Uncategorized Archives - Page 2 of 12 - The Debrief with Jon Becker

Episode 41 – Inside the NYPD Emergency Service Unit (ESU) Jon Becker: There may be no US tactical and rescue unit more well known than NYPDs emergency service unit, or ESU. Featuring a mission set that ranges from high angle ropes work to water rescue, from high risk search warrants to hostage rescue, and from CBRN response to counterterrorism, ESU has sometimes been described as 911 for NYPD. My guest today is Joe Bucchignano. Joe started his emergency service career in 1997, working as an EMT and completing paramedic school in 1999. Joe worked as a full time paramedic until 2003, when he joined the New York Police Department and spent his first seven years assigned to the 52nd precinct in Norwood section of the Bronx. In 2010, Joe was selected to join the ranks of NYPD's emergency service unit, where he spent the next 13 years of his career. During his tenure, Joe's assignment included patrol in ESU, truck three and truck one, being an adjunct instructor and medical instructor at ESU Specialized training School, and he finished his career as a full time member of the ESU apprehension team. Joe also served with New York Task Force one, a joint police and fire urban search and rescue team, which is part of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue response system. There, he deployed several times to natural disasters within the United States as a rescue and logistics specialist. Joe retired from the NYPD in June of 2023 and now serves as an assistant paramedic coordinator for an EMS agency in Westchester County, New York. He's also the founder of Crisis Zone Consulting, a multidisciplinary training and consulting company that works with public safety agencies, private entities, and individuals to enhance their organizational and individual emergency preparedness. I'm excited to share my chat with Joe because it gives us an inside view of one of the world's premier units, including how they train, how they operate, how they manage, their ridiculously diverse skillset, and the lessons learned from a career in ESU. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Joe Bucchignano! 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! Joe, thanks so much for being here with me! I'm excited to talk to you today! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Jon! I really appreciate the opportunity! We've been trying to do this for a while, so I'm glad that we finally found some time to get together. Jon Becker: Yep, 100%. So talk to me. Why don't we start with, like, you know, give me Joe's career arc. Joe Bucchignano: I mean, realistically, my career arc goes back to, like, when I was 14 years old. That's kind of when I started getting involved in EMS. I grew up in Yorktown, New York, a suburban community of New York City. And at the time, I had to do some community service, and not for, like, criminal reasons, but for religious reasons. And at the time, my neighbor was the captain of our local voluntary ambulance corps. And, you know, he kind of said, hey, you know, we have a youth group program for high school kids. Why don't you come check it out, see if you like it, you know, and you can do your community service through there. And that just – That got me hooked, you know, that was kind of my start into emergency services kind of as a whole. And so I did the volunteer ambulance stuff kind of all through high school, and finished up the EMT school right before I graduated high school. And I had all these anticipations of going off to college and doing the pre med thing and the medical school thing, and just spent a little too much in year one at college doing things other than studying. And so the college thing didn't really work out for me. And so I came back home and went to paramedic school. Finished up medic school in 99, and started a career in paramedicine. And unlike other places or parts of the country, here, especially in New York and in the areas surrounding New York City, the paramedic stuff is really not a career. It's more of a launching pad for people to go into other career fields related, whether it's nursing or PA school or law enforcement, fire department, there's just more of a career path in there. So I can remember back in fourth grade, I had a friend of mine at the time whose father was a police officer, and he had brought in this book to school one day. It was a book by Samuel Katz that was NYPD life on the streets with the NYPD's emergency service unit. And I checked this book out, and I was just enamored. The guys and girls in that book, they were just like gods and goddesses to me. I was like, man, what a cool job. I would love to do something like that one day. And so I was working as a paramedic, and I just kind of took the NYPD exam more as a fluke than anything else, kind of take it and, hey, see what happens. And I got a letter from them, like, hey, you want to come in for start your process? Yeah, why not? Might as well. Doesn't hurt to do it. And next thing I know, like, six months later, it was like, hey, we're offering you a job. And so I made the transition from working full time ems as a paramedic into the police academy in July of 2003. And I graduated the police academy right before New Year's. So my first night out on the street, like so many other cops that have graduated, at the end of December, was, you know, New Year's Eve and Times Square. Jon Becker: Oh, God! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. Thrown to the fire, so, yeah, that's. Jon Becker: Losing your virginity to a gang range. My God, man! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, the job really knows how to just throw you right into the mix, so. But, yeah, it was a great experience, you know, like, definitely one of those, like, iconic moments. Like, you know, here you were. Here I was, like, six months ago, just working as a paramedic, and then here I was six months later, like, standing in Times Square New year's Eve. Never experienced anything like that before. I was not growing up, other than going to Madison Square Garden for, like, ranger games, I was really not much of a city dweller, so it was overwhelming, to say the least. Jon Becker: Yeah. Six months ago you're a paramedic, now you're arresting Times Square Elmo. Joe Bucchignano: Oh, yeah, it was. It was good, you know? Jon Becker: So what made you select into ESU? Like, I mean, so it's. It's a lifelong dream. You do seven years ish in 52nd precinct. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I was in the five two precinct, which covers, like, Norwood University Heights, you know, by Marshall Parkway in the Bronx. So I ended up there, like, right out of the police academy and did my initial field training there, and then did mostly patrol there. I did some small condition stuff in one of the units, and then did some highway safety stuff, believe it or not, just writing tickets. So I kind of went from that, and ESU had a – And they still do to this day. But in order to apply for ESU, you have to have a minimum of five years with the department before they'll even let you apply for it. And so I waited, and ESU typically puts in one class a year. So the day that I hit five years of service, my application was, like, filled out, went down to the personnel office down at one police plaza, dropped off the application, and then there was basically an ESU, for lack of a better term, hiring freeze. So I sat there in purgatory for two years, three years, until they finally had put in the next class. And I got picked up in that class in 2010. So it was, the great thing about the NYPD is just there's something for everyone. There's so many different units. And I mean, you can go from being, if you enjoy photography, they have a film and TV unit. If you are an artist, you can go and do profile sketches and so on and so forth. So there's just so many units. But I really had, from the day I entered the police academy, my mindset that that was where I wanted to go. It was just that type of work, especially with my paramedic background, that just really attracted me to that unit specifically. Jon Becker: So you get to ESU and where do you go? Joe Bucchignano: So my first assignment was a squad three emergency service. Squad three, which is up in the Bronx, basically covers I the 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49 in the Bronx, which is essentially the South Bronx, from kind of the Manhattan border all the way through the South Bronx, all the way up the east side of the Bronx, up to the Westchester county line. So I started out there in squad one on the scooter chart, worked with some real senior guys, some great guys, definitely got immersed into the ESU life, and those guys were just really great at welcoming me and kind of getting me spun up. Because realistically, I think it's like anything else you go through. You know, at the time, the school was about seven months long. You go through seven months of training. When you graduate, you get to a truck and you realize you don't know anything, you know? And so now you're really learning. Once you get out to a truck and you start doing, you know, Esu patrol stuff. So I spent the first couple months there on a scooter chart, doing a kind of a flip flop of days and four to twelve tours. And then maybe six or seven months after I got to the truck, I went to steady midnights and I spent a – my whole time in truck three on, on, or the remainder of my time in truck three on midnight. And then from there, I transferred down to truck one. When I had about maybe six or seven years in the unit, I transferred down to truck one. The opportunity kind of was presented to me by the truck one lieutenant at the time, and truck one is known as the Hollywood truck, you know. And so I kind of said, like, yeah, I mean, I like change and trying different things and going different places. So I was doing a training stint at the time with two of the subunits that the department had created to help out with some of the counterterrorism efforts, which was the strategic response group, or SRG, and then the critical response command, CRC. So we, myself and four or five other guys were kind of tasked up with training up these new units and very basic kind of tactics and active shooter response. They were outfitted with long guns and helmets, plate carriers. And so we kind of working them through some team tactics stuff and deploying long guns in kind of a CQB environment. And so maybe my last year that I was officially assigned to three truck. That's what I was doing. And then when that kind of wrapped up and finished, I ended up down in truck one in Manhattan. So that was a different flavor of work. Truck three was a lot of what we called perp work, a lot of tactical work up there in the Bronx doing midnights. We had a fair number of highways, and because we were kind of out there on the road, we would sort of be first at a lot of pin jobs, we call them, which were, you'll see the NYPD's got a ton of vernaculars. I'm going to try not to go crazy with the vernaculars, but it's like a whole other language in a language. So we would get a lot of vehicle extrication calls on the midnights, especially on the highways, and you would get the occasional jumper, a lot of emotionally disturbed persons. So that was kind of the bread and butter work up there. Truck one, definitely a different vibe, different environment. Truck one covered Manhattan south, basically from Battery park all the way up to 59th street. So just kind of the south edge of Central park there. And that was definitely more rescue oriented work. A lot of water jobs, a lot of jumpers, a lot of rope jobs. So definitely a different type of work. Not as much, you know, tactical work. Then I was doing up in truck three, and then, yeah. Jon Becker: Good for those that don't know, like Manhattan. Like that's basically the south end of the island, right? It's the end of the island. And it's surrounded by the rivers and high rise buildings. Joe Bucchignano: East river on the east side, and you got the Hudson river on the west side. And that's basically the heart of, you know, new York City. When, you know, if you're a tourist and you think New York City, that's, that's truck one's area. And, you know, that's why it has the nickname of the Hollywood truck, because, you know, that's where a lot of news agencies are as well. And so, you know, being in truck one, you constantly ended up in the paper or on the news or something like that. Jon Becker: Yeah. And for those that are uninformed, like the World Trade center is in truck one's area. Joe Bucchignano: Yes, that's correct. Jon Becker: Wall street is in truck one's area. Joe Bucchignano: Wall Street, Battery park. Yeah. Times Square, Empire State Building. All the major iconic, you know, Statue of Liberty. So all the major iconic kind of tourist spots really are sitting in truck one's area of responsibility. Jon Becker: Literally every New York postcard is located in truck one. Joe Bucchignano: That's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe with the exception of Yankee Stadium. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Fair, fair. So, okay. And just for, you know, I'll periodically pull in NYPD vernacular. So EDP, emotional, emotionally disturbed person. Joe Bucchignano: Yes. Jon Becker: Which is I'm sure we're going to use regularly because EDP is a frequent topic with ESU. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it's definitely the bread and butter of a lot of what we do. Jon Becker: Yes, it is. So, okay, so you're. You do truck one for several years, and then what makes you want to move to a…. Joe Bucchignano: So, you know, prior to that, I got pulled down to our specialized training school out at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn as an adjunct instructor. But more so, I have a knack for PowerPoint and lesson plans. And so, like anywhere else, you know, when they see that you have a strength in something, they want to utilize that. And so I basically went down there to kind of just help out on the administrative side of the school with kind of updating a lot of our lesson plans and training programs and stuff like that. And so I went down there, did some adjunct instructor work for about a year, and it was partially missing being on the street definitely played a part in me wanting to get out of there. And then it was also some differences of opinions that I had with some of the command staff there that, you know, an opportunity came up for me and an offer came up for me to go up to the apprehension team, and I jumped all over it at the chance. I had done a rotation with the apprehension team back in what I say, maybe 2012 or 13, I had maybe two or three years in the unit, and we can get into the A team and how it operates and what the rotation means and stuff like that. I guess later I'd went there for rotation, had a blast. Absolutely loved it! And then after my rotation was up, went back to truck three and then continued my time in ESU. And when the sergeant that was in charge of the A Team at the time, who's still the sergeant in charge of it now, reached out to me, and he basically said, hey, listen, we got an opening up here. We would love to have you. What are your thoughts? And I said, I'm packing my bags, you know, basically, when can I start? You know, put me in, coach. So, yeah, so I made the move up to the apprehension team. And I gotta say, like, you know, throughout my whole career in ESU, I worked really with some. Some great people. And everywhere I worked had things about it that I absolutely loved. But those last two years or so of my career, two and a half years up at the apprehension team, was really the best two, two and a half years of my 20 year career with the department. Jon Becker: Well, if you look at ESU as an elite selected unit within NYPD and a sought after unit, the A team is certainly, even within ESU is this unique small cell that does this very interesting job that we'll talk about. I mean, it's, you know, out of, you know, whatever, 18,000 NYPD cops. There's a dozen guys in the 18. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like, I'm never one to throw around the word elite when it. When it comes to the unit. I mean, I think that there's, you know, there's some guys there that have done just, you know, some real amazing things. And every cop has. You know, the thing about ESU, really, is you spend any amount of time in there, and you're going to be tested. There's no question about it. Not just necessarily on a tactical assignment. It could be anything. But you're going to be tested, and you're going to have your moment in the sun. That's normal for everyone. The thing with the A team is that we were not necessarily better than the guys out in the trucks. We weren't any more elite than the guys in the trucks. The advantage that we had was that we were very singular focused. Our whole job, there was just tactical work, and that was it. And specifically the execution of search warrants. And so because we were kind of singular focused, we were able to just devote 100% of our training and attention and everything else to that one single task that we did day in and day out. Whereas when you're in the truck, I mean, the litany of things that you're responsible for and have to know and have to be competent at, just, it grows exponentially from there. And so that was, like, the biggest benefit that we had was that kind of just laser focus and singular focus on a very specific task that we were given. And that's kind of what made us maybe a little bit more efficient in the way that we did things was just because we were doing the same things kind of day in and day out. Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, even. Even people in the law enforcement community, people who, you know, I know that are well versed, don't really understand ESU. It is – Of all the units that I've dealt with and all the units I've interacted with, it is probably the most mysterious. Not because it tries to be intentionally mysterious, because it is very difficult to put it into any box that makes sense in any other police department in the United States. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it definitely is. It's very unique in terms of the mission set that it has. And historically, ESU, for the most part, was a group of relatively silent professionals. It was very frowned upon. I can remember when I was a new guy in truck three, and I had posted something very innocuous on social media, and I immediately got called out on it. We don't do that. We don't advertise what we do. We don't look for pats in the back and so on and so forth. And that was a big learning lesson for me. And so there really hasn't been, I think, more so lately, especially with them being in the spotlight a little bit more in some of the bigger assignments that have happened that have kind of hit news, whether it's local or national. Obviously, after 911, that was a very big moment for ESU because they lost the most number of guys. Out of the 23 police officers that were killed, the majority of them came from emergency service. And so I think that kind of that silent professional mindset as well as you see these guys walking around or driving these trucks with these big utility bodies on them, and they're breaking out tools, and you're like, are these guys plumbers? Are they handymen? Are they tactical guys? We can't quite figure out what these guys do. And the real funny part about that is it wasn't until a few years ago that the sergeant who is running the specialized training schools, he's been in that position for a while and a wealth of knowledge. He said, we really need to do kind of an orientation with people that want to come to the unit before they even go for an interview, because a lot of patrol cops don't even understand the work that we do. And we would get, you know, you know, guys and girls that would end up, getting, you know, making it through selection, and they would join, you know, they would go to the specialized training school for their initial train up, and, you know, they would at one point maybe say, what do you mean? I got to get in that water? I didn't know you guys did that. And it was like, how do you not know that we did that? Like, you applied to come to this unit. You don't know what we do. And so, you know, there were police officers just within our own department that had no clue what we do. And now we get people that show up for that orientation, and they, they go through the videos and the PowerPoint, and they explain to him, hey, this is what's going to be expected of you as an e man. And we get people that say, nope, not for me. Thanks, but no thanks. And they walk out and we'd never, you know, never hear from again, never see them again. So, you know, it's just funny that even with their own department, that that holds. Jon Becker: True. Yeah, but. But I mean, to be fair, Joe, like, there, there are a certain number of phobias that human beings have, right? Confined space, high places, somebody shooting at you, water, darkness. It is literally like animals. ESU's mission is almost like a who's who in fears and phobias. And it's fascinating because when you look at the mission set and you look at kind of the origin story of the unit, it is unique. And I use that term as a guy who's done this for 38 years and dealt with thousands of tactical units. There is no, the closest equivalent I can come up with is LA sheriff's, SCB. And even there, they're split into different teams. Right? So it's, I guess it probably. It probably merits going back to the origin story. Right? So ESU's formed in 25? Joe Bucchignano: So the. The official ESU as we know it, know of it today was, was officially formed April 16, 1930. Now, I'm not an ESU historian. There's guys in the unit who are much better historians than I am. So I'm going to try to do this some justice. But if you go back to 1925, there were emergency automobile squads. There were two of them, squad one and squad two. One was based in Manhattan, two was based in the Bronx. And just like to the origins of ESU, the whole purpose of these squads was to really assist the police officer on patrol, just to be able to bring individuals that have some specialized, we can call it training and access to some specialized or not so specialized equipment. To be able to essentially be problem solvers. And so those emergency automobile squads were started up, and it was maybe a year or so later that the police commissioner at the time saw that the benefit that these emergency automobile squads kind of offered to the department. And so they added a third squad. And I want to say, by 1926 or 28, they were up to ten squads kind of spread out throughout the city. And at the time, they were dealing with things like, you used to have horse drawn carriages in New York City at that time, and I'm not talking about the Central park tourist ones as a means of normal transportation, that when a horse ended up in the water, who do you call to deal with that? Building collapses and aided cases and stuff like that. At the time, it was really more of a unit that dealt with the unique stuff that the police department didn't know how to deal with. They said, hey, we got to take a group of people and give them some training and more importantly, the equipment that they need to be able to deal with some of this stuff. And so that was kind of really how they started. And by 1930, April 16th, was when the emergency service division was formally created. And at the time, there were 20 squads at the inception of what is now today the emergency service unit, which falls under the Special Operations division. But that was the origins. And in addition, I think at the time, there wasn't tactical training. These guys, they got training in machine guns, but you're talking, like, Tommy guns. We have old ESU photographs from way back then of these old school, rugged e men on the back of the 1930 Mac with Tommy guns. I don't think that there was much of an emphasis on tactical training at the time, because obviously, we're talking 1930. Their emphasis was more geared towards what comprises a lot of ESU's work, which is just mitigating incidents or situations that the average cop on patrol either doesn't have the training or doesn't have access to the tools and the equipment that they need to do it safely. Jon Becker: The origin story is also in the era of Al Capone. This is the, you know, this is the mob days of New York City. And, you know, the Tommy guns were probably just to equalize what the suspects were carrying. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I think at the time, you know, I think you can look back to, like, ESU's first major gun battle. You know, that as far as I know, was documented in, like, 1926 at something known as the Tombs, which is the correctional facility in lower Manhattan, with a couple of escaped prisoners that resulted in, I believe, two or three deceased perpetrators and one or two deceased corrections officers and stuff like that. Prior to the emergency automobile squads, I can remember reading stuff about the machine gun squad, which was, I think, even a precursor to the emergency automobile squads, which was all guys coming back from World War one that joined the department, and they had some, you know, military experience and some exposure to combat. And they were there as a kind of a counterterrorism effort at the time, you know, to protect the ports of New York. Jon Becker: Crazy! Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, it's wild. Jon Becker: So almost 100 years later, you know, 95 years after the formation of the emergency services division, let's talk about the current structure of ESU. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, so ESU as it stands today, I mean, you know, definitively, to give it a number count, I know at its highest, we had about 400 people in emergency right after 911. I think that number now is down closer to maybe the 320 number somewhere around there. So I think it's safe to say between 300 and 350 somewhere in there. The unit is based out of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York. It's also where the aviation unit is. So you have your administrative offices out there, the specialized training schools out there. We have individuals who are assigned to the school full time as subject matter expert instructors in the different disciplines that we have. And then the admin office is responsible for all the regular admin stuff. Payroll and roll call and the executive staff and stuff like that. The unit itself, the trucks, there's a couple of distinct, different sections of the unit. So you have the trucks. There's ten trucks throughout the city. Each truck covers a certain geographic area of the city. And then within that geographic area, there's a certain number of precincts that they cover. So in Manhattan, you have truck one and truck two. In the Bronx, you have truck three and truck four. Staten Island is served by a single truck, truck five. Brooklyn. Because Brooklyn's a pretty big and dense borough. There's three trucks that cover Brooklyn, six, seven and eight. And then nine and ten cover large. I mean, queens is enormous, like truck ten. Service area east to west is huge. But truck nine and ten cover queens. Truck eleven is not an official truck, but it's stationed out at Floyd Bennett Field. It could be staffed by the admin and instructor staff that's out there. And then you have the apprehension tactical team, or the A team. And you have the weapons of mass destruction unit, which turns out of Manhattan. So they're their own separate entity as well, especially at the height of white powder envelopes that's kind of where they were created from the initial hammer teams that were created to kind of specifically just deal with hazmat related stuff. So that's kind of like the overall structure of the unit. You know, within the trucks you have subspecialties. So every person in ESU gets the same initial training, the same initial school. You know, back in, in 1930 or 1928, whenever the first ESU school was, was officially created at the police academy, I think it was in 1928, but it was. It was two weeks long. And that's – You had two weeks and you were. You were a member of the emergency service division. And the school now is. It's eight months now. So that's just how much things have grown. And as the responsibilities and the equipment improves, obviously to accommodate all that, it now takes eight months to train up an ESU officer. So besides the initial training that everyone has the same base level of training. You have individuals who are tactical paramedics, you know, individuals who either came into the unit as paramedics, such as myself, or individuals that went to paramedic school after they had graduated from STS. You have members of the counter sniper team. So, you know, those individuals are usually spread out throughout the trucks. You have individuals who are energetic breachers, individuals who are divemasters and repel masters and hazmat specialists. And so you have, you know, everyone has the same base level of training, and then you have individuals that maybe have some specialized skill set that they can use, you know, for certain incidents that might require that. Jon Becker: But at a base level, every member of ESU is a diver, you know, an EMT, a physical extraction specialist. Right. Whether it's vehicle extraction or getting somebody out from under a subway, Cardinal has a base level of tactical and high risk entry training, has ropes training. And ropes in New York is the George Washington Bridge. It's not ropes. Three story building. It's skyscraper. It's like vertical axis. As a guy who grew up in LA, you go to New York and you realize vertical access. This is a very different meeting in New York. But like, the breadth of the skillset is really like in most other parts of the world, you have fire doing the extraction part. You have maybe somebody else doing the water part of it. I think that is one of the things that makes ESU so unique. And even within the individual trucks. Like, one of the things I love about ESU is it is the land of absolute understatement of everything. Joe Bucchignano: It is a playground for adults. Absolutely. Yeah. It's just the amount of equipment. It's ridiculous. You know, like, I mean, the big trucks have well over a million dollars worth of equipment on each one. Jon Becker: And that's a perfect example of how ESU understates everything. So you say, oh, truck one. Right? So somebody in their mind is picturing a pickup truck, and that's what constitutes a truck, but that's not what constitutes a truck. What constitutes a truck in NYPD? Joe Bucchignano: So the truck. So the term truck gets confusing because each emergency service squad is referred to as a truck as a whole. So, like, when I say, oh, I worked in truck three, that's, you know, emergency service squad three. But then each squad has what is called the truck. And the truck is essentially a heavy rescue truck with an armory on it. That's essentially what it is. And so there are eleven of those spread throughout the city. So each squad has a heavy rescue that acts primarily as a support vehicle to bring extra manpower and equipment to jobs that are more than just an atom car job. So the atom car is the Ford F 550 with the utility body on it that you routinely will see out on patrol. And that truck is, I don't want to say like a quick response vehicle. It's just, it's out on the road, it's on patrol. It's usually going to be showing up at an incident first. And it has a decent complement of equipment on it to, you know, for the two individuals that are staffing that atom car for the day to get a job started, especially a job that might require more personnel or more specialized equipment. Jon Becker: So on any given shift for ESU, you'll have an atom. An atom car. Joe Bucchignano: An atom, generally speaking, yeah. Throughout the city, generally speaking, you're going to have what we say is like truck across the board, meaning that all ten squads are going to have, you know, two individuals in the truck, two individuals in an atom car. And then if there are additional people now, you start to get, you know, a boy car. So a boy car would just be two additional, you know, ESU individuals that are staffing a second, you know, utility style vehicle. And now when you have an Adam and a boy car working a certain. In a certain truck, now, instead of maybe covering ten precincts, maybe they'll each cover five. They'll split up the responsibility for that geographic area a little bit. Jon Becker: So I think one of the things that helped me understand ESU in the times that I've interacted with you guys and tried to understand the unit is to think of it in terms of Legos of different colors, and we'll talk more about this as we get to load spread. But it is. The mindset of ESU is very much like we need a variety of different color Legos, you know, different skill sets, and we're. We're going to place those Legos all over the place. But all the Legos will work with all of the other Legos. So a guy on truck ten could work with a guy on truck one. And although they might have little local flare differences, they're going to do stuff the same way. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And that was a testament to the initial training and the importance of everyone getting that same kind of base level of training. And it was not uncommon for guys from truck ten to work with guys from truck one or vice versa. Because if truck one was running short for a day and they only had maybe three people that were assigned for that day or for that tour. Well, we're flying in someone from another truck. Maybe truck ten has five people working, so there's an odd person out. So we're going to fly someone from truck ten down to truck one for the day just to balance it out and be able to stamp both those vehicles. So, you know, yeah, absolutely. While everyone has the same base level of training, I will tell you that, you know, being someone that. That came from truck three, which did not do a lot of the style of work that truck one is known for. When I, you know, first got down to truck one, you know, I was in a very, very senior squad down there, and the three senior people in that squad were all guys that had been there for ten plus years, some longer. And, man, I had a lot of learning to do because I didn't do a lot of what we call man unders, you know, people that get struck by subway cars and now they're trapped underneath the car, and it's either, you know, a body removal or an aided rescue. And so these guys were moving at 100 miles an hour, and I just was trying to keep up because they were a finely tuned machine. And truck one gets a lot of train rescue jobs. And so I basically, even though I knew the basics of it, just the speed and the precision at which these guys worked, it was a whole new experience for me. And that's one of the great things about the unit and being able to, because it's a citywide unit. New York City is very diverse, and neighborhoods are very different, and different neighborhoods have different, different problems. And some have more water than others, and some have more trains than others. And some are more known for getting motor vehicle accidents and out in Staten island. When you're dealing with animal jobs, now you're dealing with deer. You're not dealing with deer really, other than maybe in parts of three truck up in Pelham Bay park there. So now you're just dealing with things that are not the norm for you. And I know for me, I always took comfort when I was working with someone who was assigned to that truck, and we got something that was out of the norm because it was like, man, you're the subject matter expert on this. I don't care if I've been here for ten years and you've been here for three. I'm going to just let you run with this because you've experienced this before and I definitely have not. Jon Becker: Yeah. It is an interesting aspect of ESU that there is this diverse mission set within a very diverse city. Both. I mean, you get out into queens and you have a very difficult, very different problem than you do in South Manhattan. