Episode 17 – Training & Tech – The NTOA – Thor Eells & Don Kester

Jon Becker: My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

My guests today are Thor Eells and Don Kester from the National Tactical Officers association, or NTOA, which is the largest tactical organization in the United States.

Thor is a retired commander from the Colorado Springs, Colorado Police Department, where he served for 30 years, the majority of which was in tactical response, including serving as a SWAT operator, a SWAT team leader, and a team commander. Thor is currently the executive director for NTOA. After serving many years as a board member and as a trainer.

Don has retired from the Pima County Sheriff's Department in Arizona, where he served as a SWAT team leader, a SWAT team operator, a team sergeant, the training director, and a SWAT team commander, eventually retiring as a division commander and captain. Don is currently the training and education director for the NTOA after many years of service as a trainer and a board member.

Guys, thanks for joining me today!

Thor Eells: Thank you for the invitation! We appreciate it!

Don Kester: Thank you, Jon!

Jon Becker: Why don't we start with your personal backgrounds, because I think it's good to give context to kind of the current face of the NTOA. So, Thor, give me your career background.

Thor Eells: Well, I spent 30 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Came on when I was in my mid twenties. I had been a paramedic for six years prior to becoming a police officer and was attracted to the profession by the diversity of things that you could do within policing.

And I was drawn to that while in the academy, our department had different subspecialties. Come to the academy, give a little briefing on what narcotics does, homicide does, etcetera. And tactical was one of those presentations and saw that, and I thought, well, I know exactly what I want to do when I have the opportunity to do it.

But our agency was one in which you had to. Upon graduation of the academy, you went to patrol. You served a minimum of four years in patrol before you were even eligible to test to go into what was called TEU tactical enforcement unit, which is what was the name assigned to our SWAT team, full time team. Very few openings ever came about because it was such a desired assignment. And yet that was my goal.

So I progressed through my career, eventually was able to test, got into the team, spent my time in the team as an operator. We ended up with a chief that came in and decided that believed that mandatory rotation was necessary and specialty units so that you could take that knowledge and share it throughout the department. Ended up being somewhat short lived, but unfortunately, at that time, I was one of the senior people on the team.

So I was going to be one of the first out, decided I would promote instead of promoted, but was able to come back later as a team leader and team commander. Eventually, as I progressed and promoted, became the commander of our specialized enforcement division. And so I spent the bulk of my career in tactical operations in some capacity or another. Over those 30 years.

Jon Becker: We also spent a bunch of time training. Right?

Thor Eells: A lot of time training. I was very fortunate that early in my career met some people, the Ron McCarthy's and a few others, as I was attending training and for whatever reason they felt I might have some promise as an instructor and so was able to be brought into the fold and began training in a variety of disciplines. Less lethal, basic, SWAT, intermediate, advanced SWAT, HRT, all those types of courses while I was still an actual operator, had some practical, real world experience that I could apply.

And then as I moved beyond that, more into the leadership roles, the supervisory roles, started teaching those disciplines as well. So probably spent a good 20 plus, maybe 25 plus years as a trainer within the tactical community.

Jon Becker: What about you, Don?

Don Kester: My career really mirrors Thor's in many ways. I spent about 24 years with the Pima County Sheriff's department, which is down in Tucson, Arizona, about 1600 employees. I'm one of those folks that had a blessed, charmed career with really no complaints.

I was spoiled, I'll admit it now. I started off in patrol as well, was then in traffic for a couple years and as a traffic investigator, and during that time I was selected to the SWAT team. Our SWAT team had a full time element and a part time element, and so I started that in the early nineties and continued on.

I started off in the sniper role, did that for a few years, was selected as a team leader, eventually got promoted, was a team sergeant and was a sergeant in patrol, but then was soon thereafter signed as our training director for the entire department, did that role for quite a few years while still remaining on SWAT, and then eventually became our full time SWAT sergeant and eventually our full time SWAT commander as a lieutenant for several years, and then I retired as a division commander at the rank of captain from the sheriff's department.

I like Thor, started off with the less lethal, the chemical agents, the flash, sound, diversionary devices. That's really what got me going in the tactical instruction community. And then over the years, that just grew and grew and grew into almost anything related to the tactical world. But I loved it. I enjoyed it.

We were busy team lots and lots of missions, had a great time, and it truly changed who I became as a person and as a law enforcement officer. And SWAT was my world in many ways, and that's what taught me, along with other things. But the primary leadership lessons that I then tried to at least implement throughout my career and to this day, because it really, our team was very progressive, and it was a leadership factory in many ways. It was just one lesson after another.

So not only internally within our agency and the team, I should say, but at the same time as when I was dealing and meeting and spending time with the SIDs, the Rons, the Mike Hillmans, the John Colemans, and that group. And it really, in many ways, made me who I am today. But it was a blessed career, very busy career, fortunate to be involved in a lot of different types of missions and a lot of experiences that I try to just apply those to the teaching world now and share those experiences, particularly those of what didn't go so well, and let people learn from my mistakes.

Jon Becker: When you're currently the training director for NTOA, right?

Don Kester: I am the training director for the NTOA. I took that position when I retired from the sheriff's department. Before that, I actually am the longest running instructor for the NTOA to this day. And so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I spent several years as the Les Lethal section chair for the NTOA, and then I was on the board of directors for the NTOA for about seven years as well. And then when I became the director of training and education is when I stepped down from the board.

Jon Becker: What about you, Thor? When did you first become involved with NTOA?

Thor Eells: 1995 is when I became an instructor with the NTOA. Initially, much like Don, was instructing a variety of disciplines, which also, I think, had a tremendous impact on me. You know, I had the beneficiary of, was the beneficiary of learning as I was instructing, you know, being around people that was able to share experiences and different philosophies with me while I was, I was teaching, but I had a hunger and a thirst that drove me to continue to be really actively participating within the NTOA and any opportunity that I could volunteer for a role, whether it was instruction or otherwise.

Being on committees, I took, and eventually later on, I, like Don, became a board member. I was also on the board for about seven years and served, I think, about the last two years as the chairman of the board, trying to provide some guidance based upon my experiences and the influences of, you know, many of the planck holders that we spoke about.

And eventually, when it came time to retire, it was very fortuitous for me that the position came open. I was actually looking to maybe continue my career within law enforcement as a chief of a smaller agency or doing something in a leadership role there. When the executive director position came open, and I was able to slide into that, you know, I was very, very fortunate for that opportunity.

Jon Becker: What do you see the current mission of the NTOA is?

Thor Eells: Well, I don't think it's changed. I'm very proud in that we have tried to hold true to the fundamental principle that John put forth 40 years ago now in that we are going to focus on training, education, and professionalism to enhance SWAT and to save lives, and that is our guiding principle. We very much keep that in mind when we're making decisions that we think are likely or potentially going to have an impression on the law enforcement world preston.

Jon Becker: What do you see the role of the NToA? There are a lot of voices in the tactical community now between state associations and private training organizations. Obviously, the NTOA is the largest, not only the national organization, but the largest organization. What do you see the role of the NTOA being, like, the responsibility of it to the community?

