tourniquets were forbidden. You never put it. If you put a tourniquet on that limb, you're gonna lose that limb.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dana Vilander: So you just…

Jon Becker: Yeah, I remember that.

Dana Vilander: You just didn't put a tourniquet on. And what these doctors advocated was tourniquets, pressure dressings, wound packing, things that were not in the normal world like you see today. We'll stop the bleed. So it was revolutionary in 1996. There was only one military unit that actually adopted it back then, and that was when Stanley McChrystal was the colonel. The regiment commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment instituted it. They have a great program to this day, but it was still slow to pick up in the rest of the military. In the civilian world, there was still no knowledge of this other than the fact, unless you saw the paper itself, the tactical.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, nobody carried tourniquets. No ambulances, didn't have tourniquets. It was not a thing. Right? And when you say preventable death, if my understanding is correct, what you mean is if we had had basic life saving capability, that person survives, for instance, they bleed out from an injury that you could stop the bleeding with.

Dana Vilander: Right. So if you want to look back at some of the old first aid training manuals from EMT classes, from colleges, whatever it is, when they're talking about. What's the common acronym for first aid?

Jon Becker: ABCs.

Dana Vilander: ABCs, right. Airway, breathing, circulation. Well, in those manuals, if you actually go back and look at it, it will say in there, and by the way, if the person is bleeding severely, stop the bleeding first before you address anything else. But that was completely glossed over when.

Jon Becker: It was like, oh, put a little pressure on it.

Dana Vilander: Oh, yeah, elevation.

Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Elevate it and put pressure on it. He's missing a foot. Lots of pressure.

Dana Vilander: So that was what they did was they brought this to light, that this was good. Let's go up a few years. 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan. Even the military special units didn't really follow TCCC at that point. Early on getting into Iraq, 2003, 2004, it still wasn't being taught pretty much to most of the medical community within the military. Special operations started to get that training and they started to get things like live tissue training to do it.

But what was the problem with all of the training that the military is getting and these doctors identified, that was the training. If you took advanced trauma life support, say, as a course, as a doctor, as a medic, whatever you went to advance, it's based on being in a hospital. And you have every resource in the world when you're a hospital.

But when you're on a target house, on a SWAT operation, or on a military operation, you could be hundreds of miles away from something. Or even in La county, if you're in the high desert, you could be 60 miles from a trauma center. And what do you have as your medical supplies? Usually it's going to be in a backpack or even smaller if you're a team without, say, a dedicated medicine, you may have an individual first aid kit.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but even, I mean, IFACs even was not a thing.

Dana Vilander: Not a thing. Right.

Jon Becker: Like people might have a boo boo kit. Yeah, but they weren't carrying.

Dana Vilander: Yeah. Bandaids, some gauze, Cobans, maybe ace wraps, something like that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but they weren't carrying IFACS.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: Or tourniquets or compression bandages or any of the stuff that now we regard as kind of de rigueur.

Dana Vilander: Right. When I got to ESD in 1998, I was given a Harper pack is a back pack, and you filled it up basically with the gauze, the wraps, the things like that. Not even chest seals at the time. You'd have Vaseline gauze to create a three sided occlusive dressing if you had a chest injury or abdominal evisceration or something like that. So that came later.

1998, when I got there, aeromedic school, like I said, dive school, mountain rescue school, got on the helicopter, started flying, and then it was about that time we started to see a transition in the guys from the unit, the older guys that were retiring, and then more guys were coming in with Iraq and Afghanistan. You started to see how the tourniquet started to take hold because they had to, because all the blast injuries that were happening in Iraq, I mean, it was pretty much a lot of catastrophic injuries. And the early tourniquets that they had was the Cat tourniquet by North American rescue about 2004, Tachymeter Solutions Ross Johnson developed. He was a special forces medic, developed the soft tea.

Jon Becker: Soft tea, yeah.

Dana Vilander: And that was, those were basically the two basic tourniquets. Two, go to tourniquets on the market at the time, and there were others out there. You had the NATO tourniquet. You had different people doing different things. But those are the two basic tourniquets. I was fortunate enough in 2000 to be flying air five when two PJ's from a special tactics squadron on the east coast came out to fly on air five with us. And I maintained contact with one of them, Mike. And through the years, he guided me towards military courses.

And one of them that he guided to me is John Hagman, one of the writers of the teacher proceed paper. His company, Deployment Medicine International. They were doing live tissue training for the military, and I was lucky enough to get into one of those courses. And that's when I saw the tourniquets that were out there.

And when you're working on something that's bloody. You have dirt and everything else going on. It makes a big difference when you're trying to turn, as opposed to you and I sitting here and applying a tourniquet to your arm or to your leg. With live tissue training, there's real blood, there's real dirt, there's a lot of things going on. And so you can see how these tools work in that environment.

Jon Becker: So when is okay. So tourniquets start to come in. TCCC begins to really take hold of the military.

Dana Vilander: In the military, yes.

Jon Becker: And at what point is the March acronym developed? Is that as part of the initial launch of TCCC?

Dana Vilander: March was. Yes, MAR. Originally it was MAR, and then CH came later, but it was, yeah. Massive hemorrhage, airways and then respirations or breathing. So it wasn't ABC reversed because the C in March is still circulation, but you're dealing with shock, and you're dealing with any additional injuries that you may come across. But massive hemorrhage was the big one. Like you said, if your foot's missing and you've got blood squirting out, you need to stop it. And direct pressure and even putting a constricting band isn't going to work. You need a tourniquet that you have to stop the bleeding.

Jon Becker: When did we figure out that? Because I remember as a kid, my brother was hit on his motorcycle when he was really young, had a compound fracture of his femur, would have bled out, severed femoral artery, and a med student from USC came by and improvised a tourniquet and shut the bleeding off.

And I remember the discussion about, they're gonna cut his leg off and it's gonna cost him his leg. And, you know, when did we figure out that that was just not true?

Dana Vilander: It was the data coming out of the war, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Also, the Israelis had experience with tourniquets, and they found that you could safely have a tourniquet on for two to 4 hours, was the timeframe. The Israelis actually had an experience with a guy having a tourniquet on for 11 hours with no nerve damage, no loss in sensation, anything like that.

So it was that experience at the military being the driver of this program in the beginning, that that's where they said, yeah, these are safe. And it was about 2005, 2006, ESD. We continue to funnel guys into these live tissue courses.

So those concepts came with us, and we started teaching, actually, a TCCC program in about 2006. I want to say right before the NTOA conference in LA, we were already going down that path, and we started to do some. Just some kind of familiarization classes out at patrol stations about the march algorithm and doing things. And you would hear patrol guys would come up and say, why aren't they teaching this to us in the academy? So that was back then, which they do now, probably nationwide, they're doing that.

Jon Becker: I think so. I think most places now we've kind of developed that people are carrying IFACs. If there is a silver lining to the Afghan and Iraq wars, it is the massive expansion of TCCC knowledge and understanding of hemorrhage control. And the devices that work, the devices that don't work, you know, they were obviously born of tragedy. But there are a lot of police officers that are alive today because TCCC was pushed down.

Dana Vilander: Absolutely, absolutely. Police officers, citizens, and then even suspects. So the fact that it's out in the police community, it's great for everybody. There's that video of an Oklahoma officer that was shot just recently, making contact with a guy this close. When the suspect pulls out a gun and starts shooting at him, he gets hit in the leg. He follows the TCCC principles. He runs the COVID. There's a vehicle there. While he's still engaging the guy as the suspect.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I remember this one.

Dana Vilander: Did you see that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great one. And then he comes back out to see where the suspect is. The guy's running away. So he pulls his tourniquet out and applies it to his leg, continuing to communicate on the radio. Did a fantastic job.

Jon Becker: Yeah, he really did.

Dana Vilander: And that's what you see. You look at LAPD saving their own, also putting him on citizens downtown when they were having some of the riots and things like that. A police officer. Yeah, it's for him. But in that moment, you see a lot of police officers will apply it to the citizens or the suspects.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, you see suspects that are surviving, that have been, you know, engaging police and getting shot, and the team is rescuing the guy with their own medical gear. You know, it strikes me that it's kind of good all the way around.

From your experience, how do we maintain this? Like, it's – We've had this big spike, and the 35 years I've done this, you'll see things come into favor, and then you see them go out of favor, and, you know, it's like we build a capability, and then it gradually attrition takes it down and we go, oh, my God, we have to do this. We start over again. If you're an agency, how do you maintain this capability of TCCC, you think?

Dana Vilander: That's a good question. It takes somebody at the agency, whether it's an appointed person or somebody takes it on themselves, which you see that a lot of agencies, a guy just takes on a project and he owns that project, but they need to have some sort of manager said that the training continues and more importantly, the budget for the equipment. Well, budget for the equipment and the training, because training is money as well.

Jon Becker: Yeah, sure.

Dana Vilander: But definitely on the equipment side. I think as far as state of the art when it comes to the devices and all the techniques and things like that, I think we're probably there for a while, but it's just maintaining that budget so that supplies are replenished. You evaluate your training program and. And then what are you giving the guys in their IFACS, in their first aid kits?

Jon Becker: So let's dissect that a little deeper. So first, starting with the training, what, in your opinion, how many different levels are there of training here? Like, obviously we want first aid training, TCCC training for patrol officers, SWAT teams, probably a little higher level. SWAT medics. How do you dissect that in an agency? Take a middle sized agency, 500 officers. How many different levels of expertise would you try to implement?

Dana Vilander: Oh, I would keep it at maybe just two levels. So, like, for the SWAT team, because SWAT teams train more regularly than I think patrol officers do. So a one to two day program every year for patrol is fine? Well, I wouldn't say fine because I would obviously want it better.

But I think – And on the SWAT side, every quarter, they should have a day at least. You look at the initial training, usually you're talking about, you go through the TCCC program, then you're showing them the tourniquets. Everybody goes to the tourniquets. I think the next phase is that putting them into the training operational mode where they're coming upon casualties and having to deal with them. And SWAT teams are pretty good at doing that, too.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things that we're seeing emerging with a lot of the teams we're working with is kind of a, for lack of a better term, like a three tiered approach where you've got IFACS for individuals, you have a team medic who is carrying a backpack and has other levels of equipment and then kind of a third tier of equipment, which is really mass casualty care. Right. It's throw bags. It's, you know.

Dana Vilander: Right, right.

Jon Becker: What are your thoughts on that?

Dana Vilander: I agree with it. We had bigger backpacks in our armored vehicles. For calls. We would have rope access equipment in our bearcats, and then we would also have the bigger ones for the mass casualty. And it makes sense to have the mass casualty stuff because you are going to be. You look at San Bernardino and as the team makes entry and you have 30 casualties on the floor, you know, what do you do?

And, you know, the companies in ours done a very good job of it. Tac Meds has done a good, I'm sure, safeguard medical. They all have these mass casualty bags where you can just drop a kit as you go, roll a person in the recovery position so they don't die an airway death, but then people coming in will see an IFAC next to them or something like that, or a throw kit that's down on the ground next to the casualty. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I think one of the things that came out of San Bernardino is there are a lot of people that are alive today that would have died had there not been a tactical medic or medics who had the ability to quickly look at somebody and just put them in a recovery position. They're unconscious, they're having a hard time breathing. Just rolled them into a recovery.

Dana Vilander: And that's the thing that should go out, even to patrol, because who's going to be first on scene? A lot of times.

Jon Becker: Almost always.

Dana Vilander: Luckily, at San Bernardino, the teams were training just down the road. So they were on scene like that. On a normal MCI, normal active shooter with multiple people down, it's going to be patrol. Just like the active duty procedures have changed from Columbine, where we're going to wait outside and wait for the SWAT team, to now, if you're a lone officer, you're supposed to go in there and address this guy and eliminate the threat if you can. So that's a quantum leap from where we were 25 years ago with Columbine.

Jon Becker: So, Dana, why don't we start with individual gear? Talk to me about an IFAC. What? What should be in an IFAC.

Dana Vilander: So an IFAC is actually designed for you. It's not for you to take off and use what you have in your kit on somebody else. So it's. It's designed and the commercial kits that are out there. So you'll have, typically, you'll have a tourniquet, you'll have one or two chest seals, preferably two chest seals, which we can talk about.

And then you have a gauze, whether hemostatic gauze or just regular gauze. And then you're going to have some sort of a compression wrap. You could have scissors, you could have gloves. You could have a casualty card in it to make notes if you wanted to. But that's typically what you see in a knife. AC.

Jon Becker: So why don't we walk through the components, starting with a tourniquet? Two major tourniquets are still kind of cat and soft tea. Right?

Dana Vilander: Right. Yeah. There's some really good ones from other ones. Like I said, safeguard medical. Some other companies have all come out with good tourniquets that are all committee on TCCC approved.

Jon Becker: Okay, so is that kind of the industry standard? Like, look for something that's committee on TCCC approved?

Dana Vilander: Yes.

Jon Becker: That's the good housekeeping seal, as it were. Okay, and then what about gauze?

Dana Vilander: Well, back up to tourniquets just for a second. So for a SWAT guy, he should have a tourniquet where somewhere on his plate, carrier, vest, whatever it is, where he can get to it with either hand. Because if he shot in his left arm or shot in his right arm, you have to be able to reach it with either hand. And then in the IFAC, you should probably have a second tourniquet. Cause you could get shot more than once, and you might have to treat yourself that way.

Jon Becker: Yeah, we just actually just embedded into one of our play carriers now. A tourniquet into the bottom of the vest, where it's just at your stomach. It's there all the time, and that's the – I use this for you. What do you think about the idea of locating IFACS and tourniquets and those kinds of things on, especially with SWAT cops putting it someplace that everybody knows where it is on a guy.

Dana Vilander: There's philosophical differences on that. It's something that I think it's a good idea. If everybody has their IFAC in one place, everybody knows where to go to for that. If I come on John, and John has his IFAC on his right shoulder, and I go to look for it down where everybody else has it, you're just delaying care.