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. Jon Becker: Like, it could literally be a different country and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I mean, different cultures different. And especially when you start talking about, you know, barricaded subjects and negotiations and the different, you know, maybe cultural norms for a certain group of people and being able to manage that, it's a challenge. You know, it is a. It is a challenge. Jon Becker: Well, so why don't we. Let's talk about, like, within a truck, you know, using the truck in the collective. Now, let's talk about the mission set of a truck. Like, what that truck is responsible for in its geographic area. Joe Bucchignano: It's really responsible as a patrol omnipresence and. And as a, you know, an asset that responds to request for service. So, you know, as a patrol omnipresence, um, generally speaking, you know, the atom car is out on patrol, and you are driving through, you know, the different precincts that you're responsible, you know, for covering, and you're in a marked vehicle in uniform. So you are a patrol omnipresence. And, you know, while ESU does not handle arresting people and writing, you know, summonses and more normal police functions, you're still out there, and you can still get flagged down for things that are, you know, not necessarily within your role of responsibility, but you're still a police officer, and so you're still kind of expected to at least deal with that until the patrol units get there to kind of take over the scene from you. But realistically, the primary role within a truck is to respond for requests for service so the saying in ESU is that when the public needs help, they call 911, and when the police need help, they call ESU. And so you're driving through different precincts and you are responding to requests for service. And you're also, you know, if you're driving through the 40 precinct, you're listening to that division radio, and if you hear the 40 precinct going to something, maybe it's an EDP with a knife, maybe it's a dispute with a firearm, you're going to start heading over that way. Because like I said, you're still a law enforcement officer. You're still a police officer. We all wear the same patch on our right sleeve regardless of what's on the left. And so you're there to just support and back up, you know, the patrol cops that are out there doing a very difficult job. So, you know, that that's kind of really the main mission set or role and responsibility within the truck. There's other things, you know, related to equipment maintenance and, you know, internal training and maintaining quarters and all that other stuff that is kind of unique to ESU, you know, because of the armories inside the trucks. Like, we don't have cleaning staff like, like a precinct does. So you're responsible for cleaning the toilets and the kitchen and all that other stuff. Our setups are definitely more of a firehouse style setup with our quarters. So that's kind of the day to day stuff within a truck and the mission set. Jon Becker: What's the work schedule like? Joe Bucchignano: So we do well, at the time, I think since I've retired, it's changed. But at the time, you either were assigned to the scooter chart, which was a week of days and then a week of four to midnights on a 52, 53 schedule. So you were constantly rotating your days off, or you did steady midnights with a rotation. Certain units either had. When I was on the a team, we had kind of a Gucci schedule. It was Monday to Friday, you know, which obviously within law enforcement is kind of unheard of, but, you know, it was well welcomed at the end of the career. So, you know, some units had a Monday to Friday schedule or maybe a piece of the weekend where they had off Friday Saturdays or Sunday Mondays, I believe. Now they've to try to help retain some people because that schedule is not, you know, ideal for home life and stuff like that. I think now they've gone to a steady chart where you're either working steady days, steady four to twelve s. You know, there's pros and cons to both. You know, Manhattan was very different from the other trucks working in truck 1, truck 3, the 4 to 12s. And the midnights were busy. And the day tours, they were not as busy. There was not as much going on in the outer boroughs during a day tour, whereas truck one was historically busier on day tours because you have to consider the influx of people coming into Manhattan for work, that the population density increases tenfold during the day. And so a lot of truck one's work was during day tours. And the four to twelve s were generally on the, you know, on the quieter side. So, you know, the nice thing about having that flip flop was you kind of got a taste of both and different types of work, which I think made you very well rounded. Jon Becker: And just from, like from a mission set for any one of the trucks, like, obviously, anything tactical that happens is your responsibility, right? It. If any kind of tactical situation, barricade, whatever hostage situation is going to become an e issue problem, you know, but kind of walk me through some of the other things that, you know, as you get to work each day, there are a number of things on the menu. What does the menu look like for ESU? Joe Bucchignano: Well, the menu is pretty diverse, so I guess I could start by talking about the things that we would just respond to, like, automatically once you hear it over. So ESU is on sod radio, special Operations division radio, which is ESU. K nine, aviation, harbor, scuba, all are on Sod radio. And so Sod radio is where we got dispatched on. But then we also had the capability within the trucks and the atom cars to also monitor division radio. And so anything that came over either Sod or division radio, that was a unconfirmed. So in New York City, everything's either confirmed or unconfirmed. And generally 911 calls when they first come in, until an NYPD cop gets there and puts eyes on the problem, all these things are unconfirmed. And so. But if you heard an unconfirmed jumper, unconfirmed water rescue, unconfirmed pin job, unconfirmed active shooter, you know, things like that, like those jobs, that unconfirmed building collapse, those were kind of, hey, we're going to start going and we're going to monitor the radio and we're going to listen for updates. Obviously, if the job is confirmed by precinct units showing up on the scene, then we're going to continue in on that. And if the precinct unit gets there and it ends up being an unfounded, then they could just put the cancellation over, and then we would just kind of resume patrol. So those were the jobs that we kind of automatically responded to every single time. The New York City police Department gets about 80,000 EDP calls a year. So those were not necessarily, and we get assigned every single one of them. And so those were not necessarily responding automatically just because you might have 3, 4, 5, 6 EP calls, like, in your queue at any given time. And so it's just impossible to obviously respond to six simultaneous EDP calls that you're holding. But if it was an EDP with an indication of a weapon or an EDP that was a jumper or something like that, then those, we would start to just head over that way, start taking a ride, monitor division radio, listen for the updates for patrol. And this way, if they get there and it's something that. That they are going to be requesting us for, we're kind of that much closer in terms of a response. So EDP's animal jobs, even the routine, very mundane stuff of individuals who are either locked out or locked in of an apartment, or if the patrol cops need us to come by and secure a door for them so they can resume patrol, or they lock their keys in the car or drop their keys down the sewer grate. Like, we have all of the tools to be able to solve all of those problems. And so a lot of the tools that we have can be used to either maybe recover a gun from a sewer grade that was just used to murder a police officer, or that same tool that we have to do that can be used when that police officer drops his keys or his radio down the sewer. And, you know, hey, can you just give me a hand and get that thing out so I don't have to tell the boss kind of a thing. So there's an overlap, you know, in terms of, while some of this stuff that we do would be considered to be, I'll use the word mundane, or like, man, you're taking a guy that went through eight months of trading, driving around a truck with a million dollars to get keys out of a. Out of a grate. And, yeah, on the surface, it looks like, why would you do that? But the reality is that it's those mundane tasks that we do kind of day in and day out that really help to prepare us for the incidents where like that having that experience or having done something like that before prepares you for something that's much more meaningful in terms of the resolution. Jon Becker: I also think that, you know, the one of the things I've consistently heard from everybody I've interacted with ESU is that ESU is a, you know, and, you know, you pointed this out to me. It's not the emergency services unit. It's the emergency service unit. Right? It is a unit that provides a service to the police department. Joe Bucchignano: We provide a unit, a service, you know, to the police department. And in turn, you know, in turn, that service is Isdev, you know, provided to the citizens of the city in New York. So, you know, it's. We are a full scale unit that provides a service, and that's what we do. We just bring individuals that have some more training and access to some more equipment than the average, you know, cop does on patrol. And we are there to provide a service because, you know, even something as mundane, I'll use that word again, as a police officer that is stuck guarding a door that maybe a super or the fire department, you know, or someone broke a door for a legitimate reason, and now this door is insecure and there's no way to lock it. Well, you know, we have drills and, and other hand tools on the trucks that we use for, you know, structural collapse and other things that could be also used for that purpose. And so, you know, if we have the ability to secure that door, that means that that police officer is not going to be stuck sitting on that door for 12 hours. That means that police officer is now going to be back on patrol, patrolling the neighborhood, responding to calls that maybe are a little bit more important than just having that cop tied up, you know, guarding a door so nobody goes in and steals items from an unsecured apartment. So there's always while some of this stuff, and, you know, I was just as guilty at times of saying, like, why are we doing this? Like, this is silly. Like, you know, I have all this training and all this equipment and I should be handling, you know, you know, things far more important than going in and securing a door. But, you know, when you look at it from a bigger picture and, you know, I think as you get more mature in the unit and you get more time there, you understand that stuff like that. Like it matters, you know, and, and it has a bigger effect than you realize that it has. Jon Becker: I think, culturally it's huge, right? If the focus of the unit is providing service to the patrol officers, there is a service mindset and a humility that comes with that. Right? If you're showing up in the middle of the night to help somebody secure a door, you're a lot less likely to end up with a mindset of, well, you know, with these super, super elite warriors and we're way more important than everybody else's. You are part of the team. And I think that from a patrol standpoint, they're much more likely to want to call ESU because they do have a relationship with ESU that that, you know, ESU is providing them service, and it's a partnership. It's not a, you know, an ivory tower. Oh, look at those guys. They think they're important. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I mean, when I first got to truck three, you know, the senior guy that I worked with on midnights, there had been an ESU for a long time. In fact, he was in transit rescue before the merger. So he had been in that kind of world for a long time. And in full transparency at the time, it just didn't make sense to me. We would go and we would meet up with these patrol cops one night. It was social hour and coffee and this and that. I'm a junior guy. I kind of went along with it, obviously. You know, I like looking back at my career and, you know, there are certain things that, like, that absolutely make me cringe in terms of, you know, when I was young and cocky and thought that I was this, you know, super elite, because everyone always tells you, oh, you're a part of the elite emergency service unit. An elite and an elite. And when you get told enough times that you're elite, you start to believe it, you know? And I know that I absolutely went through a phase where, you know, I had an attitude that I was just better than. And I think there's a difference between, you know, having that attitude that you're better than and then just being, you know, confident and having expectations of the guys and girls that you work with. And I think the big thing that really kind of changed it for me was when I was four, this opportunity to train up these subunits because I got really emotionally invested in giving these guys and girls just a good training experience with the limited amount of time that we had to train them. And then at the end of it, I kind of sat there and I'm like, well, wait a minute. We're giving these subunits this quality training that really goes into detail onto why they're doing certain things and we're really promoting certain things, but we're not doing that for our guys. And so I was able to kind of, like, channelize that, that desire that I had to, you know, just to better individuals and police officers and then start to kind of channel that attention or that energy into, like, hey, what can I do to help the unit. And so, you know, like, just getting back to the original point, like, the guys and girls in ESU are some of, like, the best humans that I've ever met. You know, they just – They come to work every day, and especially some of the individuals who have been there, like, what we call the dinosaurs, right? The guys and girls that have been in the unit for 20, 30 years and are still out in the atom car every day. Like, my hats off to them. I mean, I give them a lot of credit, and some of them are just so dedicated to service that ethos. And their day to day is just about helping cops. And I think that as a calling and what these guys and girls bring to the table, it really is admirable. Jon Becker: I think a lot of that is a function of culture, too. It's a function of not only the culture of the unit, but it's also a function of selection. Right? Like, it's picking. Ending up with the right people is frequently picking the right people. What is – Talk to me about ESU selection process. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And so just to, like, touch on the first thing there, I always kind of make the joke that, like, within the NYPD, there's a lot of things that we don't do right. But I think one of the things that the department does right is the culture of being very welcoming to people, and especially individuals, police officers from, you know, from outside agencies. And so, you know, my time in ESU, there were plenty of times where we would have police officers from other states, other countries stopping by truck one. Hey, I heard about this place. I want to check it out. Or units from SWAT, guys from other departments that would come up to the A Team and say, hey, we want to see how you guys are doing things. And we maybe have some questions about hydraulic breaching or tactical operations and elevated structures, things that we were used to dealing with. And it was always so funny afterwards, talking to guys offline, and they would say, man, you guys are unbelievable in terms of how you welcome people, because if you came to our city, no cop would pay you two cent. They would just, whatever. Yeah, great. You're NYPD. We get it. So I think that culture, just as a department, and now you kind of get down to the micro view of now an individual unit, and having that culture kind of be already in, instilled in you once again, police officers in Times Square, like, how many tourists are they dealing with day in and day out and taking pictures with people? And for a lot of them, you're almost like, a celebrity just because of the NYPD's reputation in film and everything else. So I think that translates over. But to get to the question about the selection process. Jon Becker: Hold on one sec, let's go back to that, because I think you actually raise a really interesting issue. I've experienced the hospitality of the issue and feeling like, you know, they never had anything to do the whole day and everybody was there just to be nice to you. And so, I've seen that. I've seen that at the school. I've seen that at truck one. I've seen that at the A team when you were there, there is very much a culture of warmth, you know, up to and including attending the Macy's parade with ESU. But while I was at truck one, one of the things that Tommy Longa said to me that I thought was very interesting was a New York police officer has to be able to talk to people. And one of the things that strikes when you go to truck one is it's not at an ivory tower station somewhere in the middle of its own area. The trucks are parked on the street in the neighborhood. And the biggest thing that struck me while I was there was the people walking by, you know, oh, hey, Tommy, we're going to bring you cookies. And, oh, you know, hi misses Rabinowitz. And, like, this whole interchange between the department and the community. You know, we in LA, we talk about community oriented policing, but watching the way that NYPD officers are interacting, because you have no choice. Right? You're embedded in the neighborhood. You have no choice. There has to be this interaction. But it struck me when I saw that, and one of the things that Tom Longa said to me was, that's a big selection criteria for ESU, is you got to be able to talk to people. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, absolutely. And that experience is definitely is unique to truck one. And I can't speak for a lot of the other trucks. I mean, I've flown to other trucks and I've worked in other trucks. I have not spent much time out on the apron at other trucks. But I know that from my time in truck three where, you know, I was on midnights most of the time that I was there. And who's wandering around at two in the morning in the Bronx, you know, it's usually not the person that's waking up for work the next day. So we didn't have that kind of community interaction. And especially, like, you know, geographically, where truck three is located, it's just not a heavily residential area right there. But when I went down to truck one, very different, you know, like, why is there a box of milk bones in the garage? Like, what is that for? Oh, that's for when people walk by with their dogs. And I'm like, we could feed dogs here. This is great, you know, so it was definitely, like, it was definitely, for me, it was a culture shock because you would stand out on the front apron and the same people, especially on a day tour, like walking by to go to work or people that lived in the Gramercy neighborhood there and stuff like that. Truck one was very involved with the Gramercy Park Block association, and so we were really, really a part of the local community there, maybe more so than a lot of other trucks. And I don't want to speak for other trucks because obviously, like, never being assigned to the trucks, you know, I don't know what their experiences were like, but I know just from truck one, you know, you were a part of the community and you got invited to community events and, you know, they would have every year, 911, you know, they would have memorial services, and there was always a good showing from the local community and stuff like that. But I think the being able to talk to people is an interesting thing that you bring up because I think that is what sets us apart, really, from a lot of other teams across the country. And the unique thing about ESU is that everyone in ESU is a negotiator without officially being labeled a negotiator. And we can get to that later. But in terms of selection, you know, as I mentioned before, before you can even apply to come to ESU, you have to have a minimum of five years with the department. And so that kind of sets the foundation or the groundwork where it doesn't matter really what precinct you're in. Obviously, the busier precincts in the city, you're going to just have more experience. And along with that experience comes experience talking to people, you know? And so, you know, we're looking for individuals who, who, you know, come from precincts relatively active. You didn't have to be, listen, I was not, by my own admission, I was not like a superstar cop in the five two, you know, I did what I had to do every day, and I came in and did my thing and I had the dream of going to ESU, you know, but, like, police work was not exactly my forte, nor was it something I never had the aspiration of going to, like, a detective squad and, you know, being a big investigator one day or anything like that. But one of the things that I felt that I was good at was talking to people. And I think that really came from my, you know, my paramedic background where I was, you know, interviewing patients day in and day out, you know, talking about whatever ailments they had and so on and so forth. And so, you know, what ESU is looking for is really kind of motivated individuals who preferably worked in busier precincts doesn't mean if you worked in a slow precinct that you were automatically disqualified individuals that were active as police officers. Because again, to go from it could be very difficult if you worked in a slow precinct and did not have a lot of experience to now get thrown into the ESU world where you are responding to, you know, some of the worst of the worst and some of the most critical incidents that, you know, that the city sees. And now you're expected to be the guy or girl to resolve that incident and hopefully to resolve it either peacefully or, you know, without any added or unnecessary, quote unquote, drama that might go along with the incident. So, you know, that's really what they're looking for. And that all happens through, you know, there was a time, especially, you know, when I first got into ESU and the time before that, that getting into ESU was really having either a hook or a crane. You know, like having somebody that was already in the unit that can kind of vouch for you definitely helped. And it was almost at a time where it was almost necessary, like you, you had to have somebody from within the unit say, yeah, I know this guy, know this girl. They're a good guy, good girl, whatever it is, they get the stamp of approval. So that now still carries weight. I don't think it carries as much weight. That whole mantra of, oh, you need a crane to get into ESU. That's not true anymore. We pick up plenty of people that don't know anyone in ESU, and it's their first experience or exposure. So obviously, physical fitness is a big part of the job because it is physically, I was nothing specimen of, you know, physical fitness. But, you know, like, you have to have a base level of physical fitness because it is very physically strenuous between diving and obviously, tactical work and, you know, doing six, seven, eight story walk ups and carrying the equipment and all that other stuff. And so these are things that they kind of, you know, test in the initial, you know, selection process. One of the other things that they do, and it goes back to what you said before about phobias, is they actually test you for certain phobias. And so you have to crawl through this real tiny dark tube into this rock pile and drag a mannequin out. And what they're really testing is not only your physical ability to do it, but also, hey, are you claustrophobic? There's the balance beam, which is essentially you are tied into a high wire and you have to walk across an I beam. It's 20 or 30 ft, maybe 20 or 30 ft up in the air. You have to walk kind of touch thing, turn around, walk back, and that's a test. Your fear of heights. So they do look for individuals that have certain phobias, because if you're afraid of the dark, you're afraid of the boogeyman in the dark or you're afraid of heights, you're not going to make it through the initial training. So that's the initial selection process you put in your application. There's an oral review board, there's physical fitness testing, there's some of the phobia testing, there's some shooting testing that all kind of collectively goes together. Then they're going to look at obviously your CPI file, your background, your disciplinary record, your sick record. They're obviously looking for people that don't have significant disciplinary records, people that have very good sick records, because ESU is not a unit where it's frowned upon if you're just calling out sick to call out sick, because obviously the trucks have to get staffed and they have to get manned. And so looking for people that have very good sick records as well. And then obviously if you bring a special skill set to the table and it could be something silly like, hey, I'm a certified locksmith or I worked at a bird rescue, or like people who are EMTs, volunteer firemen, people that have military backgrounds, all those special skill sets. You're bringing now something to the unit, you're bringing something to the table, elevator mechanics, whatever it might be, that is bringing now an expertise into the unit that the unit can now exploit and benefit from. Jon Becker: That's really interesting. That's a very interesting perspective. Talk to me about school. You get selected into ESU, you've got eight months of school, school ahead of you. How does that break down? What do you, what do you learn in what, you know, what's the kind of rough order? And how do you build the skillset that is required to be in ESU, man? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. I don't envy the sergeant at the school that does scheduling because that is a task and a feat in itself. After kind of seeing behind the curtain of, of how all that works out. An average ESU class is anywhere from 35 to 40 individuals of, you know, from police officer up through lieutenant captains and above. They don't go through the full school. They will go through certain parts of it to have an understanding of ropes, hazmat tactics, scuba, more so from an oversight scene management, scene safety kind of perspective. But everyone from police officer up through lieutenant goes through the full school. And so those 40 or so individuals will get broken up into four separate groups. So you figure ten people, twelve people per group, depending on the size of the class. And then. Excuse me, and then each group is now going to go to a certain discipline on a rotating basis throughout the eight month schooling. So realistically, within the eight months, you're talking roughly eight. And my weeks, I might be off by a week or two here, but anywhere from eight to ten weeks or eight to eleven weeks of firearms and tactics, you're looking at four weeks EMT school, you're looking at, I would say four to six weeks of ropes and jumpers because those kind of go hand in hand. You're looking at four to six weeks of hazmat and CBRN, you are looking at like a week of structural, structural collapse. So some of the, you know, the structural collapse rescue technician training, you're looking at time dedicated to, you know, maybe another week or so of confined space trench rescue, another couple days of vehicle extrication and train rescue. And you're talking weeks of a lot of the ancillary skill sets that kind of overlap into a lot of what we do, like animal control torches, hand tools, power tools, pneumatic tools, hydraulic tools, lock picking, protester locks, all of that stuff as well. You're looking at maybe I want to say the dive program is two weeks. The first week is like Padi, open water and then week two is public safety diving. And then you have another week, week and a half of surface water rescue and ice rescue and then more time allocated to small boat handling for zodiacs and John boats and stuff like that. So they have to fit all of that within that kind of eight month timeframe. Helicopter operations, helicopter rappelling, fast roping, some of the more fancy stuff that we're doing, familiarization with all of the specialized equipment that we have. So the bearcats, the bears, the MRAPs, the TCVs, just the endless amount of specialized equipment that we have, you at least get a familiarization on it within sts, more so not to become familiar with its operations, but just the capabilities that are out there and to have an awareness that this equipment is available to you because after you finish sts you show up the truck day one, more than likely you're going out in the atom car that day and whatever comes your way comes your way. So just having a familiarization and an awareness to the equipment that's available to the unit. So that's essentially what the eight months kind of covers. I mean the major disciplines, obviously tactics, hazmat, technical res, all the aspects of technical rescue, ropes, EMT and then scuba water rescue. I think I hit them all. But those are kind of the major disciplines. And then there's obviously the smaller ancillary offshoots of all of that. Jon Becker: That's really, it's an amazingly broad skill set. And, you know, I think one of the challenges has to be trying to maintain expertise too because once guys are out in the trucks, yeah, you're doing stuff and you're picking things up. But like if you're, you know, like you said, if you're in the Bronx, you may not be doing high angle rescue stuff like you would in Manhattan. How do you – how does ESU maintain this expertise when, when guys, you know, are, you know, assigned to a certain place or like you go to the A team, you're not doing any rescue anymore. So it's. How does that happen? How do you maintain that expertise? Joe Bucchignano: And, and that's the challenge. You know, like the challenge with ESU is that any particular discipline, take tactics for example, has, you know, four full time instructors. Ropes has three full time instructors, let's say. And then Hazmat has three or four full time instructors. When you have a unit of 400 people, you know, how do you, you know, how do you expect two to four people to do not only in service training, which you think about it, if a particular school is a month long and an STS is eight months, they are basically dedicated to four months out of the year to just doing new ESU, you know, school training, like ESU recruit training basically. And then, you know, they need time as well to re-up for the next class and everything else. And so, yeah, that's the challenge. Right? So there's a couple ways to, I guess, combat that. It kind of starts at the individual and the truck level where you have to take some self motivation within your truck or within your squad to do some training. And one of the great things about the unit is because there is such a diverse set of skill sets out there in the truck. When I was in truck three and truck one, if we decide to do medical training for a day, hey, I'm going to take lead on that because I'm a paramedic, so I have that background. And then maybe the next week, generally speaking, like truck based training, there was no official schedule for it. It was just on the individual squad to say, hey, we're going to do some training today. Saturdays or Sundays, I think it was Sundays was what we call trio training. So the way the patrol works with supervision is you have a citywide north supervisor and a citywide south supervisor. Citywide north covered the Bronx and Manhattan, and then citywide south covered Brooklyn, Queens, Staten island. And so, you know, generally a lieutenant could be a sergeant covering that position, but usually it was a lieutenant. And that lieutenant would say, hey, we're going to do trio training this morning. We're going to meet at truck two. It's going to be truck one, truck two, and truck four, let's say, because they're all kind of bordering trucks to each other. And this is what we're going to do today. And they would pick a topic and they would pick someone to kind of, you know, run that training for trio training that day. And that was kind of some dedicated training that was kind of, you know, run by one of the supervisors. So you had your truck training at the squad level, and then you had trio training that was a collective of two or three neighboring trucks getting together at the kind of, you know, discretion of a lieutenant saying like, hey, this is what we're going to do today. And then you had refresher training that was sponsored or run by the school after. So generally speaking, if, let's say the scuba section had a month break, maybe their next STS group to do scuba was coming in in a month. So they had a month of downtime. They would send guys and girls down to the scuba section for refresher training. So generally speaking, like most ESU guys got refresher training yearly on tactics, on ropes, on scuba. Hazmat EMT was recertified every three years. So those were kind of the major disciplines where you went for some ongoing refresher training that was sponsored by the unit of. There were opportunities for guys to go to training with outside training venues and training companies and whether they were federally funded programs out in New Mexico or Alabama or something like that, or we didn't do a lot with private training companies, but we did some stuff with some private training companies. The problem was with a lot of that training is that we're limited in the number of people that we can send to that. So the expectation was that, hey, if you went out to this training in wherever it was, bring back what you learned and share that experience with the rest of the unit. So, yes, we were out doing a lot of this work every day. Doesn't necessarily mean that we were good at it or we were doing it right. And that is the importance of the ongoing kind of refresher training. I think that one of the pitfalls that we fell into by a lot of our executives was the thought that drills were training. Oh, we're doing a drill, so that counts as training. And my personal perspective on drills were, they were great for testing your current capabilities, and they really should highlight the areas that we need to focus our training on. They were not training because at the end of the drill, if we completely botched it, we would all shake hands and turn around and walk away. You walked away defeated, like, well, we really just messed that up. What are we doing to fix it? And that was never really addressed. And so we do get involved in a lot of drills, and the drills really highlighted maybe areas that we were deficient in, and then we would hope that those deficiencies would be addressed by the school during the ongoing refresher training yearly. Jon Becker: Why don't we? So now we got a pretty good sense of what everybody's doing and how the unit works. I mean, you were there for a long time, you know, thousands of operations under your belt. Like, let's talk through your lessons learned. Like, you know, give me. Give me the lessons learned from ESU. You know, Joe's version. What, you know, what if somebody. If you have an opportunity to sit down with a tactical unit and go, here's what I learned at ESU. What's that list? Joe Bucchignano: So Joe's version might be. Might be controversial, but I don't shy away from controversy. So, you know, I think the biggest thing that I learned is, you know, there's always a plus, a pro and a con to things, right? So talking about, like, our operational tempo, you know, I guess we could start with that. And I'll bring this specifically to the apprehension team, you know, because that was my last two, two and a half years within. Within the unit, but, you know, at the apprehension. So ESU as a whole, collectively was executing somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 search warrants a year, with the apprehension team executing, like, 87% of those. So, you know, our op tempo there was right around 500, 500 plus search warrants a year. So the apprehension team was a full time sergeant, seven full time members on the team and then three to four individuals that rotate through on a three month rotation. And so one of the guys that's currently still serving on the A team, he's been there over ten years. So you consider over ten years doing 500 search warrants a year, we'll say 400 if you count in vacations and days off. That's still over 4000 live search warrants that some guys have done. What I learned from operational tempo is that, number one, I always like to focus on the downside first is your operational tempo doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing things right just because you're walking away every single time unscathed. And I think that keeping that kind of in perspective and that humility I think is important. ESU always had a pretty good culture of being honest with itself at more of a micro level. Meaning after any big job, it was always customary to get together at the back of the truck afterwards and kind of have a powwow. Hey, let's talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. And certain individuals didn't really want to hear about or talk about the bad and the ugly. We just wanted to focus on the good. And that's obviously a bad way of doing business because it instills very false sense of maybe competency, and that's dangerous, you know, so, you know, for me, especially when I got up to the, to the A team because it was a smaller unit and, you know, because I had a very good working relationship with the individuals who had been full time members of the team before I got up there. You know, we kind of adopted a culture of focusing more on the bad and the ugly and not so much the good. And, you know, one of the things I always would say to guys that were rotating through the team from day one was, you know, listen, we're going to nitpick every single search warrant that we do. And yeah, we're going to acknowledge the good stuff that you do, but we're going to focus a heck of a lot more on, you know, the bad and the ugly because that's how we learn and that's how we get better. And, you know, if we're nitpicking on really little things, take it as a compliment because that means that all the macro picture stuff, all the big stuff is like really, you know, you're knocking it out of the ballpark there. Now we just really want to refine what we're doing to get as close to perfect as possible. And, you know, in my opinion, there's no such thing as a perfect OP. There's always something to learn from every single incident that you go on, regardless of how great you think you did. So, you know, the reality is keeping the mindset that you could do 1000 search warrants a year with a girl scout troop if nobody ever gives you any legitimate opposition, nobody that's committed, willing to exploit a mistake or cracking your tactics or whatever it might be. And so just volume of work in itself is not a true measure of success. The real measure of success is when you are challenged by an individual who is willing to exploit a crack in your tactics or mistake that you made and what the outcome is. After that, there were plenty of times where I could say that we just plain flat out got lucky, and that was it. There was no skill. There was no nothing. You know, with some of these incidents, it was. It was pure luck. I mean, there were plenty of times where it was skill and it was based on, you know, lessons that we learned before that maybe we made certain adaptations or changes to the way that we did things that. That resulted in a much better outcome. But, you know, that being said, there were plenty of times where it was really, it was just pure luck. And so, for me, one of the big lessons learned is just because you're doing something a lot doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it right. And you need to be honest with yourself, whether it's as an individual or as a unit, as a team, as an organization, to say, hey, did we just get lucky here? Or was this really skill? And if it was luck, what can we do? How can we adapt our training or equipment, our TTPs, to avoid maybe this not going so well or running out of luck in the future. So that was definitely like, one of the big lessons was coming from a unit who has an op tempo that might be running two or three barricades simultaneously while the A team is executing back to back to back search warrants and everyone walking away from those incidents, there's definitely a lot of skill involved and a lot of experience that goes into resolving these things, but there are also the times where it's, hey, we just got lucky, and maybe the way that we normally do things doesn't work for every single situation. And I guess that's kind of rolls into the second lesson learned there. I don't know if you want to talk about or address anything with the first before I continue on here into the second. Jon Becker: I think the one question I had is a little bit on kind of debrief process, you know, like, your views on best methodologies of doing after actions, obviously, candid, immediate. But what other tips and tricks did you learn? Cause, I mean, at 4 or 500 search warrants a year, that is a ridiculously high op tempo for 13 guys. It is unique. Even among other tactical units. The A team search warrant volume is higher than, for instance, combined LAPD and LA sheriff. So, like, what are your lessons learned in an after action there? