It has been quite some time since the last posting - much life has been lived and many experiences have been had!
Todays piece has to do with a recent training event that iterated thru various zero-knowledge teamed/armed warehouse clearing scenarios.
One the side of the good guys teams of two & three were used - and in terms of "vagrant-actors" teams of one thru four people were utilized. From here on, "good guys" are clearing the room and the "vagrant-actors" are the ones hiding in the warehouse.
Clearing ones own home in daylight would offer enough challenges to this average SWAT team - however asking a team of civilians to the clear a large warehouse with shelving, nooks, crannies, mediocre lighting, potential threats, and no authority to use force proves very interesting to say the least.
Rather than iterate through the entire experience which could take days, there are certain points I want to address -- the reality of compliance, or perhaps more importantly NON-Compliance, threat management and use of force.
When people comply with our requests or even our direct orders, life is good! We don't need to use force! What happens when they don't comply? That, fair readers - is where our problems begin. How do you know they understand you? What makes you certain the individual or group that you are addressing will actually respond to a direct order in a "Command Voice" as we are taught almost every combat/tactical/operation/ school?
Good will? Peer pressure? Confusion? Well, perhaps the latter. However do bear in mind - the bad guys are bad guys for a reason. That may stem from the fact that they may not follow the rules all of the time... Ouch. Decisions decisions decisions based upon very little knowledge in a high pressure situation does not sounds terribly easy to me. So lets jump back to what all of us know.
Martial training (in this instance I'm speaking strictly in terms of pistolcraft) focuses on execution of tactics and dealing with intersecting OODA loops.
0) Perceive a threat, respond!
0.5) Move!
1) Issue verbal Challenge.
1.5) Move!
2) Draw weapon.
2.5) MOVE dammit!
3) Sight target(s)
3.5) Move if necessary
4) Fire.
4.5 Move!
5) Clear area!
MOVE MOVE MOVE
a) Continue firing
b) Scan & return pistol to holster
* I sincerely hope that I have conveyed the point that movement is critical during an armed encounter. Keep moving, as bullets tend to find static targets. *
While this is really great and all, and each and every one of us has done similar drills thousands of times, are some a serious gotcha's worth noting when applying this tactical ninjitsu in real life. Arm-chair commandos, grab some Maalox as this will certainly turn your stomach.
Hold on, I didn't read about this in SWAT Magazine
Scenario I)We are in a dark warehouse. Something is amiss, we don't know what, perhaps a door is ajar, perhaps a faucet is running. No reason to fear for our lives..yet.
A)Three of us were clearing the area. After some searching, we stumbled (literally) into a vagrant-actor hiding in the corner of the building. He had no weapon, and all he wanted to do was leave - at least that is what he said. However, there was the rest of the building to address. Furthermore, there were noises coming from another corner of the facility. Did it really make sense to let this man go? He could have come back and given us the what-for while we are still attempting to clear the area.
Our Choices:
1) Let him go on his own volition, accept the risk of his potential return.
2) Detain him against his will, and preserve the security of the area.
This is worthy of note due to the fact that many of us are not of the LEO persuasion. Therefore do not have a duty, obligation and quite frankly the right to prevent the the "captive" from leaving. Oh well. Our choice was to remain safer while in stepping into murkier legal waters - we detained him and left one of our party watching him (at Sim gunpoint) in a form of citizens arrest. The remaining two went off to clear the rest of the building....
B)We entered an area that was fairly well lit, and there were random clanging noises. Suddenly we heard a voice muttering and talking to itself. From the edge of the doorway, we could see a bicycle pump being swung around.
We proceeded to issue various commands in an authoritative tone: Don't Move! Drop the Weapon! What the Hell!
the one thing all commands had in common was that the actor ignored each and every command.
The vagrant-actor moved robotically into the doorway then to a bicycle all the while he kept muttering something like this to himself in Rain Man style:
"I just want my bike, I gotta go" "I just want my bike, I gotta go" "Gonna fix it"
Suddenly we realized he had a blade in his back pocket, and we were less than 15 feet away from him. There's problem one. Remember good old Mr Tueller? 21 ft now thirty away in a blade vs firearm scenario - blade still wins.
Oops. If th man had been a threat, we would have screwed up
Luckily he grabbed the blade and poked the bicycle but made no violent gestures to us. Apparently, the person was either mentally disturbed or just a few fries short of a happy meal.
More challenges were issued by us, more clever bicycle comments were muttred by our actor.
With no change in his state, our our crack-team was stymied on how to respond to a non-compliant EDP. Our instructor called the scenario to a close.
Perhaps we should have asked him what he wanted rather than escalating force with both our voices and our pistols - apparently he just wanted to leave.