Our job is to keep every drop of blood in them. So you're just having that seconds delay if you have to find the guy's IFAC or whether it's in his cargo pocket or whatever it is. I like the idea of having him located the same.

Jon Becker: And does it make sense for a team to use the same IFAC and the same gear? Because, you know, you'll see teams where everybody has the same gear, and you'll see other teams where everybody has individual gear. What are your thoughts on that?

Dana Vilander: They have individual gear because they're having to buy it themselves, and that's an issue. Right? So if you're gonna do something like that, everybody on the team should know what's in each, each person's IFAC, and then you have to pull it out and show them how to use. If you have a different iFAC or a different tourniquet than everybody else, you better show everybody how to do it. Cause you might be unconscious and they have to apply your tourniquet on you.

Jon Becker: And you said a second ago, like, we need to keep every drop of blood in their body. Talk to me about the significance of that.

Dana Vilander: Right. So if you go back to MAR from the original TCCC paper, tourniquets stop the bleeding. The second part of massive hemorrhage that they identified, and they were kind of throwing it out to industry that – If you think about the one ranger that died in the movie, Ranger Smith, the PJ or the SF medic, he's trying to clamp his artery because it was way up high in a pelvic region. Right? Couldn't do it. Couldn't clamp it. And he ends up bleeding out as a result of that.

So what they put out there in the TC paper was, we need a hemostatic agent embedded in the gauze so that it can be packed into a wound. So, blood stopping agent, commercially made by a number of companies now, but it's embedded in the gauze, and you're going to pack the wound just like you would with normal gauze.

Jon Becker: So that's like sea locks. And, you know, there are variety of things.

Dana Vilander: HemCon. Combat gauze.

Jon Becker: Yeah, variety of things. But you're not only packing gauze, you're packing in a clotting agent, basically.

Dana Vilander: Essentially, yes. Depending on what the chemistry is on how it's going to affect the clouds, how it's going to create clouds.

Jon Becker: What is it? Give me more there on that.

Dana Vilander: Yeah, so the one that is from. I'm sorry, Z-Medica, the combat GOS. So originally there was Hemcon or something like HemCon, which is a derivative from seafood. Sea life casings.

Jon Becker: Yeah, like shell.

Dana Vilander: Shellfish, which doesn't have any. It creates a clot at the site. So with combat gauze, what it is, it works on the clotting factor within your body. So it's – I forget the name off the top of my head right now for the agent that they're using, Kaolin. They're kind of a kaolin based agent that they use, and it works on the actual clotting factors. To build a clot at the site.

Jon Becker: To force the body into building the clot.

Dana Vilander: As opposed to creating, say, a plug.

Jon Becker: Got it. And so I've heard conflicting arguments on using hemostatic gauze, that doctors don't like it. It complicates cleanup and all that. And then I've heard the exact opposite, that, no, it doesn't matter. It stops bleeding immediately. That's the right answer.

Dana Vilander: Well, that's a really good thing to bring out, because when you're teaching. Stop the bleed to civilians now, and that's where we're at in society today. This all came from TCCC. But when you're talking to civilians, you say, put anything in that wound that you can possibly put into it. T shirt, a sock, underwear, anything. Dirt, grass. Stuff it in that wound if you have to, if that's all you have available to try to stop the bleeding.

So to say that there's an argument from doctors that a hemostatic agent embedded in gauze is a problem. Yeah.

Jon Becker: So when you're doing that right, when you're shoving gauze, you're shoving a sock, you're shoving whatever. What are you really trying to do?

Dana Vilander: You're trying to get in here so that you're pinching the artery down, packing it as tight as you possibly can to keep it that way, and then you're going to wrap it with a compression wrap to keep it right there.

Jon Becker: Is the goal at that point to cause the blood to clot, or is the goal to both pinch the artery down?

Dana Vilander: Both.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Dana Vilander: Cause you might not be 100% successful in pinching that artery, but you're gonna pack that wound as tight as you can.

Jon Becker: Because, again, we're just trying to retain every bit of blood we possibly can in the body. So going forward with an IFAC tourniquet, some form of gauze.

Dana Vilander: Right. Compression wrap.

Jon Becker: Compression wrap, which is, how are we gonna use a compression wrap, typically?

Dana Vilander: Like an ace wrap or coban or something like that? You're going to bring it round, tight. As tight as you possibly can.

Jon Becker: Again, creating compression. Compression on the wound site. Yeah, got it. So that's an individual first aid kit.

Dana Vilander: Right. I'm sorry we skipped over the chest seals. So when I started to create an occlusive dressing, you had petroleum gauze, and you would use tape to create that three sided occlusive dressing over a hole in the chest. What industry did was they created chest seals using a gel substance, hydrogel kind of a substance that it would stick. If you think about normal first aid tape that you have in the house or the white first aid tape that you have if you're sweaty or if you're a hairy man.

Jon Becker: Doesn't work.

Dana Vilander: It's not going to work. Well, the creation of, through industry of these chest seals, it will stick, and then they all have. Now. So you had a three sided occlusive dressing so that air could escape if it needed to. Now, they all have vents in these chest seals so that all you do is have to put the chest seal over the wound and it should vent on its own.

Jon Becker: And the intent is to maintain the vacuum integrity of the chest.

Dana Vilander: Right. We don't want air coming in. We don't want any more air even exiting an injured lung into the chest cavity that can't escape. But we don't want any air coming in from the outside also.

Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so that's individual first aid kit.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: Let's move up to a team. What do you think the best methodology for a team to carry their gear? Everybody's got an IFAC, I'm assuming to start, and then each of the tactical medics then is going to carry a secondary backpack.

Dana Vilander: Right. Yeah. So when we were doing SWAT operations, warrant service or barricaded suspect or whatever, I had a small pack, but I had four additional tourniquets. I had more hemostatics, more gauze, more chest seals, and then some of the diagnostic stuff that you would need, like a pulse oximeter, things like that.

Jon Becker: So then when we're talking about a mass casualty event and these mass casualty bags, it's basically a series of throw bags. It's a series of little individually packed. What do you see is in those individual throw bags?

Dana Vilander: Tourniquet chest seal, if they can afford it. You don't see chess seals often in those, in those casualty kits. But I would say chest seal, hemostatic if you can afford it. Remember, hemostatic started about the dollar 50 range. So if you're a small, small agency, you know, you put 20 kits together, that's $1,000. What's in your budget?

Jon Becker: Just in hemostatic gauze.

Dana Vilander: Just in hemostatic.

Jon Becker: As opposed to like, z gauze or rolled gauze, which is…

Dana Vilander: Rolled gauze is a dollar and a half. Yeah. So you'll see rolled gauze, usually a space blanket. Try to keep them warm, which is part of the h in March. Chest seal be good. If not a chest seal, they'll have the petroleum gauze in it, also compression wrap.

Jon Becker: Okay. And so the methodology being, if you have a mass casualty. Now you can hand out these throw bags, which then allows one medic to direct bystanders, helpers, people working on themselves. The idea being to scale the medic.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes sense.

Dana Vilander: And a lot of them, you'll see like up to 20 of these throw kits in there.

Jon Becker: What is your recommendation? Like if an agency starting a program or starting a tactical paramedic. Tactical medic program, what's your recommendation as to where they go for training? What do you see as the best resources?

Dana Vilander: There's good training agencies or training companies around the United States. I think one of the best ones, if you looked at it, was strategic operations down in San Diego. They're nonstop teaching the military in TCCC procedures, both out of hospital and in hospital, what they have down there at their location. But they're also into the TECC program, so they're teaching a lot of police fire on the exact same techniques.

Jon Becker: What's the difference between TCCC and TECC?

Dana Vilander: That's a good question. So TCCC is military focused. The word combat, some people, not in the military or not in the SWAT world, thought that might be sound offensive. I think we all know that a gunfight is a gunfight. Combat is combat. But they removed it so that fire departments would be probably more amicable fire departments and others and the general public knowing that you have a TECC, tactical emergency casualty care as opposed to tactical combat.

Jon Becker: So before we wrap this up on TCCC stuff, is there anything else you think that teams should or individual operators should be thinking about or looking at?

Dana Vilander: I think one of the things is have realistic training. Following up on your training question, have realistic training and put your casualties, when you're doing this training in unique positions, and just remember the guidelines are, you know, direct fire, you're return fire, get to cover first, you know, address the gunfight, and then address the casualty when you can. If he can't be taken care of himself.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting! One of the things that you'll see in training is people go, that's unrealistic. That's an unrealistic scenario that a casualty would be stuck on a roof, or it's an unrealistic scenario that a casualty would be stuck behind a bookcase.

And if we've learned anything through our lecture series, and if we've learned anything just through the debriefs we've done through this show, you ask yourself, as the story evolves, could it get worse? Oh, it can't get worse. And then it gets worse, and then it gets worse again. And then it gets worse again.

And it's just, you know, you see these circumstances where it just gets perpetually worse. And the training seems, you know, training seems to fall into these patterns of like, oh, okay, well, Dana's gonna be our test guy. He's in the middle of the room, on the floor and the suspect is already dead.

And, you know, I just did an interview with Buddy Brown from York County, South Carolina. The suspect is under a deck. He shot three guys, he's killed one and he's given up. And he's 30 ft from you. And two of your guys are bleeding you to death. What do you do? And so it's like when you talk about real estate training and you ask Buddy, he said, we never trained for that. We never thought the guy would give up. Now the guy's throwing his gun out, he's hands up.

So now you're holding at him. But are you dealing with him? Are you dealing with your guys? How are you getting the guys out? You know, buddy himself is a big guy. They had a hard time carrying him. They kept dropping him, I think. What would you recommend in those training iterations? What are the things that people need to think about when they're designing a training scenario?

Dana Vilander: Well, first off, I would say every time you do team training, you put casualties into it. The more often you include casualties in your team training. You know, particularly for the part time teams that maybe get once a month or twice a month, every time you do entry training, you should be putting casualties in there because exactly what buddy was saying, you never train for that. If you never train for that scenario, how will you react?

And there's that old saying, you don't rise to the occasion. You revert to your lowest level of training or highest level of training, whichever that way that went. But if you have never even thought about this before, this concept that I could have a casualty with a suspect right here, what am I going to do? And that's what you need to put into your team training. You have to put that in.

The military is really good at doing that, invoking casualties. And through the courses that we have, we do that a lot. So the guys get used to that. Not get used to it from the standpoint of that, you know, if that's one of their friends, you know, they're going to be. They wouldn't be upset about it. But it's – No, it's an immediate action drill.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: That's a really good way to put it. It's an immediate action drill where you've. You have conditioned the team that when this happens, we do this. And, you know, as you said in all the debriefs that I've attended over the years, that's exactly what happens. Everybody defaults to the level of their training. And so I like that idea.

One of the things that you and I have talked about and is kind of a logical extension of where we hear is ropes work, and using ropes work specifically to evac people to move them to do whatever. Why don't we start just with kind of Dana's thumbnail sketch of history of rappelling in SWAT. It all goes back to the SWAT TV show and guys swinging through windows, but give me kind of your take on it. Yeah.

Dana Vilander: So ropes haven't been used a lot in tactical situations other than in the, let's just say, the suicidal jumper type of a situation. But go back in history, everybody's familiar with the princess gate, the iranian embassy, storming by the SAS, going through the windows. And I think that's what everybody's opinion is of rappelling and rope work. When I got to the team, we had to rappel in SWAT school.

And I think just about every SWAT school probably has a repelling segment, but I think it's more of just a hoo ya, more of a confidence drill. Yeah, something like that. And I think they're missing out on seeing the other applications. If your snipers are elevated, you know, how are they getting up there if they – If there's not a ladder, if there's not a stairwell, if they're. If they have to get down in a hurry.

So in addition to rappelling, though, for the. For the ropework side of SWAT, most teams don't. Don't do it. You know, like I said, they have the suicidal jumper considerations where negotiator be out there. And there's. There's very few teams that are actually doing that. I know San Diego is doing that. LAPD does that. ESD handles that at the special enforcement Bureau.

And I'm sure New York, NYPD and I'm sure agencies around the country are doing that. But it's an interesting thing. When you talk about doing a tactical rope access course with teams, and they're from small towns, they say, oh, well, we only have two and three story buildings, so I don't need to worry about that. And if I could just tell a quick story in a conversation with an LAPD officer, was they had a crazy guy on top of a restaurant. He's compliant, but they got to get him down. Fire department won't help him help them because he's a suspect.

Jon Becker: He's a crazy guy.

Dana Vilander: Yeah. So they have to get up there on their own. They get down there on their own. So they use a dumpster to climb up on top of the roof, handcuff the guy, he's compliant, and then they have to get him down, and they kind of drop him to the dumpster, and then he rolls and falls on the ground. Basically. They thought they did a great job until they watched the body camera footage of that.

So the question was, how could we do that? And there's simple, inexpensive tools in the rope world to do stuff like that, like webbing or short pieces of rope, but you have to learn those techniques, too. Going back to the training for the medical side, you have to understand what's potentially out there that you could do, and then you need to see how you can do it. So not what to do, but how you can do things using different pieces of equipment.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think it goes back to the team having as broad a skill set as they possibly can. Right. Like, it's. I think part of the challenge with a modern SWAT team is there's so many different domains of knowledge that are required.

And, you know, you see teams where they try to maintain that knowledge for everybody. You also see teams where they build cadres. And that seems to be kind of the emerging strategy is that Dana's the rope guy, John is the medic guy, and you can take the team to a deeper level. What's your opinion on that?

Dana Vilander: No, I agree with that because are you going to be the drone operator? Are you going to be the aerial drone operator? Are you going to be the ground drone operator? Are you the planner for the hit that you're going to do? Because you could just keep going and going and going. Right?

Are you the weapons instructor for the team and you have all these responsibilities, or if everybody does that, I agree. Having a cadre. Cause they can be specialists then. And for some of these skills, you definitely want specialists to keep everybody on the team safe. And then in the liability side of it, they're protecting the team and liability also.