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I mean, I can talk about the way that we did it, you know, especially, and more specifically the A team. The way that we handle our debriefs is after we finished all of our hits for the day, the debriefs were rather informal. So unless you did something, like, real egregiously dangerous, where then maybe the debrief was not so warm and fuzzy, we would stop, pick up breakfast on the way back to the office. Then we would just sit around the table, and the debriefs and the after actions were kind of a level playing field. So it was, regardless of rank, seniority, time of the unit, whatever it might be, everyone was kind of held to the same standard. And I think for us, the A team was a full time sergeant, seven full time police officer detectives, and then we would get three or four truck guys or girls that would rotate through the A team for three or four months. And that was a chance for them to just get a kind of immersed in a lot of tactical experience and see a lot of different things and kind of learn from the 18 members that obviously we're doing this every single day, day in and day out on top of the level playing field in terms of rank and seniority, I think the other big thing that we really tried to set the example of self critique and taking responsibility for your actions. So for me and some of the other guys on the team that were more senior guys in the unit at the time, we all had over ten years in the unit, which in the span of a 20 year career is half your career. For us to sit there and start up these AARs and say, yeah, this is where I screwed up. This is what I did wrong. This is what I should have done, and this is why I should have done it. And I think that was important to kind of set that tone where, you know, hey, there are these guys who are senior guys in the unit, pretty well respected overall, permanent members of this team that do this every day. And here they are basically admitting where they felt that they had screwed up or could have done something better or whatnot. And so I think that really set the tone to kind of have these guys that in girls that were rotating through to start kind of following our footsteps in terms of doing a good self critique of themselves. So it wasn't always us saying, hey, you could have done this better. You should have done that, you should have done this, you should have done that. Instead, it was them saying, yeah, I screwed this up, and this is what I did, and this is what I should have done, and this is why I should have done it. And the other benefit to that is it just shows that the stuff that you're teaching them, that it's kind of sinking in. They're retaining it because they're realizing certain things in the moment that they're realizing afterwards that maybe they should have done differently and why they should have done, why they should have done it differently. And understanding the why is such a massively important part of this. But, you know, for us, that was the big thing, was level playing field self ownership for your mistakes, regardless of how long you had been there, you know, or whatnot. So it was kind of setting that example. And then we would, you know, use not only our own personal observations as teaching tools and critique points, but we were body cameras, you know? And so the body cameras were just an excellent tool for us to be able to go back and say, like, hey, see how you're set up on this door? Like, you know, maybe next time consider doing this. Or, you know, hey, you see where you're positioned here? Or, you know, you went left, you should have went right. Obviously, when you got the, you know, the guy that would say, like, I didn't do that. Oh, let's go watch the videotape, you know, like, yeah, see, you did that. You know, oh, man, I didn't realize I did that. Okay, we'll let it slide, you know? So utilizing some of the resources that we had available to us as a teaching tool just so we could keep on getting better, I mean, that was really, at the end of the day, it was all about just getting better, doing the job better, being efficient, proficient, being professional. And one of the most gratifying things about the A team was you would get the seven of us that work together consistently. We worked pretty smoothly together, because you're working with the same guys every day. You start to learn guys' body language and their verbal cues and stuff like that, just the way that they operate. You get used to it. You get accustomed to it. Obviously, that makes for a very good flow state when you start doing a lot of the search warrants that we were doing, which were primarily no knock entries. You know, when you get three or four individuals now rotating into the team that you've never worked with before, and you just see the progression from week one to the end of month three or month four, however long they're there for, just to see how they really – It's kind of like the general progression was like month one was just getting them kind of just up to speed with just real basic stuff, you know, like, for a lot of them, you know, especially in the trucks and especially working the scooter chart where most, you know, guys and girls go to when they first graduate sds, you're not really doing a lot of search warrants. Most of the search warrants are happening, you know, 06:00 a.m. and if the trucks are doing a warrant that maybe the apprehension team is not doing, it's usually the guys and girls that are working midnight. So they kind of get the volume of the search warrant work outside of the A team. And so a lot of these guys and girls that come rotating through the team, some of them have never done a search warrant in their first year in ESU because it's just. It's never come up in their area or an emergency search warrant just never popped up when they were working. And so for a lot of them, it maybe is their first time doing a warrant. They've been on dozens of barricades, but obviously, that's a different, you know, operational tempo then. You know, for us, the way that our team worked our tempo for. For search warrants, because we were doing no knocks, was different from the way that we were doing barricades. But for a lot of them, it was seeing where they started. And then by month two, they were getting more comfortable and the mistakes were less. And now we were just really fine tuning that. By month three, the debrief points were now very, very either minute, minuscule, nitpicking stuff. You know, once again, just to always try to get as close to perfection as possible. You know, so just seeing that progression over a three month period, it just – We saw how the deep, brief stuff really helped. You know, like, at the end of it, at the end of the rotation, they would say, man, just sitting down after these hits and talking about them and seeing, you know, talking about, you know, what was good, what was bad, what could have been done better, and how it could have been done better was such a great learning experience for everyone, even for the guys that were on the team for a long time. There's just always something to learn from every single operation you go on. Jon Becker: But, you know, with that volume of work, right, doing 500 search warrants a year, I think it would be very easy to get sucked into the trap that, like, we do this all the time. Why do we need to debrief it? Why do we need to, you know, you've got a huge volume of work. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And like we said, you know, like, it's. You could do 500 search warrants a year and without opposition. You could take a Girl scout troop and do those 500 search warrants. If nobody's really willing to give you legitimate opposition to exploit a crack in your tactics or your techniques or your procedures, it is that. 500 search warrants. Any real measure of. Of success? In my opinion, no. The measure of success is when you are tested by someone who's maybe willing and committed and see how you fare after that. I think some of the – Going back to what was discussed before, I think there were definitely search warrants where we just flat out got lucky. We got lucky. There was no question about it. A lot of what we did in the way that we mitigated some of the warrants that kind of went sideways was definitely based on our experience and skill that we kind of brought from our past experience. And, you know, we were always learning. I mean, even in the short two years, two and a half years that I was there, we made a lot of changes, and it's, you know, we would, we would go to something and, you know, we would do a warrant, and it just would not. It just didn't look right. It didn't feel, feel right, and we would come back afterwards and, you know, hey, how'd you guys feel about that? And it was a collective, like, yeah, not. Not so good. Okay, well, what do we do to fix this? You know, how do we – What can we do differently that's gonna make us better and not put us in that position again? And so, you know, there was just always something to learn. I don't care if you do five warrants a year or 500. It doesn't matter. There's always, always, always something to learn from each and every single one. They're all unique. And so I think, again, when you're nitpicking the little stuff, I think that means that the macro stuff, the big picture stuff, is being done good enough to the point where maybe it doesn't require discussion. Now we can start really focusing on fine tuning. Jon Becker: So let's talk about training culture a bit of. So, I mean, obviously, unit culture for debrief is one thing. Training culture is a different thing. And so I'm kind of curious. You know, you spend time at the schoolhouse, you spend time, you know, in 3 and 1 and 18. What are your thoughts on training and the way that we are training our tactical law enforcement currently? Joe Bucchignano: I think so. I think collectively, just broad blanket statement. I think we're lacking, like, significantly. Now, there's some teams that train more than other teams, and that's great. And I think it's finding that balance between operational experience and training. And so you could have a team like ESU that has a lot of operational experience but maybe doesn't do as much on the training side. You know, like I said, the a team a little bit different. You know, Monday nights were kind of our dedicated training night where we would come in once a week and we would work on some isolated skill. Usually, you know, especially in the very beginning when we got a new rotation, we were very heavy on training. So, you know, I think when it comes to training, you know, collectively, you just look at law enforcement. Now, I guess we could start with patrol officers, because I think within the tactical community, there's a little bit more emphasis on training. I think it's a little bit more accepted. I think guys are more motivated to train and stuff like that. But the benefit in a city like New York is you have a unit like ESU that's available 24/7, 365. We're a full time unit that's on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so, you know, we're generally showing up to incidents pretty quickly. You know, you go to other parts of the country where, you know, maybe you have part time regional or multi jurisdictional teams that are going to take time to assemble and show up in an incident, and maybe there's one or two patrol guys there that are kind of left holding the bag until they get there. It's interesting, you know, like, I had done a – I don't want to call it a study, because it was by no means a study, but just a little survey maybe a year or two ago of police officers from, like, different parts of the country kind of saying, like, hey, you know, how often are you doing active shooter training or refresher training on active shooters? And, you know, I got everything from the most common answer, yeah, we get 8 hours a year. You know, we get one day a year. Okay, 8 hours. By the time you show up, by the time you go through all your safety procedures and maybe PowerPoint and this and that and lunch break, and everything else, that 8 hours really gets watered down to 5 hours of training a year for something like responding to an active shooter all the way to other guys that went, active shooter refresher training. Hey, what's that? We haven't seen that in years. Once again, we talked a little bit before about the difficulties of training a unit of 300 to 400 people with only four people maybe assigned full time as instructor cadre to a certain discipline. Well, now, you take the NYPD. Let's look at the macro picture as a whole. Now, you have a department of 35,000 police officers. Even if we said that, you know, 25,000 of them were individuals in the rank of police officer. Detective sergeant, lieutenant, how are you doing? Ongoing refresher tactical training for an agency that has 25,000 people that you have to train on top of everything else. Logistically, it's a nightmare. And so I don't even know. Well, I shouldn't say that. I do know how you can accomplish it. You just have to dedicate the manpower and the time to do it right. So that's the easy answer. In my eyes, that's the easy answer. Hey, this is an important skill set that individuals need to know, and so we're going to dedicate the time and the manpower in order to make this happen yearly. But logistically, probably not feasible or possible. So I think that a unit like ESU is, you know, microcosm of the bigger NYPD, meaning you have individuals within the unit who are very training oriented. They enjoy going for training. They eat up training anytime they can get it. They're self motivated self initiators to do training within their truck or their squad or whatever it might be. And then you have other individuals who just kind of shrug their shoulders and what do we need training for? We do this all the time. And it kind of goes back to that first point of, just because you do it all the time, it doesn't mean that you're doing it good. And if you're not willing to really sit down and be honest with yourself, your organization, your team, whatever it is about, hey, maybe we're not as good as we think we are, but we can get better. We just have to dedicate the time to getting better. I think that's the important thing. You could have all the, you know, the cry precision this and the night vision and the lasers and all the fancy toys and tools and everything else. But, you know, if you – For lack of a better term, if you suck at the basics, all that fancy stuff means absolutely nothing. In fact, it's usually more of a hindrance than it is a help, you know, and equipment will never take the place of tactical, you know, officers or police officers who are truly problem solvers. And I think that's one of the things that really sets ESU apart from a lot of other teams, is we have a lot of equipment. There's no doubt about it. We have all the armored vehicles you could think of and everything else that goes along with it. But I think what sets us up kind of different is our ability to. Going back to before, our ability to talk to people and our ability to problem solve. And that's where something as simple and mundane as, like, you guys are like dog catchers. You go around doing animal jobs. Yeah, absolutely. You know, so now when I've used, you know, an animal restraint pole or loaded up, you know, ketosis to tranquilize a dog 50 times before in a non tactical environment where the stress level is relatively low, now when I'm doing it at three in the morning, hitting a gang spot, you know, with a four dudes inside with guns, and they got two pit bulls that are guarding the place, like, managing that problem. I've done it 50 times before in routine fashion. This is nothing. This ain't my first time doing this. Just the dynamic and the environment surrounding that problem is obviously a little bit different. And there's other considerations, but that's where us having this wide skillset in this wide day to day experience, doing the mundane, it pays off in dividends when that mundane is now a part of a bigger, more kind of complex problem. Jon Becker: Yeah, but also, it's interesting because as you talk about that, it's stress inoculation, too, right? Like, you've done this, you tranked a dog enough times that that's not a stressful event for you. And so everything else that's happening, you know, I recently interviewed Brittany Loney, who's a performance psychologist that works with soft units. And we talked a lot about stress inoculation and how not tying up your cognitive space with stuff that, you know, shouldn't be stressful allows you to perform at a higher level. And that strikes me as the same is true here. Joe Bucchignano: Absolutely. And that, and that stress inoculation goes across such a wide, you know, array of things that we do, because a lot of what we do is stressful. You know, scaling the Brooklyn Bridge, you know, for the first time is stressful. And, you know, going under a subway car when there's electrified third rail and like that's stressful. And all these other things that we do, you know, non tactical are all stressful. And I truly believe that the more that you're exposed to that stuff, you know, the more that you get conditioned to it, the more that you're inoculated against it. That just leads to better decision making. And I think that that is one of the biggest benefits that we have, you know, is especially when you first get to a truck and you're out in the atom car, you're, you know, you're usually with someone that has some experience. And so, you know, the first time you show up to that barricade and you take control of that door and you knock and start talking to that person on the other side of the door, you know, this time it's not training in John Jay. It's for real, you know, and there's now consequences to the things that you say and everything else. And it's for me, I found the more stressful part was knowing that I had a whole team of people behind me from the senior guy in my squad all the way up through maybe the duty captain that was working that day, listening to every word that I was saying, judging, evaluating and everything else, you know, like, that's stress as well. And so that's where, you know, the volume of work that we do has a benefit because, you know, now maybe in your first year, you'll have handled, I mean, between barricaded, emotionally disturbed persons and cell extractions and jumpers and all these situations where you're just talking people to mitigate a crisis. You're going to do that in your first year a handful of times, if not two handfuls. So you start to get that confidence and it becomes you get a repertoire that you start to find what works and what doesn't work. And obviously you're also learning from watching other people and maybe more senior people to see how they kind of handle these incidents. And so all of that just kind of plays into the bigger picture, that it translates over into the little mundane stuff, translates over into the bigger things that you have a better grasp on generally your own emotions. Jon Becker: That's a really good way. Really good way to put it. Just a couple more things I'd like to hit on with you before we call it a day from a training culture and training mindset, there is a lot of crossover taking place between law enforcement and military training right now. And there's certainly been a lot of opposition and the whole rise of the warrior cop thing and counter militarization and all that. But you see, in the tactical culture, there is, I mean, obviously there's a great deal of experience coming back with 20 years of fighting wars and all of that. What's your read on kind of the way we are training tactical units right now. Joe Bucchignano: So again, pros and cons, you know, and I think individuals from the military community, especially those individuals from tier one units and special mission units, have a lot to offer. You know, there's, there's a level of real world experience there dealing with deadly force encounters that the average law enforcement officer will never experience nor has ever experienced. And so, you know, for example, I've never been involved in an officer involved shooting. So I am definitely not the person to stand up in front of a class full of people and talk about what to expect in, you know, in a deadly force encounter. That's never happened to me. So, you know, I'm not the one to speak to that. But you take someone from a tier one or a special mission unit that has been involved in close quarter engagements, and there's a lot of learning that can be taken from that. I think especially in the realm of command and control and deconfliction and large structure clearance management and stuff like that, I think there's a ton that we can learn from military guys and girls coming back and sharing their experiences and stuff like that. I think the downside is, unless you were a police officer, and especially policing in today's day and age, which is much different from what it was even five or ten years ago, there is nuanced stuff that is very, very specific to how law enforcement operates, how we should be operating and how we should be conducting ourselves. And, you know, the whole goal of a tactical team is preservation of life. And it's not just preservation of innocent life, but it might be the preservation of the life of a suspect. And so I think there's a very fine line and a very fine balance between the quote unquote warrior cop and the individual who has the skills and the mindset to, to do a job when it needs to be done, but also realizing that it has to fit within the letter of the law and that it has to fit for the situation at hand, that we're not, we can't just go out there and just start shooting and killing people and stuff like that. That's not the role of a tactical team. And this is going to lead me to another point. But I've had some experience training with some of the military based training companies out there, and I've learned a lot. In fact, it was going to – One of those courses was my tactical awakening. It was like, here I was, younger guy in ESU and thought I knew everything because, well, I'm an ESU man. We do 1000 search warrants a year and barricades and we do all this stuff. And I have all this experience. And then I went to a five day tactics course that was given by a bunch of, you know, former tier one and special mission unit guys. And then I realized, like, how much I didn't know, just like foundational principles and stuff like that. And so it was really eye opening for me. The problem I had with it was that some of these stuff was definitely too much on the warrior part of it where everything was like, kill, kill, kill, shoot, shoot, shoot. And there was no de-escalation there. There was no nothing about incidents where maybe deadly physical force is not applicable for a situation. And so I started being a little bit more open minded to thing. I think that the training companies that are out there that are military based training companies that also incorporate active and retired law enforcement in their training programs, to give that perspective as well, deliver some of the best programs that I've seen. There's a large training company that I've done some work with that they really pick from a cadre of both the military side and the law enforcement side because there's teaching perspectives from both that are very applicable to law enforcement. And some of this stuff is very, very nuanced. When you're doing debrief points that the military guy might not realize or understand that, hey, before law enforcement breaches that door or as they're breaching the door, maybe they should announce that they're law enforcement police and that's something that maybe they never had to do overseas. Whereas for law enforcement, that becomes a pretty important debrief point, that if a team doing a search warrant doesn't announce who they are and now they get engaged by an individual, that individual might use an affirmative defense that I thought my house was getting broken into. So if there's castle doctrine or something like that. So I think training companies that dive into or that delve into the experience of both military tier one special mission units as well as law enforcement individuals that have a lot of experience from the SWAT, tactical, and bringing kind of those two worlds together, I think they deliver, like, phenomenal products from a training perspective. Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, a lot of it is what you're looking for, too, right? Like, if you want to learn to shoot proficiently. You know, there's probably no more proficient shooters in the world than we have in our miss special mission units like that. From a skill standpoint, it's staggering. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And even from the civilian sector, I mean, there's individuals that have no law enforcement background and no military background who are some of the best shooters in the world. And so I always, when I get into the conversation with people about individuals and teaching and teaching stuff that's either with or within their wheelhouse or outside of it, I always tell people like, hey, you don't have to be a law enforcement super duper SWAT guy or Navy SEAL or Delta Force to teach something as simple as fundamental marksmanship. But now, when you get into applying fundamental marksmanship in a CQB environment where you're adding additional things that are now out of that individual's wheelhouse, now that's where that stuff really starts to become applicable for me. I'm never an advocate of people who teach things that they've never really done in real life. We never ran nods. You would never, ever, ever see me teaching a nods class. I can go out now and take a nods class and immerse myself in it and become as proficient as maybe the next person running night vision, but I never did it for real. I'm not going to turn around now just to make some money, say, hey, you know, we're going to do a night vision class because I'm just teaching notional stuff without any real world kind of backing to anything that I'm saying. Jon Becker: Yeah. One of the things that is interesting about ESU is it's very, like your approach is very. I don't want to use the word vanilla, but I can't think of another word. Like, it's not sexy. Archaic. No, it isn't. But the thing is, it isn't archaic. Like when you. When you talk about the why with guys, there is a specific why, right? The use of tear gas, the use of explosive breaching, the use of nods, things that units think are very sexy and want to go hunt. And then you have a conversation with ESU and it's. It's very, you know, it's hydraulic breaching and it's very bland because it's safe and it's been proven safe. And there does seem to be almost this, like, counterculture within the unit to kind of the latest, greatest influencer, you know? Look how cool this is. It almost feels like the unit is kind of like, yeah, no, we're not cool. We're just very professional. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So, once again, I always look at pros and cons, and so just to touch on both of those, I think it's a testament to the unit, the fact that we mitigate a lot of incidents every single year without night vision, without utilizing energetic breaching, without utilizing chemical agents and stuff like that. And a lot of these incidents we resolve by simply talking to people like that. There's no super secret playbook. It's just we're good at talking to people. And so we're able to continually resolve incidents without utilizing a lot of this extra stuff. The downside to that, and this is, this is the struggle with this, is that sometimes our success, because it is the norm, it becomes the expectation. So now, especially the higher ups in the department who are not within the special operations division, not within ESU, when you start to request, utilize certain things like chemical munitions or, or energetic breaching, they turn around and they say, well, what do you need that for? You guys do this all the time. You've never had to use it before. Why do you need to use it now? And obviously, the risk aversion light starts going off because no chief wants to be the first one to give approval to do an energetic breach or to utilize chemical munitions. And then something goes wrong, and then it's obviously going to be on their shoulders and they're going to have to kind of answer for it. Regardless how much stuff rolls downhill, they're still giving the ultimate approval and authorization for it. And so one of the, especially the environment that we work in, very dense apartment buildings and stuff like that, we have to consider cross contamination. We have to consider the effects that an internal energetic breach might have on neighboring apartments and stuff like that and everything else. And so these are obviously factors where I think professionals, you do stuff when you need to do it, you don't do it just because you can. And so for us, it was a lot of these incidents. We did not feel that this added stuff was necessary. I was always very adverse to night vision guys that I worked with. Oh, we need night vision. We need night vision. We need night vision. Me, it wasn't so much a, what do we need night vision for? We've done this for X number of years without it because I see the use for it and I see the benefits to having it. You know, it's New York City, but we still have areas like Pelham Bay park and Central park and Casino park in Queens and these large wooded areas that get pretty dark at night, you know, and we've had incidents where individuals have run off into the woods, and now, you know, we're hunting through the woods with white light, which is obviously not ideal from a tactical perspective at all. But my issue with the night vision comes back to what we were talking about earlier with, how do you maintain training for a unit of three to 400 people? And now you add a skillset like night vision that guys and girls are not going to be utilizing on a daily basis. You can't just say, like, hey, yeah, throw on some night vision and turn off the lights in the garage and walk around and there's your truck. Training like that, that doesn't work, and that's far more dangerous than not having it at all. So I think that if we had a methodology or a means of providing that necessary ongoing training to complement specialized equipment like that, then it might be realistic. A team of 20, 30 guys that are full time, that maybe do 100 operations a year and have a lot of time to spend training and perfecting that. Yeah, it makes sense. Like, absolutely, I'm not anti night vision, but for us and for our purposes and for the maintenance of just being proficient at its use, that was why I was against it. And it was like, hey, until we can figure out this training stuff, we have no business at all utilizing something like that. So the problem, like I said, comes into now when you encounter a situation where maybe this stuff is warranted. And I think I can think of two incidents off the top of my head, and one was a search warrant. When I was on the A Team, we had gotten some intel from an outside agency of an individual in Brooklyn who was threatening to do a mass shooting inside of a supermarket. This was shortly after the mass shooting that had happened in Buffalo, New York. And so he had made some indications of wanting to do a similar attack, kind of a copycat sort of a thing. And so it ends up getting kind of pushed down through our intel division, and it ends up on our desk as an emergency search warrant. And so the challenge to it was the structure was a three story brownstone, and the target of the search warrant lived in the basement, which had an internal staircase that led up to the second floor. His mother lived on the second floor of the location. And so, doing our kind of scout stuff before going to execute this warrant, we determined that the only breach point into this structure or into the first floor. The warrant that we had got was just for the first floor or the basement level, I should say, of this structure. And so it was a single breach point. We didn't have another option other than an outward opening door with three locks on it. And the individual had posted photographs. We had photographs of this individual with an AK-47. And so we started game planning this about how we were going to handle the situation. And our initial thing was, hey, we're just going to do a surrounding call out. You know, we're going to get perimeter and containment. We're going to initiate our call out procedures. We're going to have all of our guys behind armor and observation team up and the whole nine, and we're just going to call this guy out. It's not worth us rushing in there just to get into a gunfight. And so that was the initial plan, which quickly devolved after that, because we had gotten intel after that that his plan was to do some harm to another individual that was inside of the location prior to committing this planned mass shooting. And so now we started to look at this as a, well, if we initiate surrounding call out and he kills this third party inside of this location, now we're kind of holding ourselves responsible knowing this. And so it became a very delicate balance between, hey, are we going to do a surrounding call out and put ourselves in a position of advantage, or are we going to do this as a – We had a no knock endorsement on the search warrant. So it was like, hey, are we going to do this as a no knock entry with a dynamic entry, almost in the perspective of considering this like a hostage rescue, just because we did not want this individual to kill an innocent third party inside the location. And so the breachers, in fact, I was one of the breachers that day. And so looking at the target door going, man, that's a heavy outward opening door with three locks on it. Like, that's not an easy breach. There's really nothing for us to hook up a chain or a strap to, to do any kind of a pole. And so we are now kind of stuck doing this with manual tools between hydraulics or a halogen. And so we said, hey, you know what? This is a good situation, or this is a good scenario for us to use explosives like we have energetics. I was one of the explosive breachers in the unit. And so based on all the circumstances, the type of door that it was, the difficulty we knew that we were going to have getting through it in a timely manner, and the fact that it was an exterior door. So we were not worried about internal overpressures in an apartment door right across the hall and all that. Other stuff we said, hey, this is the perfect scenario for this. We went to the duty captain that was working, and he was on board. Yeah, this makes sense. Everything you guys are telling me, this makes sense. And it made it way up the chain. And once it hit a certain level at a certain individual, it was like an immediate, like, no, you guys don't need that. You've done this before, so on and so forth and everything else, and was, like, shot down without any other consideration. And so that was one of those incidents. Where did it work out? Like, yeah, I'm still here with no extra holes in my body, but the individual came and opened up the door as we were trying to breach it. Cause that's how long it was taking. And so, hey, that only worked because he made the conscious decision to come to the door with nothing in his hands and open it up for us. Had he made the conscious decision to give his ak, come to the door and start shooting through the door? I mean, you know, like, I might not be sitting here right now having this conversation with you, but, you know, the way that it was looked at afterwards, we were very defeated as a team. Like, that was collectively, we were like, that was garbage. Like, that was not good. That was cowboyish. That was totally unnecessary, completely put us at risk for absolutely no reason when we had these tools available to us. And in the eyes of the individual that made the decision to deny the energetic breach, it was, see, everything worked out of. Everything worked out and got in his car and drove away, you know, so, you know, yeah, it's a testament to the unit that we get this stuff done and, you know, yeah, I use the word archaic because we don't have the latest and greatest with everything. Some stuff we do, some stuff we definitely don't. There's definitely teams out there that have, you know, a lot sexier gear and equipment and I access to certain things and everything else that we don't. But I think that's a testament to the unit, the fact that we are able to be successful without it being due to luck, but instead just being due to skill and experience that so many of these incidents every year are resolved simply by talking to people. The vast majority of our barricades end up in involuntary surrenders, and I think that's really amendable. Jon Becker: 100%. Yeah, I mean, that's the funny thing about the current modern dialogue about SWAT teams is SWAT team shows up and it's going to get more violent. And you look at ESU, you look at LAPD, deep platoon, you look at SCB, that's the exact opposite of what happens. A professional tactical team gets there, the situation slows down, it becomes more deliberate. You know, it de-escalates. It's more negotiation. It's, you know, I think, it is a testament to ESU's professionalism that that still is very much the mindset. Joe Bucchignano: Yeah. And, you know, I think that a lot of people that are not in the tactical community don't understand that. You know, the body armor and the armored vehicles and the chemical munitions and the impact rounds, like all of the tools. Tools that we bring to a situation, to an outsider, they look escalatory, but they are all completely de escalatory in nature. You know, if I'm behind armor, maybe I don't have to shoot a person that's shooting at me. If I'm sitting in an armored vehicle and the nine millimeter rounds are just plinking off the side of it, like, okay, we're safe in here. Let's try to resolve this without using deadly physical force. But, you know, I think, again, there has to be also the mindset that, yes, we can resolve 99% of the incidents through our regular, conventional means, but we have to be prepared, ready and willing and equipped and trained to deal with that 1% that falls outside of that spectrum, that, you know, committed, trained individual armed with a long gun, body armor, like, not willing to, you can talk as nice as you want, use every trick in the book that you've amassed over your career and everything else. It's not going to work, you know, on that one percenter. And so, you know, those, I think those are the incidents that really kind of set, you know, set you apart. And those are the incidents I used to tell people, like, hey, we're going to train for the 1% because that's going to make the 99% of the work that we do easy. It sets you up for success. That that 99% we're going to be able to handle with no problems at all. Yeah, maybe we'll be here for a couple hours, but eventually it's going to result in a voluntary surrender, and everyone's going to go home and be happy in that feeling of accomplishment, knowing that we're able to resolve an incident just through verbal de escalation, utilizing some negotiation techniques and stuff like that. But it's not the answer 100% of the time. And I think that is the problem is when you encounter an incident that gets resolved purely on luck, but the upper level or the executives look at it as just another win. And then they go out and they tout the equipment and look, oh, this ballistic shield got shot and it stopped the bulletin. Well, maybe that guy didn't have to be there in the first place. Maybe if we had utilized chemical munitions, we wouldn't have had to put one of our guys in a situation for his ballistic shield to get shot. So that has always been my critique, is our level of success that we have. It's not always the answer. That's what we should strive for. We should always strive for the lowest level of force possible to resolve an incident. And if we can resolve an incident just through negotiation, fantastic. I mean, that's a win. And I think I used to tell people it's a lot harder to talk someone out of a crisis than it is just to walk up and punch someone in the face. Anyone can punch someone in the face and use physical force, but it takes a lot of skill and patience to take someone who is on the edge of a crisis and kind of talk them back to reality and then get them to submit to you. That is far more powerful than any tough guy. Macho. Yeah, I punch this guy in the face, like, whatever, nonsense. So I just, it's a very, it's something I'm very passionate about. It's a sticking point for me that, that we let our success is, it's a fantastic thing that we should be touting, but it's also a very big downside. It's a very big negative, because, like I said, it just becomes the expectation. Jon Becker: I think that's a fantastic place for us to stop. Joe, where can people get in touch with you, see what you're doing, all of that? Joe Bucchignano: Yeah, so I'm not really super active on the socials, but, you know, I retired in June of last year, June 30th, on my 20th anniversary, and I started up a company, crisis zone consulting. Just trying to share some of the lessons that I've learned over the years. And just give agencies, and whether it's public safety agencies like law enforcement or EMS agencies, businesses, private entities, or even individuals, just good training, just based on some of my experience. So you can find my website,. I'm on all the socials as well, under the same name. You can find me there. I'm going to start getting a little bit more active there, so please feel free to reach out through the website if I can ever offer up any assistance or advice or whatever it might be. That's what I'm here for, just to continue service in my retired life. Jon Becker: Joe, thanks, man! It's great spending time with you! Joe Bucchignano: Thanks, Jon! I really appreciate the opportunity!

