Great Article on Post-Shooting Procedures by Greg Ellifritz

[Bartholomew Roberts]

https://www.activeresponsetraining.n...ing-procedures

The article discusses a post-shooting response for church security teams and similar organizations by analyzing the Fort Worth shooting.

[TXAZ]

I have a problem with the statement "There’s no need to separate him from the weapon if you have enough people to cover him with a lethal force threat option."
There's a million + variants, and a blanket / generalized statement like this could be hazardous.

If the gun is still in the hand of the bad guy, he may be able to pull off a lethal shot before he gets shot again.

Too many options such as could you evacuate quickly and leave the bad guy there instead?

Bottom line is good guy(s) with a gun(s) stopped a very bad guy with a gun.

[FireForged]

I agree.. that statement nagged at me as well


If I have a duty or responsibility to protect other people, I am going to secure his gun as soon as I deem it practicable. If I am only protecting myself, I will have already removed myself from the area one he was down. I am not going to secure anything if I am acting to protect myself as a private citizen. I will do what needs to be done and then immediately call the authorities from a safer place.

If we use the church shooting at a context and imagine that I am a security team member, I would have secured his shotgun asap. It doesn't mean I am going to make a bee line for it.. I will use reasonable caution.

[American Man]

Some people insist on giving the shooter every opportunity available to kill again.

No one should even be thinking about anything till the threat is eliminated.. which includes separating his weapon from him and anything else he might have. And his "Approaching the down bad guy is dangerous. Don’t do it." statement is kind of too late.

Who wrote the article?

Of course this statement is preceded by him talking about how, "The bad guy may be playing dead. He may also be momentarily unconscious, but not out of the fight When people fall to the ground, it’s easier to get blood circulating to the brain. The person you assumed was dead may suddenly regain consciousness on the ground...."

You secure the scene right then and there immediately. And he recommends that you don't use the guy that shot the BG in the first place to cover the downed BG. If one of my guys ever drafted this garbage and told me to look at it, I would have to send him for a psych eval.

I wish people the best of luck if they find themselves in these situations. But I feel bad for people who haven't been tested yet because of all the garbage that experts fill their heads with.

[USNRet93]

Originally Posted by TXAZ

I have a problem with the statement "There’s no need to separate him from the weapon if you have enough people to cover him with a lethal force threat option."
There's a million + variants, and a blanket / generalized statement like this could be hazardous.

If the gun is still in the hand of the bad guy, he may be able to pull off a lethal shot before he gets shot again.

Too many options such as could you evacuate quickly and leave the bad guy there instead?

Bottom line is good guy(s) with a gun(s) stopped a very bad guy with a gun.

A little out of context, IMHO..he's saying that there is a still a possibility of him faking, coming to, still being a threat and there being no need to get real close to him, compromising your advantage....

Just me take. I think he realizes it's real important to disarm him but keeping him covered' more important..until others can 'cover' him.

[American Man]

Originally Posted by USNRet93

A little out of context, IMHO..he's saying that there is a still a possibility of him faking, coming to, still being a threat and there being no need to get real close to him, compromising your advantage....

Just me take. I think he realizes it's real important to disarm him but keeping him covered' more important..until others can 'cover' him.

This self proclaimed expert is specifically talking about this church shooting and talking about how Wilson, after he shot him, walked up and kicked the weapon away.

Does anyone on here have a problem with how Wilson approached the BG and how he kicked the weapon away?

Then self proclaimed expert pontificates about the importance of covering him instead... for what? Till LE gets there? The team is in action because LE is not there. And last I checked, LE only had 2 arms and 2 legs and are pretty safe on their way to the scene, meanwhile, the team might have other imminent problems to deal with if there is another shooter waiting... you secure the scene right away. But the author would have you play some waiting and watching game. There is such a thing as over complicating things. There is still plenty to do on scene without worrying about if this guy is going to be afforded the opportunity, if he is faking or comes to consciousness, to kill anyone else. Simply doing what Wilson and his security team did is what I would expect a security team to do. This doesn't take any specialized training... definitely not harder than what Wilson did to the shooters head. You just cover, move in and disarm. Fake surrender should be incorporated in the training of a security team, but if they don't or haven't then maybe they should.