Jon Becker: Yeah. You know, we're hearing. I'm hearing more and more from teams that they've kind of given up the idea of tactical rappelling, where they're going to do the princess gate, swing down to the window and all of that. And so you'll hear like, well, why do I need ropes? Why do I need repelling? Talk to me about some of the reasons and some of the applications that you see for ropes work in a modern tactical environment.

Dana Vilander: Sure. I mean, again, getting a sniper up into position, that's really common here in LA because they have the academy awards, they have all these things. It's real. Even at Sofi Stadium now with the Rams and the Chargers over there, ESD is up on the rafters all the time. You have protesters that go up there. So not necessarily on the SWAT operational side of it, but that's a specialty that somebody on the department has to have, and it's not going to be the fire you sar guys, particularly if these are suspects.

So the team needs to have that capability for those type of incidents. So if you go to the fifth and main hostage rescue with LAPD, you know, that developed so quickly because the suspect was acting erratically and violently. And then they did the dual explosive breach on that because it happened that fast. And what they would have done, talking to the team, the climbing team leader over there, if they had had the time, they would have sent guys down on ropes, whether it's to breach a window, whether it's to put a diversion outside, throw a drone in, whatever it is.

So there's definitely some uses for it. I think what teams aren't seeing is also that if, let's just say the suspect sets a fire below you, you're two or three stories up, and now you have a fire that goes below. That's to get started by the suspect below you, or they light off the natural gas pipe, and now you got natural gas filling the house and you're two or three stories up. Are you going to run down the stairs or do you want to just go out that window that's right there?

So there are escape techniques that are out there similar to what firemen use and train at on a regular basis. But I think SWAT teams should know that because you just never know what's going to happen below you as well.

Jon Becker: And also, you know, there's the whole. To tie it back into the TCCC conversation, there's also like, if one of your guys gets injured in an elevated position, you've got to get him down.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: Right. Or a suspect, you know, it's. I mean, you're probably a little less concerned with the suspect, but, you know, if. If somebody gets injured in an elevated position and you can't bring fire in, what do you do?

Dana Vilander: Right. Or just think about being on the fourth or fifth floor, one of your guys is down.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Dana Vilander: I mean, are you gonna. It's gonna take a few guys. Cause with equipment and everything else, you're gonna be fairly heavy. But how many, how long will it take you to get the guy down to the ground floor as opposed to breaking out a window, attaching a rope to him? Cause he's got some sort of a rigging belt or something. And then just dropping him to the ground? Not dropping him, but lowering ground, which could be done in about 25 to 30 seconds.

Jon Becker: Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. I think it's trying to articulate to teams why they need to maintain this other capability. With regard to gear for a team, what would you recommend a team carry with them?

Dana Vilander: I think everybody should have at least a rigging belt on. Not a. Not just a velcro belt or something. You need something like what Aardvark put out with the belt system that you guys have, where you can actually put a rigging style belt or a rated belt like from Misty Mountain or something like that, that can be integrated into a harness if you needed to, but you can rappel off of that.

And that is the first place with two carabiners. I think every operator on an entry should have 25 to 30 ft of one inch tubular webbing. Because you can escape yourself. You can use it to open doors. You can create a harness with it. There's a variety of uses to use with one inch tubular webbing. That's what everybody should have.

An agency that I work with quite often just did that after I did some training with them on what the possibilities with webbing are. And I'm not trying to sell my classes, I'm just saying those are the possibilities that are out there. But you should have a roping team guy you were talking about, special. You should have a specialist and he should have a rope that, depending on the size of the building, is that you can get down at least 100 ft, if not more.

And then he would have the ability to anchor the rope, send the rope out, and then have a carabiner or device that the agency, the team wants to use so that everybody can bail out again, this is more of the bailout mode for about three pounds weight. Really not that much money. You could have a kit that is fully capable to do whatever you want to do with it.

Jon Becker: That somebody just carries in a backpack. And that's where it sits.

Dana Vilander: Yeah.

Jon Becker: With a rope stuck on a vest.

Dana Vilander: Right.

Jon Becker: And even from a rope standpoint, it doesn't have to be, you know, 716 inch kern metal rope. It can be smaller.

Dana Vilander: Right. So technology obviously has come a long way even in the rope community. What the PJ's use is an eight millimeter rope by sterling. I know a North American rescue has a new eight millimeter rope. So 8 millimeters is down there in size where you would like to be because 100 ft weighs maybe about three pounds as well. And it's very compressible when you're carrying it.

Jon Becker: So Dana, obviously these domains require a lot of expertise. What's the best way for people to get a hold of you and to learn about the programs that you're running?

Dana Vilander: So we have a website, it's and we offer about 14 different courses. The majority of them that we have are California post approved. So I thought it was important to get the state's buy in for the SWAT community and for the law enforcement community in general to see that we have an approved program and guys will get the credits necessary for them when they take the classes.

Jon Becker: Are there any resources or websites you'd recommend? Do you have Dana's reading list or website list?

Dana Vilander: I really don't. I ponder that a lot. I do a lot of just the research myself. But on the rope side of it though, there's definitely, if you looked at on YouTube, not rescue craft. Well, there is rescue craft on YouTube, but also element rescue. Sean McKay, he does great videos, explains things very well. A lot of the techniques that we teach are the techniques that he's teaching and that's a good YouTube resource.

On the tactical medicine side, North American rescue has some really good content on their website and also on their instagram they have a NAR doctor. They have some really good content going out updating people on things that are happening regularly.

Jon Becker: Well, we'll link to all of that in the show notes and make it easier. We'll also link to your website.

So Dana, thanks so much for joining me today! You taught me a lot.

Dana Vilander: Thank you, Jon!

Episode 11 – Kris Allshouse: The Use of Drones in Law Enforcement

Jon Becker: 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!

My guest today is Kris Allshouse. Kris is the executive director of LA County Regional Training center and a former SWAT operator for a large Southern California agency. Kris and his team at LA CRTC have emerged as some of the primary thought leaders in the use of drones, more specifically sUAS for law enforcement.

Kris, I appreciate you joining me today on The Debrief!

Kris Allshouse: Thanks for having me, Jon!

Jon Becker: Just for background, will you kind of give us a little bit of your career in law enforcement first?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, sure. I spent my career in law enforcement at the Long Beach Police Department, where I was on the SWAT team for 13 years. Work gangs, worked our training division. I finished in our advanced training unit before I retired and moved into the Los Angeles County Regional Training center.

Jon Becker: So how long have you been with LA CRTC and what's your job there?

Kris Allshouse: Started working there in 2015. I'm the executive director. We really, in earnest, didn't get started until probably the fall of 2015, but we've just really found a niche in drone training. Incident command. We're nonprofit, created to support public safety, initially law enforcement, but that has expanded to public safety, NATO allies. Any way that we could make people safe? That's part of our purview.

Jon Becker: So tell me, when did you guys first become interested in drones and specifically drones for law enforcement?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, I think right when we started in 2015, I started going to conferences because I didn't know anything about drones whatsoever or anything aeronautical. Ended up connecting with an old friend and we started training and we started training and started building this drone training program. And it was really new for some, for most. So anyway, pardon the expression, took off with the demand.

And then we just started pulling in instructors from all the really robust programs out there. So they brought all their knowledge, things done right, things done wrong, best practices to the table, each one from various parts all over the globe, really internationally.

Jon Becker: So we could probably spend hours talking about drones and many different public safety applications. Law enforcement, fire, I mean, everybody from the forestry service down is using it for this purpose. Let's focus in on law enforcement if we can. How have you seen the evolution of drones over the last few years for law enforcement?

Kris Allshouse: First, I think the right answer is the macro view, because I remember having a phone conversation with a northern California major city that said, we will never have a drone in our city several years ago. Now they have a very robust program.

What has happened is the paradigm has shifted where people have realized that these things benefit everybody in law enforcement. Everybody. If you are a black lives matter or a homeless advocate or, I don't like high taxes, it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum. These tools help you. They benefit you. They benefit everybody, and they really decrease uses of force. They decrease violent confrontations. They really, really stretch the dollar as far as a force multiplier is getting things done. And it's just been an amazing thing.

So the biggest, probably shift that I've seen is this paradigm shift where drones are bad. And when people are starting to see even people who are anti law enforcement, for lack of a better description, they see what it does and then they go, okay, I'm okay with that. That's good. I like that. So that's been probably the biggest shift that I've seen.

Jon Becker: If you were gonna break down the categories. Cause I remember when we first started approaching drones, the idea was, oh, they'll replace a helicopter, and pretty soon you were seeing them used for crime scene investigation and tactical and fire. And if you're gonna break down the categories of usage, how would you split it now?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. And I think you and I talked about this a long time ago. A long time ago. There's that outside large. You know, it's going to be up high and kind of stagnant, maybe even tethered. And then there's something a little bit smaller that you could fly into the backyards and be overwatch, support for tactical teams and that kind of thing, or just area searches or whatever.

And then an interior drone, something specifically designed to fly in very confined spaces with a GPS denied environment. So those are probably some. And we could probably go even deeper. And there's overlap, of course, in all those categories.

Jon Becker: So that's vertically from a platform size. How would you split it horizontally? From a mission set standpoint?

Kris Allshouse: The mission sets are large and expanding. So there's the whole investigative side, first of all, that's really exploded. So there's these 3D mapping softwares that are out there and drones that best work with those softwares. And that is amazing for rapid clearing of crime scene, rapid clearing of accident scenes. As far as time goes, you close a freeway down in LA.

Jon Becker: Yeah, right.

Kris Allshouse: There's a financial number there. I don't know how they come to that, but it's expensive.

Jon Becker: Well, there's a financial number. There's an emotional number. There's a, you know, everybody hates sitting in traffic, so. Yeah. The faster you clear that scene, the happier everybody is.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. And so. And you and I have a little bit talked about this, that the tactical application with the 3D modeling right now, I could put a drone out back in the 1900s. You send a couple of officers out to go scout a target that you were working on, they come back and they're riding with Crayon.

Jon Becker: They come with a crayon sketch on the back of a cocktail napkin, and it's like, that's not even a house.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. How far away is that?

Jon Becker: I don't know about that far.

Kris Allshouse: So now you can go out there, and in two minutes, you can capture the scene, and then you can have it at the command post in a 3D model where you can measure things and zoom in on things in about ten more minutes, 10, 12 more minutes, and you can have that at the CP. That is a game changer for me. Tactically, I can't believe we're not just scratching the surface with data collected.

And that's where those mid size outdoor aircraft go, by the way. Those same ones can also do all these things that we have with barricades in cars or areas or Overwatch for teams as they make their approach, or search and rescue where someone's missing. How do we find them when we have these really high quality thermals?

Jon Becker: It's kind of investigative. Is a silo. Search and rescue applications is a silo.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. And then you have their tactical. Your tactical missions, and there's, of course, overlap, but ultimately, it's gonna be out of the trunk or out of the car.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Kris Allshouse: And they're just gonna pop right out. And it's already happening. Agencies like Antioch PD up north and Huntington beach, and a lot of them, Chula Vista, Torrance, they're deploying rapidly and resolving things safely and rapidly. So it's a huge win, win, win.

Jon Becker: How do you, as far as tactical use, how do you see, like, how do drones improve the safety of law enforcement? How do they improve the safety for the public? How do they improve safety for suspects?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, well, it's a great de-escalation tool. So if I fly, whether it's outside or inside, if I fly and make contact with somebody who's 500 yards away or inside versus, I come around the corner and I have to deal with that person in an armed confrontation or a potentially violent confrontation, even if it's somebody who's suffering a mental health problem.

Jon Becker: Yeah, mental health problems.

Kris Allshouse: How nice is that I have all the standoff time and ability to talk and to provide some services or intelligence to my own team where I can keep them safe, remove that aggressive confrontation until we can resolve it in a different way. That's just touching it. I mean, there's so much more going down this path where it's just keeping everybody really safe.

And now we go inside and I can. It's a flying camera, and it integrates into all the other tools that we've been using over all these years, k9 and positions of advantage, where you can see in and binoculars, for that matter. But all these different tools that we use. Back in the 1900s, we had like 30 foot poles with a mirror at the end to see it pop this camera to fly it to anywhere I want it to.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, you think about a tactical situation where you're first trying to shrink your problem, right? It gives you the ability to shrink your problem rapidly because you know exactly where the guy isn't, which lets you take space until you actually get to the problem.

So now your operators arrive and they're not exhausted from an extensive, you know, stealth contact search. Then you get there and now you have the ability to communicate, see the suspect in a way that he loses his tactical advantage very publicly.

I remember years ago I had a friend that worked, one of the ESU teams, and they had a guy barricaded in an apartment with a knife. And he said, if you come in, I'm set up. I'm going to kill you, whatever. They knocked down the door and pushed a ballistic shield against the door. It was an apartment in New York. And now they're looking at the guy. That changes the negotiation dramatically. There's no more pretending like you're in charge. You're behind the door. Do you think that it improves safety of the suspect as much as it improves safety of the team?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, probably even more. If we're well trained, we're pretty good at it. Not that we want them, but we're pretty good at armed confrontation, violent close quarter combat. We're trained. We don't want to do it, and we try to be there in a way to not let that happen. But if we're there and somebody points a gun and we're in a room, you don't have any options other than lethal force.

This gives you a whole lot of other options, including there's a psychological factor that comes with a robot that's flying and telling you you need to get out or you need to whatever, or just saying, what can we get you? Depending on the scenario, it's a double.

Jon Becker: Edged sword, and we'll probably touch on that later. As to the idea of something flying into your house and negotiating with you, both profoundly effective and creepy at the same time, for sure.

Kris Allshouse: But the alternative is there's another human there, and we all know that as there's an aggression, there has to be a response that's lawful, but that doesn't end well for anybody, and more often than not, it doesn't end well for the suspect. So this is. I think, overall, it is definitely more of a benefit to the public. And this is a big thing coming out with crowd management. So crowd management, you know, it's the new hot button thing, at least certainly it was last year.

Jon Becker: Yeah, for sure.

Kris Allshouse: And you had a lot of people who were very strong advocates of saying, hey, we have the First Amendment right. We should be able to go do things, assemble. I'll just leave it at that. And I am one of those people.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I do.