Episode 40 Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 40 – The History of SWAT in Texas and TTPOA

Jon Becker: The evolution of special tactics in the United States is a complicated story whose roots lie in the violent social and political environment of the late 1960s. Highly unusual and televised events like the Texas Tower Sniper in 1966 and the Munich massacre in 1972 created the need to develop specialized units to respond to events that were beyond the capabilities of normal patrol officers.

While Southern California often receives most of the credit for the development of special tactics because of the efforts of LAPD D-Platoon and LASD, it's important to understand that the West coast was not the only one who were looking at special tactics.

In fact, by the early 1980s, there were numerous regions who were all following parallel paths of development, albeit in different stages. In these regions, tactical associations began to form that were focused on sharing information and training among agencies.

One of these was the Texas Tactical Police Officers association, or TTPOA, which was formed in 1984 and this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary. As such, it seemed like a perfect time for us to do an episode on the history and evolution of SWAT in Texas, as well as the history and impact of the TTPOA.

My guests today are three influential figures in TTPOA.

Lieutenant Dan Colosanto is the current president of TTPOA. Dan is a 30 year veteran of the Garland Police Department, with 28 of those years spent on the SWAT team. Dan has worked in patrol, narcotics and SWAT and is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and an army veteran.

In February of 2021, Dan earned a master's degree in homeland security with a concentration on counterterrorism for the American military university. Dan was the SWAT team leader during the May 3rd, 2015 ISIS inspired terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Dan also serves on the intelligence and terrorism chair for the NTOA.

Paul Ford has experience spanning both the government and private sectors. Paul's diverse roles include being a police officer, instructor, writer, publisher, developer of police training, and sales and marketing executive. Paul began his law enforcement career in 1985, assuming roles in patrol, SWAT and as a detective. Paul spent almost a decade on the Austin, Texas SWAT team, serving as the unit's training coordinator and team leader. He's the recipient of more than 60 commendations, including three for meritorious conduct.

And in the 1990s, Paul played a pivotal role in reshaping and expanding TTPOA, where he served as a secretary, vice president, and editor of Command magazine. His dedication earned him the association's prestigious, Excellent award in 1999 and in 2001, Paul transitioned to the private sector where he has held positions at defense technology and is currently the vice president of sales and marketing for CSI. Known through their brands, CTS and pen arms.

Sandy Wall is a true legend in Texas tactical community. Sandy spent 28 years with the Houston, Texas Police Department, 22 of which were on Houston SWAT. Sandy is a recipient of the TTPOA Excellence Award and the TTPOA Lifetime Achievement Award and the National Police Association's top cop for the state of Texas. He has also received the Houston Police Department chief's commendation for valor and the Officer of the year award.

Sandy has served three times as the president of TTPOA. He's also written two books, invented the wall banger system, and has taught and testified as an expert all over the United States. This is a really enlightening discussion and I hope that you enjoy our conversation about TTPOA.

My name is John 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 so much for being here today! I'm excited to have this conversation!

Sandy Wall: Great to be here!

Paul Ford: Thanks for having us!

Dan Colosanto: Thanks for having me!

Jon Becker: So, you know, I set the environment in the intro, but, you know, 66, Charles Witten climbs the tower at the University of Texas and we, you know, starts the active shooter craze. 72, we have the, you know, the Munich massacre at the Olympic Games. And it kind of sets an environment where special tactics teams start developing all over the world. In Texas, Houston SWAT forms in 74, if I'm remembering correctly, Sandy?

Sandy Wall: That's correct.

Jon Becker: Kind of set the, set the early environment for me. What was that like? Because a lot of you guys got, well, you got there pretty early. What was it like as this is evolving?

Sandy Wall: Well, I had the luxury of knowing several of the original team members. In fact, we have an alumni association and February 10, we will bring all of the surviving members of the original 1970, 14 together. And it's going to be a big deal and we're going to, we're going to celebrate those guys. But having talked to many of them, they were picked, handpicked throughout the city, the city force at that time, there's probably about 1502 thousand officers in Houston and they were hand picked for their talents.

Most of them were Vietnam veterans. And it was just a mindset that those guys were used to combat and I. And, you know, bad situations, and they would handle it better. They put them all on an airplane and sent them to Quantico to train with the FBI. And when they came back, there were. There was 24 people picked, and that that manpower level stayed the same for years and years and years.

In fact, it's not much more. Even now, we have a relatively small team. But those guys that, when they got off the plane and I made it back downtown to the police station, there were 24 police cars, unmarked, waiting for them, brand spanking newt, and they headed up keys. It was like a super proud moment that they had a take on car and. But having said that, the. The city was all in on it, but they had to buy their own uniforms. Their weddings were bought by the city, but they had to buy their own boots and, you know, ancillary things that kind of come with it, the individual equipment. And they made some horrific mistakes right at first, but the city stuck with them.

I think they burned down at least three houses in the first two years. The most horrific event we had, an officer was shot by three escaped convicts that were holed up in an apartment over the east side of downtown. And a patrol officer tried to make the initial approach on him, and they shot and killed him. And his body was laying in the front yard, and SWAT got there and they started receiving fire, and the decision was made to use gas on them. And they, back in those days, they didn't know the difference between hot gas, meaning like riot grenades and indoor gas.

So they threw outdoor gas inside a structure and burned it to the ground. They brought it to a resolution, but the city ended up having to buy that apartment building. But it slowly evolved. Those guys weren't quickly. And by the time I came on the SWAT team in 1979, it had only been in place four years. But those guys were so squared away and had learned so much. And the things they taught me were state of the art at that time and just a credit to their ability to adapt, adjust, learn from their mistakes and improve. And as a result, the team continued to grow.

Jon Becker: So when you come on at 79, how many teams do you think there are in the state of Texas?

Sandy Wall: How many SWAT teams? Yeah, you know, I think Dallas was just getting formed. They were probably came on as 74, but at a different level. I don't think they had gotten to the position that they were at now. I would guess maybe two or three. Houston may have been the only full time, and that's what we were. When you say a full time SWAT team, a lot of people think, well, you're dedicated, swap, but you do other things. You have ancillary duties. We did. I mean, when you went to work, the first 2 hours were working out and the rest of your time on that ship was trained. We didn't have ancillary duties unless the president came into town or there was some special event, but that's all we did.

Whereas a lot of teams, they would call themselves full time SWAT, but they had to do patrol, they had to do warrant execution, they had to do different other things. And that was one of the things that was, I guess, a benefit to us in terms of being doing just one job. But as a double edged sword, if you screwed it up, we really didn't have many excuses because the city was giving us what we asked for.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think at that point. So that's – You guys are farmed in 74, deep potatoes farmed at 71. There are probably less than a dozen full time SWAT teams in the United States in the early seventies because even agencies that were forming teams were forming counterinsurgency teams or riot teams that also did SWAT stuff.

So I think, yeah, you guys were definitely one of the earlier teams, especially earlier teams to go full time. So you get on the team in 79. So NTOA was formed in 1983. TTPOA was formed in 1984. Give me the environment, you know, as Ttpoa is formed. Talk to me about that early, those early days.

Sandy Wall: Well, I actually didn't have much personal involvement in TTPOA when his first storm formed. I got to give credit to some Dallas guys that kind of got that initiative, and they came to Houston, asked if we wanted to be part of it. Another guy on our team, the guy by the name of Paul Day, represented us and helped, I guess, you know, carve out some bylaws and some rules that the organization would operate from.

But it was one of those things that wasn't truly supported by their departments, so they had to do it in their off time and weekends. And it was just really, really difficult for guys that are carrying out a full time job, maybe raising a family, maybe working extra jobs to make ends meet, and then now they're having to devote time to this fledgling organization that's trying to get started.

So it really didn't go very far until a guy by the name of Paul Ford got involved. And he had the vision and the foresight and the leadership to see what this organization could be. And so that was a few years later, and then that's where it really took off. So for those first few years, it was just kind of bouncing around. It's kind of a neat idea, a neat concept, but wasn't a whole lot of people fully on board?

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think it took several years for NTOA to even really take a foothold, even though John and Mike had really leaned into it. It took him a few years to actually get it off the ground and really start doing training and some of that. So, Paul, you get to Austin SWAT in 1989? My memory.

Paul Ford: Yes. 89.

Jon Becker: So how long is it before you are involved in TTPOA?

Paul Ford: It's probably two or three years. I mean, I had heard about teach POa. There was a. There was a guy in the Austin SWAT team who had taken the initiative. You remember him, Sandy. His name was Dale Toler. And I think Dale was like a regional director or training coordinator. So one of our guys was involved, I think. I went to the first TTPOA conference in 1992.

I met Tom Shelton, who was the president at the time. He was editing the magazine at the time. And from there, I just steadily got more involved. Submitted some articles for the command that Tom was publishing at the time. Started going to the conferences at the same time. I had gone to an NTOA conference around 92, 93. I went to an NTOA conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and all the greats were there.

I mean, John Coleman was there, Sid Heal was there, Ron McCarthy was there. I could go on and on and it was like a moment where I was able. I can make a comparison between what I saw in the TTPOA and what I saw in the NTOA and both in, like, not just the organizations but the people. I mean, the caliber, the presence, the quantity and the quality of the information that these guys were sharing. It was a stark comparison to me of, okay, this is the TTPOA and this is the NTOA.

And kind of where we needed to be going, you know, what, the ground that. The ground that we needed to make up and catch up. Because I was, you know, I'm from Texas. I'm proud to be from Texas and I'm, you know, and I was proud to be associated with the TTPOA at the time. But it was a big difference.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think people forget that, you know, in. In 1984, the Olympics came to California, they came to Los Angeles. And if the Munich massacre is the catalytic event that drives the development of special tactics teams, the 84 Olympics is the gasoline on the fire between La sheriff's SEB, LAPD platoon and FBI, specifically HRT and the LA office. There is a massive amount of money that gets poured onto special tactics. In southern California, you saw this very rapid evolution of tactics and skills, and you had those teams spending a lot of time with the european counterterrorism team 22, SAS, new form, GSG 9.

And I think that for a while there, the West coast got this kind of acceleration as a result of the 84 games. That didn't happen in other parts of the country. But with the advent of NTOA, I think you started to see that seeding the other regions, which is kind of exactly what you just described.

Paul Ford: Yeah, I was also able to make the connection then that, you know, about tactical community. TTPOA existed, but we really hadn't come together yet as a tactical community. And I felt like I started paying attention. I could see what was going on in California. I could see what was going on in Florida. And Florida teams also seem to be very advanced. They seem to be strict about their standards, about PT, about selection process and things like that across the board.

And I could see that the thing that California and Florida had in common were strong associations, a tactical community that grew from those associations and from there it seemed that for me that for Texas to rise, for the Texas boat to rise, that we needed to have a good tactical community as well. And we had the vehicle, we had the teachboa, you know, we had the framework for it. It just hadn't all coalesced and come together yet.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, just for further historical context, 91, we have the Luby diner, Luby's diner massacre with 23 people killed and 27 injured in Texas Lubbock, if I remember correctly.

Sandy Wall: Colleen.

Jon Becker: Colleen.

Sandy Wall: Colleen.

Jon Becker: Colleen. Which then kind of creates a little more impetus. And then 93, we have the Waco siege, which obviously creates all kinds of tension, both good and bad, for special tactics worldwide. But also in Texas, even though it wasn't a Texas op, it was an FBI op, it certainly put the focus of the tactical community in that part of Texas. 90, Sandy, when do you actually, when does Paul first lure you into involvement with TTPOA?

Sandy Wall: I was. I remember like it was yesterday. It was 1995. We were down in Arlington, Texas, at the time, the SWAT athletic competition, what we call the. Back then they were called the police Olympics. I think they're still in organization, but they ran that TTPOA didn't have anything to do with it. And we went down there and competed.

I know Austin was there, Dallas was there, a lot of the major teams in Texas. And after the competition was over the next year, it was going to be held in Houston. And I had already met with a representative of the police athletic Federation and showed them what we could do for them. And so I had a nutshell of how it was going to run.

So they asked me to step up in front of the group and tell them about where this is going to be next year, what it's going to be like. So I did. And after it was over with, Paul comes walking up to me. He said, hey, we need to talk. And that's where I got the spiel. And he was basically saying, look, I can run the organization, but I need somebody to be the president. I'll handle the magazine, I'll handle the money, but I need somebody to grab this thing by the horns and run with it.

And I'm looking at him like, I don't know what you're talking about. Top four or five jack and cokes. Somehow he convinced me to do it, and so I wasn't elected yet. I had to go to the following meeting, which Paul hosted there in Austin. And we had our winter conference, which at the time was the only thing we did.

And it was just mainly a few lectures, and I think maybe they had one class off site that was about it. It was probably not more than 70, 80 people there, SWAT officers. And we had the election right there. And they elected me. They said, Paul said, Sandy's going to run. And everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in. At least the ones that were still sold were voted for me. And then they hand me this shoebox with some papers.

And, of course, I soon realized the organization is invalid. I wasn't even elected by the bylaws, the way they're written. I was supposed to be elected. We had lost our incorporation status with the state of Texas. We didn't have a 501 C3. They were telling me we couldn't do that, which I found out later we could, and we did, but. And we were broke, looking at Paul like, what the h*** can you get me into? And so that's the rest of the system.

Paul Ford: Okay, so, yeah, the truth was, Sandy, that there wasn't any money to handle. We didn't have any. And handling the membership consisted, did consist of that shoebox that you got and all those pieces of paper with people that probably hadn't paid dues in two years and couldn't figure out. I couldn't figure out, you know, who was an active member or not. So we were. I mean, yeah, we had the foundation for a tactical community, but we hadn't really organized it yet, Jon.

Sandy Wall: We had to pass the hat at the meeting or at the conference in order to pay the hotel bill so that Paul didn't have to go to jail.

Jon Becker: Yeah, so, you know, there are moments in TTPOA lore that even in California I hear about the passing of the hat. In the basement of the Ramada Inn is one of those moments. Paul, do you try to defend yourself there or just go ahead and admit to it now?

Paul Ford:

We had to have that conference to kind of just break even to pay for a magazine and to pay for what we spent at that conference, we had to have that conference, the registrations. You know, I tell you, Sandy, at the beginning the magazine was a big expense for the association, but it was. And I think maybe today magazines are not as big a deal, or having a newsletter isn't as big a deal for a tactical association, I think, as it was back then.

But back then it was kind of the standard. If you're going to be a tactical association, you're going to have a publication. You know, the Florida SWAT association had a magazine. NTOA, of course, had tactical edge. When Cato formed in California, one of the first things Ken Hubbs did was to have a publication to go along with it. And it was the way that we communicated. It was our platform for communicating and informing. But it was also the suck of money that came out of the association every quarter.

Sandy Wall: I would agree with that. And I would say it was the face of the organization that gave us some credibility. And I can remember going into corporations around Houston trying to, you know, get some money. And the first thing I do is slap that magazine down in front of a CEO or somebody, and he'd look at it. It was very professionally done, at least by the standards at the time.