Thor Eells: Well, I think we, if I were to pick a word, I would say is a resource. So we try to do our very best, make a very concerted effort to gather information. We're listening. We try and balance some humility with our own degrees of competence and understanding, but in recognizing that we are certainly not the know all, be all, end all, but through that recognition, we are very actively and continuously seeking information. We are looking to try and identify what are people's needs. How can we in any way, shape or form, address and or meet those needs, and then how do we share that?

So we try to be mindful that, yeah, there are regional issues, regional problems, state by state, as different legislators or decision makers make various changes to the course of business and daily activity type of thing. But there are lessons to be learned in that, that we can then try and share, communicate elsewhere. We can assimilate that information, disseminate it, and hopefully through all of that, again, remaining true to John's vision, which is help people not have to reinvent the wheel.

And so I think that's still very much our primary role, is to assist people in that, in meeting their individual needs, departmental needs, those types of things.

Jon Becker: Do you see the NTOA as competitive with state organizations?

Thor Eells: Well, I would hope not. I mean, I can tell you that it's certainly not my desire for that to be the case. And in my communication with my colleagues, my peers that are on the board, certainly with Don as our training director, we are very mindful that we don't want to be competitive. And I know that under our tenure, we have made an effort to try and ensure that we have a relationship with the states, that this is a two way flow of communication.

What can we do to help you? We're certainly not afraid to ask for help or input from others. You know, what are we missing? Are we not looking at things the right way? We try to do that, but I think in doing that, we have, with some of our relationships that are more advanced and developed just because of personal relationships or knowledge, done a very good job of finding out where our niche is, so to speak. What can we really do to help state associations, and what can we do to not hinder their abilities to grow and be successful individually?

Jon Becker: Yeah, it's always struck me, I've heard people say they're competitive associations and there is not an overabundance of good training. That's always my argument. It's not like we have 500 good training options every day you can go to. There is a dearth of good training. And I don't understand why somebody wouldn't belong to both the NTOA and their local association, their state association, because the perspectives are different.

The quality of, you know, the variety of training is different. Like, what are your thoughts? I mean, I'm assuming while you belong to NTOA, you probably also belong to RMTA or mountain states when you're in Colorado.

Thor Eells: Right. And you're absolutely correct. And that is really, quite honestly, our philosophy is we recognize that we have a unique and fortunate opportunity to see things from a national level. I mean, we operate from California to Florida, and, you know, all the spaces in between, and there are different perspectives, and it affords us an opportunity to see things through different lenses.

But at the end of the day, we are not looking to compete. What we're looking to do is enhance, to really be a benefit to those that are out there, to be that added resource. As an example of that. I know that Don, as our training director, one of the benefits that I, when I was younger, always thought was unique and helpful from the NTOA.

And Don continues this today. But when we send several instructors to a class, we try and intentionally, we deliberately send two different instructors from different areas. They're not from the same department, the same area. Somebody might have local perspective and experience and understanding, but then we'll bring or partner them with someone that comes from a different region, a different area that may have a different perspective, so that we are able to really expose those that are in attendance to different ways of thinking, different ways of problem solving, and gaining appreciation, that there are frequently more than one ways to address problems.

So it's a very deliberate effort to expand knowledge, experience, exposure, those types of things. And that's what we really wanted try and continue to accomplish with our state partners.

Don Kester: And, Jon, we really do try to support those state associations. In fact, in our classes, we encourage attendees at our courses to be members of state associations, multiple state associations, as well as the NTOA, to attend those state association conferences if at all possible. And we also support those associations when they do have their, their annual conferences.

The NTOA oftentimes will send an instructor or two and provide free training at the conference on behalf of the state association. And we work that out with the state association each time. And many of the states take advantage of that on a yearly basis. So usually we will send instructors to 13 to 14 state conferences in a year, where we provide the instructors, we pay the instructors, the associations help us out with the expenses of travel, but we cover the instructors and many of those expenses as well.

So that's a resource that is available to them. You'll see Thor and I and others at many of the state associations sitting in classes, trying to learn, trying to keep cultivating those relationships as well. So we, certainly, I can tell you, don't view it as a competition. There are things the state associations can do better than we can, and there are things that we probably have some advantages on at that national level. So we understand that we try to coordinate with them and want to continue that.

Jon Becker:

I think that, you know, it's always struck me that there's a very local aspect to law enforcement, right? It is possibly the most local thing you can do yet, like any political thing, and it's a government service. There's a local perspective, there's a state perspective, and there's a national perspective.

And I think that you guys are in a unique position because in dealing with all the state associations and in states that don't have an association into a is the state association. You have a unique perspective on policing nationally, and I'd like to kind of discuss some contemporary topics with you guys to get your perspective nationally. Why don't we start with police reform?

And this kind of, you know, it seems like the move to police reform and defunding police may have, have hit its nadir and were starting to swing back the other way. But what is your perspective, Thor, on kind of this national movement towards police reform?

Thor Eells: Well, I think it is still evolving. I don't think that it has lost as much momentum as some people might believe. And my reasoning for that is each time we have a police incident that achieves national media attention, it tends to restock those fires and calls for police reform. And so I think that is still a movement that is evolving as we speak.

But I do think that what has happened in a positive sense is that it's not quite as emotional. And they're beginning to recognize that there are more moving parts to this than perhaps were originally forecasted or understood. And by that crime is on the rise. Violent crime in particular is on the rise in communities around the country that jumped into reform without really fully appreciating the unintended consequences of that quote unquote reform.

And I think what we've begin to perhaps appreciate a little bit more is that this reform that has been proposed in many respects is more punitive and in almost all cases tends to be post-incident driven. So really nothing has been done, done or proposed or at least accepted upon proposal to be proactive and to do something to prevent some of these incidents from taking place.

And so when we look at some of the incidents that have taken place that have received a lot of scrutiny and judgment and second guessing, we're beginning to recognize that there are potentially training issues, there are leadership issues, and those are some of the things that we need to be more mindful of and focused on if we want to really try and have a positive impact on policing as it's delivered to the communities throughout this country.

Jon Becker: Yeah, I think so much of the police reform movement is reactionary, angry. One bad incident turns into, well, we need to eliminate all of this. And I think one of the important roles that the NTOA plays is opposing that. Don, talk to me about how the NTOA serves as an information source to kind of oppose that narrative.

Don Kester: Well, police reform really is a very complex topic, and it's very broad. And I think to really dive into the topic of police reform, you have to first start by defining what part of police reform are we going to discuss? And so if it's like Thor mentioned, you know, the punitive aspect, we know that that is setting law enforcement back years, if not decades.

If folks want to talk about police reform in the sense of how do we make law enforcement better, which might not be all about restrictions and curtailing activities. It might be, but it oftentimes is more about how can we make law enforcement better, then we would strongly support that. And so one of the ways we address that publicly and with the state associations and the media and other entities, first and foremost, is be honest. And we've taken the mantra that we're not going to try to defend the indefensible.

And I think that has been a challenge with law enforcement historically, where we do as a, as a profession, there have been times, let's face it, where the profession, the industry has tried to defend things that there really was no defense for. So that's one of the messages we really emphasize and push out is let's have some honest, useful, productive conversations and let's look at what we're doing now and where we can improve.

So the NTOA is really trying to drive that, along with other groups, to focus on what is true police reform, meaning what's going to make us better. And, you know, some of those other negative aspects of it, they'll sort themselves out over time. One of the things we're doing is developing new programs. We're focusing on the concept of emotional intelligence. We're focusing on the concept of brain science and leadership and professionalism.