If the author wants to babble on about xx contingencies for the xx situations that didn't occur in this situation, that book should be for later on and not about what this security team actually did.... and especially not about what they did right.

I could complicate this by many scenarios that I've had to deal with, suicides by people with explosives vests still intact, fake surrenders... but this guy's story is referencing Wilson's security team, not 5 people from 5 different states that just happen to be getting gas at the same gas station... but I would still expect them to kick the weapon away if something did happen at the gas station.

[Aguila Blanca]

I had no problem with Wilson's approaching the shooter and removing the shotgun from the shooter's reach. I thought that was common sense, and I'm pretty sure any responding LEO would have done the same thing.

I was more concerned about the fact that the entire security team became focused on the downed shooter. I think that the protocol would/should be for some members of the team to secure the rest of the area, to ensure that there aren't other shooters waiting to take out the security team as soon as they have identified themselves. In this incident, all eyes were on the shooter and nobody was watching the rest of the sanctuary.

[TunnelRat]

I had an active shooting force on force scenario that ended practically the same way. I did as was done here and removed the firearm from the assailant. The problem was in my scenario the assailant had a sling. My trying to get the sling disengaged while still covering the assailant by myself wasn't the most graceful situation and certainly there was the possibility of the assailant re-entering the fight. Had I someone that could cover the assailant while removing the sling would have made me feel better. The other question was if I operating as a civilian was better off just leaving the room and moving to the emergency responders. This is different than operating as part of a security detail.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[Bartholomew Roberts]

First, thank you to whoever cleared up some of the extraneous and unnecessary political talk.

Let’s pull back from the myopic focus on one thing and look at some other points in the article:

1) Most people don’t even plan for the black swan event, even fewer plan for the aftermath.
2) Humans stand upright. When you poke holes in their circulatory system, they fall down because it is difficult to pump against gravity. When they fall down, the circulatory system is no longer pumping against gravity, and they can regain consciousness.
3) Medical gear and a designated medical response are great things to plan for if your plan involves flinging high speed lead projectiles at each other.
4) A controlled interface between police and the crime scene is a great thing to have if you can manage it - the more random 911 calls the police get, the foggier they are going to be about what is going on. Let’s remember this is a high-stress game of telephone where you tell the dispatcher one thing and the dispatcher enters it into the system “as they understood it” and the cops then add their own interpretation to the dispatcher’s notes.

Who wrote the article?

Mr. Ellifritz is an Ohio police officer since 1995 according to his bio - with around 13 years of tactical team experience.

You secure the scene right then and there immediately. And he recommends that you don't use the guy that shot the BG in the first place to cover the downed BG. If one of my guys ever drafted this garbage and told me to look at it, I would have to send him for a psych eval.

I don’t know what the precise training is for officers in Texas; but throughout the entire state, the practice is to remove the officers involved in the shooting from the scene as soon as possible and get them put of the scene. For all the bluster, shooting people does really ramp up stress levels on people and make them edgy. Heck, we’ve seen plenty of examples here where police have shot next to suspects heads or shot a suspect while trying to activate a weapon-mounted light in scenarios where no shots had been fired.

[American Man]

Originally Posted by Bartholomew Roberts

Mr. Ellifritz is an Ohio police officer since 1995 according to his bio - with around 13 years of tactical team experience.

I don’t know what the precise training is for officers in Texas; but throughout the entire state, the practice is to remove the officers involved in the shooting from the scene as soon as possible and get them put of the scene. For all the bluster, shooting people does really ramp up stress levels on people and make them edgy. Heck, we’ve seen plenty of examples here where police have shot next to suspects heads or shot a suspect while trying to activate a weapon-mounted light in scenarios where no shots had been fired.