And he thought, wow, these guys, they got their own magazine. You know, they got officers, they do training around the state. Wow, they must. They have their stuff together. Little did he know we were sliding by the seat of our pants. In fact, I can remember Paul telling me, Sandy, we need to do a class and get some revenue. I cannot afford to publish the next magazine until we do. And then now we're scrambling, trying to put together a class.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think that is a recurring theme among all the associations. It's easy in a modern information environment to forget that in 1992, 93, 94 there was no Internet. There was no – You just go find an article. The way that information was shared in the tactical community was through TTPOAs magazine, Florida SWATs magazine, and NTOAs magazine. And the number of people that belong to multiple associations just so they could read. The magazine was. Was a pretty high number.

Sandy Wall: Yeah. It's funny you should mention the Internet. I told a funny story. When we were all waiting to come online, there was this new thing called the Internet. And I could see these websites popping up, and I didn't know anything about how to do them.

So my point man, it was on my team, and of course, all the guys on my team, I just basically directed them, you're going to do this and you're going to do this. And so I made John our treasurer at the time to take some of the load off Paul. And then I also said he was kind of a techie guy. And I said, you're going to put together a website for us. And so he took me over to a webmaster and we sat there for like 2 hours in his office, and they're talking french. I don't understand any of it. We leave there.

I said, John, do you know what to do? And he said, no, but I'll figure it out. And the next morning, he came into the SWAT office and he looked like crap. I said, what the h*** happened to you, John? He said, I've been up all night building this a website. And I said, do we have one? And he said, come here. And we went over to our little computer that I had borrowed from a little company called compact Computer back at the time that was started in Houston. I had to take the CEO's son out and let him shoot a machine gun to get the computer. But we got it and we powered that thing up and I'll be damned. We had a website and I wanted to kiss him right on the mouth. I didn't, but I wanted to.

Jon Becker: I'm gonna need a rentals, so. All right, so that's like 90. What are we at? 97? 96? 97?

Paul Ford: I think we're 95. Yeah.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah.

Paul Ford: I think when Sandy and I started talking was 94. And by the time things started coming together and we started actually putting out a magazine and talking about the next competition and a conference in Austin was 95.

Jon Becker: So when is the first big TTPOA conference?

Sandy Wall: Austin, Texas? Tell them about it, Paul.

Paul Ford: Yeah, so we had gone to, and this is the part where SWAT guys are competitive. And either if you're on the same team together or you're on different teams in the same association, you're competitive. And we had gone to, I believe, college station up there near Texas A and M and had our conference.

Sandy Wall: We went up there.

Paul Ford: It was a good conference, but it was a small conference. And we were four or five of us on the way back, and we just got to talking in the car and a guy named Kevin Yates, so it's on, the Austin SWAT team, said we're. We're going to make all those guys look like, you know, second place next year. We're going to have the best conference that disassociation's ever had, and we're going to raise the bar, and that's what we set out to do.

I told Kevin when he signed that contract at the hotel to commit to all the things we committed to that. I was, again, terrified that we wouldn't be able to pay for it, but we did, and we ended up having a huge conference, and we had great instructors and huge attendance, and it was fun. We did fun stuff. It was a pivotal moment, I think, for TTPOA, that 98 conference in Austin.

Sandy Wall: To add some numbers to that, John, a big conference before that was about 100, 2130 people. Anytime you went over 100, you were doing good. If you got the 100, 2130, that's excellent. Paul went over 400. That was like a phantom leap, you know, we just couldn't believe it.

Jon Becker: So that is when, you know, that is when TTPOA makes its quantum leap and becomes, you know, one of the biggest conferences in the world.

Sandy Wall: At that point.

Jon Becker: I mean, yeah, that was huge, the number. Yeah, so that's 99? 98?

Sandy Wall: 98 I believe it is. And in 99, we had it in Houston. Of course, Paul's talking about the competition I'm getting with my guys. And we said, we're going to do this even bigger and better. We're going to go over 500. And we did. We went out to clear Lake and we had it at the Hilton out there, right on Galveston Bay, and we went over 500, and then it went to Dallas.

And of course, Mike Finley's involved by them, and he's like, we're going to beat Alliston and Houston and we're going to make this even better. And I think he went to 600. It was just. It was just as it rotated around, every city wanted to do it bigger and better than the city before, just because of who we are. And, you know, that we're always willing to beat the next guy.

Jon Becker: Well, I think it speaks to the culture, TTPOA, and that still exists, right? There still is this, you know, although. Although it is an association, there's an internal, healthy cultural competition that is constantly going on, even among the regions in Texas.

Sandy Wall: Dan could probably speak to that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah. So at the winter board meeting, we have the different regions, and there's a huge competition as far. I mean, they won't say it out loud, but they're always. I know there was. When I was the region director in region seven, I was always in competition with the region director of region two in Houston. And we'd go back and forth. I remember one meeting, I think it was. Hugo was the, was the region director down there, and he went first and he's like, yeah, I made whatever amount of money he made.

And I went, man, I said, I've made so much money, I don't even know how much, but I know it was more than Hugo. I made it to be like a penny more. And he got mad. He was super competitive. But there is that competition among the regions as to who's bringing in more money and that sort of thing.

Sandy Wall: And of course, all that money's from classes. Those guys gotta go out and work and make those classes happen.

Dan Colosanto: They're working. That's not. I mean, as I like to say, everybody thinks the SWAT fairy comes down and waves her magic wand and these classes happen. I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into not just getting the instructor, finding a place to do the class, and then putting on the class, making sure it's run safely, and everything gets done. And then comes the real hard part, which is taking care of the rosters, making sure the guys are getting the T Cole credit, making sure everything is right for the record keeping and that sort of thing. And it's an administratively heavy load.

Jon Becker: So I'm hearing you say that, Dan, it sounds like you're no longer using Paul's shoebox strategy.

Dan Colosanto: No, we're a little bit more advanced than the shoebox at this point.

Jon Becker: It's. Yeah, some traditions.

Jon Becker: Just a little.

Paul Ford: I guess we always hoped it would get there, Dan.

Dan Colosanto: It's there.

Jon Becker: So, Sandy, before we more modern ERA TTPOA, I want to go back and just kind of early evolution of special tactics in Texas. You and I have talked in the past about things that were drivers, and one of those was the relationship between Houston and the tier one teams. Can you talk about that for a minute?

Sandy Wall: Yeah, absolutely. I would say before we really started developing that expertise with those guys, we were pretty much a surround and negotiate, you know, call out, gas them out. We would call ourselves a hostage rescue, but I can't think of any that we – If we did it, we didn't do it very well because we didn't know what we were doing, and we didn't have, I didn't know anybody in San Antonio or anybody in Austin or anybody in Dallas, so we just didn't have other expertise that took to call on.

So we're figuring this out as we go. And I call it inbred training. We're learning from the guys that were here before me. They're just passing it down, the mistakes, and we're trying to get better at it. But somewhere along the line, and my memory escapes, who actually, if they reached out to us or we reached out to them, but at the time, the economy was not that good and we had a lot of older buildings in Houston that were going to be torn down or needed to be torn down.

And somehow these guys from Fort Bragg, everybody knows who I'm talking about, came down and said, we'd like to develop a relationship with you guys, and if you'll go out and show us these buildings, introduce us to the owners, and we'll negotiate the deal. We'll bring people down here, we'll train. You can train with us.

In fact, when the deal is over, you can send a team up to Fort Bragg and we'll train with you up there. And, you know, I grew up in the Vietnam era, and I just wasn't a real big, I guess, not that I didn't like the military. I wanted to join the army, but after Vietnam, I had a just sour taste in my mouth and I was thinking, you know, what really can these guys do?

And then the first time I went out with them and I went, oh, my God. They were showing us stuff that I hadn't even imagined, and they were showing us how we really should be training and operating. And of course, the force multiplier with that is we're spreading them to the teams around us. After these guys would get on their C-140 and fly back to Fort Bragg, we're taking all this knowledge that we learned, we're splitting it around to other guys, and everyone is getting better.

And then, of course, it wasn't long we got involved with TTPOA, and not only are we sharing what we knew, but we're bringing in guys that had now retired from that unit of, and they're kind of got their own shingle hanging up and they're, you know, a gun for hire now. And they're going around and teaching what they were teaching the operators at Fort Bragg. They're teaching the law enforcement now, and we're bringing them in and it's just, I can't imagine.

And nothing to take away from the seals because the SEALs came to, we learned from them as well. We just had more of a relationship with the Bragg guys, but both of them tier one operators, we learned so much and I'm telling you, they probably save lives, not only the hostages but ours because we would have screwed it up trying to, you know, what we – To be what we eventually became.

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's interesting because you see the same thing in the west coast, you see the same thing in Florida where, you know, the tier one teams develop out of Munich and on the heels of Munich and, you know, 84 Olympics happens. Everybody's engaging with, with the SEAL teams, they're engaging in bright with the guys in braggest and you just see this kind of catalytic effect of law enforcement working with military units and military units come to law enforcement to learn about urban environments, law enforcement is going to military to learn about tactics. And it just creates this kind of synergistic relationship that I think makes everybody better in a hurry.

Sandy Wall: Yeah, I would add to that, I recently wrote a book just kind of based on my career, but a large portion of it is my SWAT career. And in the book I tell a lot of stories of our interaction with those guys and almost every story ends with the title, these guys are crazy because, I mean, the things, the, I guess the safety limits that they were willing to push even in training, we would, like, really? Are we really going to do that?

Like, yeah, I can remember once they crashed a little bird and it was at night, they crashed it and they had two operators on either side. The little bird flipped on its side, had two operators pinned underneath it. We're running over there trying to get this helicopter off these guys to get it. The other two jumped off and hit the target. And while we were over there trying to save these guys lives, underneath the little bird, these guys are hitting the target.

And when they came back, I'm like, what the h*** have you guys been? They said, well, we hit the target. I said, like a helicopter crash. And he said, well, that's what we'd have done in a real deal. And then I look at him and I realize these are guys at a level that I can't even imagine. I mean, we would have called a real world event, stopped everything and focus, not them.

If that's what they would do in a real deal, that's what they did. And I mean, I just, it was a mindset that I don't think I could ever, I know I could never get to. And they were at a level I can never get to. But, oh, my God, did we learn from those guys?

Jon Becker: I think another catalyst for development, explosive entry, starts largely in Texas. It happens in a variety of places, but it develops pretty quickly in Texas. And I think that's because of your relationship with Alan Brosnan, right?

Sandy Wall: Yeah, Paul, you probably speak to that. Yeah.

Paul Ford: Allen was one of the early supporters of the association. He would come and he would pay money and advertise in our publications. He would submit articles. He came to our conferences for free, and he would provide this training. And he was a close friend and a strong ally of the TTPOA all through those nineties as we were developing. And I think by and large, Alan is, has done the same thing all over the country.

He's a, you know him, Sandy Dan knows him. He's a really interesting person and a very unselfish person. And he was also one of those, one that, you know, he fits in and that he wants, he wants to, he wants to help you. He wants, you know, you to rise, you know, to, to another level. Just like the tactical communities in California and Florida were helping Texas to rise up in the nineties. Alan was the same way, and it was just a great relationship.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think there were a handful.

Jon Becker: Of people that kind of nationally were populating knowledge. Allen Brosnan, from teased being one of those, Sandy, Paul, who were the early movers, I've heard you refer to the Fab five, you know, Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Abilene. I get that, right?

Sandy Wall: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You had Mike Finley. We brought him on a little bit later, but Mike hit the ground running and took off and did great things for the association. Shannon couch was in it from the very beginning. He was there before me or Paul, although, you know, he, being from Abilene, a smaller town, and kind of out in West Texas, he was limited. But that guy was always there. He was always a hard worker. And somehow, he, if he said he was going to do it, he did it.

And then, you know, you get over San Antonio, you got a guy named George J. Hamp, several other guys, Eddie, Moe, the list goes on and on. But they were not as active in the association back then as terms of like, being a regional director or a board member. But when we needed them to host a class or host a conference, they stepped up and they did their part. So, yeah, those are the names that come to mind for me. Paul, can you add?

Paul Ford: No, I would just say that, number one, it was Shannon couch and Abilene. Mike Finley, yourself and myself. But we had departments that supported us, our commanders, and our rank structure. In our departments, they were behind us. They let us take city time to do TTPOA business sometimes. And we had teammates who were like, okay, you're the guy that TTPOA, but we're your team.

So we always had guys within our unit that were pitching in the, and kind of forming a cell around us to help out. Definitely couldn't have done all the things we did, just the four of us. But I think it's those four, those four guys that were kind of, you know, making the call to action in those first three or four years.

I mean, we were really having to like, hey, you know, join the TTPOA, you know, do something, host a class, you know, send an article in for the command magazine. This stuff isn't free, you know, it costs money to run this association, you know, so, I mean, those four guys were the ones making the call to action. But as the herd kind of grew, you know, we started kind of snowballing, got a lot of momentum.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I mean, at some point, TTPOA is bringing in national level experts, Sid Heal and Ron McCarthy and the guys that are kind of leading the charge nationally. You are pulling them in, and then it's not long after that that you are becoming the national experts. Right?

And Sandy Wall is teaching all over the United States and testifying all over the United States. Within a period of about ten years there, there was a massive transition from a fledgling organization to one of the strongest associations in the country.

Sandy Wall: Yeah, I would agree with that. And then we relied a lot on the NTOA. Right? At first to bring us talent like the Ron McCarthys and the Sid Hills and those guys that came down. And then we started branching out into the tier one groups and the black ops guys that were coming in, and then we started developing our own cadre, and we relied a lot on Paul Howe for a while, and he had already retired from the army and helped us out a lot.

But now the association, although they still bring in those world class guys and those guys with those experience that only a person that has been over in a hostile environment and had to fight your way in, do the job, fight your way out, and they're going up against trained soldiers instead of idiots, like a lot of times we do.

But we have a talent base now within the association, and I'm super proud of. And some of the things, I guess, that I'm just as proud of not only what I did for the association, but I brought in a guy like Paul Hershey who became a president of the association and took it to the next level. And then a Gary Heath. Those guys were all from Houston, so they were, I guess, learning from me not because I was doing it right, but what probably what not to do, but then became a leader within the association to take it to the next level.

And as I've told Dan more than once, because he gives me and Paul a lot of credit and you know, okay, I'll take a little bit of it. But we were about building a foundation and as you guys know, there's no structure that can stand if it's got a crumbling foundation. We built that foundation, but those guys built the tower on top of the foundation and it's still going up. I mean, every conference I go to, I'm amazed at what they've done with what we started with.

Jon Becker: So let's talk about that for a minute. So Dan, you're the current president, TTPOA. Talk to me about the current TTOA.

Dan Colosanto: All right. So right now we just, we're on our third website. Had to throw that out there. We have, so we're kind of in a transition getting from the people from the old one that's come back. So we're at pulled some numbers for you that you asked. We're about to be about 2000 members right now that we have signed up, that we still have people signing up because of the new website.

As far as the conferences go, I think the biggest one we ever had was 700 last year we were at about 600 registered, but we had about 1000 attendees. We've been staying pretty steady at about 1000 attendees. Now between signed up people and people coming to the vendor show, we had about 600 last year.

So I know one story they told was vendors. They had like 13 vendors at the first conference. And on TMPA podcast I told them, I said yeah, well, and this is true, we had 13 in the lobby because they wouldn't fit in the ballroom. So we were – Andy Atkins does a phenomenal job with that. We had about 200 vendors last year and we have 97 sign up now. So we're on track to stay around 200 plus. And the vendor show for us drives the train, talking about going to different places. We need about 50,000 sqft for a hotel to have the vendor show. And if they don't have that, we have to try to find another spot. So we're kind of, there's not, you'd be surprised. There's not many places that have that.

Jon Becker: No, it's nationally that, yeah, that is a true national level show. I mean, there are shows that regard themselves as national level shows that are not as large as the TTPOA conference, and it is certainly one of the top two or three in the country consistently.

Dan Colosanto: We had a waiting list last year. We'll probably have a waiting list again this year.

Jon Becker: That's fantastic! Talk to me about training. I know TTPOA does a lot of training both at a regional and association level. Tell me a little bit about what TTPOA is currently doing training wise.

Dan Colosanto: So training wise, we have, the last I checked, we had about 84 classes for this year. For this year into next year, we had probably, we did probably over 150 last year. The regional directors do that. They handle most of the year round training. They're kind of the glue that kind of keeps everything together. As far as the training goes, we have a myriad of instructors. One of the things we do as an organization is our goal. Our mantra, if you will, is we provide training. That's our mission.

The agencies and the end users decide how they're going to do it. We've been talking about explosive breaching. We offer explosive breaching from all the big three people that do it, from Alan Brosn, from Phetheme, Mister Cherry. He does it. And we provide that training. Same thing with tactics. We have army guys, we have Navy guys, we have officers, we have our own cadre guys that do it.

Same thing with shooting. We have world champion shooters and we have our own cadre guys. If you come to this year's conference and you want to shoot and you don't shoot, it's your fault because we have several world champions. We have Ben Stugger, we have Matt Pranka, we have Dan Brokos, we have, I mean, Rob Vogel. I mean, we have all kinds of instructors during the year we've had, Rob Latham has taught up in region seven, so we're bringing in all these instructors. So you have your choice.

And the good thing about it is the region directors can reach out to their regions and say, hey, I can call up and go, hey, I need a class from Sandy Wallace, or I need a class on tactical basket weaving. And we will find the guy or the girl and we will have that class. So those guys do a good job. Like I said, they're kind of the glue that keeps the organization rolling throughout the year. And I think we're one of the only associations that do off site training like that continuously throughout the year.

So those guys stay pretty busy because, like I said, it's not just putting on the class and bringing the instructor. That's the easy part. The hard part is all the admin work that goes along so that these guys get the credit for the training.

Sandy Wall: Phenomenal!

Jon Becker: Yeah, it really is. I mean,that is a full time training business that is, you know, turning out thousands of students a year. And the idea that it grew from, you know, literally everything is in a shoebox is kind of a staggering concept. And the thing that blows my mind.

Sandy Wall: It's run by volunteers. None of these guys get a dime.

Dan Colosanto: We all do it at our own.

Sandy Wall: Time for the right reason.

Dan Colosanto: One of our things that we talk about and we talked about with the NTOA was like some standard stuff. So there's. There's base for basic SWAT in Texas. There is a. The course has to be a minimum of 60 hours. And there's certain topics that have to be covered within. Within the class. You can go over 60 hours, but it has to be a minimum of 60. And some of the class, it's like team composition, SWAT history, legal liability. I think gas is in there, too.

Some other gas insertion and less lethal. And then you can kind of freelance after that. But those. There's specific topics, and I may be leaving some out, but there's specific topics that need to be covered. But the one thing we discovered was, and that's for T Col, there is nothing for advanced SWAT. Now, we've been doing advanced SWAT and most guys would agree, most of our regions, it's hostage rescue based. So it's hostage rescue topic.

So what I tasked the, our training advisory board with at our winter meeting is, hey, we need to come up with a set of standards for advanced SWAT. Hey, it's got to be 40 hours. And these are the topics that need to be covered. And put that through to TCOL. So we get an actual T Col number for advanced SWAT. So now we can say, look for in Texas for basic SWAT, you got to have this class.

And these are the criteria for advanced SWAT. You have to have this class. And these are the criteria because those are the big two that we do. And a lot of the guys that do those classes are volunteers. We're lucky the agencies let those guys come on their training time. And it's very for us. We really try hard to make the training inexpensive, as inexpensive as possible.

Jon Becker: I think one thing that's unique about TTPOA is some state associations find themselves in the middle of the political dialogue about setting standards, about the way law enforcement interacts with state government. And it does seem to me that you guys have made a conscious choice to stay out of that.

Dan Colosanto: Yes, we have. Again, I'm lucky I have these guys. They mentioned Gary Heath. Gary Heath's the one who got me. He jumped me in, as they say, at one of the Dallas conferences. So I'm lucky because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I have these guys to rely on. I call them a lot. Hey, if I'm screwing this up, please call me and tell me that you're doing something stupid. I kind of joke with Gary Heath and call him the special assistant to the president, because I've called him many times ago, hey, I'm about to do this. And he goes, maybe you should do this instead. Shannon Couch is on the board. He's our secretary.

And so I have him to rely on a lot of times, but none. And I'm going off of what was done before me, and we never got into that. We never got involved in that. And I don't think that's something that, as long as I'm the president, we're not going to get involved in it, because our job is training. Our job isn't getting involved in politics. We don't do that. We just don't. I don't think it's a good idea. We have too much other stuff to worry about getting guys trained and getting some guys, because there's a lot of agencies that can't afford it. We have a tremendous number of guys. You'd be surprised.

I mean, Sandy and Paul know they pay their own way. I mean, not everybody's that lucky where their agency pays. I've had guys come to class going, I paid my own way, paid my own hotel, paid for my own ammo, and I got a soft spot in my heart for that. And I'm like, all right, well, we're comping your spot to this class. We'll refund your money because you had to pay this other stuff.

So it's very important for me and the region guys know, hey, listen, you know, you got a guy like that compass spot? Cause that's part of our deal. As the 501 C3, we donate a lot of training. We give free spots out a lot to agencies that they just don't have the budgets.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you touched on something that is an essential role that the associations play, which is Texas is one of the largest countries in the world. Even though we see it as part of the United States, it may see itself as an independent country, and it's a mixed bag of large full time teams and very small part time teams. And I think an important role in the association plays is to bring the lessons learned from the full time team, from the national level experts down to teams that otherwise might not have that opportunity.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, and I think we do a really good job of that. The big five, they play a major role in instructing for us. And I think one of the other things that I'm proud of is I think if you go across the regions and you go to a basic squat, you're going to get the same stuff. Pretty much. I mean, there's different ways. And what I'm fond of saying is, hey, what we can do in Garland, they may not be able to do down in Laredo. You know, what they do in Houston, we may not be able to do.

So some of that stuff also depends on what resources you have. Not everybody has a bearcat. Not everybody has a rook. Not everybody has these tools. So you have to give them other options to still solve the problems are the same, but we have to give them, our challenge is to give them options to solve these problems. Maybe not without the same tools that other teams have, because they still have to get solved.

I mean, the barricaded guy is the barricaded guy, no matter where he's at. And it's, you know, I mean, the way you're, the way to resolve it is probably similar, but you may not have the same tools and resources as others to do that.

Paul Ford: And I would say, looking from the outside now as a, you know, as a person in business, as a non police officer, but someone still involved with law enforcement, what I see now is in the nineties, yeah, we were able to get people to have PT tests and have a real selection process to choose your SWAT team.

But what you guys have done now seems the way that teams approach a mission, their tactics and their technology that they apply to it, that's what you guys have got everybody on a one sheet of music in a really big state, a lot of spread out geography in a lot of people, which is quite amazing for me.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, it's a challenge, but I think the technology piece is huge. But again, it goes back to not everybody has the same technology. And before I forget, I do want to mention one thing. We talked about the magazine. The magazine's all digital now. We stopped mailing it out, but it's still there. But it's the trend that everybody else is going to like. Sandy said, you don't find many published magazines from the associations. And our while I was at shot show.

Paul Ford: I did have somebody put in my hand CATO field command color publication. So not to be competitive with CATO, but I just let you know that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, well, you know, I think, as you said, it costs money to publish the magic. Trying to – That's right. Trying to save a tree. Trying to kind of put that money somewhere else.

Jon Becker: Well, you do raise a valid, interesting point, though, is the stronger associations now, Dan, seem to have a higher level of integration than they've had in the past. I know that you and Brent Stratton from TTPOA and Chris Aquin from Florida Swad. And you guys are talking, Nick Sprague and RMTTA are talking more regularly, kind of at a national level. Talk to me about that.

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, that's. I'll give props to Nick. He kind of set that up. We had our first, it's been maybe last year, we had our first Zoom president Zoom meeting, and we're kind of doing it on a regular basis now. So all the presidents that can make it, we have a Zoom meeting discussing different things. As far as you know. Hey, how are you doing vendors, how are you vetting instructors? What do you guys do for the membership? What are your bylaws like? We're kind of getting on the same page as far as that stuff goes association wise, which is really good, and it's good to meet with those guys. And some of them are starting associations.

So the bigger associations, like us and Cato and Florida are trying to help these guys out. Like, hey, this is what I would suggest. It kind of reminded me of Paul and Sandy story, the one guy's like, yeah, we're trying to do this. We got this hotel. And, you know, I go, man, I would start with debriefs. Just get some debriefs. Get some people over there before you try to expand into the, you know, a larger, a larger deal.

But, you know, they – The story is the same. I mean, the way they're starting out, it's the same. It's the same thing. But I think it's important that we're all meeting and discuss because the problems are the same. It's just the people are different. They're running into the same things.

But I think it's, you know, at least as far as tactics and the way things are going, you know, we can, we can talk that out and figure out, hey, this is what we doing. What are you guys doing? But again, it goes, it goes like my analogy in Texas, you know, what we can do in Texas, they may not be able to do in California or Colorado. And what they do in Colorado, we may not be able to do so. But it's still good to talk that out. And I think the important thing is that we are all together talking about things and the issues that we're each facing and the challenges, because in a lot of respects, they're the same.

Jon Becker: Yeah, 100%. And although tactics, although the political will changes geographically, tactics don't. Right. Like the challenge is, you said America's America. Like everybody is faced with barricades, and I don't care what state you're in, there are barricades. The more teams and associations are sharing information. You say these analogy raise our polls and raising all boats. Everybody is getting better by sharing information. There is not an overabundance of quality information in the environment. So the more you guys are interacting, it seems the better the entire community gets.

Dan Colosanto: I agree 100%.

Jon Becker: So, Dan, if people want to learn more about TTPOA, how do they find it?