And when we talk to groups, media, whomever it might be, those are the things we really hit on. And we tell them sometimes, yeah, law enforcement made some mistakes in these areas, these incidents, whatever it might be. But what you're proposing isn't going to solve anything. It's not going to change anything. If we really want to change law enforcement, then there's certain things we need to do, and law enforcement does need to get better. We do a lot of things well, we do a lot of things not so well, but we can do everything better and improve.

And so we're really trying to take it from the strategic standpoint and say, how is it that we're training law enforcement? What can be changed? Because in many ways, training of law enforcement is decades behind the times. We're trying to look at policy issues and see how can we truly improve policy training and education to enhance law enforcement, to avoid these types of problems.

So we're excited about where we're going and what we see as the future. But of course, we can't do it alone. We have to have the buy in and the support of everybody in the state, associations and things like that. And the feedback has been great, but we're excited to get some of these new initiatives launched and really make them a much bigger part of the conversation and a much bigger part of the process of the evolution of law enforcement, because we feel, while we all have great intentions and things, we do a great job in the profession, there are things we can do to get better.

Jon Becker: Well, I think you raise an interesting point, which is so often when an incident happens, the response of law enforcement is one of two. It's either trying to defend something that is very difficult to defend with a straight face, or the corollary to that is not defending something that is completely defensible. And because there isn't an organized messaging platform, law enforcement, media response is based on a local agency, and that agency may have a fantastic PIO, but the majority of them don't.

And so you have a professional media organization that is attacking an agency in a lot of cases, and an amateur PIO who is trying to respond to reporters who do this for a living. It's a difficult balance, because anytime law enforcement defends something that is really not defensible, they lose credibility. Anytime they don't defend something that is, then the narrative is allowed to run rampant.

And the example that I know we discussed it at breakfast is the Breonna Taylor case, where everything that's running around all the media initially is wrong. You have the vice president, now vice president, United States, saying that they hit the wrong house, which is 100% not true. You had people saying that she was shot in her bed. You had all these things, and yet you didn't have a coordinated response to go. Here are the facts. Thor, what role can the NTOA play in kind of countering that messaging and helping agencies to deal with this?

Thor Eells: I think the best thing that we can do is assist with awareness in how they are responding. Should they be unfortunate enough to find themselves in the midst of that type of scenario? And so you said it very, very well, in that if we do something that's bad and we try and defend it, we lose credibility, no doubt.

I mean, the American public is not stupid. They can look at something and recognize that was wrong. The corollary to it that you mentioned is you have an incident that unfolds that is defensible and yet is not defended vigorously. The same consequence is applied, which is you lose credibility. That's true because they believe that your silence is, in fact, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. And so that's just the end state. So it's a lose lose if we continue to approach these incidents the same way.

So you look at Breonna Taylor, and you're absolutely correct. I mean, it's really a showcase of a multitude of poor decisions in how that information could have been refuted and been more vigorously corrected. And I've said this for a while, that one of the things that is hurting the profession right now is that the silence from American law enforcement leadership is deafening.

Jon Becker: Yes, it is.

Thor Eells: And so it begs the question, well, why is that? I mean, who was in the best position to really vigorously defend what took place in Louisville, Kentucky, with Breonna Taylor? Well, quite honestly and quite bluntly, it was the chief of police.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Thor Eells: But through a variety of, for a variety of reasons, police chiefs in America have been effectively silenced because of their at will status and their vulnerability to be removed at will if they don't get in lockstep with what a political narrative and or track is going to be taken on something. So you mentioned, you know, our vice president incorrectly sharing information about where the warrant was served, and there's no correction of that.

And in fact, what you have is the mayor then makes a comment that really does nothing but add fuel to the fire and doesn't correct it. And the sheriff or the chieftain has been told you're not to say a word. This is the pathway that we're going to take.

And so I think the best that we can do is when we have these conversations, is to share that information, to create that awareness. And we're not passing judgment, believe me, on political ideologies or things of that nature. We're simply saying that you have to evaluate the circumstances that you find yourself in and begin to do sort of a pro and con analysis. You know, what's the cost benefit factor here?

And the analogy that I tend to draw or apply is many people remember years ago when it became very, very common to file frivolous lawsuits against major private corporations because they would always settle. It was less expensive to simply settle. Well, eventually somebody raised their hand and said, do you realize that the number of settlements that we are making out of a need to be expedient is actually our net cost? Is this? And it was far worse.

Well, I think the same thing is applying to law enforcement is that as we continue to just roll over and not defend those things that should be defended as being lawful and correct, albeit difficult, is having a cost. It is tearing the fabric of trust between the American public and their law enforcement providers, which is serving no one.

Well, it's certainly arguably, at least among the quote unquote experts, a contributory factor to our increase in crime in this country. So we need to have greater awareness that these incidents need to be addressed one way or the other. Either acknowledge the mistake or acknowledge that we didn't do wrong.

Jon Becker: Well, you know, you raise a really interesting point, because a lot of the problem is the politicization of American law enforcement. Law enforcement is not a political function.

Thor Eells: It wasn't intended to be. Correct.

Jon Becker: It wasn't intended to be. And sheriffs are elected, and that is, it gives the people the ability to pick their law enforcement leader. But law enforcement in and of itself is an executive function that should be agnostic to politics.

Thor Eells: Correct. In fact, it's part of the reasons that when you look at some of the challenges that we have today is our forefathers wanted American law enforcement to be fractured. We didn't want a single law enforcement entity that could potentially then become corrupted and tyrannical, tyrannical and violate the rights of the American people.

So as a result of that, we have over 18,000 different police departments. We have over 3000 different sheriff's departments, and we have potentially an untold number of federal law enforcement. We have tribal law enforcement. We have thousands and thousands of agencies in the country that have thousands of different policies, procedures, training, standards, etcetera.

And it adds to the complexity of this whole reform. Where do you start? Who are we reforming? Because it's not a one size fits all. There's not a single answer that's going to address the diversity, which certainly has its pros, but it also creates certain complexities that we're facing.

Jon Becker: Now I think it's interesting because the forefathers didn't trust government. If I learned anything in con law and in reading the federalist papers, they were not trying to create an efficient government. They were trying to prevent efficiency in government and ensure that nobody got an opportunity to accumulate power because it corrupts people.

And ultimately their fear was a tyrannical, centralized federal government because that's what they fled. And so they intentionally separated powers. They intentionally created a federalist system. They intentionally paralyzed government. You know, people that have not read the constitution carefully think that it gives you rights. It does not give you rights. The constitution prevents the government from taking rights.

And so much of what is happening in American law enforcement right now is this idea, like, we'll push them all together. We'll make centralized things and we'll give more power to the federal government. And that was exactly what the founding fathers were afraid of happening.

So I think that one of the things that we need to do is we need to eliminate this politicization of law enforcement. We need to have our politicians stop saying, well, the FBI is corrupt or the LAPD is corrupt. People take inappropriate actions and need to be, those actions need to be remedied. But a rogue FBI agent is not reflective of the entire FBI. You know, a George Floyd does not mean we burn the whole police department to the ground, nor does it mean we vilify everybody.