Plonk. Had he walked towards us, we would have shot him. Period. In essence, we would have forced our vagrant-actor to act, thereby forcing US to react with lethal force. I can only speak for myself, but knowing the person might be an EDP and not some deranged psycho-killer makes it a much more difficult to willfully pull the trigger. All laws aside, I am not morally comfortable knowing that I might be shooting somone who's only real issue is that they forgot their meds or their blood-sugar is too high. I might add that this whole situation sucks.
If you think it's hard keeping your site on target and pulling the trigger when you are pumped full of adrenaline -- no. That's easy with enough training. Not knowing if you SHOULD pull the trigger is something else entirely. That is terrifying.
CCK: Close Confines KillScenario II)As noted above, when clearing a room and not understanding ones attack surface - close confines kill. Please reference an older article about 0-3 hand2hand & blade fighting, a 50/50 chance of survival IF you are prepared and the ECQ DogBrothers/Suareze video....then bear in mind we are in a dark room, there are upwards of 5 bodies moving around...
Had the individual wanted to cut us, we would have had some serious problems to say the least. Had there been a third individual who came down from the rafters (as there apparently was a cubby above where we stood) things would have been even MORE interesting.
At any rate, my group had morphed into the vagrant-actors - and we did a stellar job.
A) People fuck-up during high-stress situations. The 1st group missed me as I was hiding in the bathroom. playing with sink, flushing the toilet, smacking the door with a toilet brush etc. They were preoccupied with shooting one of the vagrant actors, so the rest of the scenario was a wash.
Do what you are doing when you are doing it. Clear your room. 1/2 measures are only good when you are dealing with 1/2 wits. If you forget, the other 1/2 of the wit will coming out from a scary dark corner and get you when you aren't paying attention!
B) In a room that you have never seen before, it's really hard to understand how spatially constricted you are, but you should still try!
Factor in one non-compliant vagrant-actor (me!) stumbling out the bathroom, clutching his stomach, spinning in circles with a toilet brush....moving in and out of shadows, coming within 2-3 feet of the armed "good guy" - maybe pulling a blade all the while my vagrant companions flutter out of the woodwork and do the same. While no-one got shot, the point about the CCK rule was driven home a number of times. Maintain your distance and give the "bad guys" theirs.
In sum:
1) Remember to maintain your spatial integrity - from the threat as well as the bookshelf.
2) When working with 1 partner stay touching back to back or at minimum keep in physical contact.
3) It's better to clear a large room with three people, five is better. Better yet, send the K-9 in THEN move the five in after.
4) Move. MOVE! MOVE! Always keep moving. Static = Dead.
5) Lights on can be good, lights on can be bad. Just and understand what you are trying to accomplish.
6) Consider less lethal alternatives such as pepper spray. If you are not faced with the moral quandry of pulling a trigger and ending a life (cause it isn't always a threat) you may perform the indicated response in time and that pepper spray/taser will save your otherwise OODA-halted-ass.
7) You. You with that 110 lumen Surefire. Point it in the targets eyes. It does disorient them - enough that you can MOVE MOVE MOVE while ascertaining the situation and using your pepper spray, or perhaps escalating force to a firearm.
8) Beware of your own shadows - It's not just a Pantera song. You cast a shadow, you get painted by light in a dark room -- the bullets and the badguys will find you.
9) If the command voice isn't getting a response- try a different tactic - ask what they want. They might tell you.
10) Ambiguity is scary. The range isn't ambiguous, it's binary. On or off. Shooting or not. Same holds true for any martial *training*. On or off, there are no real psychological/moral judgement calls there is only action. We train, we execute. We rarely if ever come to the brink of our scenarios....then retreat or allow a retreat. Both life and courtroom are not that simple....I've experienced this binary magic in real life situations, and ONLY through some combo of luck/fate did the situations did not escalate to scenarios which would have ended in very bad experiences for all parties involved. Carrying pepper spray is a good idea. If you carry a sidearm, carrying pepper-spray should be mandatory as a method of de-escalation. I firmly believe it is better and more cost effective to have a peaceful denouement rather than a violent altercation -- HOWEVER as is the WCC credo - when it comes to the life and well being of you and yours - The prudent individual must perform the indicated response - just be certain of what you are doing.
Let me share a fine quote that I believe will clarify the point:
When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.
- from a Ch'An Buddhist Classic, Quoted in Thunder in the Sky, Translated by Thomas Cleary, 1993It is imperative to learn how to cope with situations before there is a need escalate one's readiness level, and this skill seems to be lacking in most modern combatives systems. How do you train life experience, right? We have some ideas on this topic and going forward this type of decision support system WILL be integrated into all future WCC training initiatives.