Kris Allshouse: I really am a big proponent of that. The problem is you have organized trouble mixed in, and that's true probably for any event. So separating folks that are just trying to express their views on an issue, exercising their First Amendment right, versus those people who are just there, criminally minded, with total criminal intent and no intent to be involved in whatever's going on in the protest or the assembly, removing those, identifying who those are, this is a tool that allows you to do that, that protects people's right to continue to protest because we're removing the things that make it unlawful.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because if you think about the purpose of the First Amendment was specifically to protest the government. That's why it exists. So we want to have that ability. But the challenge with those crowds, as you say, is there are professional agitators. There are people that are there specifically to provoke a reaction. I remember years ago, went through a class, and the instructor said, the thing you've got to understand about a crowd is it's not homogeneous.

There are people that are there because it's interesting or it's novel. There are people that are there because they really believe passionately. There are people that are there to start a fight. And part of the challenge with crowd control and riot control has always been differentiating the good guy from the bad guy, the guy that's there exercising his constitutional rights, who we want, not only we want him to have that right, we want law enforcement to protect that right, versus the guy who's there to break windows and steal stuff and throw rocks at the police.

And I see what you mean by putting a drone up. You do have the ability to start to identify the agitators, identify the trouble.

Kris Allshouse: It preserves the assembly.

Jon Becker: That's a very good point. As teams are moving, we see this movement on the heels of the Breonna Taylor case to move away from dynamic entry for SWAT teams. And whether that's the right decision or the wrong decision is obviously subject to debate. How do you see drones and other robotic devices fitting into this new mindset of coordinate contain or contain and call out?

Kris Allshouse: Right. And, of course, that was happening for us at Long beach before I left, for sure. Probably before a lot of people, long before I left, is, you know, the tactics behind it. I use dynamic when I have speed, aggression, and surprise, and if I don't have those or I can't regain those, then I'm out. Right?

So now, if I don't need that, if there's no compelling reason to put us at risk or put suspects at risk, for that matter, this is a no brainer. So we have all these tools that have really emerged over the years, attachments to armor that allow you to port and open up houses so that you don't have to go in. We can try to resolve that.

Jon Becker: Yeah. We know you're barricaded in the bathroom. We're going to take the bathroom wall out. You're not barricaded anymore.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, I mean, like Sid used to say, it's the center of gravity of the suspect. If they're barricaded, then the walls are the center of gravity.

Jon Becker: Take the barricade away.

Kris Allshouse: Right. These are probably the most nimble of the newest tools, or of any of our tools that we've had. All I got to do is break a window if there's not something open, and I can fly this in and locate the suspect. Now, if they knock it out of the air or whatever. Okay. It's still intelligence. It's still way more than I had. I get to see what's going on inside.

So it's so easy and so rapidly deployed and so much data in such a short amount of time, it's kind of a no brainer to add to the tool chest for any tactical team.

Jon Becker: How do you think it fits into the use of things like K9s, chemical agents? Like, where in the toolbox does that go?

Kris Allshouse: So I would send something not alive before I would send something alive, and then I might send something not alive after I send something alive.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That's a very elegant way to put it.

Kris Allshouse: So I send the aircraft in or integrate it with the dog, which is happening a lot, training with the dog. So I fly, I find something. I perch, I hold. This is what I like about your Loki system is. And I'm a fan of three, by the way. I haven't told you.

Jon Becker: Yeah. One is none. Two is one. Three is the right number.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. I want three on that controller, and I'll leapfrog them all the way up there and hold those. And I put cameras all over the place, so I'm not dependent on any one or any two, for that matter. So in any case, you've used that live feed and then you integrate dogs and anything else. Chemical agency, if you get any movement or anything, all that put together in that tactical plan. I mean, it's unique and case by case, but those are some really great tools to have.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's interesting because the most dangerous thing is the thing you don't know about. It's the unknown. And it strikes me that whether the circumstances, a tactical situation or a foot pursuit or a fire or a search and rescue mission, this gives us the ability to solve the unsolvable, to find the hidden thing in a way that is not. Doesn't create risk. I think one of the things that is currently in the news is it seems like the regulatory environment is struggling to keep up with the evolution of technology. It seems like the technology has gotten considerably ahead of the regulatory environment. What do you see as a primary regulatory changes? That's our primary regulatory challenges?

Kris Allshouse: Well, you're hitting me right at the time of the military equipment designation in California for the drone, which is. It's unfortunate to see what most agencies are using you can buy at Costco.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Kris Allshouse: It's not some. I mean, are they highly specialized? I guess, yeah.

Jon Becker: It's not a weaponized predator drone that's dropping a hellfire missile. It's literally an advanced hobby drone.

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. You know, if you're getting it from the military surplus or something, I get it. I understand that there might be a designation there, but it's not. And this really. That's the same mantra I have. It's helping the ones that are in the most need of help besides law enforcement. Yeah. Is it good for us? Heck, yeah.

Jon Becker: Sure.

Kris Allshouse: It's amazing for us. But don't underestimate how powerful this is in helping. Like we just talked about preserve first amendment or address the homeless or. Or black lives matter. I tell this story all the time. I was at a conference in Torrance. Police department put up a video of them chasing a suspect yard to yard with the drone. And they had their manned helicopter above, and they were coordinated really nicely. Excellent job. Right?

So the whole conference, silent watching this and yard to yard. And the short version of the story is just like in any negotiation, you tell the suspect it's futile in some way. Right? We're here. We're not going away. Whatever. Something like that. Well, the drone does that for you. Even without a speaker, it does that for you. I'm here. I'm not going away. And this is how serious we are.

And it chases him about three yards, and you can see in this guy's face, like, and he gives up, he walks out, and everybody's happy. No cops are hurt, running to chase them. There's no use of force. There's no shooting. There's no dog bite. There's nothing. And you know how it is. I'm not going in the backyard with the potentially armed suspect without sending a dog or something. Right?

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Kris Allshouse: So none of that happened. This helps protect the people who have any potential confrontation with law enforcement. It's just a – it's a no brainer for me. And so regulatory, it's hard to see the military. Sad to see the military thing. The other side of it is this is a national priority in FEMA, and yet when the funding from the feds come down here, by the time it gets down to the state level, it's hit or miss. Whether it can reach these agencies, these small agencies that are struggling, they're literally going to Costco or they're doing worse. They're taking Officer Joe's drone and using that, which is, of course, a no no.

But it's, you know, part of that is this confusion that a lot of municipalities and counties are seeing about where we going.

Jon Becker: Well, there is this kind of idiotic contradiction that you see in the regulatory environment, which is that if I'm shooting a video of my kids snowboarding and I don't have a, you know, I'm not a part one of seven pilot, I don't have an FAA license, I can kind of do what I want to do because I'm not even aware of the rules and nobody's going to enforce them against me.

But if I'm shooting, you know, if I'm a photographer, taken out of law enforcement context, I'm a photographer taking a picture of a house for a real estate brochure. I'm an FAA pilot, and I'm paying attention to the rules. It strikes me that possibly the most dangerous people, as far as a public airspace environment, have no regulation, and possibly the safest ones have tons of regulation. What are your thoughts on that?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, well, I was talking to Marcus from CATO the other day, and he hit the nail on the head. He said, they're like four years behind us. They think that the privacy concerns and all these things are things that we haven't even thought about. They're already well ensconced in policy and TTPs, police agencies are on it. The policies are not. They're not mysterious anymore. They're out there. ACLU has involvement in them. There is. We are very aware of privacy, of meaningful policies that have a broad stakeholder appeal, which is where we teach everybody, start with the stakeholders, everybody in your community, everybody that's affected by this. Build that support, maintain that support. That's already happening.

The sad part is there's some legislative bodies that are not aware that we're on it. Law enforcement's on it. They are doing things the right way. And you're right, the commercial pilot's license or a certificate of authorization, these are things that we're already dialed in, though, and we're held accountable. Very much so.

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's funny, because you look at the commercial drone market is hundreds of times bigger. When I say commercial, I mean the retail hundreds of times bigger than the professional market. And so it's like, just from a ratio of aircraft, it's hundreds or thousands to one. And yet here we are trying to regulate the environment.

Another thing that strikes me is kind of interesting, as you look at the rapid expansion ground based cameras, there are cameras everywhere. We have cameras in our refrigerators now, cameras in our TVs, cameras in our computers, and there is national policy. How are drones different than cell phone video, than body worn camera, than traffic camera? Anything else in your mind?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah. Well, they're more regulated. There is, and I get it. There is a real fear of big brother, which, it's funny because, like you said, there is no more privacy, but it's not because of the quadcopters that cops are flying. It's just not. Not even close. And so it is more restrictive, but this is also so much more recorded.

So the way we teach, the way public safety is doing it, is we log everything. We have training records, we have flight records, we have maintenance records. We have safety management systems, and now we have this software that integrates all of it.

So if I want to see what you flew and the path that you flew and the speed that you flew, it's right here. And how long that was and what your battery life was like and on and on and on. It's all right there now. And so there is no more. There's nothing hidden. It's all very, very transparent. So it's a no brainer from my perspective, no matter where you are on the spectrum, as far as privacy issues, as far as cops using drones, that kind of thing, because it's all verifiable and we're starting with stakeholders first and we're keeping them involved.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's an interesting question because I always think of the example of you walk by somebody's house, the back fence of somebody's house. You can't see into their house with a drone, you can. So there is that expectation of privacy question. Do I have an expectation of privacy in my backyard surrounded by fence? And I can make an argument that I do because nobody can see from the ground. But then again, anybody that flies over can see it. And so the drone kind of ends up between those two.

Kris Allshouse: It does. It does, Jon. So here's the thing. People ask this kind of stuff all the time, and the answer is, the constitution does not change. It hasn't changed just how we apply it some. And we don't have any really good case law yet. We just don't. We're going off helicopter case law.

Jon Becker: Well, generally speaking, any topic, there is no good case law, usually only bad case law.

Kris Allshouse: But there are some general things. Do you have a legal right to be there? Are you doing something right? If you discover something, was it discovered in good faith, or were you on a fishing mission where you had to manipulate and fly under something to see that kind of thing?

So good faith, legal right to be there. General concepts like that that are constitutional, constitutional under Fourth Amendment, and it doesn't change. So if you're looking at the concepts of being right, of unreasonable search and seizure, and you mentioned expectation of privacy, if you're looking at those concepts and you're understanding them and you're making wise, thoughtful decisions, you're going to be just fine.

Jon Becker: Do you think that the drone should require any different use of search warrants than any other investigative technique?

Kris Allshouse: The only time I would think that it would require a search warrant is where you're going someplace that you do not have a legal right to be and that the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and you're going to fish there, you're going to try to discover something that would be a case where you would need a warrant.

But if you're just flying the aircraft in the normal, routine function of your enforcement or something else even, and you come across something again in good faith, where there may or may not be any reasonable expectation of privacy if it's in an open backyard, probably not from above. Right? Especially if you're in Southern California, helicopters everywhere.

Jon Becker: Yeah. So in your mind, this is just another investigative device. The Fourth Amendment, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence covers all of this, and there isn't a need to make an exception. Do you think that that changes with exigent circumstances? Do you think that it's the exigent circumstances should just continue to be what they are?

Kris Allshouse: Well, so, you know, you can conduct the searches on those three things, consent, exigent circumstances, or warrant. So how you conduct something that requires a search warrant is irrelevant, whether that's whether I walk into a building, whether I fly into a building. It's just I'm conducting a search that required one of the three conditions to conduct that consent, exigency, or warrant.

I don't think this is a big one, though. It should not be written in how you plan to serve a search warrant. If I have a search warrant, I'm authorized to search. Whether I search by walking in or flying in doesn't have to be written into my affidavit.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's an interesting point. How do you think we best balance, obviously, as an attorney and as a con law guy, I love constitutional law. That was my area of interest. How do you think we balance our constitutional rights against privacy in this context?

Kris Allshouse:

Well, again, I don't think it changes. It should be balanced. And of course, we have to rely on the judicial branch to interpret that. Sure. But the same questions, regardless of how, have to be answered, and I don't think that changes in this case.

Jon Becker: There was recently a news story about a startup drone company that was proposing weaponizing drones at the border and using that as a means of securing the border. And it created quite a bit of outrage, and obviously people were spun up about that. Do you think that there are circumstances where it is legitimate to weaponize drones for law enforcement?

Kris Allshouse: I absolutely think so. Not in that case that you described.

Jon Becker: Yeah, nor I.

Kris Allshouse: But I do think, and here's the answer every time, is it going to save somebody's life or great bodily injury? And if I can find situations, which of course I can, whether it's taser or some less lethal option, if I can do something like that that prevents me from having to take another human's life or use deadly force on somebody. That's a win. As much as that doesn't sound like a win, that's a win. So I would never want to rule that out.

So limiting that saying I can't weaponize it, it's just saying, okay, well, then you forced me to put a human there.

Jon Becker: It has a weapon. It's interesting, I've had this discussion with friends where they say, well, you should never be able to remember. There was the incident in Dallas where Dallas SWAT used a robot to kill a guy with an explosive device.

And the reaction to that, had that happened in California, probably we would have eliminated anything robotic, including cars for police officers. But it was in Texas, and that's a different environment. But that raised the question of, like, is that okay? And I had friends who were like, that is never okay. That should never be allowed.

And I said, so if the guy stepped out and took a shot at police officers, they're gonna shoot him anyways, right? Like, how is that any different? And do you – I get the argument for non lethal. I think lethal is a more sticky environment, for sure.

Kris Allshouse: Well, but this is it, again, something for the courts to decide, because here is the question. Is the governmental interest so significant that we do not want that person to step outside? That's how compelling the governmental interest is in seizing him. If it is that compelling, then lethal force is authorized.

So you're weighing that against the individual liberties. And if you can make the case that our governmental interest is so compelling that that person should not be able to step outside or in view or whatever, then you've made your choice.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's usually another place that I think there's been a lot of attention is the use of UAS or other forms of robotics by terrorists as an attack device. And obviously, the idea of somebody using a UAS as a UAS born IED is terrifying in any context. How do you think we can best prevent that from happening?