But, you know, you raise an additional point, which is there aren't national standards, and it's problematic. And part of it is the complexity of it. You know, the smallest rural police department in Mississippi is never going to hold the standards that the NYPD or LAPD can because of funding, because of personnel.

But in the tactical community, there aren't national standards. Some states have standards, some don't. And the NTOA played a big role in the creation of a national standard. So talk to me about that. Like, where did the national standards idea come from originally?

Thor Eells: Well, it evolved out of what was originally proposed through the NTOA as our quote, unquote, best practices. And eventually the conversation took place. And this was when Don was on the board and I was on the board and speaking to some bright folks, Sid Heal being one of them, and recognizing that best practices, quite honestly, really wasn't enough. It's like the person that you want to go to the gym type of thing, you know, you say, well, we want everyone to be more cardiovascularly Fitzhe. And you put a challenge out there.

Well, the only people that go to run and get cardiovascular fit were the ones that were running to begin with. And so the best.

Jon Becker: Yeah, the fit ones, right?

Thor Eells: So the best practices, while certainly noble in its foundation, really wasn't enough to incentivize folks to work towards. And Sid being the savant that he was so well educated in looking at trade associations and how they achieved professionalization, and he's the one that shared this with me. And I went out and then started reading and educating myself, and I thought, well, you know, this is really brilliant. You look at, you know, how did medicine get where it is today? How did the bar association get where it is today?

And, you know, Sid would ask. His first thing was, well, who dictates the curriculum of medical schools? It's not the United States government, CMA. It's the American Medical association. They decided what was going to be the curriculum to become an MD or a do in this country. It's the medical associations that have determined what the standards will be. You will take X number of hours of education and et cetera, et cetera, do residencies, the whole nine yards. They do that. And then you pass your boards, which are set by the association. Same thing with the bar, with attorneys and med or, excuse me, law schools.

And you begin to look at that and think, well, you know, that really does make sense. I mean, you can either write your own story or someone will write it for you, and it may not be the one you like. And that resonated with us.

And so, as the board, we said, and Sid was really the one that encouraged us to adopt the leadership role. We were in a unique position as the national association with the opportunity to work cooperatively with the California association of Tactical Officers, CATO, Florida SWAT association, and some of the others, and reach out and bring the thinkers, the practitioners from their respective regions and create a committee so that it is a national perspective.

We consider folks from small, medium, large agencies, small, medium, large teams, full time teams, collateral duty teams, municipal, county, state, federal teams. Bring all of those together, and then let's have the conversation on what should minimum standards be. What can we all agree on are the minimums that SWAT teams need to be able to do? And I can tell you that one of the folks that had a profound impact on me was chief Mike Hillman.

So Chief Hillman was approached by FEMA post Hurricane Katrina when they wanted to type SWAT teams so that it could be like the fire resources, you know, if you need certain number of engines, they pump so many gallons of water, etcetera.

But we would do the same thing with teams. We'd have everything from type one, which would be the most robust, hostage rescue capable teams with, you know, certain number of operators and armored vehicles, et cetera, all the way down to a type four team, which would be, you know, four guys in dark t shirts that were one size too small, but they all had hunting rifles and baseball caps and Oakley sunglasses.

We got together and we thought, well, that's not possible one, because you're missing the cornerstone for that, which is, how do you define SWAT capability? You might have a warrant service team, but that's not necessarily a SWAT team or a dignitary protection team or a fugitive apprehension team or things like that. They're not SWAT teams.

So you had to define, you know, what will SWAT teams do? What are their minimum mission capabilities. And that's where we started. And then from that, and with the input of these committees and these representatives from all across the country, we were able to develop what we believed would be helpful to our profession of what a SWAT team can do at what levels, with different typings, different capabilities.

And I think, I would like to think, anyway, that this has been extremely helpful in serving as a roadmap or as a template for teams to improve either their ability to gain access to training hours, to purchase certain equipment, to sign interagency agreements with others where they're lacking, but certain capabilities.

But a sister agency might have that, and that's really what we've worked towards with the national standard. And it's meant to be just a bare bones minimum. I mean, it's certainly not a dictate. We don't have the authority to mandate people meet these. But at the end of the day, what drives any kind of change, just like in the legal or the medical field, is your risk of liability. That if you're not doing these minimums that the profession is requiring of practitioners, then you expose yourself to liability, not just financial, but certainly public goodwill and other things. And we've tried to step into that was what was a void and provide that.

Jon Becker: That's a huge void. And, you know, one of our mutual friends, Todd Mackler, years ago, told me an analogy I use all the time. He said, I have a driver's license. My 17 year old daughter has a driver's license, and Mario Andretti has a driver's license. We're all drivers. We don't all drive the same.

And I think one of the challenges with the modern tactical environment is you do have a, not only a wide range of agency size and agency capability, ranging from, for lack of a better term, a tier one law enforcement resource, whether that's NYPD, ESU, or LA sheriffs or whoever, all the way down to a part time small regional team. You're trying to regulate behavior from 60 man full time team that does 200 ops a year to 6 man part time team that does 6 ops a year.

And then to make it worse, the mission sets. It's almost a matrix where you have team size and mission set. And the mission sets vary from simple narcotic search warrant to complex, coordinated terrorist attack or hostage rescue. Don, from a training standpoint, how do we address that? Do you think the NTOA has established a national standard? What do you think the best approach is from a training standpoint, to try and equalize some of that?

Don Kester: Jon, that's a complex question, and I don't know that it's got a direct answer. I think that is certainly one of the challenges in training law enforcement because you've got the challenge of the small team, the big team, the medium sized team, the regional team, collateral duty full time, and they all have their own complexities that come with it.

So I don't know that there's one specific answer. I do know that the standardization has to play a key role in that. Standardization of policies as much as possible. Standardizations of training, standardizations of equipment, things that, frankly, are lacking in the SWAT community.

One way to address that, particularly for some of the smaller or midsize teams, is the concept of regionalization. We're forming that multi jurisdictional SWAT team. And I personally think there's a, there's a lot of misinformation out there about regional teams. And I think they get a bad rap. Some, you know, there's teams out there that are some of the biggest SWAT teams in America that are not maybe as high speed as, as they should be, just like there's the smallest teams in America that are not as high speed as they should be. The same goes for regional teams.

But I do truly believe that some of the most capable and competent teams in America are, in fact, regional teams. And I don't think most in the, in the tactical community see that and are aware of that because they only see what they see in their very local small bubble.

You know, if you're here in a small area of California and you've got teams that you, you know, you know, are maybe higher quality and those that aren't as high quality, but that's all you know, because that's what you deal with. That's what you work with on a daily basis. But that doesn't mean that's the same case in the state next door or on the other side of the country.

And so regionalization has actually proven to be quite effective for, for a variety of reasons. One is that it does eliminate lot of SWAT teams. And by eliminate, I mean we can take eight teams and make them into one. Now where we've eliminated seven SWAT teams in the country that had seven different policies, seven different training standards, seven different selection standards, seven different budgets, and on and on and on.

Now we have one team that, again, you sort through your personnel and you work through those logistics, but now you may have a very large tier one team that is one of the most well equipped in the country, and there are regional teams out there that are some of the most well equipped in the country, and they have the personnel. They've got 50 or 60 bodies, and they're doing 200 missions a year, but people don't really hear about those.