Dan Colosanto: Go to the website,. If you go up there now, our conference stuff is up there. 40th anniversary. We're hoping to make a big splash for the 40th. So everything's up there now. All the information for the conference,. you can sign up, join up. You don't have to be from Texas. We'll let you come from the outside. We don't even charge you extra for that.

Jon Becker: So is that true even if you're from California, though?

Dan Colosanto: I like Brent. Brent's a good guy. So we kind of made a little agreement. We kind of made a treaty. So it's all good. So we let those guys in. But, yeah, everything's on the website. Brand new website. Thanks to Aaron, Marco and those guys,. All the information about the association is right there.

Jon Becker: So Sandy, is that this is the last year that you will be involved or be on the border with TTPOA? Is that the truth?

Sandy Wall: That's the truth. All things good things must come to an end. And I recognize that there's other people that can step up and do and offer something new, fresh ideas, fresh energy. And that's a good thing. When I left HPD SWAT, I was probably still a decent operator, but I'd lost a step, and I knew that, and I had other things I could be doing that were probably more beneficial in the long run.

And it's same thing here. My time has come. I'm just so grateful to the guys for letting me hang around even after my usefulness was over. But I'm stepping away from the board. I will still always be there. And anything I can do to help the association, I will, because it has paid untold benefits back to me for whatever effort I ever put in.

Dan Colosanto: And I did talk them into being the emcee for the, for the banquet.

Sandy Wall: So one last hurrah?

Dan Colosanto: One last hurrah. Absolutely.

Jon Becker: I love it! Well, I feel like an appropriate place for us to wrap up would be to go back to each of you guys. And what do you think looking back now over the evolution of TTPOA? What do you think people need to know about TTPOA or about the evolution of SWAT in Texas that we haven't covered? Paul, you wanna go first?

Paul Ford: Sure. Yeah. I think the thing that inspired me and the thing that continues to inspire me, I'm amazed when I, when I go to my own department here in Austin and I see who those guys are, what their capabilities are. Same goes with TTPOA. I'm amazed when I go to the conferences and see what you guys accomplish every year and you seem to top it. My parting word would be is that it's going to advance. It's going to continue to get better. It's gonna, you know, your capabilities are gonna continue to increase, but only if we have this kind of community.

Only if we have this kind of, you know, interagency association where people can share, people can learn from each other. It's gonna get, it's gonna get, it's going to continue to get better and more sophisticated, more technology aided. So whatever we did for the last 30 years, I don't know, but it's gotten better. And congratulations to guys like Dan and Sandy who've stuck with it and continue to push it uphill.

Jon Becker: Dan, you want to take us next?

Dan Colosanto: Yeah, I think it's a great organization. As I said, we're still trying to build. My goal was to obviously make it better than it was when I started. And I have no doubt that the people who come after me will make it better than whatever it is that we're doing right now. But we provide some good training, it's affordable, and we're out there as an asset to these agencies that need help with training. So I think we have nowhere to go but up. Hopefully.

Jon Becker: Sandy Wall?

Sandy Wall: Well, I'd like to finish with the way I started talking about the original SWAT team in 1974. Those guys were handpicked and selected and volunteered to do a job that they had no clue. And they got a little bit of training from the get go, but after that, it was trial and error, and they learned from their own, and they weren't getting any extra pay. They were doing it for the right reason. They didn't have an association to call on. They didn't have outside instructors that were coming around and spreading information and showing expertise. They learned by trial and error, and they pass it on to guys like me.

And then I met a guy named Paul Ford who changed my life, and we started trying to build this association who other guys had started, and we took it to another level, and then guys like Dan had taken it to another level. But I will say this, that before I got involved in association, I didn't know anybody in Austin or San Antonio or Dallas or anywhere El Paso. And now every city of any size, I've got somebody there that I know, and a lot of them I've met, and if nothing else, sat in a hospitality suite and we talked about, when you all do this, how do you do that? Or, oh, my God, never do this, because this did not work out well.

And you're like, what happened? And then you visualize, God, that could have been me. I need to go back and learn from this. So that's fostering those relationships, fostering those ideas, and bringing all of those smaller agencies up to a level that they could have never imagined, if not for their association or for this association and learning and the exposure that it's given them. So hats off to TTPOA, and everything is done for me, and I just can't say enough. And God bless you, Dan, for still carrying the flag.

Dan Colosanto: Thank you, sir! Hey, you're still going to be advisor to the president, even though you're not going to be on the board.

Sandy Wall: I'm here for you.

Jon Becker: Well, guys, thank you. I mean, I hope you realize that The contributions that each of you made not only made officers in Texas, but officers all over the country safer. And, you know, let's hope that that dad is going to take this to an entirely different level, and the guys that follow him will be the same.

Dan Colosanto: We're going to hope that Dan doesn't screw it up. He's going to try hard not to.

Sandy Wall: You got it, brother.

Jon Becker: All right, guys, thank you so much, and thanks for being with me!

Sandy Wall: Jon, thanks for the opportunity!

Paul Ford: Thank you, Jon!