Kris Allshouse: First of all, that's a horribly underreported event. It's happening a lot globally. Amazingly, we've dodged a lot of bullets here in the United States with this. But here's a couple things that I would just. Food for thought along this topic. In our incident command class, chaos. Working in the edge of chaos, we have the students come up with a terrorist attack. Every class comes up with a drone attack. And I make them have to do research and prove that this is doable. It's like, I'm gonna get a nuclear bomb and stick it.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Kris Allshouse: Okay. No, no. Tell me how you could do it. And they come up with really realistic terrorist attacks.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I don't think you have to be a math major to do that one.

Kris Allshouse: And so then you go back to the Connecticut kid who put a Glock on a phantom four. And I always go back to this Harrison Klebold in Columbine kids, not funded kids, they had secondary devices. If they all had explosive devices throughout, if they were an adult, terracell, or just an adult who's just not well, they could have really done a lot of damage. And then you add this capability, like, I can do a lot with the drone.

So this is why it's a national priority for FEMA, why the money is there, to try to do emerging technology and counter drone technology. There is a lot out there. The hard part is we're struggling to get it down to the state and municipal level, even down to the cities who are really dealing with some tough stuff, including just coming into your CP, flying over you.

Jon Becker: Yeah, flying over you, flying out to look at the positions of police officers, scouting things, you know, flying into airports like it's – Do you think there should be a national counter drone strategy?

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, and I think that is coming. I mean, I think with the traffic, air traffic management systems that will be coming online, every drone that's in the air will be known who it belongs to or where it is, what's it doing, what it's doing, what its whole flight pass. That's right here. That technology is not hidden. So I think that's absolutely gonna be the case where you can't launch a drone without. Without a regulatory body seeing what's going on.

Jon Becker: Do you think it's reasonable for state and local governments to be building counter drone strategies, or do you think that's something that has to happen at federal level?

Kris Allshouse: I think it best probably served at federal level, working with state, local agencies, where it's a total collaborative event.

Jon Becker: Kris, a recurring theme that pops up when the subject of drones comes up is this idea of a dystopian future. People cite the example of the Terminator and Skynet. Eventually we're going to build the right technology, that the planet's going to kill us, computers are going to kill us. We're all going to wipe ourselves off the planet. What are your thoughts on that?

Kris Allshouse: I have to admit, I'm one of those people that's a little bit afraid of it myself. I mean, Skynet's here. AI linked autonomous vehicles are here. So it does scare me for sure. And we were talking earlier, right? I want humans making decisions, especially ones that affect humans. Yeah, that's a – And I don't know what. I don't know. But, yeah, that scares me. And I'm selling it, or at least teaching it.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because I do have this, like, I have this internal conflict. Right? I find that I don't know why the subjects of drones bring this up more than robots did or autonomous cars. Maybe it's just the visual of something flying that human beings are key to a primitive level to react to. But I do see this tension of the ability to observe decreases the likelihood for lethal conflict, the ability for us to make decisions.

I agree with you completely. Human beings need to be making decisions, but human needs, we need to make decisions based on good information. And so there is this feeling of, like, the more information we present, assuming it's filtered and doesn't overwhelm us, is we're more likely to make a good decision. But how do you think we prevent that? In your mind, what's the best way to walk that balance?

Kris Allshouse: Well, I think as we move more and more down the technological path, that we never underestimate or undervalue the quality of really good decision making. Really good training. Training to make good decisions. So, in law enforcement, we're always fighting this. You know it as well as everybody. We're always fighting budget cuts and training cuts. And then they wonder why a 23 year old kid made a bad choice. He's a 23 year old kid.

Jon Becker: He's a 23 year old kid who's been through tactical training for 8 hours and is shot one time this year.

Kris Allshouse: And now that I'm old and retired, I think, boy, I finally know how to make good decisions. I finally know how to talk to people right in the field. Hopefully, I wasn't horrible, but I know that I know more now than I did then. I don't know what the balance is with training and all that, but not to get too far off the technology stuff, but that's all going to be integrated where you have benevolent people who are well trained, managing whatever technology we're using.

Jon Becker: Kris, I really want to thank you for taking the time to sit down with me on The Debrief today!

I think that these are really big questions, and I think that we're trying to balance constitutional rights against safety, and we're trying to balance technology against privacy.

And, you know, I am concerned about that as I know you are. And I am glad that there are guys like you that are doing the math and doing the heavy lifting and hopefully going to help us make the good decisions.

So thank you so much for joining me!

Kris Allshouse: Yeah, thanks for having me, Jon!

It's always fun talking with you. Thanks!

Episode 1 – Sid Heal Part 1: The History of LASD – SEB

Jon Becker: This episode of the Debrief is dedicated to the memory of Sid Heal. When we began this project, our primary goal was to capture the history and stories of the men who developed special tactics before we lost them to time. Weeks ago, we made the decision to launch the show with two episodes we recorded with Sid.

Sid has been my friend for more than three decades and was a key part of my early career and tactical education. Without Sid’s influence, I'm not sure AARDVARK would have ever developed into what it is, and I'm certain I would have been a very different man. As a result, it seemed only fitting for Sid’s episodes to lead the series.

Sadly, a few days ago, we lost Sid. As we were preparing for his memorial, I anguished over whether we should release these episodes and what the right thing to do was. That anguish ended when Sid’s family gracefully told me that I needed to release them, and that is exactly what he would have wanted me to do.

A special tactics community will remember Sid as a force of nature, as a teacher, as a marine combat veteran, as an author, and as the quintessential student of the tactical game. I will remember him as a great friend, a man of deep faith, a loving father to his kids and grandkids, and a dedicated husband to Linda for almost 52 years.

I'm very grateful for the time I was able to spend with Sid. His impact on the special tactics community was profound, and I know that he will be remembered by his teams, his friends, and his students for decades to come. I'm also grateful to have had this conversation with Sid just weeks before he passed and to be able to share that conversation with you.

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!

My guest today is Sid Heal. Sid is a legend in the special tactics community and a key figure in the history and evolution of special tactics in the United States. Sid is a retired CW-05 in the United States Marine Corps, serving numerous combat deployments, including the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and Operation United Shield in Somalia, just to name a few.

Sid is a retired commander of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and has led the Special Enforcement Bureau in a wide variety of other assignments. Sid is the author of several books and literally hundreds of articles. Sid is taught at the US Army War College and is the former president of the California association of Tactical Officers.

Sid, thanks for joining me today on The Debrief!

Sid Heal: Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: So why don't we start with where your career started. Let's start at the beginning and kind of work our way forward to the present.

Sid Heal: Law enforcement career?

Jon Becker: Let's start with the Marine Corps.

Sid Heal: Marine Corps. I was 18 in those days. The draft was going. I was one, I was going to go at any time. Nobody would give you a good job. Nobody wanted to train you and have you leave. So we were basically societal cast offs. And so I joined the Marine Corps to keep from getting drafted.

Jon Becker: And then how long after you joined the Marine Corps did you deploy to Vietnam?

Sid Heal: I went in the Marine Corps in February, and I was in Vietnam by August, so. And that includes a 20 day leave, 10 days of mess duty.

Jon Becker: And then how long were you – how many times did you go to Vietnam and how long were you there?

Sid Heal: Two. Technically, I was only there on one deployment, but I got hit by friendly fire on April 5th, 1970. And so I spent the rest of April and most of May in Guam Naval hospital, and then they staged me back in Okinawa for about a week before I went back.

Jon Becker: And then you get back, you're done with the Marine, your Marine. Well, you're not done with the Marine Corps service. You come back from Vietnam. When do you go into the sheriff's department?

Sid Heal: Oh, not till 1975.

Jon Becker: That's right. Because there was an interim there, wasn't there?

Sid Heal: Oh, yeah. You could not have envisioned a scenario that would keep me in the Marine Corps one more day. But what happened was that I had, on the way to Vietnam, I had met a girl that I wanted to marry, and I knew that I wanted to go to college. And so the GI bill made that possible.

So when I came back, the two things that I knew that I wanted to do with my life was marry the girl that is still my wife 50 some years now and go to college. And so I got out of the Marine Corps, but when she had our oldest daughter, she couldn't work and we couldn't make it on the GI bill. And so I joined the Marine Corps to stay in school. They promised me that if I would come back in the reserves, that they would guarantee me my bachelor's.

Now, interestingly enough, I was a little bit more than skeptical, but they were absolutely truthful. I can't even tell you the number of things they did to help me stay in school. I'll just give you one that I thought was phenomenal. This particular unit that I joined was Anglicol, and you were required to be jump qualified within twelve months of your billet assignment. And so they sent me to jump school.

And when I would come back, I had to go to school and they would have a jump, or we'd have, and they literally would send us all over the world. I would just load my pack up with books and land. I was a corporal and the first sergeant say, hey, come here, and I'd go over there and he says, it's time for you to study. And they'd send me off to one side and I would sit underneath the tree and study. They were absolutely serious. I mean, that's just one of the things that they did. The reason I say jumping was significant for me was the fact that my pack was so heavy that to keep stick integrity, they would usually make me stick leader because I fell the fastest.

Jon Becker: I love that! So then, okay, so after that, you go to college. You didn't start at the La county sheriff's, right? You started…

Sid Heal: I started with the district attorney's office. It was kind of interesting in those days. I was a white male. I was not a high value recruit. And so I tested for every place I was accepted for Michigan State Police, which was my home of record, which is where I had joined. But I had gotten married, bought a house, had a baby, and I got asked to join the LA sheriff's department and the LA district attorney's office.

But the LA district attorney's office offered first. And I was in a position where I needed the bird in the hand. And so I did two years as an investigator. And be honest with you, I loved it. Investigation was, I don't even know how to describe it. The only thing I could compare it to was either SWAT or patrol. But you literally would beat the suspect at their own games.

So I learned informants and I learned interrogation and putting the pieces together. In fact, I started the sheriff's academy because I had to go to another academy when they hired me with a post certificate in investigation, a basic certificate. So I have two post basic certificates, one in investigation and one in general practice.

Jon Becker: So then two years later, you leave and go to the LA county sheriff's department?

Sid Heal: John van de camp became the DA and said that he did not need a police force. The Bureau of Investigation, they're all police officers. So I was low man on the totem pole, and I was going to be cast aside. And so they asked me if I would do a Y rate. I didn't even know what a Y rate was, but basically it's a demotion in lieu of layoff. But I had a baby. I couldn't go out and hope I could get a job that I want.

So I took the Y rate. It went right to the bottom of the totem pole, except for seniority. And they sent me through the sheriff's academy again. So I went through the Rio Hondo police Academy for the first time. So I went back to the sheriff's department. Interestingly enough, two years later, they called me to go back to the DA's office. Well, needless to say.

Jon Becker: That ship has sailed.

Sid Heal: That's right.

Jon Becker: It was gone. You had your chance at that one.

Sid Heal: Thanks for calling.

Jon Becker: So where was your first assignment? Like, walk me through your sheriff's career up until the point that you ended up.

Sid Heal: Oh, I started with jail. And it was interesting because there were a lot of opportunities in the jail, but I'm not an indoor person. I didn't realize how bad it affected me until I was actually inside. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I would do anything to be outside. Sometimes I literally have to check out just to go outside. I can see why people would be claustrophobic. I mean, it was that kind of a feeling. I've never been claustrophobic, but it was an anxiety.

So I knew that I was not going to do well there. And to be honest with you, had I not gotten out, I would have left. It was that bad. By the time I had three years in and I had already decided that I was willing to start over rather than stay inside anymore. So I got selected to go to Firestone station, which was actually number one on the list for two reasons.

One, I really, really liked the people there. I had done a ride along there in the academy, in the action. It was probably as close to TV as anything that I was likely to see. And the second reason was it was the number one fastest way out of the jail because there was a lot of people that didn't like that.

So I spent 80, see, last part of 79, 80, 81, and 82 at Firestone. Then I went to industry. My name was on by that time, intent to promote the sergeant. Then they made me a sergeant and sent me to Crescenta Valley. And then I only had 22 months in grade when they asked me to take a test for the special enforcement bureau.

I loved patrol and I was good at it. And they had asked me to go to SCB as a deputy, but I was having too much fun in patrol and I just really didn't want to start over again. But they asked me to go as a sergeant this time. And so I did. And I spent 84 to 89 there. And then they promoted me to lieutenant. I spent twelve years as a lieutenant.

And then I was actually quite shocked to be a sergeant, to be a captain. But I was ecstatic when they put me back in the special enforcement bureau. It was like putting briar rabbit back in the briar patch. I mean, I was a happy camper and I would have been content to stay there, but I got activated. I had been activated for every war that Marine Corps had at that time.

And this one, the latest one was Operation Iraqi Freedom. And they activated me in January, and I was gone pretty much the rest of that year. And so they put somebody else in charge while I was gone. When I came back, they promoted me. And five or six years I stayed as a commander. So that's pretty much it.

Jon Becker: So I'd love to kind of walk through because your career parallels the evolution of special tactics in the United States. And if you were to sit down and write the history of SWAT, you can't write the history of modern SWAT without mentioning Sid Heal. It's just one of those names that's going to be there. You certainly can't talk about flashbangs or tactical science or a variety of other topics. I will tell you that. You know, I've done a lot of these interviews. The one name that has been mentioned in every single one of them was yours.

Sid Heal: Oh!

Jon Becker: And that is, that is from an officer level to a chief of police level. As people talked about their careers, they talked about the evolution of their careers. And I went to Sid’s this class. I went to Sid’s that class. So what I'd love to do is wind back to when you first get to the bureau in 84, the 84 Olympics are happening. And kind of talk me through that initial evolution, because the bureau starts earlier. Do you remember when swots started at the bureau?