And so I think that regionalization leads to more standardization, and it leads to an ability to more properly train because of more people, better budgets, more exposure, maybe around the country or in your region at a minimum. So there's some different ways to go about it. But I think regionalization does play a key role.

Now, that being said, it's not for everybody. And the biggest challenge is not generally the operators and the SWAT teams. The biggest challenge to effective regionalization is administrators and politics. As you brought up earlier, you know, there shouldn't be a lot of politics in law enforcement, but one of our challenges is many of the police agencies out there. They want a SWAT team, or they want to say they have a SWAT team, and they call themselves a SWAT team, but they may not necessarily truly be or have a SWAT team.

And so you have to get the Chiefs and the sheriffs to work together and agree to form a regional concept and a regional team and realize that I'm not giving up my SWAT team. I now have one team that is much larger, much more competent, much better equipped, and much better funded. And any of those chiefs can call that team, and that team belongs to all of them. But you have to get the politics and the egos out of the way.

And generally, looking across the country, in my experiences, those organizations that have been able to put together a high quality, high functioning regional team, that regionalization has expanded to air units, motor units, k nine units, and on and on and on.

And frankly, that just makes sense for policing in America. Having over 20,000 agencies, all duplicating efforts, all trained to do the same thing just on different scales, if we continue with that, we will never eliminate many of the problems with law enforcement. Just that sheer number of agencies creates many of these problems. Regionalization, particularly in the tactical community, does help address these issues.

Jon Becker: I think you're right. It's the double edged sword of fractionating government. You avoid centralized, tyrannical government, but you create an inefficiency. And especially when you get into municipal departments. Small cities may not even have one SWAT call out a year, and so it's not uncommon, in my experience, in dealing with teams all over the country to find a team that trains quarterly and has three operations a year, but is prepared to engage whatever mission they get.

And I think when you look at an agency like that, that has one or two SWAT callouts a year. They would be much better committing a single body to a full time team. I used analogy years ago of like medicine, but if you go into a small town, there's not a brain surgeon. There might not even be an orthopedic surgeon. There's a general practitioner doctor, and he's good at basic life support, but you don't want him to perform brain surgery on you.

To some degree, tactical operations are the brain surgery of law enforcement, and it's challenging to maintain the very high level of specialization that you need to be able to effectively do a hostage rescue or an explosive breach or any of the high risk operations. When you are a small agency and you don't have that kind of op tempo, it's like expecting going into a small town in the middle of the country and expecting to get absolute top tier medical care. It's not going to happen well and.

Don Kester: Logically, Jon, it just doesn't make sense for many of the agencies that have SWAT teams. There's no logic to having that SWAT team. It doesn't make sense financially. It's misleading to the public. We're setting our personnel up for failure as leaders within the organization, and you can't properly equip the team. You can't properly train the team.

You're not going to have enough missions to, number one, justify their existence, but number two, maintain that competency level versus if we combined resources and work together in many, many locations in this country, we would be doing a much better service to our personnel, our agencies, and the citizens of the country.

Jon Becker: Yeah. And I think that is a role that needs a national voice. Right. There needs to be a national voice that is speaking to that, not only in the form of SWAT standards, but in the form of providing a unified voice, which I think is a role the NTOA does and can play in these situations is, you know, if you're a small agency that doesn't have the expertise or you're an agency that gets into trouble or has a bad incident, it strikes me that the NTOA is the place that those agencies can turn to get direct access to true subject matter expertise. Is that true, Thor?

Thor Eells: Absolutely. It's one of the things that we have really made a concerted effort to share that information, that we are there for that exact reason. So when we do speak about regionalization and encourage multi multi-jurisdictional approach and sharing of resources to accomplish mission capability, that's one of the things that we try and support.

So our efforts are in that we feel a responsibility that if we're going to set forth standards, we have a fiduciary duty to also support the agency's abilities to reach those standards. We can't just leave this void between we want you to operate at this level and you're at this level. You figure out how to build the bridge.

Our approach to it is that if we're going to set forth that, we're going to provide you with the bridge. Whether you choose to cross it ultimately is up to you, but it absolutely is something that needs to be done. I mean, the byproduct of agencies not doing that or engaging in some of the misguided decisions that Don spoke to, where you allow ego or politics or otherwise to interfere with making a, a really objective, rational decision on need and or capability is that unfortunately, the american public does not discern the difference between a high level, high functioning tactical team in this country from areas that don't have that. They simply see the title squad officer did X, Y or Z.

And in many cases, that is driving bad case law. It's driving a loss of confidence in our ability, in our capabilities, and, you know, a multitude of negative consequences result thereof. And so it's really important for us at the NTOA to create this awareness. With regard to the communities, tactical communities, I'm referring to now about asking these practitioners to pause and really have an objective internal analysis. And you think about after action reports.

So we strongly encourage and for many, many years have told teams, you know, when you finish a mission, you sit down and you have an after action, and it should be very objective. It should be brutally honest. You're looking for your strengths, your weaknesses and means to either bolster or correct.

The same thing has to happen with regard to just your overall function within an agency for the citizens of your community. And that's what our standards are really designed to do, is to ask people to say relative to these standards, where do we honestly and objectively fit? And if we're at a four and we want to be a three or we're at a three and we want to be a one, how do you accomplish that?

Well, we'll help you with that. We'll share policies, we'll share procedures. We have a multi-jurisdictional section chair. So we have folks that have that experience, that have that direct, intimate knowledge of, you know, what are the obstacles that you're likely to encounter? How do you overcome that? And we'll share all of that. I mean, none of this is considered, you know, state secrets or anything that we're going to keep guarded. We want everybody to be successful.

Jon Becker: But I think we have. We've politically driven law enforcement away from self reflection. We have driven law enforcement away from after action. It's interesting, you know, I remember in law school, they talked about subsequent remedial measures and how if a business does something after the fact to fix a mistake that they made, that you can't introduce, that you can't come back and go, well, Ford's brakes didn't work because Ford redesigned their brakes.

Because the policy disincentive of telling Ford that if you change it, we're going to punish you for it is terrible. Yet in law enforcement, just in the time that I've done this coming up on four decades, the amount of introspection I have seen in teams has gone through the floor.

Like, I can remember early in my career, going to debriefs and seeing heated discussions and candid self, you know, self flogging of, we really screwed this up. We can't do this. There was a policy of kind of holding each other accountable. And what we now see is kind of a move towards the opposite. You know, when you attend a debrief, the debrief is a hero story, and anything that went wrong is not discussed.

One of the things that – The first question I ask when we do our lecture series is, what went wrong on your operation? And if the answer is nothing, there's no point in us having a debrief. Cause we're not gonna learn anything. Dawn, over the time, have you noticed that trend? Do you see that happening?

Don Kester: I do. It is becoming more and more frequent, and I'm not really sure why. I mean, I have my personal opinions on that, but we're not being as honest with ourselves as a profession as I think we need to be. And we can be, and I think I said it earlier, we have to improve. Law enforcement has to change. And if we think politics doesn't affect us, then we're living in a world that doesn't exist, because it does. And I'm not saying it's right. It just is what it is. We have to work around that. We have to improve the way we do things.