Episode 38 Transcript

jonathan@aardvarktactical.com on October 3, 2024

Episode 38 – The Emergency Mind – Kentucky State Police SRT Jon Becker: In late August of 2020, the Kentucky State Police Special Response team attempted to execute search and arrest warrants on a family compound in Johnson Holler, a heavily wooded and very rural area of Kentucky. The suspect, who was being sought on a potential murder and drug related charges, had hiding locations and weapons throughout the compound and had built a series of hardened firing positions from which to attack officers. In the 48 hours that followed, the team would have two officers involved shootings with two different suspects, all on the same compound. This event would stretch the team and its resources to their limits. Yet the team rose to the challenge, yielding a successful outcome despite almost impossible conditions. This case provides numerous lessons learned and teaching points about rural operations and the dangers of unexpected challenges. My guests today are Sergeant Heath Ayers and Trooper Logan Smith from the Kentucky State Police Special Response team. 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! Heath Ayers: Thanks for having us! Logan Smith: Yeah, appreciate it! Jon Becker: Why don't we start with just kind of overview of the team? Like, give me a little understanding about how Kentucky State police special response team works. Heath Ayers: So we've got a full time team. We cover the whole state from Mayfield to Pikeville, which is west to east. We can go as far as north and Covington, all the way south of the Tennessee line. We are fully operation 13 guys. We are on call 24/7, 365, fully outfitted with multiple armor vehicles and a lot of really nice gear. Jon Becker: What's your, what's your typical operational temple in a year? Like, how many ops does the team usually see? Logan Smith: I think it fluctuates a little bit. I would say we're pretty close to hitting 100, 100 plus each year. But it's different. It's not always barricades. It's not always hrs. It's a lot of help with the drug guys and our desi units and stuff like that. So it can fluctuate. Jon Becker: Yeah. What I mean is most of your work kind of warrants, arrest warrant type of stuff, or what's, what's most of the work? Heath Ayers: Yeah, I would say we do a lot of pre planned warrant services, both search and arrest warrants and then barricades. Jon Becker: Yep. Makes sense. So set me up how this Johnson Hollow event starts. When do you guys first get involved in this incident? Logan Smith: We actually. And that's kind of the tricky part about this whole incident. We actually didn't even find out about this case until July of 2020, so it was kind of thrown on our lap. But the actual Knox county sheriff's office, where this took place, they actually dealt with this back in December of 2019. So you can kind of paint your picture there of the timeframe. And they originally had the contact with the suspect, and what makes actually started the case from there. But we actually, as a team, didn't. We didn't even find out about it until July. Jon Becker: So Knox county, what. What happens in January of 2020 that Knox county gets involved with this guy? Logan Smith: Okay. The Knox county sheriff's office had been working a drug case against this guy, and basically he was involved in narcotics methamphetamine. And they had some tips. They were all just trying to do a search warrant on his residence. And this is the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, if you're familiar with the show, Harlan, and all that kind of justified thing that's kind of there you're dealing with. But we were in Knox county, and he just – When the sheriff's office shows up that day to serve a search warrant, they don't locate anybody at the actual residence. And as they are looking around, they're searching the wooded area, and they actually run into the suspect there. And he's on a four wheeler in a ghillie suit, and he actually has an AK 47 style rifle strapped to his back. So they kind of challenge him there in the woods. He gets off the foiler, takes the rifle off his back, turns towards them. There's no exchange of gunfire at the point, but he does take off running in the woods. So they just kind of hold back, from what I can tell and from that investigation, and that's when they actually kind of pursue him just a bit. But then they start noticing all these fortified shooting positions and different ambush spots he's got up all over the mountain. Jon Becker: So they make a decision that they're going to terminate. Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: Engagement with him. Logan Smith: Correct. I think there was just two of them at the time. And they just backed out. And basically, unfortunately, they really didn't notify KSP at the time. So even then, that was kind of a – They could have called us then, possibly. They could have notified the actual local post there. To get some troopers involved. But, yeah, they just kind of kept that to themselves at the moment. Jon Becker: And so, like, just, you know, to give context, because I grew up in a city in California, so I don't think the average person understands how rural this part of Kentucky is. So give me some context as to what are we talking about property sizes? What are the towns like? Logan Smith: I would just picture it as that kind of that one like town. Very rural areas. Most of these houses are tucked up in, tucked up in these hollers or tucked up in the side of a mountain. And very, I mean, it's just very, very rural. You're talking probably each little town probably doesn't have but a couple thousand people when you're dealing with these smaller little communities in that area. And unfortunately, it's just very poverty driven, a lot of low income in the mountains, and you're starting to cut out the coal business as well. So you're having to deal with people that just don't have a lot. Jon Becker: And from a local law enforcement standpoint, like, okay, you got a town with a couple thousand people who's policing that town? Logan Smith: Well, that's kind of the case. Is your, your departments, even then, the local PD's and even your sheriff's office and that kind of thing, they just don't have the manpower. They're in the same battle as everybody else, so they just don't have the bodies. So thankfully, KSP is a little different. We aren't kind of your typical highway patrol like you see with other state agencies. And we actually do a lot of rural work. So we're answering calls for service. They're just, there's not a lot of highways running through Kentucky other than 65 and a couple big ones, but there's just not a lot. So we're actually answering a lot of calls for service in these rural counties, just like a typical sheriff's office or PD would. Jon Becker: But you are talking, like, rural hill country here. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, yeah. Backcountry forest. Yes. I mean, yeah. And that's why I kind of mentioned justified because I think that's a show that probably everybody can relate to or have seen on Netflix, that kind of thing. And that's really what you're dealing with. You're dealing with that rural atmosphere, lots of elevation and big woods. I mean, you're talking Daniel Boone National Forest and all that. So it's very, very rural. Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so skip forward now. July 2020, SP gets involved. Logan Smith: Yep. We get the call basically post hand there. They get the call and they start their investigation. And basically it's at this time, they still haven't really talked with Knox county sheriff's office, but they've already started working up their own investigation in regards to the drug involvement. And so they're starting to talk with their CIS and they're getting all this information about the drug activity, obviously. But now they've actually received information that possibly the suspect has killed another individual with a 22 and kind of hit him in the – hid his body in the woods. Basically, after all this information, they actually do start relaying a little bit of mess relaying a little bit of information with that Knox county sheriff's office. And that's when they build their case and start getting some arrest warrants and search warrants for the suspect's house and that property. Jon Becker: So we're working a drug case, but quickly building a murder case. Logan Smith: Yes. Yeah. And they had all intentions on it. I think everything they were receiving from the CI was pretty accurate at the point. At this point. And just based on their, the guys tendencies and after talking with Knox county sheriff's office, they were, he was a pretty bad dude. Jon Becker: So eventually they do get ahold of Knox county and find out that they'd had this prior altercation with them. Okay. Logan Smith: Correct. Yep. Jon Becker: Okay. So then when, when does the team become involved here? Logan Smith: We, shortly after that, they kind of started working the case and realized how, how dangerous and kind of the scope of it. And we actually found out about the case. Right? Early August 2020. So we're talking several months after the fact. And that's when we're actually getting a lot of information from post level detectives and they're starting to share all this information and we start kind of getting our game plan, getting all our ducks in a row to actually scout and do our due diligence, I guess, on this particular incident. Jon Becker: Yeah. Because, I mean, I'm guessing even scouting a location like this is going to be difficult because in a town of 2000 people, a couple of cops rolling through with a camera is definitely going to attract some attention. Logan Smith: Yeah. You're not, you're not going in these areas any marked cars. It's just everybody knows when the nod cars in the holler are in that area and they're all calling their buddies, they're all friends, they're usually all relatives. And that's just, that's just how that area operates. Jon Becker: Yeah. I guess it's another aspect of kind of the rural south that you don't think about when you live in big cities is that some of these are, like family compounds. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, exactly. This particular instant, not to jump ahead, but his parents lived literally probably 50 yards behind him, and then an uncle lived within another 50 yards beside him. So we're on the family farm kind of thing with. And that's just what we knew about. We're not talking cousins and that kind of thing that live across the street and all that. So, yeah, we're right there on the family farm, and everybody knows everybody. Jon Becker: Yeah. So. So, you know, I mean, every single call is a giant domestic disturbance where, you know, you're going in there to arrest a member of their family. Yeah. That sounds just lovely. So, all right, you guys start. You get tasked with this thing. How do you scout this? Logan Smith: Thankfully, we're pretty lucky. And if you think in rural kentucky, a lot of us are outdoorsmen, we know kind of what to look for. Thankfully. And we actually utilized our aircraft branch early on because we wanted to see if all this intel with him possibly living in the woods and having those fortified fighting positions like the pitchers from the Knox County Sheriff's Office showed us, we were kind of hoping that we would be able to kind of pinpoint that area that he was hiding in and then using that bird to possibly just give us some. Some points to actually, like, focus on. So we originally started with that, and at the time, it was just. The foliage was just too thick, so we couldn't really see a lot. But I – We really relied on just basically maps and topos and stuff like that. So it was really important for our guys to really focus on the terrain, the terrain features. And just by that intel, we could, for the most part, kind of pinpoint a certain area that if he was actually living in the woods, it would kind of have to be this general area based on the elevation and where the flats were and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: The pictures you got from Knox, like, I – As I'm reading this incident and kind of thinking through it, I'm picturing, like, a house and the guy living in a house, but he's not living in a house, right? Logan Smith: No, his house is right next to the road, but it is a trailer, but he was actually living in the woods behind the house in supposedly, like a tent. And it was at that point, that's all the kind of information we had. All the intel just gathered was a tent of some sort. And those pictures that we got from Knox county sheriff's office kind of show several different tents. And as you can tell from those photos that was in January. So basically, there's no foliage, there's no leaves. There's no ground cover whatsoever. So you're actually seeing all that area with no foliage covering it up? No, nothing like that. So it was really just more of just tents and tarps and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: And fighting positions and hills and trees and relatives surrounding them. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Yeah, it sounds really easy. I don't know why you guys. Yeah, it's basically sounds like trigonometry did to me in high school. Heath Ayers: Right. Logan Smith: And those fighting positions is not just kind of a makeshift something you do. I mean, he had actually put some time and effort into it with a actually, like, four by fours and actually using stones to stack up and camouflaging them with, like, tarps and different stuff like that. So, I mean, he was. He was definitely committed, and I think his intentions were accurate. Jon Becker: So, I mean, from your perspective, is he building those fighting positions knowing that eventually law enforcement's gonna come get him and so he's gonna need to be able to engage in a protracted gun battle with the police? Logan Smith: Yeah, I do. I really do think that that was probably most of it, and I think just someone like him and any drug user, I think they're just paranoid people in general. So whether it was for us and he had made statements that, hey, he's not going to jail, he'd be willing to shoot it out with law enforcement, it was either that or even other addicts or drug dealers, that kind of thing. It could have been something like that, too. But I think it was just. That was definitely his intentions. Jon Becker: And I'm assuming, going in, you've probably already run intel, I'm going to guess, because he's in a rural Kentucky, he owns a gun. Logan Smith: Oh, yeah, 100 of them. Yes. I would say several. Everybody we deal with, it's kind of the whole you got the gun hanging in the back window kind of thing, and that's everyone. You just expect everybody to have a gun, and that's perfectly fine. But, yeah, when you're dealing with someone like him, he's definitely going to be armed. Jon Becker: Okay, so we move forward September 2020. You guys have done your scouting. You're gonna execute the warrant. Walk me through that. Logan Smith: Okay. We had basically, we completed all our scouts the best we could, and that was using the aircraft. We did a couple different drive bys, and like I say, that was in all unmarked, very quick, just trying to get a lay of the land, and then kind of starting to plan where we put our QRT where we put, where we stage all our equipment and that kind of thing. But basically after we had gathered all that and decided what we were going to do, we actually had to kind of hold off a little bit for manpower issues. So we mentioned we're a 13 man team that cover the entire state, and we would have liked to actually probably hit this almost immediately after getting that intel. But we had guys that were actually out for just vacations, trainings, and that kind of thing. So that was one thing that kind of held that off. So when we, when people kind of probably wonder why did it take so long for these guys to hit this? Number one, that was an issue. But it was also this guy wasn't actually really out in the community wreaking havoc. He was actually just kind of to himself, but he was dealing drugs. And then the possible case of him actually murdering somebody, that was kind of raising flags. But it wasn't like he was actively out in the community causing trouble. So that's kind of why we held that off a little bit, just for manpower. And basically after our, basically after all our scouts and all our information, we just, we knew this was something that we were needing all hands on deck kind of thing. Jon Becker: Makes sense. Logan Smith: But to get, get to your question. So we basically decided that we would need everybody, number one. But we ended up putting our QRT staging location about, probably about two or 3 miles from the actual target. And we were going to plan on infilling a Woods team or actually two woods teams at about 08:00 a.m. that morning. And the reason kind of for that is through those photos, we had already decided and already found out that he very possibly had some early warning devices, whether it was like fishing lines and coke cans kind of thing, hanging in the woods. But also we knew of these fortified fighting positions and that he was actually living and knew that farm, if you want to say, or that area like the back of his hand. So we wanted it to be daylight. We had the capability to run MVGs and that kind of thing. But we were just making sure that we could actually see and not have to deal with school buses, traffic, and we could actually get off that main road and get in the woods. But we dropped off the two woods elements and then we actually dropped off basically an observation unit that was going to be standing across the road just kind of watching the house at that time. Jon Becker: Got it. And so your, your woods teams give me how many guys? What are we doing? How are they equipped? Logan Smith: We had basically two woods teams, and obviously this time of year, there's tons of foliage. It was very green. So we were all outfitted basically in our camo, like our tropic gear, face painted gloves, that kind of thing, with hats and all that. And we were also, each of us had our rifles, binoculars and that kind of thing. Because basically our game plan was hopefully we were going to be able to clear as much of these woods as possible, either locate these tents, clear them, and then basically collapse down on the house and just basically serve a standard search warrant on that residence. So that was kind of the best case scenario for us at that time. And while we were actually going to be in the woods, we were basically just hoping that our other team that was across the road, just basically being an overwatch position, we're going to be able to find our suspect coming in and out of the house, that kind of thing. And then we were going to collapse on the house at that point. And then we would also have that containment on the backside of that house as well. Obviously it didn't work out like that, but it never does. Jon Becker: So, search warrants for the property or the house? Logan Smith: We had search warrant for basically the house the property, which was, I think, give or take approximately 30 acres, and then actually his uncle's house and his parents residence as well. So basically the entire property and everything on it. Jon Becker: Got it. The whole compound, correct? Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: In this case, I think the word compound is an appropriate work. Logan Smith: Yeah, I believe so. Our game plan there was basically to kind of, we were going to work together and try to just get up on top of the mountain and use that, use the actual terrain as we could see it on our maps and that kind of thing. And basically get a group that was moving more on, like, kind of the lower level and then another group to get really, really high and basically kind of parallel each other across this ridge, basically, and kind of get to the point that we thought, or the area that we actually thought that we could actually pinpoint the possibility of him actually having these structures or these fighting positions. Intense. Jon Becker: So try to give me as best you can. It's hard to describe property in a forest, but what's the shape of this thing? Are we in a canyon or a hauler or what's it look like? How much elevation gain is there? Logan Smith: You're definitely in what we would call a holler. And basically it's just these houses are just right off the road. So his house is probably ten yards off the road and directly behind his house. It went straight up, probably another 20, 30 ft, and it kind of flattened off and it kind of just staggered like that, kind of like that stair step all the way up this mountain. So, I mean, we're thinking probably 700 ft elevation, give or take, here and there with. With different levels of aggression, I guess you could say, on that. But, yeah, it was, I mean, very, very hilly, pretty rough terrain and thick at that. So we're always dealing with that as well. Jon Becker: And just for the more urban audience, give me a definition of a hauler. Logan Smith: Basically, a holler would just be just a small area that runs in between or runs up a mountain. So the lower area that would run up kind of like a drain going up a mountain or a hillside, kind of where it's flat enough to where people can actually build houses and have, and put a foundation to put these trailers on, that kind of thing. So usually it's a one lane road going up into this area with houses kind of staggering on each side. But this particular one just basically was. Had just enough room to fit his uncle's house, his house and his parents house. And then it went straight up into the hillside and the mountainside. Jon Becker: Got it. And what are we talking for? Like, what kind of trees? What's the foliage like? Logan Smith: Which, that time of year in Kentucky is usually really, really thick. So you've got all your lower undergrowth, which is actually coming off the ground. It was really, really thick and green and leafy. And then you got your just big mature trees, so you've got your walnuts, your white oaks, your maples, that kind of thing. So the big mature trees that are, number one, they, they're all the foliage, so you're blocking out a lot of the sunlight. So it's usually, it's pretty dark in the woods at that time of the year, so you're not getting a lot of sunlight through, but just that undergrowth, that's what caused that undergrowth to really flourish. And so it was really, really thick, actually, on the ground level. So you're getting big mature trees, you're getting that undergrowth, so you're probably visibility. I mean, it varied, but a lot of times, I mean, you could see 30 yards ahead of you and then everything else, you were just having to really be cautious and clearing what you could see and moving around different objects and that kind of thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. And you're trying to move in with stealth, too. Right? So it's like, you know, not breaking branches not making a lot of noise. Logan Smith: Correct. And like I said, we're trying to do this. We didn't really know if any of this stuff existed outside of the photos we had. So, yeah, we were just really trying to be cautious, be patient, and. And really be stealthy just to try to move through these woods knowing that that's not our territory. That was his home. That was his home court, as we could say. And he knew everything, but it was our first time in those woods. Jon Becker: And so your goal being shrink the problem to the house if possible? Logan Smith: Correct. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, during our brief, like, best case scenario would, we would clear the hillside, the mountainside behind his house, not locate him or anything in the tents, and then we would actually just collapse down and I perform just a standard search warrant surrounding call out and slow play it from there. Jon Becker: And the rationale being that if you just hit the house, he's just going to disappear into the woods anyways, right? Logan Smith: Correct. Yeah. And we would have some containment and be able to deal with him if that were the case. Jon Becker: Got it. And you have search warrant and arrest warrant or just search warrant? Logan Smith: At the time, we had both. I think we had, actually a search and arrest warrant on. Jon Becker: Got it. So he's going either way. Okay, so how far, like, your infill point versus the house? What's the distance and how long does it take you guys to cover it? Logan Smith: I would say our actual infill location was probably a quarter of a mile from the house, just around a curve to where we couldn't actually. So you couldn't see the house or anything like that. And we strategically actually infilled in a certain area just to keep even neighbors from being able to see us get out. But, yeah, I would say a quarter mile from the house. And then our observation team, we got them on here as Charlie, but they basically were a couple hundred yards off the house, on the other opposite hillside across the road. But, yeah, that was. We tried to stay off the best we could just from that actual target. Jon Becker: And then you said you had a QRT team. I'm assuming, like, quick response team that if you have an issue, that's going to be your QRF, for lack of better term. Logan Smith: Yes. Correct. And they were probably about, I would say, ten minutes away at the max, and that's with armored Bearcats, armored suburbans and that kind of thing. So they were basically just standing by and hopefully we were just going to call them in. Hey, we're. We're collapsing on the house. We'll hold security on it until you guys get here, and we'll just conduct our surrounding call out. So that was kind of the plan. And then while we were actually moving through the woods, the best we could, if, like I said, if our observation team actually saw anything different, then they would be able to relay all that information through radio traffic. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you're on one of these containment teams. You're on the other one, right? Heath Ayers: I'm actually on the QRT. Jon Becker: You're on the QRT. Got it. Okay. All right, so. And how big is the QRT at this point? What do you guys have? Heath Ayers: So the QRT has got five operators, and that's also with assistance from k nine handlers. Our lieutenant was there at the time. So it's not just operators. It's got a few different people that could operate vehicles for us. Jon Becker: Got it. And you're going to be, you know, either the team that's going to come in and conduct the search once they collapse on the house, or if things go sideways, you're. You're the responding team and dealing with whatever happens. Heath Ayers: Yes. Correct. So if the actual mission took place, that they could clear the woods and then contain a. The house. There's multiple structures there, so we could fall in and pick up those securities on those different residences as well. Jon Becker: What's the distance between, like, his house and his parents house and his uncle's house? Heath Ayers: I would say the distance from the uncle's house to his house, maybe 100 yards. Jon Becker: Okay. But I'm assuming that is not a flat. Hundred yards, you know, with a walking track between the two. Heath Ayers: Actually, on that one, it was a straight shot. Jon Becker: Really? Heath Ayers: Yeah. Jon Becker: Okay. Heath Ayers: Yard to yard meant flat. It's nice and flat, which isn't also an issue because that house can see that house. So we have issues with cover concealment, and also holding security on both properties. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, so you guys are infilling and getting close, and what happens? Logan Smith: So we had our main team, and, like I said, pushed to the top of the mountain, and then the lower team was kind of pushing that flat that we could see on our topo maps. But, yeah, as my team was actually on top of the mountain, the team on the flat actually encountered what they were just calling a tent, and they couldn't see much of it. They could just tell it looked like a tarp. And basically, when they informed us that they had actually located something, they actually started relaying their coordinates via the Garmin, their Garmin phone app. Okay. And then we just used those coordinates to punch them into our watches and actually started to backtrack to them and try to set up some type of el ambush on that location. As we were actually backtracking, trying to get towards them, they had said that they had heard a foiler start up and head up the mountain. So while they were sitting there and while we were trying to move to them, they actually encounter a male individual on a four wheeler. And he pulls up next to the side of what they call in this tent. And they're relaying all this as well over comms, but he gets off. They can't really id the guy. It's just through that thick foliage. So they're just kind of trying to get what they can get. And he ends up walking in the tent. So now we know we've actually got. They've made contact with somebody, at least visually. So we're trying to actually get to them the best we can and obviously being pretty quiet and moving through them woods as well, hoping not to encounter anything else. But once they actually receive contact, we try to just work to them and set up that good solid ale ambush for them. Jon Becker: So does this, the suspect on the four wheeler do that?. Does he see them or do they just see him? Logan Smith: Nope. He did not see them. So he pulls in, not aware that anybody's around, and he just hops off the four wheeler and walks right in the tent. They had mentioned that they could smell marijuana coming from the tent. So we think he just went in the tent and was just smoking some marijuana or something like that. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay, what happens next? Logan Smith: Okay, while we're. While we're moving to them and we're trying to get set up the best we can. And anybody that's listening knows that tactical l we're talking about. We're trying to set that up on this location. And as we're doing so and trying to get guys in position, we actually, there's another male and female and a dog that just come walking through the middle of the woods. So we had no idea where they were. We don't know where they came from. They were just walking down a trail, talking and walking this dog. Well, we obviously, everybody holds and is trying to relay that information. So as soon as they get to the 10th and they both go in the tent as well. So now we've actually got three people in this tent, or tarp, whatever you want to call at the time now to deal with. And we couldn't id any of them, other than just knowing that it was two males and a female and a dog at that point, as we're trying to get set up, I'm kind of more in an observation point to where I can actually use my binoculars and I'm trying to watch. And the female comes in out of ten a couple times, but you could barely, you could barely see much of anything just because the foliage. So you're kind of looking through that thick vegetation, and you're catching just glimpse of her coming in and out of. So, next thing, I actually see the male come out, or one of the males, and he's looking, he's kind of looking around, not really paying attention to anything. But it was a little odd. Cause he started kind of scanning the area, I thought, and he goes back in. So I'm kind of telling the guys, be like, hold tight. Stick what you got. He was kind of scanning around, but I really didn't think much about it. And then he comes out just a few seconds later, and he's actually holding two pistols. So I tell the guys, hey, he has two pistols. He has one in each hand, and I'm trying to relay that to everybody. And he's actually, now he's actively kind of searching, scanning through that wooded area. So still, we don't know if he saw something or heard something, but at this point, we're on high alert. And he actually starts at that point, walking through the woods towards some of our woods team members. So he's got the guns behind his back, and if you can kind of picture he's got a gun in both hands. He kind of puts them down to his side, and he's kind of slowly scanning around the woods, kind of bending down. He's trying to see through that foliage, too. So he's kind of creeping through the woods, but I can definitely tell that he's actually looking at something in one of our guys. So they actually get ready, and one of them actually challenges him. So immediately it's Kentucky state police, drop the guns. And about simultaneously to that, the guy actually raises two pistols, kind of dueling pistols. And that's when he engages our trooper engages and actually hits him. He falls backwards, and he actually gets right back up almost immediately and kind of leans up. And that's when a couple other troopers also engaged him to eliminate that threat. The worst case about that is when he actually raised his pistols and was. And we started engaging him. Shots were fired from the tent, from the other suspect. So we've engaged this guy simultaneously that we're getting engaged from the tent by another guy, and then him and the female actually run out of the tent, and while they're running away, he's actually firing rounds at us over his shoulder, kind of as he's running away from us. Jon Becker: The second male? Logan Smith: The second male, correct. Jon Becker: So first male's down. Logan Smith: Yep. Jon Becker: Guy with two guns. He's down. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Second male shoots at you from the tent. Then he and the female start running, and he is engaging at, you know, shooting at you, basically. Over his shoulder. Logan Smith: Yes. Yeah. With the female in tow. So from my perspective, actually, I was. Even through our interviews, I actually thought that the first male that came out with the dueling. Duel in the pistols, I thought he actually was the one that engaged us. I was so focused on him at that point that I really thought that he had shot. But later on, we come to find out that, no, they were actually coming from the tent, from that other suspect. So later, kind of in the investigation, I think the female actually admitted that they had thought they had heard something. Whether that's true or not, we don't know whether the main suspect actually had the other guy go out and kind of do his dirty work for him, thinking that maybe there are some guys wanting to rob him or who knows at that point. But, yeah, we'll just never know. Jon Becker: Was the dog barking? Logan Smith: No dog. The dog never barked. So it was just a puppy. It was just a little dog. But, no, we never really. Never really heard the dog got it. Jon Becker: So it wasn't the dog that tipped him off. You know, I was wondering, like, did the dog. Logan Smith: Yeah. Jon Becker: You guys up on scent or something? Logan Smith: No. And as you know, that happens a lot. But, no, the dog. The dog had no idea. Jon Becker: Interesting. Okay, so this guy and the female now run off into the woods, basically. Logan Smith: Yep. Correct. And as he's running off and engaging, we actually kind of do, like you're taught shoot, move, communicate kind of thing. And he's obviously got that female in tow. Right. He's kind of got her by the hand, dragging her behind him, is what it looked like from my point of view. But the female actually kind of shoots off right back, kind of going towards behind the ten area, and he continues running, shooting, and we actually try to engage him through that thick foliage and try to eliminate him as a threat as well as he's running down the woods. Through the woods. And we just. At that point, he actually kind of engaged another, got into a little gunfight with another one of our guys. It was kind of on that far end of that l kind of our last man, and at that point, we kind of lost visual of him, and we kind of just held there for a second just to kind of get our bearings about us, kind of have that tactical pause, I guess you could say, and making sure everybody's okay, everybody's accounted for, and just kind of reevaluate our situation at that point. Jon Becker: Yeah, because it wasn't scary enough. Now, you've lost a guy that shot at you in the woods on his property. Logan Smith: Right, knowing what he's got all over this hillside. So. And obviously, I didn't have that viewpoint of it, but after talking with our other guys that were actually that observation team, they're sitting on the other hillside across the road from this guy's house, and they're just kind of hearing our radio traffic prior to all this. And next thing you know, they're hearing gunfire and they're hearing suppressed gunfire along with unsuppressed gunfire. So you can only imagine what they were thinking at that point. But that basically went immediately. They did exactly what they were supposed to, and their job was to activate the QRT quick reaction team and send them our way. So, kudos to those guys. I mean, they did their job, and they basically got us guys down to us as quick as we could. So they were kind of in no man's land, and I hate it for them, but they were. They couldn't help. But their only job at that point was to call our QRT and let everybody else know what's going on. Jon Becker: Yeah. So you guys are on the hillside, you know, in the woods, having just shot a suspect. Shot at another suspect. Don't know whether you hit him or not. He shot at you. The female has split and headed somewhere. The male has continued deeper into the woods, shooting at your last man in the L. And now you've lost basically both of those two suspects somewhere in the woods of Kentucky with a gun. And, yeah, I'm going to guess from the QRT standpoint, this is getting spicy really fast. Heath Ayers: So the issue with that part of Kentucky is radios can only go so far, especially direct line of sight. So with the people in the woods, they had a direct line of communication with the observation team, but they did not have direct comms with the QRT. So everybody at QRT had no clue any of this was going on. No communication other than just small updates. And then until we had the message to launch, that's when we found out there was a gunfight in the woods. Jon Becker: Man, this keeps getting worse, doesn't it? Logan Smith: Yeah. I mean, I could just imagine myself, and I talked to one of the guys, and I – It's just kind of that helpless feeling for them was they knew we were in a gunfight. They knew we were in some type of battle, and they could just hear it echoing off that hillside. They didn't actually know our exact location, just kind of where they thought it was. But, yeah, those guys, they felt pretty helpless. But I'll give them credit, man. They did their job, and they got guys to us quick. Jon Becker: And even from a nav standpoint. Right? You guys don't even. Even the two woods teams probably don't know where every. Every member of the other woods team is. Logan Smith: Yeah. And we were trying to kind of keep that line of sight between each one of us. But, yeah, when I say thick foliage and when we're engaging this. This guy, I mean, if anybody's actually been in deep, thick woods, which I'm sure a lot of listeners have, and when it's got thick foliage, you're just catching bits and pieces of this guy running off. And I guess the best thing about it, I guess, and unfortunately for him, I remember him specifically having some khaki pants on and no shirt and that kind of thing. So he kind of stuck out, obviously, running through that green foliage. But you just don't have good shots. You're just trying to catch him in that open area and try your best, actually get contact with him and actually just whatever you can to eliminate that threat at that point. So it just really, really thick. We could see each other, but not very well. And like I said, when all that gunfire was going on, you just. You kind of had that second step back and be like, hey, I hope. I hope everyone's okay. We just didn't know. Jon Becker: So what do you guys do next? Logan Smith: Basically, we kind of had that, like I said, kind of that tactical pause. So once we confirmed everybody was okay, we basically kind of collapsed down, made sure that the first individual we engaged, we made sure that he was no longer a threat and secured him. And then we actually pushed, a couple of us actually pushed over to that far lithe, the other trooper there that kind of got in that last engagement with the suspect. So we kind of pushed to him to make sure he was okay and basically get his. Get information from him. Hey, where was he at? What was his last known? Which way did he go? Because at that point, we had all lost. Everybody else had lost visual, but him. So we basically just kind of took a second, got our wits about us again. And basically at this time, we've actually got a bird in the air. And thankfully, and we'll get to this later, kind of. Your kind of. One of the pros is basically he, our pilot in command at the point and actually the head over our program for that. Our aircraft branch is a former team member, so he knew what we were dealing with. Not exactly, obviously, because he wasn't on the ground, but he knew what we were kind of expecting, what we were wanting from him. And he actually was flying over, doing his best to utilize his flir to actually try to locate these individuals that fled. Obviously, I mentioned earlier that foliage, especially with big mature trees, is just. It's really cutting out on all that flir and all that imaging he can actually get. But thankfully, he did actually end up locating what he thought at the time was two individuals. So basically our. The female split, like we mentioned earlier. So female went right. He kind of continued down that ridge, but our aircraft branch was basically saying, hey, I've got. I do have a heaton signature. I do have somebody on this hillside looks like they're land prone kind of thing. And so we kind of just basically move up into a better position, kind of trying to maintain that good tactical l. And then he actually says, and it's in the PowerPoint there where you get the. We got some video of it where he's actually identifies it actually being, hey, I think it's the female. And actually it's a dog. It's not another man. And he actually can see them coming down the hillside. So immediately he's kind of walking them to us through comms, really. We haven't seen her yet, but. And we're kind of trying not to give up our position the best we can, but we're trying to actually verbalize to her, hey, state police, show us your hands, come down the hill, that kind of thing. And then finally we do end up seeing her coming down. And she was cooperative, the best she could be, I guess, and what you kind of would expect. But we were at least able to get her down the hill, detain her as well, and at least know. All right, now we've got two of the individuals. Now we're just missing the other male suspect, but that flir. And we can get to that later on. Our kind of what came out of all this. But with him being a prior team member and having that capability, it actually located her fairly quick and eliminated. Just one other problem we were having to deal with. Jon Becker: Yeah, that's, you cut your problem in half. Logan Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Jon Becker: Which is not a bad deal to take. Logan Smith: Yeah. And the footage is good. I mean, it was pretty clear. But you can tell just by the folded. You're. You're kind of catching bits and pieces. So he. He did a great job. And then he tried continually find the other male too, but it was just too thick. And he just wasn't catching anything else. Jon Becker: Got it. So now you've got the female in custody. Is she cooperative? Logan Smith: Yeah, she's pretty cooperative. She's obviously distraught, as you can imagine. And she wasn't, I don't think, involved, obviously, or had any ill intent towards any of us. She was just caught, literally caught in that situation. But she was tore up. We were trying to get as much info as we could on who the individuals were. Did he say anything? Did he have any guns on him? Just kind of your basic information. But at that point, we just kind of were detaining her and we went ahead. Cause at this point, we're really close to that tenta. So we needed to clear that structure, I guess you could say, before moving on to the next chapter, I guess. So we actually just got our containment and got our. Our wits about us and actually end up trying to clear that tent to eliminate that and kind of focus all our attention towards the direction that he fled. Heath Ayers: Got it. Jon Becker: And by now the QRT is rolling up on you guys? Logan Smith: Yes. Now they're rolling up. Now we're in the middle of the woods, right up on a hillside that they know of basically a direction, but they don't know exactly where we're at. So they're actually just pulling into this guy's driveway at this point. And we're not as we're not sure if he's fled back to his house. We're not sure if he's went to the uncle's house or what. So they're having to deal with that, with those issues as well as we're trying to deal with issues we've got up on the mountain. So. And he may be able to walk us through that a little better than me just because I wasn't there on that particular. Jon Becker: So you guys roll into the driveway. What happens? Heath Ayers: So we get the message to launch. We start heading that way. We know that we have the main suspect's house to deal with, but the main house that we're going to first take down is the uncle's. The observation team. Early in the morning, did observe a couple suspects, subjects. They couldn't id them correctly. They couldn't possibly id that there was two males, female, walking back and forth from the suspect's house to the uncle's house, back and forth. They couldn't positive id. So we had to take that into account when we launched and initially set up on the uncle's house. So, once we set up on the house, the observation team comes down from their position and pluses up our armored car, and we do a surrounding call out perimeter, set up the perimeter, do a surrounding call out, and start working our process to try to get possibly the uncle and more people out of the house. Jon Becker: Got it. And who comes out. Heath Ayers: So, ended up the uncle was not there. But a couple different people came out that we had never seen on any intel reports, didn't see that day. And after our process was completed, we cleared the structure, and we could not find the main suspect or the uncle. Jon Becker: Got it. And do we – Have we gotten any information yet as to who's been shot in the woods and who's run off into the woods? Like, I'm assuming you're thinking it may be your suspect, but what do we know at this point? Logan Smith: And it just so happens that me and another one of the guys on the team were the ones that actually headed up the scout and. And had kind of the initial information and gave the brief to the guys. So I immediately knew that. That the original. The first male that we encounter was not our actual suspect. He was just someone else we had had to encounter. Right? So I knew at that point that not necessarily