Sid Heal: Yeah. SWAT actually started in 1966. The concept.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so, Sid, I would love to start in 1984 when I, you know, you get to the bureau, the 84 Olympics have happened. You know, SCB and LAPD have now both spun up SWAT teams, but it's starting to evolve and you land there as a sergeant. So walk me through what happens when you first get there.

Sid Heal: It's actually even bigger than that, because there were a lot of societal changes that made SWAT, the concept of SWAT vital, not the least of which is fully automatic weapons and booby traps and rock houses. What had happened was that our system of government does not allow the military to intervene in what is believed to be a domestic policing matter.

So as a result of that, we had to rise to the level of our military counterparts, not the least of which, in those days was Delta Force and the Seals. So they provided a huge amount of training and we had all of our weapons upgraded. And largely the 1984 Olympics went on without much problem.

So as a result of that, we had all this training and equipment, and now we're faced with rock houses. So as a result, and I don't know who said it first, but somebody said, hey, if this will work for hostage rescue, this will work for arresting narco suspects, and sure enough, it does. And interestingly enough, within about two or three years, we were teaching a lot of the things that we had learned back to the military. So including my team had been activated and sent back to the east coast to train with Special Operations Training Group, which had just been stood up by the Reagan administration because of TWA-847.

So it was a time, the best way, it was explained to me, Washington, a colonel in special operations training group, full bird colonel, to tell you how high this was up in the Marine Corps chain of command. He said that they considered LAPD and LASD experts in urban warfare. And I was shocked. I said, sir, we're not at war. He says, you're attacking a fortified location. I said, yes, sir. And they're shooting at you? Yes, sir. And you're shooting at them? Yes, sir. Sounds just like war.

And so as a result of that, that started a relationship that went for years and years and years where we could literally pick up the phone and talk to people, in many cases in different parts of the world, and ask a question and get a straight answer.

The special operations communities, both in the military and law enforcement, did not play well together. It was like everybody had their best kept secrets. It did nobody any good, really. And so the National Tactical Officers association was formed in 1983 to start alleviating that. But you could have professional conversations that you could not get at a conference. You could not get in any kind of a public forum, but you could talk to people in Nebraska that were taking down underground concrete bunker complexes.

And I'm using these as actual examples. They flew us back to the east coast and then flew the dutch entry team in for the dutch Malaccan train assault. I went to Israel and debriefed in Tebbe and Malat. I went to Belfast and Haifa and Jerusalem and Princess Gate, in London, and the mall bombings in Sydney, Australia, and the Yonsei University riot in Seoul, Korea. And so many places I can't even think about because it was not going to be put to paper and they needed to vet the person they were going to talk to. And they would not exchange the information in any kind of a durable format.

We were free to take notes, but some cases we were told, like, we couldn't take pictures or we couldn't take some notes or just to leave this off. But we got straight answers. It really kick started a lot of our thinking.

Jon Becker: And just to put context on it, right. 1972 is the Munich massacre and 84 Olympics come. Everybody's afraid that that's going to happen in Laden. That's in context with Prince's gate. Baron, Switzerland, Mombachan, Kenya. There's a series of hijackings and building takings, and hostage seizure becomes a mechanism through which terrorists are negotiating to get media attention and push their message.

Sid Heal: Interesting thing that you should say that, too, because it resulted in a change of tactics with the terrorists. The terrorists at that time really relied on hostages. It gave them a huge amount of public exposure. It allowed them to negotiate because they had to be taken seriously. Otherwise we lost the hostages.

The tactics, techniques and procedures and some of the technology allowed us to recover the hostages, in many cases killing the suspects, the terrorists, and being very successful with the hostages. And when I say we now I'm talking about the counter terrorist community.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Sid Heal: The global counter terrorist evolving. Yeah. Both military and law enforcement. It was so successful that they had to switch to bombings because.

Jon Becker: Well, because you had entebbe. They all get killed. You have prince's gate.

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker: All the hostages, rescue suspects are killed.

Sid Heal: Mogadishu.

Jon Becker: Mogadishu Bern, Switzerland?

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker: You know, you had the one. Was it GSG 9? Did the airplane….

Sid Heal: Yeah, that was GSG 9. And the airplane was in Mogadishu.

Jon Becker: So, like, you have this series of, like, it works pretty well. It works really well in, you know, Munich, but that's kind of the apex of taking hostages and making a scene. From then on, the tactics start to adapt.

Sid Heal: Yeah. And evolve. The after action of Munich was an eye opener. They have a saying that success has many authors. Failure is anonymous, but there was no way that we could attribute some of the mistakes that were made at Munich to accident or incompetence.

There were some real command and control issues, some intelligence issues and a lot of tactical issues that everybody that was going to find themselves in such a situation started taking seriously. And because this informal collaboration had already started to evolve by the 1984 Olympics, and you're right, we were terrified. It wasn't just a feeling that they were going to attack. We were terrified. We knew they were going to attack.

We learned everything. I'll just give you one that was shocking to me. I was quite comfortable, having been so many years in the Marine Corps by that time, including my tour in Vietnam, in the rural environment. But there was as much to learn about the urban environment as there was the rural environment. And I was a duck out of water.

And so I really started paying attention to the people that had been doing this on a routine basis, not the least of which is the combat was extremely close range. The targets were fleeting and elusive. And as a result of that, we learned to shoot without getting a front sight picture by adapting it, literally with a piece of aluminum angle iron in those days with a flashlight that we would use fiber washers to adjust the flashlight so to the height of burst. And we had sighted our weapons in at 25ft.

A lot of people were shocked at that. But the advantage was is that if you could see the light and it was on your target, you could pull the trigger that quick. I can't tell you how many times that saved people's lives. And we went to state of the art submachine guns and the recoil, which at that point….

Jon Becker: [Crosstalk] – Started with MP5S.

Sid Heal: Started with MP5. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Nine millimeter MP5S. And that's when the MP5 was just an MP5.

Sid Heal: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Becker: So, so then, you know, you and you and LAPD are running parallel in your development. I recently interviewed Mike Hillman.

Sid Heal: And there's another guy that I got to tell you, if they're not mentioning Mike Hillman, they're missing.

Jon Becker: They're missing. They're mentioning. It's not quite as much as they're mentioning you, but that guy is – [Crosstalk]

Sid Heal: He was one of my mentors, so let's put that in perspective.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Yeah. Mike. Mike. You know, Mike kind of walked me through, from the D Platoon side, the evolution of tactics and how they started to reach out to the European units. They started to reach out to the military units. You guys were doing the same things kind of together. Right?

Sid Heal: Together and apart. It's kind of interesting because we, first of all, we compared notes with each other on a routine basis. There was a lot of rivalry, but it was a friendly rivalry and nobody wanted to see anybody on the other side get hurt. And nobody wanted to feel the guilt that we would have inherited if somebody failed and got hurt because of something that we had withheld.

So it was open, but it was very informal and it was usually done on the phone or we train together in person. And LAPD ended up with teaching the west coast marines and the east coast seals, and the LASD ended up teaching the east coast marines and the west coast seals. We didn't really plan it that way. It's just the way it turned out.

But, yeah, and I couldn't even begin to tell you other countries that ended up getting involved. But if you ever go down to SCB and see the trophies and we display them with honor, is the number of world famous teams from France and Germany and the United Kingdom and Australia, and both in the military and law enforcement.

Jon Becker: So it's GIGN, it's GSG 9, it's, you know, 22 SAS. It's, you know, it's – At that time, it's literally a who's who in the tactical world exchanging tactics. Because, you know, one of the ways that Mike put it that I think was really articulate is he said, you know, we were concerned about them taking hostages on a bus like they did in Munich. And he says, we had to figure out how to assault a bus.

And I think the thing that's easy to forget is everything has a beginning. Special tactics in the United States, that beginning is the late sixties, early seventies. SED starts a little sooner. LAPD D Platoon is the first official SWAT team beginning full time in 71. But the real zenith here, the real acceleration takes place for the 84 Olympics.

Sid Heal: The original SWAT teams were in response to the Texas tower shooting. And so as a result of that, the concept was counter sniper, and the sniper had the primary function on the SWAT team. And everybody was pretty much in support for years. When we started doing entries, the snipers became in a supporting role and the entry teams took over the primary function.

So I got to tell you, what I've just described is a lot more methodical and neat than it really was. It was messy. For years, we refused to write down standing operating procedures because we didn't have any adherence to paper.

And as a result of that, we would change a technique. If we had a briefing in the morning, we were free to change that technique for an operation in the afternoon. It was that fast. So it was a state of constant review and continual adaptation.

Jon Becker: Where everybody worldwide is trying to figure out how to do hostage rescue, how to make it effective, how to apply it to multiple environments. And I think one of the things, this is just before I start my career, but there is this very collaborative sense. And I think that's right about the time John Coleman founds the NTOA and creates an official platform.

Sid Heal: Yeah, as a matter of fact, it was never national. It was always international. Right from the very beginning, it was obvious that we had to come to grips with this. We were in operations in those days where we were so certain of being shot that we would put a personal vest underneath our entry vests because we knew that the entry vests were not going to stop some of the things that were being shot at us. That gives you a perspective of pragmatism that no class or PowerPoint could ever achieve.

So just to give you an example, nobody really intended to specialize, but some were just the nature of the game. Seals would teach us how to tell if a boat was overloaded by looking at the water line. In some cases, they'd repaint the water line, and the seals would tell how to tell us, teach us how to tell when it's been repainted so it looks like it's actually higher than it is. And then we would teach them urban warfare because we could actually close down the city at night, and we would. A lot of operations that people had no knowledge of were because we were moving at night. Crossing a freeway at night is like crossing a big river, except you can get killed, and so.

Jon Becker: Except the river is full of alligators.

Sid Heal: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I couldn't even begin to tell you. The marine corps with vertical operations, vertical assaults and helicopters and skid drops. One of the things we discovered was the fact that we could take down a skyscraper because there's no windows on the roof. And so we could actually, most places we couldn't land, but we could skid drop.

We also found out that when you skid drop, when you jump off the skids of a helicopter, you need to have some protocols, whether you call them standing operating procedures or not. Because if half the people jump off the helicopter on one side and the pilot corrects for the heavy side, you can tip the helicopter over. And pilots don't like that.

Jon Becker: Neither do the guys getting on the helicopter.

Sid Heal: Exactly. So I can't even tell you how many skid drops we did. And then I learned to repel. I mean, I repelled in the Marine Corps, but nothing like what we were doing, the Australian rappel, because we could go in from the top of a window without exposing us or the rope.

And then eventually we didn't like unhooking from the rappels, so we went to fast ropes and I got that from the Marine Corps. I don't know who invented it first, but I learned it first from the Marine Corps and then LAPD and LASD. And I don't even know how to tell you how many different things I would say in the five years of my first tour. There wasn't a day that I didn't come to work where I didn't learn something new. And I think that most of the people felt the same way.

An eagle was your biggest obstacle. It would be like bleeding in the water with these guys. If you had anything that you were sensitive about, a scar, a tattoo, your ear stuck out too far. I'm trying to think it was like sharks, they would go for you. But it was always with the understanding that we would be better, that we were no different than anybody else. But we were being exposed to knowledge that nobody else had really ever taken the effort to gather. It had probably always been there, but now we were actually discussing it at a professional level.

If I could take credit for anything, it was the fact that I was one of the few guys that started codifying it. I actually started taking notes, probably because I just wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and I did not want to forget this stuff. So I began taking notes in probably the spring of 85 is when I can first remember when I really, and that tickled my curiosity to study, if this is this, what else? And I wanted to know why it wasn't enough to tell me what to do. I wanted to know why it was important and how it's contributing.

So from there it just went on. I started writing lesson plans for years and then I got asked to write one article and so I wrote the article. I couldn't believe the interest that it got. It was the first time I had testified out of state and I was being called to Florida and Minnesota and Arizona, Oregon and Washington and places that I didn't know anything about the case, but I could explain it. And I need to emphasize that I was just one of the guys. I probably got more credit than I deserved because I had the name recognition from the articles and eventually the books.

Jon Becker: So mid 80s, you're at SCB, you start, you guys are students of the game, you're studying, you start writing lesson plans. At some point you get tasked to do flashbang research. Walk me through that.

Sid Heal: It was in 1980, early 1988, and we were getting sued for flashbangs. And one of the questions that were coming up was who trained you, what were their qualifications, and a variety of other things. So my lieutenant at the time, Russ Collins, called me in and he wants me to do a lesson plan on flashbangs.

So I went back, I gathered all the materials, and about a month later, I came back and said, russ, we're going to need to do original research. And Russ goes, why? I said, because the only information available is coming from the people that are selling them and they're only providing the information that makes their particular product look good. And they're really not addressing what we believe the key issues, when it should be used and when it shouldn't be used. But they would tell us everything they want to know about how it worked.

So as a result, he said, how long is this going to take? I said, at least six months. And to his credit, he said, okay. So that became my collateral assignment. And I interviewed doctors and acoustical experts and went to the crime lab and got the original study from the human Effects laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, and interviewed the military who had been studying grenade simulators and a variety of other things.

And so we wrote a fairly comprehensive lesson plan and published it December 1st, 1988. And we, according to our protocols, made it available to anybody with a need to know, which was other police departments. By January, it was the national model and we could no longer keep up with the requests which were coming in scores at a time. And I believe the lesson plan at that time was 30 or 40 pages. It was pretty comprehensive and it was at a user level. It didn't explain a lot of things, but it was expensive for the LA county, if you can believe that, to duplicate this lesser plan and send it to everybody that was asking. And yet we did not want to charge for it.

So we asked the National Tactical Officer association to make it available at cost, and they did. And to this day, as far as I know, it's still available.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, that was the original NTOA flashbang diversionary device user's manual.

Sid Heal: Yep.

Jon Becker :Yeah. Which quickly became the national standard and still forms the roots of almost every flashbang class worldwide.

Sid Heal: I think as an author, and I became an author later, I didn't really consider myself an author because I did the lesson plan, but the greatest feelings of success and self satisfaction come from having somebody that I respect as an intellectual thinker and teacher cite me either. I don't even know how to tell you what that feels like. It feels like, wow, it really was worth going the extra mile and being able to attribute that. I attribute all of the things that I learned to the original authors. But if I could take any credit was the fact that I just compiled it.