And I think the most frustrating part that I see looking at incidents and working on cases and working with SWAT teams around the country and then working with legislators and you name it, is that the reality is most of the problems in law enforcement can be pretty easily fixed. They really can be. If you start breaking it down to what the bigger issues are. They're fixable. It's just, do we have the right people in the right places with the guts to move forward and fix it? You know, Thor hit out an important point earlier. You know, most chiefs are at will, so their hands are somewhat tied.

Now, certainly not all chiefs, and certainly some chiefs don't care about that and they do the right thing, but many are hand strung by that. And again, I think that's the frustrating part, is we can fix our problems if we focused on emotional intelligence, and we truly bought into emotional intelligence and we paid the money and we took it serious, like many other industries, many law enforcement problems would go away.

Jon Becker: But in order to do that, we have to be willing to be introspective. And more importantly, as a society, we have to be willing to allow you to make a mistake and recover from it. You know, one of the things that I tell people is any of the forefathers of modern tactics would be fired in their second or third year, maybe, except for Mike Helmand, would be fired in their second or third year in a police department.

Now, because they were aggressive, they were hard charging, and they made mistakes. And that's why they're Graybeards now, was because they made mistakes. We as a society are moving towards this mindset that if you're willing to lie and deny till the very end, we'll keep you. But if you make a mistake, we're going to crucify you for it. Well, the net effect is we're getting people who are either really good liars or people who will not take responsibility for their actions.

And so what's happening is we're breeding a generation of managers, naughty generation of leaders. And I think that's kind of what you're saying is you're not breeding people that go, hey, wait a minute, I screwed this up. I need to fix it.

Don Kester: There is a leadership vacuum in law enforcement. There's some absolutely phenomenal leaders, but there is definitely a need for enhanced leadership in law enforcement. And that's because of a lot of reasons. There's a lot of factors that feed into that, but it is having an impact on the profession, and it really ties the hands of the profession, and it makes it difficult to move forward and do the things we're all talking about. We all would like to see, without leadership, nothing's going to happen without leadership.

Jon Becker: But if you don't get on the scale every morning, you're getting fat, period. Right? Like, if you are not introspecting and looking at yourself, you are not getting stronger as an organization. And I think that the problem for law enforcement is that gradual erosion of leadership, that gradual erosion of knowledge, that gradual erosion of introspection leads to society. I mean, again, you know, law enforcement polices at the consent of the people.

The net effect is if law enforcement is gradually getting worse and is not introspecting and is not owning their mistakes, what happens is what is happening in California, which is we make stupid a** laws to try to fix a problem. We're like, oh, I don't like that. Let's just throw out the whole thing. And the next thing you know, we have AB-481 and we're trying to get rid of canines. And you know, and I think a lot of that is the legislators don't know what they're talking about. But, also a lot of his law enforcement isn't helping them to get smart. What are your thoughts, Thor?

Thor Eells: Well, I couldn't agree more. I think the societal norms have been evolving and not necessarily in a positive direction. You know, I think, as I alluded to earlier, the silence from law enforcement regarding our profession has been this endorsement of our lack of professionalism, albeit unintended. It's the consequence of that we have to find a way to find our voice and be heard. I do agree that much of the legislative efforts are potentially as a result of being uninformed.

Well, some of that we own responsibility for. Who is going to inform them and help them make informed decisions with regard to laws or otherwise. Having said that, I also would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge there have been a lot of good faith efforts where folks have tried to share information, and it's just being willfully ignored.

This politicization of policing has, I think, reached a level of toxicity. Unquestionably. It is doing far, far more harm than it is good. That has to be righted. There needs to be, we need to find a way that we can create. Some separation for chiefs, for leaders, sheriffs, to be somewhat insulated from misguided efforts so that we can do the right things for the right reasons. I think there's an impediment to that right now, but the downward spiral that we find ourselves in right now is, is consequential.

Again, as I say, when you just look at crime, you look at recruitment, you look at retention, all of those are a direct result of some of these societal influences. Politics, bad laws being passed, the punitive approach to this, the criticism that's in many cases unfounded, but no effort to correct, is having a compounding effect on where we are with policing. And it's going to take a herculean effort to reverse what really right now is almost a tsunami of change, not necessarily for the better with the profession, but it, as Don mentioned, is kind of a complex answer.

I mean, it's not just chief standing up and saying something or sheriffs. It's a multiple pronged approach. I think the media bears tremendous responsibility for much of the false information that is shared, and they're not called on that, and they need to be because as the, you know, the fourth tier of our government system, you know, you talked about the separation of powers between judiciary, executive, legislative, et cetera.

You know, they used to always argue or say that the press is the fourth to hold everybody accountable. Well, originally that was, in fact the case, but it was under the premise that people would be honorable and truthful.

Well, that isn't the case. You have a problem. And I would submit that in many cases, the media is not fulfilling their responsibility of being objective in the sharing of information for people to make informed decisions. So until we can correct that, I think we're going to be swimming upstream as well.

But having said that, you know, in the end, the best that we can do and what we're trying to do is stay active, share objective information, continue to encourage people, despite the pressures of not having that introspective encouragement, to engage in it anyway and have the courage to act on it, because there is a lot of incentive right now where the less is more in law enforcement, the less I do, the less likely I am to find myself in a situation that I have to explain and or defend that is not serving anyone well, not the profession, not the public.

And so we'll have to continue to really try and get people's compasses realigned and encourage them to do the right things for the right reasons. And that isn't always easy. But we're not in this for the easy way out. We're in it to do the right thing, and that is continue to fight the good fight.

Jon Becker: One of the things that I think is necessary for that, though, is courage. Right? It takes a courageous approach, and change comes from swimming upstream. Right? And, you know, recently not, you know, not that long ago, the NTOA issued a policy statement about no-knock warrants that was received in some sectors with a shrug and, oh, yeah, I. And in others with a violent, you know, you got to be kidding me. Reaction. Talk to me about one, what, what the policy statement said and why you chose to engage that fight right now.

Thor Eells: Well, the current circumstances was the trigger for why we chose to get back out there, but this time to elevate the directness of the message. So it was sort of an iteration where we had best practices and now we had standards. The same type of elevation in. We have been discouraging dynamic entry, which was the inexplicit association with no knock. They were attached at the hip through a course of evolution over a number of years from when this really became kind of a primary tactic in the eighties, the war on drugs, to current day scenarios.

And we looked at that, and historically, you know, going back literally to the 1980s, Mike Hillman, in that era of people were telling people, hey, no knocks aren't for every single mission. Dynamic entry is not for every single mission. So it wasn't nothing new in terms of our position, but we went back and we looked and said, okay, for years we've been teaching decision making based upon our priorities of life. Hostages, innocent citizens, law enforcement, suspects, and really shouldn't be on the chart.

But in some cases, people have applied evidence to sort of de emphasize or at least better clarify evidence is at the bottom. Evidence is the least of your considerations. You should not for any reason whatsoever, be in unnecessarily endangering these human life because you want to get evidence.

And so obviously, a number of high profile incidents surrounding the quote unquote no knock prompted us to go back and take a hard look at where do we stand on this and why, and what have we been teaching so that we're not speaking out of both sides of our mouth, so to speak. And in looking at what we realized is what has transpired over a period of time. Is this misunderstanding in why we serve warrants and what the mission objective is relative to what your safety priorities are? And they were being misapplied if you really looked at the mission objective.