knowing that the other guy was our main suspect, but we did have another male that had ran off that kind of matched that description. But we were at least able to later id the male, deceased male and then the female. And then we actually got them off the mountain as quick as we could. Jon Becker: Who is the deceased male, out of curiosity? His uncle or. Logan Smith: No, it was just a. I guess a friend at the time. I think it was actually the female's boyfriend. Jon Becker: Got it. Logan Smith: So I think they were just friends or acquaintances, I guess. Jon Becker: Picked a bad day to take the gun into the woods. Logan Smith: Yes. Jon Becker: Okay, so you guys are clearing the house, QRT cleared the house, don't have the uncle. What's next? Heath Ayers: So we end up moving from the uncle's house and move up to support capacity into the woods. Jon Becker: And do you guys, at the point that you dismount and head up into the woods, do you have a pretty good sense of where your team is, or are you guys still kind of scattered. Heath Ayers: They did a really good job of communicating the lay, the land, and also the best infill spot for the QRT to transition to. I will say that the clearance of the structure was not a fast procedure. It was a lengthy procedure rightfully so, with all the unknowns. But the other thing that we also had with the QRT is it was the lesser seniority guys. So the five were the kind of the five lower. So it was kind of new to our qRT as far as experience level in seniority. It did take a little bit of time, so it made the woods team guys be in the woods for even longer. But once we cleared that and moved our infield spot, we moved up into the woods tried to support them best we could and get some type of laid land so we can start clearing more of the woods. Jon Becker: Okay. All right, so you guys are sitting up in the woods, waiting for them to clear the house. Are you still hunting the suspect? Logan Smith: Yeah, just a little bit. Basically we had. So basically we cleared that initial tent that they had went in and came out of, and then we actually went to the last known position that our last trooper, and they got in that little gunfight. So we actually found where that position was. We could see bullets hitting the tree where they had hit the tree. We could see where he actually slid. It's almost like he tried, he was trying to run up the hill, but it was just too steep, and he slid back down. As he was engaging. We didn't see any blood or anything like you would, you would hope, I guess, for in that case. But we kind of at least had a decent, decent travel, I guess, where he would win. But unfortunately, literally, as soon as we started that initial track, or kind of was trying to find that track and find that path, we encounter another tent. So now we've got another structure that we didn't know about that was only 20, 30 yards away from us, and we just never knew it was there just because how thick it was. And now we're kind of thinking, oh, well, now he's, he just made it in this tent, and now he's probably rearmed waiting for us, that kind of thing. So now that's in the back of our head. So we basically kind of slow roll it again, slow back down. And we're actually, as those guys are coming up the hill to us, we go ahead and have one of them just grab one of our robots. It's kind of in a backpack, and we bring it up and actually utilize it to clear that tent. Jon Becker: He was just rolled in with a little robot. Logan Smith: Yep. Yep. Tried to roll in a robot just without having to stick our head around the corner, obviously knowing that he's got all these ambush spots. So we were being extremely cautious at this point. But you're also just to get a timeframe as we're getting late into the evening. And in eastern Kentucky, that time of the year, you're obviously losing light earlier in the day anyways. And now you've got this thick foliage. So we're really starting to battle the nightfall. And so now in the back of our heads, we're thinking, hey, we've got a whole bunch of issues and a whole lot of problems, and now we've got darkness to deal with as well. So we kind of have another little powwow. Kind of just sit back and let's talk this through and see what our next step is going to be. Having to deal with that. And unfortunately, a lot of us were not prepared for this op to last that long, so we were kind of just one of those things we'll talk about later. But we, as you get in your head, you're thinking, hey, we're going to infill. It's going to be over in a couple hours, and we'll be eating lunch together. Now, we're – It's getting dark. Several guys don't have MVGs. They didn't pack them just because they weren't expecting to be there till dark. Now you're running out of snacks, food, water, anything like that. You've packed. So we've got a whole bunch of issues really mountain up right now, and it's causing a lot of trouble. Jon Becker: Yeah, but, I mean, to the credit of the team, you guys are recognizing that this is evolving on you in a negative way. Right? It's very easy in these circumstances to just keep chasing the guy into the woods and put yourself in a worse and worse tactical situation. So you guys are taking the pause to go, hang. Hang on a minute here. Like, it's getting dark. We don't have MVGs. We're hungry, we're cold, we're wet, whatever. Logan Smith: Right. And, yeah, that's just kind of our ATL and our TLs just making those decisions because you're obviously, you want to go after this guy. You want to. He just engaged. You just had this incident, right. And you want to push that limit, but just knowing what you can do and what you can't, and we actually already had. Obviously, as all this is unfolding, we're getting command staffs being notified. We've got basically every k nine in the state headed our way. We've got every trooper in the post district on scene at this point, at least on the main road. We're having them get on every other road around there. You're kind of blocking off, hoping maybe they just encounter him, maybe they see him running, maybe a neighbor calls him in kind of thing. So we're trying to do our due diligence on that aspect as well to provide some type of containment. But you're also dealing with a ginormous portion of woods with no house anywhere. So really, our search area at this point is just too large. It's too big, and we've got too many other issues to really push the envelope at this point. Jon Becker: What did you decide to do? Logan Smith: We were waiting on our critical incident response team, and basically we call them cert, but those guys are great. They basically work every single officer involved shooting in the state, and they do a really good job. So they work every agency's officer involved shooting. So obviously, once they realized that we were in an OISDE, they went ahead and came up on scene as we secured it the best we could and kind of started to do what they could with a little bit of light we had left and simultaneously that as well. We had actually notified FBI regional SWAT that, hey, we were going to need some relief and let them know of the situation and what we were going to be dealing with. Jon Becker: And regional FBI is Louisville? Logan Smith: At that point, I'm pretty sure it was, but I'm pretty sure it's Louisville, but I'm not 100% sure. Jon Becker: So, I mean, what's their ETA when you put out to them? What are they giving you for an ETA to get there? Logan Smith: I think they were around 4 or 5 hours, I believe, so we actually. We knew they were coming, thankfully. And we've got a good working relationship with those guys, so that's a blessing. But. So we've got our CERT guys on the hill as well. They're starting to realize, hey, we can do what we can do now, but we need to be off this mountain. We've got a armed suspect still on the loose on his home turf, and we're just not going to be able to do anything under darkness. So we basically actually back them out. We leave a couple troopers there, a couple SRT members, to kind of maintain security and basically wait for that regional SWAT team to show up. And basically, it was kind of a handoff of that area. Jon Becker: Is the suspect that the deceased suspect been evacuated or is he left in place? Logan Smith: No, he was left in place. And basically that was a call that the command staff made, I believe, just basically due to the. Due to the incident in general, just all the moving parts and for Cert to get an accurate investigation, they didn't want to. They didn't want to pull him off the mountain. And also, we didn't want to bring EMS or anybody up there. So we were going to, if we were going to kind of exfil, I guess you say, him off that mountain, then we were going to have to do it. And they just decided, hey, if we're going to. If we're just going to hold and maintain security throughout the night on this area, just leave him here and provide security. And that's what we did. Jon Becker: Yeah, it's 100% the right call. I mean, trying to split the team's attention even further. How many of the guys on the team were engaged in the shooting? Like, how many shooters do you have at this point? Logan Smith: Let's see. At this point, we have got three shooters. Jon Becker: Now, are they going to pull those three shooters off or are they going to leave them on the problem? Logan Smith: And I take that that's four shooters. So we've got four people engaged him or gazed into gentlemen that afternoon, but they are basically the way that works. Those guys were pulled off a mountain so they weren't left to deal with. Holding that, maintaining that security while FBI showed up. So it's kind of good thing on our team leaders just understanding, hey, knowing what they've been involved in and just getting them off X. Right? And just basically, hey, good job. You did what you had to do. Now let's go back. Let's get back to that safe area where you can kind of decompress a little bit. But, yeah, usually anytime we have an officer involved shooting, they are put on an admin leave, that kind of thing, and we go through our process with that CERT team to where they're doing their investigation. Jon Becker: Got it. So we start off with 13 operators. We just lost four operators to the OISDE. A QRF has collapsed, and now you're starting to pull the team off the mountain. What time do you guys tender the scene to the FBI, you think? Logan Smith: I'm not exactly sure the exact time, but I would say it was after midnight. I'm pretty sure it was just after midnight when we actually pulled off. So we started at. We infield at 08. And then we were kind of falling off the mountain there, the best we could. Jon Becker: A little after midnight, 16 hours on scene, and an OIS and a lot of woods and. Logan Smith: Right. And I don't think I mentioned it earlier. We're talking late August in Kentucky. And if you're not familiar with that weather, it's usually extremely hot, extremely humid. And August is usually one of the hardest, hottest day or hottest months in the year for Kentucky. So we were just dealing with a whole lot of different issues, and that's when I kind of say we're running out of that water. We're having guys kind of start having some issues, and we're trying to address it. And now. Yeah, we're just trying to. We're just trying to get back to where we can start reevaluating our situation. Jon Becker: Yeah. And, you know, I grew up in California, so I don't really understand humidity, but. But you guys have a pretty good handle on making rain fall sideways in the air on a hot day from what I've seen. Okay, so FBI takes over the scene. They secure it. Logan Smith: Yeah. Basically, you hand off that scene to them, and we kind of give them just the down and dirty on what happened. And then also kind of, hey, we're. We're gonna go get some shut eye, and then we will come back and relieve you guys, and then we'll just kind of get our game plan for day two. So, unfortunately, our day isn't over. We've got our CERT investigation to do, as well, just because of the officer involved shooting. So we basically all regroup. We actually go to the original staging area that we had that had a. There was an office building there we could utilize, and then that's where we go. And they actually take our pictures. That's when they take pictures of the guns. Actually, anybody that was involved in that shooting, you count all your rounds. Actually, they do. The whole team, but they count all our rounds that we had on us. And then they actually take those rifles that were used in that first office involved shooting. So now the four guys that were involved no longer have their primary hk 416 and suppressors. Jon Becker: Got it. So we started off with not enough resources, and we are continuing to lose them as the day goes on. Logan Smith: Yeah. Yeah. With that giant team we have known. But, yeah, we're doing what we can. Jon Becker: It just keeps getting worse. Okay, so you guys go through the investigation, hopefully go home, get some sleep. When does this thing that you're basically just holding security overnight? Right? Nobody's nobody's hunting the guy. You, you just kind of lock down the scene as best you can, trying to just neutralize it overnight so he hopefully doesn't escape your containment. Logan Smith: Yes. Correct. And, yeah, we were, we weren't more or less, yeah, we were not actively searching for him at this point. Yeah, we're just holding basically containment and security on that original scene. And the game plan at this point was, hey, we're going to get some shut eye. We'll get some rest. We'll be right back out here first thing in the morning. We'll relieve FBI SWAT, and then we'll hold security while CERT does their investigation, get this other guy off the mountain. And, hey, we'll re evaluate, kind of catch this guy later. Hopefully, he gets pinned up. Hopefully just let the intel do its work at that point. So, I mean, that was the plan. Jon Becker: And what happened? Logan Smith: We go back to the hotel. Eventually everybody gets back there with us after FBI shows up. So we relieve that scene to them. Obviously, a lot of the road units and stuff, they stay on scene, but we get back to the hotel, get some rest, and the next morning, we had a couple SRT members that weren't involved in the original incident. They start going to the scene and they're going to relieve FBI as they're actually showing up on scene and kind of on the road. They meet FBI SWAT coming down the hill as they're kind of coming up. So there's a little bit of a panic button being pressed because now we're worried about, hey, containment. Where's that security element at? And basically, it was just as a miscommunication on our part, and we take full responsibility for that. But I think we had a couple, we had a couple canine units. Troopers had worked their way up the hill as well because they were going to be part of that relief. And as soon as they got there, FBI thought it was okay for them to come off the hill. And so at this point, hey, we're kind of scrambling just a little bit. Not a giant issue, but we were kind of worried, hey, we don't want two canine guys up there by themselves. So those guys are scrambling to get back up on the hill and try to basically provide that security. Jon Becker: So the team gets back on the hill. Got a dog, boy, got two dogs now on the hill. They have the Ken and handlers have the dogs with them. Logan Smith: Yes, they do. Yep. And then we've got basically. So now we've, we've got that containment secure now. And there wasn't an issue, thankfully, no problem. But now we've got CERT involved, and they're actually standing around just doing their investigation. So we strategically set up guys around that perimeter, and they're basically just holding it while CERT does their thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. Provide physical security to this, to the crime scene, basically. Logan Smith: Exactly. Jon Becker: Yeah. So they CERT, sir, gets in there, they do their work, and what happens next? Logan Smith: One of the members, Heath, I'm not sure if you were on that hillside at that point. I'll let you just go ahead and talk about that. Heath Ayers: So we show up the second day. We meet our canine units from post level, and it's half the team is on the hill. This morning, half the team is getting breakfast, resting, and while we are setting up 360 security for our CERT team to be able to preserve evidence, the male that had ran the first day comes walking back from the second tent towards the first tent, and one of our perimeter units challenges him. At that point, he doesn't exchange any gunfire. He immediately turns around and runs the way we were looking, to the left, which would be downhill from our current position. Jon Becker: So he's obviously, he's come back to his house, basically coming back to his tent in the woods, I guess, assuming you guys had left or something. You challenge him, and he just turns and runs? Heath Ayers: Yep. Correct. Like, and when I say challenge, the perimeter unit did a great job using cover concealment. And when he got close enough, he challenged him by saying state police. And then he just turned around and. And ran. Jon Becker: And ran down the hill. Heath Ayers: Correct. Jon Becker: So is he running towards the houses? Heath Ayers: He's running actually towards the uncle's house. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. I'm starting to build a picture in my brain. All right, so then what do those team members do when he takes off? Heath Ayers: So after we hear that challenge and it's communicated on the radio, we ended up getting in a line just for fields of fire, and we just held. We saw the last known that we saw him, and then we communicated that to the other half. The team that was eating breakfast at that point. That's when they were launched and drove from their hotel to our location. Jon Becker: And they get there and do what? Heath Ayers: So they set up at the uncle's house and decide to infill behind the uncle's house on a fourler trail back to our location to try to possibly flush a suspect or locate the suspect, because that was the avenue of his exfil. Jon Becker: Got it. How are they going to. I mean, how are you guys deconflicting fields of fire at this point. Like, this whole thing just seems like a three dimensional nightmare as far as, you know, uphill, downhill houses. Like, the deconfliction of fields of fire just sounds terrifying to me. Heath Ayers: The good thing about this lay the land is there is a lot of elevation change. So if they did encounter him on that hillside, we would be protected by our terrain. Jon Becker: Got it. Heath Ayers: And likewise for the team on top of the hill, if we encountered him on a flat, then it would be above the other team. Jon Becker: Got it. Okay. Okay. Logan Smith: And basically, when, obviously, I was one of the guys that was back eating breakfast there and just basically everybody recovering. So, yeah, we scramble. And basically, it's another kind of all hands on deck scenario. And that was command staff like, hey, even though you guys have been in this incident the day prior, we need all the bodies we can get. We just encountered the guy again. So that was just decision that was made at that moment to pull the four. Jon Becker: Even the four shooters. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Okay. Logan Smith: Yes, correct. And it's just a manpower thing. Jon Becker: Yeah. Ultimately, you're. You're putting the other nine guys at great risk if you leave four people out. Logan Smith: So, yeah, a great decision by them. So. Jon Becker: But they don't have rifles. Logan Smith: But we do not have our primary HK-416. So now those four guys are pulling out the mp seven s, and they no longer have a suppressor. So we had weapons, and we were. And those are. Those are great firearms. But, yeah, we infer that wooded terrain maybe not the best option, but we. We did the best we could and dealt those cars were just dealt a – That way. So we end up starting there, like Erra said, right behind that uncle's house. And our game plan was just kind of trying to backtrack and try to encounter the suspect hiding or in that position of that tackle position, trying to wait for the other guys to push towards him. So we were just hoping that maybe we would have. We would kind of cut him off as he was coming back to the house or whatnot. So that was kind of the game plan on why we decided to go that route. But that was also part of the issue because we were actually starting to encounter all these other fortified fighting positions. So that's when we start seeing, hey, well, there's another tent. Now we've got to deal with that then. Now there's this. This. A bunch of rocks stacked up, man made. Obviously, we got to clear that spot. So. And we had a canine with us, and we'll get to that later as well. But the canine wasn't a usual handler and dog that we dealt with. We had used him in the past, but, yeah, he hasn't done a lot of work like that. Jon Becker: He's patrol dog. Logan Smith: Correct. Jon Becker: Apprehension dog or tracking dog? Logan Smith: Apprehension. Jon Becker: Okay. Logan Smith: Yeah, apprehension. So we were just kind of keeping him back in case we did encounter that, that runner scenario or just needed to send him on that on if he was hiding kind of thing. But so we're working our way back, and the next thing we know is we have a rifle laying right in the middle of a four wheeler trail. And that was really the odd thing. Two is we already knew the four wheeler had came up this four wheeler trail earlier or the day prior, but now we have a. It ended up being a 22 rifle scoped rifle, and it was laying just perfectly placed right over the trail, the four wheeler trail. So now we're stepping back again, thinking, okay, well, he's drawing us in. He's wanting us to walk up to this rifle just for an ambush. So we kind of backtrack again, get a game plan on how to handle this, and we kind of end up working a different way to get around that and basically realize that, hey, it's secure. And really kind of, to this day, we don't know why the rifle was placed that way. I don't know if it was a way of knowing for him that nobody was back in that area or had been back that trail because they would have picked up the rifle. I don't know if that was a way of him just knowing that nobody was up in the tent. So I don't know if he placed that there, the date prior or if he just lost it. We don't really know. Jon Becker: Yeah, or is he laying guns? You know, that'd be my concern, is he's laying guns, you know, from fighting position to fighting position, so he can move to location to location. Logan Smith: Correct. And that very well could have been his option or his intentions as well. Jon Becker: Yeah. Okay, so when do you next encounter him? Logan Smith: Okay, so we actually. All right, we do our deconfliction process. We know we're actually starting to circle back and. And kind of get on that blue on blue area. So we basically deconflict that the best we can as we're coming back on each other. And then once we do link up, that's when we decide that we're going to go to that last known area and basically conduct our track. Heath Ayers: So now that we have all of our guys back, we have a last known that's marked visually and with a GPS coordinate. We move to that location and set up a tracking formation. I'm actually in the tracking formation, and as we are getting the tracking formation set up, I'm scanning and I visually locate the suspect in a bunch of downed trees. We've got a process to that. And when I realize that people are not quite set up yet, I go ahead and just challenge the suspect. And at that point, he gets up and starts running away from us towards the uncle's house, his house, his mom and dad's house, and the rest of the post personnel. All of our support capacity is all downhill from us, and that's where he's going. Jon Becker: Oh, boy! Logan Smith: And just to add to that they found that last, that last known, as I keep saying, and, and where he had kind of slid down that hill and from that point where they actually made contact was probably only, was it 2030 yards from that last gnome, is that correct? So he kind of bailed off out of sight and he had pretty quick, so he didn't go very far, at least just for, to paint that picture. Jon Becker: Got it. Got it. So he's now popped up again. He's running. When do you see him again? What happens next? Heath Ayers: So we end up chasing him. We pursue him, but with that thick of a woods, down trees, we have a lot of different little small creeks flowing down. It's not conducive for in a foot pursuit, especially, especially with tactical gear. Jon Becker: Yeah, it doesn't sound like foot pursuit ground. Heath Ayers: So to paint the picture, half the team is in a tracking formation. Thankfully to our team leader at the time, he did a good job taking care of his guys and the guys that were involved. The first day, he tried to stick them in a location that they could do more of a security position for the evidence of the first days incident. Yeah, so they're, they're kind of put up there. Hopefully, they won't get into anything else. But as the situation unfolds, this guy circles backs and we're on the lower shelf and those guys are on the upper shelf. So we're running parallel with each other again. So as that formation moves into a tactical l, the people that are up doing the security position start running parallel with the suspect and us. So we're able to have that tactical. Logan Smith: And before we jump ahead too much, as I was talking about, hey, this, the canine, the handler we were utilizing at the time hasn't really operated with us. And this whole backtrack is, which we had just done, obviously wasn't a quick process either. So we're talking several hours in that, in that August heat again. So they actually had sent the canine after that fleeing male. And just a note for the listener is he wasn't armed. He didn't have anything in his hands. That's why we did what we did. And we didn't, we weren't running after this guy, but we were pursuing him, trying to keep him just in sight. That's kind of what you're just having to do in that situation. The canine was deployed and he did not engage the suspect. He just ran beside him. So now we've got a dog on the loose that did not engage our suspect. And now this suspect is running downhill kind of towards his residence, towards his uncle's residence and to those other containment troopers, which we do not have comms with. So we're on a different channel, I guess our team is, and the road troopers are on their own channel. So at this point, they just know and they hear the holler and all that, but they really don't know what we're doing on top of the hill. Jon Becker: And so you've got an armed suspect. I mean, you don't, haven't seen a gun in his hand right now, but we know he's armed, closing on an unsuspecting population of perimeter officers. Logan Smith: Correct. And it was pretty shortly after that initial contact that he's actually comes out of the woods there and he is challenged by the troopers. So they actually have visual of him. And as soon as he's challenged by them, he shoots back up into the woods. They didn't pursue. They did a great job. They knew their role and so they just held what they had and they didn't go chasing after him. And that led our guys kind of continue to push towards that last known once again. So at this point, everybody's lost visual of our fleeing suspect. And we're just basically now trying to slowly work through the area and hopefully, hopefully identify the guy and make contact once again. And that's when your guys, your two guys that were on top of the hill that are paralleling and kind of watching, watching this play out below them. They get to a point to where they can actually see mom and dad's house. And we can tell that there's actually troopers behind mom and dads as well. So we're kind of trying to see that area. We're like, hey, he hasn't gone this far because they probably would have challenged him or saw him at this point as well. He hasn't came uphill and got high ground on us because we would have seen him, we would have been able to challenge him. And so that's when we made a decision to just drop over that hillside just a little bit, to kind of see down into that little. That little valley area. And as soon as we did, it wasn't just a few seconds, and we actually identified the guy laying kind of in a fetal position, kind of tucked up under a bunch of foliage, and he kind of stuck out like that sore thumb just because he didn't have a shirt on. He just had those khaki pants and all that green, green foliage. So immediately we picked him up, and then it actually worked out really well because we actually noticed a tattoo on his shoulder. And that was the same tattoo we knew from our brief and all our intel. So we knew, hey, this is our guy. It wasn't the uncle that we didn't know where he was at. We were actually able at that point, hey, this is our guy. We've idd him, and that's just kind of one of those things. It was just why we thought of that or whatever, I don't know, but we were actually able to ideem, so that worked out really well. Jon Becker: And what do you do? You guys challenge him? Logan Smith: Yeah, we – There was two of us. So immediately we wait for support, and me and him actually start slowly working our way down towards him, utilizing cover of the biggest tree, I guess you could say that we had. And at this time, he's not. He doesn't know we're around, so we're trying to just maintain that noise discipline and just move towards him. And as soon as we get to about the tree, that last point of concealment, I guess you could say he actually kind of is laying on his side, facing us. So we're a little bit uphill above him, but we can see his chest. We can see he's kind of laying fetal towards us, I guess you could say. And he raises his heads up and makes eye contact with us. So as soon as we know the gig's up, he's made the eye contact, we immediately challenge him. Hey, Kentucky state police. Show me your hands. Show me your hands. At the time, he had the hands, which he didn't have anything in them for what we could tell, but they were kind of together at his waist. And then he goes, as he's looking at us, he doesn't verbalize anything, doesn't have any motion whatsoever. And then he just slowly starts reaching over his right side. Behind his back. And that's when we decided to engage him to eliminate that threat. Jon Becker: You have a gun? Logan Smith: He did not have a gun. No. We got down there to him. Obviously, we held what we had on high ground as that other element pushed towards him, kind of maintaining that good tactical well. And once we got up there and secured him, he didn't have a pistol, but he did have a – Where he was reaching, he did have a holster. So I'm not sure if he had just lost it when he's running or if he thought he still had it or if he was kind of won that suicide by cop. I mean, at this point. Jon Becker: Yeah, at that point, who knows, right? It's so far down the road that, you know, he had plenty of time to put his hands up and obviously made a conscious choice that that wasn't going to happen. That's a h*** of a story. How. I mean, how's it in for you guys? Obviously, it's suspect now. Secure. I'm going to guess there's probably more searching that's going to take place and everything else, but how does your day wrap after that? Logan Smith: At this point, I think all of us are just. Obviously, it's a crazy few hours there. I think we're a little relieved. Number one, knowing that we've got our guy. And he did match the same description as what we had on the day one. But we also knew that we had an uncle missing from the other house. And then we had to just deal with that whole investigation with CERT and deal with the evidence and that kind of process. The day's not over, and we actually just pretty much just relieved from the scene and let SIRT come in and basically take over that scene at that point. Jon Becker: Got it. So, guys, let's walk through lessons learned here. And obviously, it's a profound event. A lot of moving parts here. Talk to me about what went right, what went wrong. Give me your kind of after action view of the lessons learned. Logan Smith: Yeah. And I'll just – With that after action, it's just. It's so important that you actually sit down and have an honest after action with your guys. There are so many moving parts. We were so short handed on top of that, it just being insanely difficult terrain and all that. You gotta have that conversation. And sometimes it's tough, right? Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but you just have to have that conversation with your guys. And thankfully, we've our senior guys and our TLs and ATLs, they've always done a really good job with just kind of humbling each one of us. But when it just gets down to it, I mean, there's always things you did right and there's always things you did wrong. It's just a matter of admitting those issues. And just to go just through some of the pros, just to start, is kind of our intel gathering. And it's kind of funny wrapping around to that now is because the guy that actually got our, all our intel package together from post, from the get go, saw how we operated and he did such a good job with that. He's actually on our team now. So, I mean, if you look at that now, I mean, he saw how we operated. We got a firsthand of what kind of guy he was and what kind of detective and package he put together for us. And now he's on our team. So it's kind of cool. But they're not always going to be right with their intel packages. So it's important for your guys to do their due diligence on their end too, and just try to check off those boxes. It's not that you're the, you don't trust those guys. It's just, hey, we're going into it too. We're going to see if we can find a hole, you know, something you didn't think of. And it was good for us, so that was really good. And then we didn't mention it in the podcast, but I got on here like a sixth sense, and it just goes back to trusting your gut. We had one of our guys that was one of our main guys doing the plan, doing the brief. And he sat back with me one day and was like, man, I don't know what it is. I just don't feel good about it. And this was prior to any of it, he just said, for whatever reason, I've got a gut feeling that it's not, it's not going to go as we want. It's not good. I don't know why. And it's just, it's that 6th sense, but it's don't disregard that for fear. It's trust it, share it, and it kind of gets everybody else. Hey, maybe we need to be on our toes a little more on this guy. Maybe it's, maybe there is more to it. Jon Becker: So when he said that, you guys leaned into it and took a deeper look. Heath Ayers: Yeah. Logan Smith: And he was a senior guy, been on the team for 12, 13 years, had seen a lot, right? So coming from him, you took notice, right. It was kind of like, that's odd for him to say that. And whatever it was that made him have that feeling he was right. He was right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, no kidding. And then, like, decentralized command, you've probably heard Jocko or somebody talking like that kind of stuff. It's basically that you're all. All of our operators have that tactical authority to act, but your thinkers first and your shooter's second. So when those two guys that were on top of the hill made that decision on their own to, hey, we're going to start paralleling these guys at the end, on that second day, that wasn't a decision that somebody told them to go do that. It was, hey, we can't let this guy get. Get high ground on us. They. We've got actually control this. So that was just a movement they made on their own, and it ended up working out and they ended up having to be the guys that made the last shot. But we didn't have anybody telling them that we just trusted, hey, they're going to do what they need to do and go on. And that's just. It's a testament to our team, I think, in the way we train and the guys we're actually bringing onto the team, and we just trust them. We trust that you're going to make the right decision. Jon Becker: Yeah, that's really smart. Logan Smith: And just land NAV and communication. We're really good in rural operations, but that's our bread and butter as we talked. So just understanding those maps and kind of pinpointing, hey, this is probably one of the only few places on this mountainside that he could have a tent or he could have a little flat spot to have an area he's living in. And looking back, yeah, we were pretty accurate on it. Like, we were pretty close. It was a lot of ground to cover. Yes. But at the end of the day, by doing that and understanding those topical maps and discussing that stuff through Rouhaups training and that kind of thing and showing that stuff, I mean, it really helped us out. And then the communication aspect is that's a whole lot going on. And thankfully it worked out. Jon Becker: Yeah. I think one of the things that you said that is really troubling is that the QRT can't talk to the obs who are able to reach the team. But because of the terrain, I think it's very easy to forget that terrain can literally take away your ability to communicate. And so I think the fact that you guys had coordinated on the front end and had a pretty clear idea how you were going to move. Probably decreased the likelihood of you ended up on a blue. On blue, you know, where your guys got downrange of you or uprange of you. Logan Smith: Yeah, no doubt. And just to continue on that, just uniforms and camo. I mean, just knowing what environment you're going to be operating in. So it kind of goes back to the, hey, though, the black tactical gear. That's not always the best option. And unfortunately, some of these departments, even in the city, get stuck having to utilize that equipment because that's all they got. But then they're in a wooded area that just so happens to be a couple acres next to a urban environment. So, I mean, but that's just kind of one of the things that, like I said, it's just we're really good at knowing what to use and what to wear and that kind of environment, and then just preparation. You're training in those positions, in those environments, and then your physical fitness, just being able to do so. It's a long day. You're packing all kinds of gear up and down this mountain, and… Jon Becker: It's hot. Logan Smith: It's a lot, and it's hot, and it's, you got the humidity to deal with, and you got all those other factors, and unfortunately, you're just gonna, if your physical fitness is bad, you're gonna go down. It's just your stress levels and everything is just gonna fall back on you. Jon Becker: Well, if nothing else, I mean, as you start to fatigue, your decision making is gonna begin to fail, too. Logan Smith: And just always I got on there, just always, like, improving your positions throughout that encounter. We were always kind of that shoot, move, communicate kind of thing. And you're always looking for a better position to be in to where you're a better teammate. Right? You're better support for your guys, or you're in a different position or different angles to where you can see more, communicate more, whatever you need to do, but it's just, don't get stuck in the mud. Always be willing to move and just be ready to evolve with the situation as you see it. Jon Becker: Talk to me about info, like the way that you guys are gathering a lot of information. How are you disseminating it? What are the lessons learned from the – As you were getting information, how you're sharing it within the team? Heath Ayers: Thankfully, we had a very senior heavy team at the time, and they've planned a lot of ops. We disseminate information on a brief, primarily, but as we get information through our scouts. That is always passed up and down the chain to those that are going to be in different roles. The briefs are very, very long, very deep, and if we have questions, we are going to get answers. If we have questions that need to be answered, we're not going to pull the trigger on operation until we get those answers. And we disseminated that information very clearly the night before. Logan Smith: And I'll just add to that, like on that communication aspect is you just, there was some miscommunication, number one, with us, an SRT and FBI. And that's kind of like that was, that's on us. That was completely ours. We just didn't give, we didn't give those guys a very good game plan for day two and they were doing exactly what they thought they needed to and end up. We kind of left that area unsecure for just a minute with some guys that, with some canine guys that just weren't capable probably if there was a situation was to rise. But it's kind of that communication on that and then it's also goes into like our communication on just our land NAV in general and being able to communicate. Hey, this is the GPS coordinate we're given on a location. Hey, we need you here because this is where our situation is at now. And we had some issues there. Basically when we were trying to link back up with that first woods team on day one, a GPS coordinate was sentence via the iPhone. Well, it wasn't completely accurate and it gave us, it took us a little longer to find them because they weren't coming directly from like a Garmin device. Jon Becker: Just because the difference in a resolution between an iPhone nav and a Garmin now. Logan Smith: Correct. And when you're dealing with a large wooded area with lots of foliage. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. Logan Smith: And you don't have that direct line of sight anymore. That little bit of difference can, I mean, it could have threw us on top of the target. It could have threw us in some bad spots. But it's just something that we know that, hey, if you're going to use some type of GPS coordinates to relay that kind of stuff, make sure you're using either the same device or something more accurate that's actually built for that other than just your phone, that's kind of jumping all over the place. Jon Becker: Yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. What are kind of give me the kind of cons, negative lessons learned, things that you maybe that drove changes of behavior after the, after the event. Heath Ayers: So we discovered a few on the issues with the GPS devices, the differences, and then the miscommunication with FBI. We brought up some in the start of the podcast that some of the guys were planning on a short operation. So instead of packing their MVGs, we had to push a little bit the issue with daylight and start making some changes there. And then preparation. We're talking really hot days, really humid days. We expected a shorter operation. So we did take water and food, but didn't take quite enough. So you started to see some guys get dehydrated, exhausted, and we're already a low man team, so we don't have a lot of support. So that's a couple of the cons. The other cons on the second day, the guys that were in the officer involved shooting the first day had their rifles taken from them with their suppressors. So that was a huge issue in the second day shooting, because when we heard the shots, we couldn't see our guys. But it said it was all unsuppressed gunfire. Jon Becker: Oh, boy! Heath Ayers: So our thought was – that was just coming from our suspect only where. And that's where we learned that we need to get suppressors for not only our 416s, but also our mp seven. So we've made that adjustment. Jon Becker: Now I have nothing else. Just to be able to differentiate between you and suspect fire. That's a really good point. Heath Ayers: Some other things that we have learned with the cons is now we have a dedicated team dog that is full time to our team. One of the operator runs the dogs, he takes care of the dogs, he trains with the dogs. But we've also added to that four post level guys that are training with SRT. And if we have an operation that we need an extra dog, one of those four is coming with us. So we've added that capability. Obviously, the lack of manpower in general is always going to be an issue. So we're trying to bump those numbers up. aircraft, they're able to get aircraft, another camera on another bird, the exact same type. So now we have, they can switch out Hilos in a long, lengthy operation. Two pilots can fly in flock for a couple hours, and then that they can switch out while they're refueling, resting, so, so on and so forth. Jon Becker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Logan Smith: And I would add to that, too, is kind of that con is just understanding what you're expecting out of your guys, and especially out of guys that aren't used to training with you. And that's kind of what we did to the canine. It was no fault of his own or his dogs. We kind of set him up for failure and we expected something out of him that he had never put himself in or we had never exposed him to. So when that dog failed, it wasn't the dog's fault or the canine handlers. We just pushed the limit and didn't step back and, like, take into consideration, like, his thought process on, hey, can you do this? Are you, are you, are you comfortable doing this? And that kind of thing? So when that all unfolded, it was kind of like, yeah, that was dumb. That dog had been out here in the heat for hours. We were just expecting too much. And that's kind of the FBI thing is we just, we didn't have communicate well and it wasn't a problem. Thank goodness. But that was our fault. We didn't communicate that. Hey, we were. The tech guys are going to really attack guys and it just kind of, it just fell on us and we take full responsibility for that. That was – Could have went bad, but it didn't, thankfully. Jon Becker: Yeah, fortunately, no, I mean, there's a hundred ways this op could have gone bad, and you guys managed to pull a very successful operation out of what should have been extremely ugly situation. And, you know, you guys should be really proud of your team for this because this is a hard operation and, you know, nothing but respect for what you guys did. So, guys, thank you so much for doing this with me, you know, fantastic! And I'm glad everything turned out. Heath Ayers: Appreciate for having us! Logan Smith: Yeah, thanks, Jon! Appreciate it!

DME-04 – Patrol Based Domestic Hostage

DME-04 – Patrol Based Domestic Hostage

Episode 48 – Improving Tactical Decision Making – Dr. Gary Klein

Episode 48 – Improving Tactical Decision Making – Dr. Gary Klein

DME-03 – Injured Hostages: The Critical Decision to Initiate a Hostage Rescue Team

DME-03 – Injured Hostages: The Critical Decision to Initiate a Hostage Rescue Team

Episode 47 – LODD on HRT Crisis Entry – Austin PD SWAT

Episode 47 – LODD on HRT Crisis Entry – Austin PD SWAT

DME-02 – Critical Choices in Hostage Situations

DME-02 – Critical Choices in Hostage Situations

Episode 46 – Escaped Inmate Hostage Rescue

Episode 46 – Escaped Inmate Hostage Rescue

Episode 45 – Improving Tactical Performance with Cognitive Training

Episode 45 – Improving Tactical Performance with Cognitive Training

Episode 41 Transcript

Episode 40 Transcript

Episode 38 Transcript

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