Jon Becker: Well, see, I think it's – So we met in 89. 88 or 89?

Sid Heal: I think you were 88.

Jon Becker: So say 88. I mean, I don't think it's possible retroactively for people to put in context how unusual that diversionary device user's manual was. It's unusual. Now, at the time, it was unheard of. Nobody took the time in law enforcement to go and understand blast physics and understand physiology and understand, like, people were using flashbangs, but they were using flashbangs because they had been exposed to grenade simulators and they kind of made them feel stupid. And they thought, well, this is going to work.

So really, like, you were the first one to actually look at it scientifically and say, this is why it works, right? I mean, I learned all of that from you because I knew you. Everybody else learned all of that from you. They all learned bleaching over Dobson. They all learned temporary threshold shift and hearing pressure wave sensory overload. Like those were terms you developed in that research, but nobody knew.

Sid Heal: I think you'll recall that I mentioned that it sounds a lot more methodical than it was in reality. It was quite messy. I'll just give you one. I had to laugh when you were saying that because I remember how messy. We had flashbangs that were basically adapted from grenade simulators, and the majority of that was basically just powder and paper. So you couldn't throw them through a window, you couldn't throw them through a screen, you couldn't get them through bushes.

So what we would do is we would get a cod weight, which weighed half a pound to a pound, and we'd put some duct tape around it and we'd throw it through the window. Well, that solved one problem, but we noticed some disparities. Somebody would say, holy mackerel, that was hot. No quality control or…

Jon Becker: Too many rolls of tape.

Sid Heal: Exactly. It was the amount of tape we were using. In some cases, we would just put enough to adhere to the weight and it would explode normally. But in other cases, they would put 100 miles an hour tape that we'd get from the pilots or duct tape that we could buy out of one of the hardware stores. And some people would put one band and some people would put five or six. And without knowing it, we were creating these miniature pipe bombs.

Well, when I got my class in blast wave physics, literally from Dr. Paul Cooper at Sandia Labs, I learned that we had no clue what we were doing. And it's only by the grace of God that we weren't getting hurt worse than we were or hurting somebody else.

Once we explained that, it also really lit the manufacturers and developers. And so they started building things that we could use as is, which is tremendous advantage from a civil liability standpoint. And to be honest with you, there's more money in doing that than there was in selling dope because they were making money hand over fist. The flashbang in those days costs about one dollar fifty cents to 1$, 80 cents to make and we were buying them for anywhere from $15 to $30 each. So it was a huge markup.

But the use of the flashbang was a game changer in our tactics because it created what I learned, a thing called an exploitation window, a period of time where the human brain is unable to process outside information because it's being overwhelmed by stimuli. And now we know it as the amygdala hijack, we're actually indexing a portion of the brain which is going to be perceived as life threatening, even though the flashbang, if used properly, is pretty harmless. But the fact that it's perceived overwhelms the brain's ability to do anything that we would consider thinking.

So we, in fact, I'll just give you one right now. Off the top of my head, I had three separate incidents where we took the guns out of the hands of the people or they threw them down when they knew we had them. That would have died had it not been for the flashbang. Well, needless to say, this created a situation where we tended to overuse them. If it works a little, it'll work a lot.

So we threw more than one flashbang and we didn't understand a lot of things. But once we started doing the research, we made a lot more knowledgeable decisions and intelligent decisions, wise decisions. So we found, actually, and I did a statistical analysis on that, is that we were using them less and we were using less of them, meaning, per the situation, it's one of the few non-lethal options that will support a dynamic entry. The effects of are virtually instantaneous, and I say instantaneous. Scientifically, there is no such thing. That's one of the things we found out.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's milliseconds.

Sid Heal: That's right, milliseconds. To give you an idea, there's about a two second window of vulnerability, but that's because it takes that long for the fuse to go off. It's a delay, but then we get anywhere from 2 to 8 seconds of what we call the exploitation window, where the individual is incapable of mounting an effective defense. I mean, they'll have startled reflexes and other things without getting into too much depth, but typically that was enough to save their lives and save our lives.

Jon Becker: So, yeah, 2 to 8 seconds is a long time.

Sid Heal: A long time. We could put the full entry when we were doing experiments with the Marine Corps. One of the things we would do is we would give the subject ear protection, which most of the suspects didn't have, and a camera, and having take pictures of the entry team when that flashbang went off, if they could take the pictures, all they got was pictures of muzzles.

In one case, we had Captain Jim French with a camera and we threw it in and he could not make his finger work enough to click the trip. I took the camera out of his hand, took his picture, and then put it back in his hand. That's how long 6 to 8 seconds is.

Jon Becker: I have a very clear memory. Shortly after we met, probably 89 or 90, we did a flashbang demo together, testing some stuff, and we gave a guy a squirt gun and put the squirt gun in his lap, threw the flashbang in and then simulated an entry coming in. And the last guy grabbed the squirt gun while the guy sat there trying to figure out what to do.

Sid Heal: In real life the first one that happened to me, the first one I can remember off the top of my head is we had a guy with an m two carbine. He had gun ports cut in his house. He swore that he'd never be taken alive. And when that flashbang went off, he reached out and could hit the m two that was leaning against his bed but could not put it enough together to grasp it. I literally picked it out.

Jon Becker: So the sheriff's department starts actively using flashbangs. You're writing. This is kind of the beginning of Sid Heal, warrior poet, for lack of a better term. The flashbang manual comes out. It begins to get people thinking about a deeper level of understanding. It's not just, oh, the manufacturer says it's this, it's let's go do our own research. When is the next significant event in your career that you think marks a milestone? Is it Somalia?

Sid Heal: Probably. That was huge. That put me at an international level for the first time by Somalia for me was in 1995 and, well, started in 1994. But as I mentioned, I was working with a special operations training group and I get a phone call. What do you know about nonlethal options? And I laughed. What do you care about non-lethal options?

And he said, I've been ordered to do research on this. And these guys were all just like, we were doing research. And they said, we don't know where to start, but we figured cops would know. I said, well, I'll just tell you what I think is that you're looking for a magic bullet that doesn't exist, that it's not a technology problem, it's a training problem, that we need to have a holistic view.

And one of the incidents that they cited, Washington, some refugees in Guantanamo Bay decided they would riot and take over a PX. Well, a marine's company was charged with guarding it, and they fixed bayonets, and apparently they weren't taken seriously, and they stabbed three people. And so I mentioned this incident. I said, if you're willing to stab them, skip the intermediate options, because I don't have anything that I can think of that would be as good as that. He said, well, we don't want to do that. We need to be able to accomplish our missions without having to kill the adversary.

And I said, well, I know a guy that I'll get him to talk to you. But I was a CW-05 by then, and I was not willing to drive to California. I mean, drive to Camp Pendleton. CW-05, for those who've never been in the military, I explain it as a huge amount of esteem accompanied with absolutely no authority. But my lips were moving, and typically a colonel or a general's voice would be coming out.

And so as a result of that, I enjoyed vicarious authority. And so when I said I wasn't coming, they took me seriously. And so they said, well, when can we meet? Let me know. I'm working all week. And they said, Thursday. I said, come on up. Well, on that particular day, it was raining and pouring down rain, one of the few days in southern California.

So we went into a room that kind of went as a skiff because everything they were saying was classified. And so they gave me a bunch of scenarios, and I explained where I thought some of the problems were, and I gave them some suggestions. That's all it was on how I thought we could have done it better. But the big thing is, they had no technological advantage. Their idea of a non-lethal weapon was shooting somebody in the foot.

So I called you to bring in whatever you wanted to demonstrate. Shotguns and bean bags. And I'm trying to think pepper balls didn't exist in those days. But, yeah, whatever we had, and I do remember it was so hard. What's that – [Crosstalk]

Jon Becker: Stinger grenades.

Sid Heal: Stinger grenades, yep. Flash bangs. Obviously, it was raining so hard, we had to blow the water out of the rear sight apertures to see. And they were surprised that we didn't go to arrange. We went out in the parking lot and fired it into a concrete wall. Whatever it was, it left him quite impressed. And so I got kind of volunteered as a consultant.

Jon Becker: This is in voluntold.

Sid Heal: What's that?

Jon Becker: Voluntold?

Sid Heal: Voluntold. Yeah. That really wasn't as bad as that, because there wasn't anything they could ask for that I wouldn't have given. They had been more than gracious with their information and time. But, yeah, it was understood that it wasn't given to me as if I had an option. And so I went down there several times, and they came up and we exchanged information. And I got a phone call in the spring of 1995, right out of a clear blue sky that said, sir, what is your – This is sergeant so and so. What is your Social Security number?

So I gave it to him and I said, just out of curiosity, why don't you get it out of my OQR officer's qualification record? And he goes, sir, I'm not from your unit. And I go, whoa. And so we hung up, and I turned to my partner, Danny Bean, and I said, Danny, I don't have good feelings about this.

Jon Becker: Get ready, buddy. You just became a partner of one.

Sid Heal: I got activated on a Thursday, got my shot record updated on a Friday, was sicker than a dog on Saturday from all the shots, and Sunday I was in Mombasa, Kenya, and it was like something out of a movie. It was a side of the Marine Corps that I'd only seen on the special operations side, but I literally had the pick of the Marine Corps of the best guys. They were all gunnery sergeants, Gunny agers and Gunny Dunn and…

Jon Becker: Gunny McGilton?

Sid Heal: What's that?

Jon Becker: Gunny McGilton?

Sid Heal: Gunny McGilton, Gunny Rodarty, and a second lieutenant in the Air Force who had six months and worked for Phillips lab. The guy was smarter than all of us put together. Our GPA, our YDEZ general classification jumped by double when he was present. I mean, he was that smart. In any event, he was in charge of lasers. And I literally had a blank check. And to this day, I have no idea what I could spend.

But I reported to a three star general around the chain of command, and there's a lot of people, even at a CW-05, between a CW-05 and a three star general including the MEW commander and the commander of the landing force and everybody else, well, including the ship's captain, to give you an example.

And so I not only had the best in the Marine Corps, I had a guy that could write checks in about ten different currencies at one time. I asked him, Bob, how much money can I spend on this? He says, that's classified. I says, yeah, but just give me some ideas. He says, well, you've already spent three quarters of a million dollars. I says, oh, can I spend a million dollars? And he looks at me and he gets excited, you think this is going to cost a million dollars?

And I thought for a second, I said, you know, Bob, I realized that one of my unfulfilled career goals in the Marine Corps is spend a million dollars in the Marine Corps money. And he laughs, and he goes, you can spend a million dollars. So I go, well, can I spend 2 million? He says, don't go there.

Jon Becker: There's the line.

Sid Heal: I'm not going to tell you what you can do. So I had sticky foam and oculus foam and lasers that are still classified and would do things that even Star Trek has yet to figure out, which is, well, I'll give you an example of how smart this guy was. One of the lasers we had was LX-5, laser experimental model number five. And it was at the, what we call, I later found out, the brass board stage.

Basically, they had built this amalgamation, for lack of a better term, this component out of off the shelf things. So they had gadgets and gizmos and whatchamacallits and thingama jobs that had to fit a certain way. And so it was necessary for all of my guys to learn how to do this. And so we were up. We were staying in a hotel at that time in Mombasa, Kenya, in plain clothes. And I was having everybody do the drills, take it apart, put it together, take it apart, put it together, hour after hour after hour.

Finally, about 02:00 in the morning, when we are literally brain dead, I looked at the lieutenant, and that was another thing that used to irritate my gunnies is that I called him by his first name in the Marine Corps decorum. That was a little out of their social constructs.

And so I go, Rob, I got good news and bad news. And he looks at me and goes, well, what's the good news? The good news is you're going to be the first United States Air Force officer to win a Marine Corps combat action ribbon since the Vietnam War. And his eyes get about this big.

And he goes, well, what's the bad news? Bad news is you're going ashore. There's no marine that's going to be able to fix that if it doesn't work. And we cannot have it not work. So we went ashore. We got in a huge firefight, which nobody remembers that wasn't there because it was so much emphasis on the non lethal part. But he did. He earned his combat action ribbon and it was awarded to him as his highest decoration. And he's proud of it to this day, even though he's retired.

So it was a wake up call. And when I got back, we came into March. Air Force Base, they flew us back, flew my team back. The rest of the team was on float and they were in the Mediterranean in that area. But I had a team and they flew us back. Well, being a CW-05, March Air Force base is about 25 miles from my house. So I called my wife and said, hey, meet me here. So she came there and I waved goodbye and never checked out.

So I just went home. I mean, I'm never going to be promoted again. And so I went home and sleep because there's like 11 or 12 hours difference with jet lag. And I get called up by a colonel in Washington, DC, said, gunnar, how long is it going to take for you to get back to Washington, DC? And I go, sir, I'm going back to work. He says, well, when are you going back to work? I said, Monday. And it's like Thursday night now. And he says, well, that's true. He says, but technically your orders don't expire till midnight Sunday.

So how long will it take you to get back to Washington, DC? I said, wow, sir, military transport. He goes, you come back any way that you can get here? So I flew commercial back, and what they wanted was a debriefing. And that was probably the tip of the tip that you just described in Somalia, I couldn't even begin to tell you how many different places and how many people I talked to at such high prestige in both academia, the military and politics, to the consulate level, including other countries.

So, yeah, everything else I did till that point really paled in comparison. If I had to pick just one, that would have been in 1995. And by 1997 was the first time I was speaking to an international audience. And they were paying me.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah, no, that was – It exploded. Like, it kind of the same thing happened to the business, right? Like, that was the beginning of the Marine Corps non lethal program, which then we had the army non lethal program. And all of those programs kind of evolved out of that one trip to Somalia. And it was really kind of the genesis of us becoming a non lethally oriented business, especially because it was that Somalia mission. We didn't have time to put together lesson plans. We didn't have time to train anybody.