So that's the purpose of the warrant and why you're there relative to the safety that is there. We could not with good conscience support no knock warrants. I mean, there were already the legal exceptions that allowed you to forego a knock and announce, if necessary, based on exigency that was occurring.

And the other tactics that have become available to teams over time that are tested made more sense. The primary premise under no knock is that you're hoping through the utilization of that no knock exception, that you're able to achieve surprise.

And then second component sometimes is speed. Although I would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that there are teams that have been using no knock simply to forego the knock and announce requirement. But they're not necessarily making entry. But the real foundation for the no knock is, well, we're hoping that it allows us some surprise, some opportunity for some movement, for some sort of tactical utilization that we achieve surprise.

We're either better positioned or these types of things. Well, hope is not a tactic. And to hang our hat on that is doing a disservice to the men and women doing a very dangerous job. And some would maybe counter, well, without that, it's dangerous.

Well, I'm not going to say that they're all wrong, but it begs the question again, when you look at the analysis and how teams throughout this country, very experienced, very tenured, very busy teams, have been able to accomplish the exact same kind of missions and never use a no knock versus those that are doing them as a matter of routine.

I mean, there's an agency that was using a no knock warrant to retrieve a pit bull puppy that had been taken in a theft slash robbery. You know, that's why we felt we have a responsibility for the good of the profession as a whole. To say that no knock warrants really have sort of outlived their usefulness, in a sense for the safety of all involved.

Jon Becker: So it's, you know, these things, these concepts tend to get conflated together, right? A no knock exception is a legal concept on a warrant that says you do not have to provide knock in notice before making entry, right? Because the constitution requires knock and notice and obviously requires a search warrant to enter somebody's home requires knock and notice as part of that search warrant, unless there is a specific exception granted by the judge, who is the only one that can say that.

But then beyond that legal concept, there's also a tactical question or a tactics question of are you going to knock and wait? And if you knock and wait, then what are you doing next? You see all over the country multiple strategies being employed there.

Some are give knock a notice and don't enter, just contain and call out. You see limited penetration where they are doing knock and notice and breaking down the door, but then withdrawing and waiting and trying to engage the homeowner in a conversation, again with Nye to moving out or true dynamic entry, whether you knock and notice or you don't knock and notice, whether it's no knock or, or knock and notice, dynamic tactics of entering the building rapidly, clearing the house quickly.

And I think that one of the things that you see the media currently conflating is those two concepts. Breonna Taylor had a no knock warrant, but they used dynamic tactics after providing knock and notice. And so is the NTOA's position directed towards the use of no knock warrants or is it directed towards dynamic tactics for search warrants?

Thor Eells: That's a great question. And really what we're wanting to discourage is that entry component, because with the utilization of the no knock frequently then coupled with the dynamic tactics, is this is the part that's counter to what we instructed is you are taking a situation where we are the conduit for compressing time and opportunity for decision making. That's counter to our instruction. It's counter to what we teach is why would we want to compress time both for suspects to make decision making on what their activities are going to be as well as us?

So now we have to assess more under a compressed timeframe that we can created. And now the consequences are in the current climate that we work, if we make a mistake, it isn't. And you alluded to this earlier when you're talking, we now live in a climate where we are criminalizing mistakes. When I was a young officer, some of the mistakes that I made, if I were to make today, I could very well be indicted and criminally charged for.

Jon Becker: Oh, for sure.

Thor Eells: So that has changed and we have a responsibility say, well, why create that circumstance? Why put yourself in those positions? I mean, if you, you know, we're going to speak very bluntly here. You look at the incident that generated a lot of national attention around no Knox other than Breonna was the incident that took place in Minneapolis.

Now, by the letter of the law, what the Minneapolis Police Department SWAT team did there was absolutely legal. They followed all the statutory requirements that the state required with regard to the acquisition of the warrant, the manner in which the warrant was served, those things. And yet you look at then what was the fallout of that? And I'm not passing any judgment on that. I'm just simply saying, you know, you look at what took place on a national level and what it resulted in in many states prohibiting any kind of no knock warrant, their legislators reacted immediately.

So it's another example of a national issue that, you know, originally, ten years ago that would have been a local issue, but everything receives national attention now, and there's often national responses to that. And so we felt that we had this responsibility to differentiate.

A no knock exception is exactly that. It is a legal exception versus a tactic of dynamic movement. And where somewhere along the line, those two became one in the same. If you said no knock people's minds. That meant, you know, people are making entry, their hair's on fire, we're going from front to back in the least amount of time, that type of thing.

But the one thing that I think is also not frequently stressed is there is a knock and an ounce requirement, but there's actually a third leg to that stool, which is wait a reasonable period of time. So not only do you need a knock and announce, the stipulations are that you await a reasonable period of time. Reasonable period of time, obviously being somewhat subjective, based on the time of day that it's being served, the, you know, sides of the structure that it's being served at, all those other types of things.

But timeliness of your waiting is weighted. And many agencies have expressed to us, well, we don't make entry, but we use the no knock so that there's no risk of having to face suppression hearings on did we wait a reasonable period of time to do X, Y and Z? We don't have to answer to did we knock and announce? Well, yeah, we did.

But, you know, you look at Breonna Taylor, one of the contested topics there was, did they knock and announce? Did they announce themselves in a way that could be understood, that type of thing? Well, some agents are saying, well, by having the no knock exception, we don't even have to deal with that. We understand that, and we're not disavowing that. That could be helpful.

What we're really taking a hard stand on is that the entry movement there is fraught with high risk and relative to the safety priorities that we have been for decades teaching, that far outweighs this mission objective of what the warrant's there for.

Jon Becker: It's funny, because if you listen to most SWAT teams talk about the mission of a SWAT team, it is to slow the event down, give the guy time to make a good decision, negotiate, try and slow everything down. But then that same team will turn around and argue that, you know, you have to use dynamic tactics on warrants, so you have speed, surprise and violence of action.

And I interviewed Phil Hanson, who's one of your board members and one of our joint mentors for, you know, many years. And Phil, I asked him about the origin of those tactics because Phil was around when that all started. And he said, you know, the thing is, it all started with hostage rescue. All of our training was rooted in hostage rescue, which is, you know, speed and surprise and violence of action really matters in hostage rescue. You have to get there quickly. And he said, so that was what we built the team's tactics around, and then we just applied that to dynamic, you know, to search warrants.

And he said, at some point, we realized that we were compressing time in a way that wasn't to our advantage. If the goal is to use time to your advantage, it was not working. I think Sid Heal put it best years ago. He and I had a discussion about it, and he said, you know, the problem with. With dynamic search warrants is you're taking a guy who has made so many bad life decisions that when he had time to think about it, that the sheriff is knocking down his door with a SWAT team, and now you're going to give him 30 seconds to make a decision that may not yield the right decision. And, you know, it's, I think this tension is an interesting question that I'm not sure what the right resolution is. Don, what do you think?

Don Kester: Well, I think this points out one of the maybe failings historically of law enforcement is to truly understand the definition of the terminology that we use when people talk about speed, surprise, and violence of action, which we don't condone the use of that term. I haven't for years, and hopefully people aren't using that anymore.

But if we look at the definition of violence of action, it basically is an unrestricted use of force. It's a military term. I don't know of any law enforcement agency or officer in the United States that is allowed to operate under those circumstances. None of us, even in a hostage rescue, violence of action, by definition, doesn't apply to civilian law enforcement in the United States.

So we really have to do a better job of understanding the definitions of the terminology we use, and we're starting to do that. I want to go back to your previous question, because it was a great question about, are we trying to address the tactics associated historically with no knock warrants, or is it the use of the no knock warrant? And Thor hit it all on the head. But I will say it does go beyond that. And what I mean by that is we at the NTOA do strongly feel that anything that is accomplished with the use of a no knock warrant can be accomplished safely and effectively with the use of a knock and announce warrant.

And so, while, like Thor mentioned, we do acknowledge that there are teams that use a knock, a no knock, but they're not making that immediate entry. We understand that. We get that. We understand their philosophy. However, a counter to that is that we can still accomplish everything using the knock and announce. So is it worth it for us to put ourselves in the situation to have to deal with the whole no knock issue whatsoever.

And I say that we know we can do it with a knock and announce piece of paper because thousands of teams throughout the United States have been doing it since their inception. There are teams that were created in the 1970s, extremely active teams, that have never served a no knock warrant. And they do. They apply, they apply the safety priorities and the tactics and they do great.

And there are teams that serve hundreds of warrants a year, some of the biggest teams in America, and they have not done no knock warrants for 30 years. The vast majority of SWAT teams in America do not conduct no knock warrants based on anecdotal evidence conversations.

Jon Becker: Now, when you're saying that, you mean using the no knock exception or using dynamic tactics.

Don Kester: Using the no knock exception even.

Jon Becker: Got it.

Don Kester: And so now people, of course, are going to say, well, where's the numbers? Those numbers don't exist. What we do find, though, first of all, I want to just emphasize that the feedback when that position paper was put out by the n, two, a, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive from law enforcement. In fact, the general response was, two general responses.

One was, why are you guys putting this out? Doesn't everybody know this? And number two was, it's about time you guys pushed this issue and finally took a stand on it. So the overall reaction, even from state associations, was extremely positive. Am I going to say every agency, every SWAT operator and every association completely was on board? No, that, that absolutely is not the case. But it's very regional.

And in fact, some of those I can give you, I won't mention areas and names, but a couple regions where they historically do serve no knock warrants. And they had a little bit of an issue when this position paper came out, have completely changed their tune. Now for a variety of reasons.

One, they've been educated and trained because that's one of the challenges we have seen is teams that really, or personnel that really fight this issue, and they don't want to sit and have a discussion about the no knock, you know, that conversation. They've never done it any other way. They don't know how you accomplish what you accomplish with a knock and announce warrant. Yet hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of warrants have been conducted by SWAT teams using knock and announce warrants, and very safely, very soundly.

And so we've seen a huge education boom on that issue. And that's been good to see. We're proud of that. We're happy with that. We are more than willing to have those discussions with anybody. We understand, you know, we're not a governing body, but we felt it was time to take that stance, to, again, try to improve things. Don't set ourselves up for failure. Don't set our people up for failure.

And let's take the whole no knock thing out of the equation, because we can do everything we're doing with a no knock. We can do with a knock and announce. And now we've dealt with this issue and it goes away.

Jon Becker: So what about the argument? And I've heard, you know, people that were opposed to the paper and came back and argued it, their argument is, you know, Breonna Taylor's a perfect example of what happens when you knock a notice and then enter with dynamic tactics. Right? They knock notice. They had time to get out of bed, arm themselves, and then shoot Jonathan Mattingly when he made entry. So, you know, would you not have been better off in that case with a no knock execution and a dynamic execution? What are your thoughts on that argument?

Don Kester: Well, I'll speak and say that I don't support that argument. Could it have happened? Yeah, and I don't discount it either, but I would much rather them get up, arm themselves, and come to wherever they want to come to. And if they are going to fire around, I would rather not be in the house when that's happening. In certainly most situations, it also comes down to what resources are being used. It comes down to training, comes down to education, experience, comes down to who is doing the mission.

And I'm not worried about, personally, I'm not so worried about what people are doing inside a house when I go serve that warrant. If I'm going to do the knock and announce, I'm going to breach the door. When I decide to breach the door, I'm going to wait as long as I decide to wait. And it might be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, it might be 45 seconds. Every situation is different, but we definitely want to take all of that into consideration.

But we would rather engage all of those folks from outside the house. Anything can happen on any mission at any time. We understand that there's no perfect solution to this, and we're not saying there's a perfect solution. Are people going to get in shootings with knock and announce? Absolutely.

But we're in a much more defensible position, generally, physically, from a safety perspective, and legally, and from a societal perspective. In that public perception. It's a very big, complex picture. We're trying to put teams in the most defensible position they can possibly be in. That includes safety, physical safety, legal and public perception.

Taking out, knowing that we can accomplish the same mission very safely without the use of a no knock warrant, while at the same time we're taking out the legal issues and we're taking out the public perception issues, is a win, win-win for everybody.

Thor Eells: And one other thing that I might add to that is that our approach to the no knock component of this and what we're trying to do is really have teams and operators actively engage in risk management. So when the mission is presented, immediately begin looking at what is our mission objective. How does that correlate to the safety priorities with regard to the manner in which we choose to accomplish the mission objective?

So if we're given the warrant, and our primary mission objective is to secure the residents for the purpose of detectives being able to find evidence, paper evidence, money, receipts, records, things of that nature, you understand that that mission objective with regard to the safety priorities is at the very bottom. We're not going to unnecessarily endanger the lives of those above it.

And so how do you achieve that? You begin to consider your warrant service options, take down away knock and announce with a breach and no entry, limited penetration, contain and call out the all these options that are available, and you engage in the risk mitigation. You know, if we do this, what are the potential positives, what are the negatives? And you eventually arrive at your course of action, where through that process, you have mitigated risk.

To the degree that we can control, we fully understand we don't control suspect behavior, things of that nature, and we appreciate that. But there are things that are within our control that we can mitigate risk based upon the safety priorities, the priorities of life relative to mission objective. And that's where, as I mentioned earlier, we frequently find that mission objective is superseding the safety of the operators, the public, etcetera. And that's when we find ourselves on the receiving end of the criticism that is currently being discussed.

Jon Becker: Well, and I think it's also where you find yourself in the position of trading an officer's life for a bag of dope.

Thor Eells: Absolutely. And when you ask relative, you know, law enforcement practitioners, how much is one of your detectives lives worth? Or an officer, deputy or otherwise, they'll say, well, there's nothing out there in the world that is worth their life. And then you showcase these examples of, well, why are we doing this then? I mean, and there's this always this pregnant pause where you sort of catch them off guard as to. Well, yeah, I guess that is sort of difficult to explain.

So, you know, I just want to underscore that, you know, our position on this is relative to, we want to encourage people to be actively participating in risk mitigation to the fullest extent possible for their own safety, for the safety of their teammates, for the public, because that is what we absolutely need.

Jon Becker: I think that's a really good place for us to stop. Guys, thank you so much for joining me today!

Thor Eells: Thank you! We greatly appreciate the opportunity!

Don Kester: Thank you, Jon!