Sid Heal: And so it was messy.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I did a five day instructor course for your unit in one day with retroactive read ahead. Here's all the stuff you guys have, Sid. Godspeed! Good luck!

Sid Heal: A lot of the documentation we did after the fact.

Jon Becker: Oh, yeah.

Sid Heal: One of the things that was interesting, too, is that I mentioned the fact that CW-05s, which are pretty rare. I think at that time, I was the 13th one in the Marine Corps, including the reserves. I mean, there was only 13, period. And not everybody wore the bars because they became limited duty officers. But we had a huge amount of esteem and not a lot of authority. But I reported directly to General Zinney. I got credit for a lot of things that he actually deserved the credit for.

I asked him one time, I said, sir, do you ever feel dumber when I get near you? And he's not one that really chit chats, but I was a five, and I was as high as I was ever going to be, and I felt emboldened. And he looks at me and he goes, no, why? I said, well, sir, if there really is a scientific process called osmosis, I get smarter. I was just wondering if information and knowledge was a finite.

Jon Becker: Yeah, because I'm getting smarter. Are you getting dumber?

Sid Heal: Well, the great thing was, besides his intellect and his foresight, was he was pragmatic. He understood the concepts, but he also understood that the applications were what were going to make the concepts work. The rules of engagement, for instance, were unwieldy. And I was ordered to bypass the chain of command, not run anything through the chain of command, report to him directly.

And so I lived on the Ogden, but the flagship was the BellaWood. And so I would pick up the phone in the combat operations center up with, where all the navy guys were and say, I need a ride to the bell of wood at such and such a time tomorrow morning. And sure enough, there'd be a helicopter there. And then I'd go see General Zinni. First time I'd ever been in a flag officer's wardroom. And I remember in this one occasion, I started explaining the conflict, and he recognized it so fast. He held up his hand, which I took as sign language for shut up.

Jon Becker: Because it was sign language for shut up.

Sid Heal: Yep. And he turns to the chief of staff, which is the only reason I know his name, John Moffatt. He goes, John, he's right. He's right. We got to fix this. And he fixed it. That was just the kind of guy he was. I feel guilty accepting praise. That was really vicarious.

Jon Becker: I don't know. I mean, General Zinni certainly set the tone, but the evolution of the non lethal program accelerated rapidly because of your involvement. Whether it would have happened without you is a matter of debate. But the fact that when we met those guys at SCB, and that conversation started with, tell me what nonlethal is.

Sid Heal: Yeah.

Jon Becker: It ended with trained marines off the coast of Kenya, what, three or four weeks later. It was not a long time. And during that time, had to write rules of engagement and had to get all the stuff vetted, put it together. Like, had you not been there, you were catalytic to that process. You being there gave them a connection between the military world and the civilian world and tying them together.

Sid Heal: That was how General Zinni explained it to me, because I was actually feeling it even then, and I did not want to take undue credit, but he explained that I was bilingual. I could talk Adam boy Charlie David to law enforcement, or Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta to the military.

One of the things that it led to was in 1997, I got called into the under sheriff's office, and he started the conversation with, if you can do this for the Marine Corps, you can do this for us. And he had a bunch of notes on a legal pad and proceeded to rearrange my career path from what I had envisioned. And as he's going on, he's describing a project which eventually became known as the Technology Exploration Project. And none of what he described was anything that was really appealing to me at the time.

But I'm a lieutenant, and he is multiple pay grades above me. So I'm taking notes and I'm pretty quiet. And he says, I know you don't like this, and I don't particularly care, and goes right ahead with what, the next two years, which I thought was gonna be my career, and that was to manage this technology exploration project. And the focus was on finding technologies that had applications in law enforcement.

The idea was to leverage my contacts in the Marine Corps and my association with them, because I had a clearance. I was working on classified projects. I had literally been all over the world. I was gaining and had already gained by that time, a national reputation and in some cases, in international, in the sense that I was being interviewed by TV stations from Australia and Italy. I'm trying to think of some of the ones.

Jon Becker: We wrote an article. You and I wrote an article for Jane's international defense.

Sid Heal: As a matter of fact, that was an interesting one because it went to Jane's international defense review, and that was really a groundbreaker because I got invited to speak at the first international non lethal weapons conference and ended up speaking at four of the first seven as a keynote speaker.

Well, it's like Odenthal calls the self licking ice cream cone. The better it tastes, the more you lick it. The more you lick it, the bigger it gets. And that's exactly what happened. And I couldn't begin to tell you how many different places. But Haifa, Jerusalem, Israel, Belfast, Dublin, Mostar, Sarajevo, Seoul, Brazil, Argentina, I'll just skip the cities and go to the countries, because in some of the countries, I'd go to multiple cities because it was expensive to move me over. In any event, that led to teaching, and I started teaching at the us military war colleges.

Well, I did for 20 years and taught at every single one. My handler was a retired lieutenant colonel from the Marine Corps. Told me I had a hat trick. I was one of the few guest professors. I don't know what their associate professor, adjunct. I don't know what the title is, but that had been invited and spoken at every single one.

All four of the services, industrial college, the armed forces, the National War College, command and staff, general command and staff, which eventually became the basis for a book on the concepts. There was no textbook, and so I kept thinking somebody would write one. And we have had some good books on non-lethal, but they've always been focused on the technologies. And right from the beginning, the technology was the way of developing and utilizing the concept. In some cases, the concept existed without the technology.

Jon Becker: The technology was a manifestation of the doctrine. Right? Like, in the end, non-lethal is a mindset. It's teaching force as a rheostat rather than a switch. And the technology was just the vehicle through which you were administering that application.

Sid Heal: It's funny you should pick that out. That was one of the original metaphors that I used to explain the non lethal force concept to people that believed that the Marine Corps force spectrum ran from the M-16 to the F-16. That's a quote.

Jon Becker: Now I remember there was an article that you and I wrote a rebuttal to written by an army colonel, and it was like, I think it was. What price sticky foam? I think was the article arguing that the us military is the most lethal killing machine and never needs non-lethal. And then Afghanistan happens and Iraq happens, and they go, wait a minute.

Sid Heal: The Balkans were the big ones. When the Balkans went off, we got sent back in as peacekeepers. And one of the things that I used in Somalia, I explained, was the fact that it's going to be difficult to make a case for a humanitarian effort if the only tools we have available to us are to kill the people we're sent to protect. That has been quoted a number of times since then, but it also expressed the frustration that we experienced.

There were a lot of people out there that became adversaries that I never truly thought that they had thought it through, not the least of which the international community of the Red Cross, who believed that we were using them to enhance our ability to use lethal force. That's true to a point, but the lethal force was going to be used anyway, and the idea was to protect the innocent while still being able to use the lethal force. And there was a number of other ones.

Jon Becker: There was a mindset in the kind of late 80s, early 90s. I mean, I went through it. I remember did an interview on Daryl Gates radio show with the ACLU, and the whole argument was, this is going to be used disproportionately. It's going to be used racially, it's going to be used this way. So what you're saying is you would prefer they use a baton because that's the choice you're giving them.

Remember, you and I have both repeatedly used Maslow. The only tool you have is a hammer. You tend to view all your problems as nails. The corollary to Maslow is if the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems are nails.

Sid Heal: Yep. What's really interesting, too, and I don't know why, but the baton is one of the oldest non lethal options available to us. It's been around since at least the 1820s, and for whatever reason, it doesn't have the controversy attached to it, the emotional baggage, as some of the safer devices, even though we'll admit that it's primitive and they cause injuries like the bean bag and the sting ball and the taser and the pepper ball. And I just have to wonderland what they think is going to happen.

One of the things that we're experiencing right now, today is the fact that judges and activists are advocating for injunctions against the use of nonlethal weapons or some types of non lethal weapons, without realizing that removing this particular device from the forced spectrum relegates us to using something that's far more harsher and primitive because the problem doesn't go away, because they don't like the way it was handled. And yet some of the biggest critics have come from the law enforcement community, but we can't get any traction.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting. I remember when I did the instructor training for Somalia. It was a room full of gunnery sergeants and arms folded. I'm the most lethal killing machine in the world. Tell me why I need this. And I remember saying to one of the gunnies, if right now you have rules of engagement, those rules of engagement require lethal provocation for you to use lethal force. Everything up until now, everything up until that occurs means you're taking rocks and bottles, and all you can do is wait till the problem escalates. It's like dropping a match on a piece of carpet and waiting till the house is on fire to try and step on the match.

Sid Heal: Exactly right. And that was one of the things that the international committee, the Red Cross, objected to, was the fact that we could target noncombatants to get them away from harm's way, which made the likelihood of killing the adversary, which were putting them in danger to begin with, easier. I'll admit the rationale.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But the inverse is also true. You're driving away the non combatants, so they're a lot less likely to be killed.

Sid Heal: What they ignore is the fact that in many cases, the technicals in Somalia were putting them in harm's way on purpose because it made us reluctant to use lethal force, and so it gave them an advantage, particularly when our technology was better than theirs so they could negate that technology.

So it's one of the things I got asked this in London one time, it's legally right and morally wrong. I understand where you're coming from, but the law needs to be caught up to the technology. We don't have to kill people that are not trying to do us harm.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but it's interesting because, and this is what you see happening today. I mean, you look in California with AB-481, there is so little understanding of the technology and the doctrine that there's a belief that nonlethal weapons are increasing the number of incidents of injury and fatality. And it isn't until you take them away and put law enforcement in a position like the military was, where it's like, here's your tools, hammer and screwdriver.

Hope you don't have to cut anything because you don't have a saw. I think that we're kind of at a point where the doctrine now is lagging behind the technology.

Sid Heal: Again, what's interesting is that if you really look at it from the balcony, we're using technologies that we were lauded for 20 years ago, even 10 or 15 years ago. What's happened is that we'll be the first to admit that we're using the cutting edge, the state of the art. There hasn't been a lot of improvements, and the improvements that have been made have usually been increasing the effectiveness of an existing device or technology rather than a new technology. So there are new technologies out there, but sadly, nobody wants to bell the cat.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And it's, I think, you know, as we've talked about, you know, there's always an arms race between technology and doctrine, right? Since the first guy picked up a stick and used it as a baton, there has been an evolution of technology and an evolution of doctrine. And, you know, you think about the lecture that Robert Bunker gave years ago at one meth, talking about the evolution of armor and the evolution of weapon, and there's this constantly taking place. We're in one of those periods where we have transitioned, and doctrine has become less important.

And I think that one of the things that you said early in this conversation that has stuck with me is that the why was what you were trying to figure out. We've reached another point where the how is past the why.

Sid Heal: Yes. And let me just add to that, that is a police problem. The training in police is unbelievably expensive, far more than most citizens understand. We pay the guy to go to school, we pay the person that's teaching them, and we pay the guy that's doing his job or her job while they're gone. It's horrendously expensive.

If you gave me a device that worked 100% of the time for free, I, as an administrator, would still have to factor in what it's going to cost to bring it up to training. And if it's got a steep learning curve, it may not be cost effective.

So when people are talking about defunding police, if they would just change the name to reform police, a lot of us would be on their side. The sad part about it is we've been complaining about this for years, but nobody has been paying attention.

Don't listen to the politicians when they're telling you they're spending millions of dollars on the development of non lethal options, for the simple reason is go look at how much of a percentage that really is compared to all the other things they're purchasing well.

Jon Becker: I've spent my entire adult life in non lethal weapons and the last significant technology was 15 years ago.

Sid Heal: Taser?

Jon Becker: Yep.

Sid Heal: Yep, you're right.

Jon Becker: It was exact.

Sid Heal: Interesting enough, the taser, the new taser is really an adaptation and an improvement on one that had existed before that.

Jon Becker: Yeah, but as you said, it was a game. It's not a brand new technology, it's an evolution of an existing technology.

Sid Heal: That was one of the things I learned by the travel. The travel really opened up my eyes because they would send me to places like Belfast and Dublin and Haifa and Jerusalem and Bostar, where I thought that they would be light years ahead of us in both the thinking and application. In reality, they were struggling with the same problems and the antiquated technology. You're right.

One of the things, when you mentioned the taser was the fact that a lot of the controversy surrounding it in the United States is cultural. It's not unpopular in the United Kingdom. But what's unpopular in the United Kingdom is impact munitions, which are not all that unpopular in the United States.

So it had no basis to do with science and safety and effectiveness. It was people's uneducated opinions, ignorant opinions in many cases. And in some cases I would argue and debate activists from the other side, including in public, and give them scenarios using their strategy as opposed to ours. And we would admit, for instance, that impact munitions are going to cause injury. So too, batons.

The difference is that I may be willing to shoot a man with a knife at 35 or 40 ft with an impact munition.

Jon Becker: Hitting him with a baton.

Sid Heal: I can't reach him with a baton unless I'm willing to accept the risk to my own life.

Jon Becker: And he's dead long before that.

Sid Heal: And that's exactly what's happening. And they have not thought some of these issues through.

Jon Becker: Well, it's interesting because, you know, again, it goes back to the why, right. It goes back to kind of this understanding of doctrine. And I think that that's kind of a good segue for us to talk about how you began to merge or fuse what you had learned in the Marine Corps from a doctrinal standpoint and what you had learned in law enforcement and push those together.

Sid Heal: Probably the best way to explain this is the fact that when I became an officer in the Marine Corps, I had had 10 years as an enlisted for 1978 until 1986, 8 years. I would conservatively estimate that the Marine Corps spent $100,000 on my education before I ever led troops in harm's way.

When I became a captain for the sheriff's department, which is an executive level. I got a handshake and a new badge. It was expected that I had already acquired this knowledge. Without a career path, without any command colleges, without any schools, the Marine Corps would give me material that I was expected to read when I would go to school. I took tests that I was expected to pass.

And if I didn't pass, I could expect not to be promoted again. And within the given time, I could expect to be reduced to harmlessness, is what we'd call it, put to pasture. That mindset drove me into studying for myself as a law enforcement officer, particularly when I became into some decision making authority.

Jon Becker: So that's the genesis of your book, Sound Doctrine, which I think we'll pick up on our next episode.