There is time for triage/comfort when the site is secured. This expert is actually talking about others covering the BG and just waiting.... WAITING, while the scene is not secured and other things can still develop.

You may be impressed with this guy's resume, but I am not, especially when his entire article is in reference to covering a BG with a weapon within arm's reach and taking others OUT OF THE FIGHT, and why? to wait for the cavalry. That team was the cavalry. It would benefit you now to realize how stupid that is.

And I'm well aware that police are investigated after every shooting, but it is usually after the shooting, correct? This guy is talking about separating an able bodied team member, when you already have two team members out of the fight, 1 KIA and 1 WIA who needs help and LE isn't even on site.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Well, I didn’t take it that way. I assumed some level of common sense was implied in implementing these recommendations. Perhaps we should rename the 21st century as the “autistic” century since it seems commonly assumed norms from my childhood are no longer understood?

Edited to add:

In retrospect, that seems dismissive of the points you raised and it was. One issue with Internet communication is that things that seem obvious to me, might not seem obvious to you and vice versa. And as we all become aware of this, we default into this super-tedious stage where we have to spell-out “Well, of course, don’t touch the oven if it is flaming hot.”

I didn’t read the comments as “never try to disarm the bad guy” or even the milder interpretations of that expressed here. For example, you wpuldn’t remove the officer involved in the shooting if he was the only officer (or even second or third); but once you’ve got seven people there and the threat is clearly over, that officer needs to decompress somewhere else.

[Aguila Blanca]

Waiting may be official protocol in some jurisdictions.

A current thread discussing a case of abuse of Colorado's red flag law by a mother who attempted to get a protective order against one of the two officers who shot and killed her knife-wielding son led me to a video showing the incident from the perspective of the body cams of the two officers who fired shots. The subject was armed with a knife, not a gun. After he had been shot, the two officers stood there and covered him until at least two other officers had arrived and were also covering him with drawn weapons. Only then did they begin to discuss how they were going to approach the subject, secure the knife, and then secure him so the medics could begin to treat him.

I was, quite frankly, astonished.

I can't access the 9-minute version I saw earlier because I've exhausted my free views on the newspaper's web site. Shorter version here. The shooting is at 2:25, and from then until the end of this video there's no attempt to approach the subject. If you can find and access access the longer version you can see how long the officers waited before approaching the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oc_paJi2dc

[American Man]

Originally Posted by Aguila Blanca

Waiting may be official protocol in some jurisdictions.

A current thread discussing a case of abuse of Colorado's red flag law by a mother who attempted to get a protective order against one of the two officers who shot and killed her knife-wielding son led me to a video showing the incident from the perspective of the body cams of the two officers who fired shots. The subject was armed with a knife, not a gun. After he had been shot, the two officers stood there and covered him until at least two other officers had arrived and were also covering him with drawn weapons. Only then did they begin to discuss how they were going to approach the subject, secure the knife, and then secure him so the medics could begin to treat him.

I was, quite frankly, astonished.

I can't access the 9-minute version I saw earlier because I've exhausted my free views on the newspaper's web site. Shorter version here. The shooting is at 2:25, and from then until the end of this video there's no attempt to approach the subject. If you can find and access access the longer version you can see how long the officers waited before approaching the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oc_paJi2dc

I'm all for cops taking as much time as they need... if time is on their side. A wounded guy with a knife on the ground is not going to outmaneuver any LE covering him. I've seen an entire SWAT team trained on a guy with a gun in his hand as they are trying to talk him into dropping it and the BG ultimately got 4 shots off with the revolver, critically wounding one officer. I don't like quarterbacking, but I said to myself, that enough is enough with this guy.

So yeah, if time is on their side, take your time but people should not be convinced to over think it. If there is a gun within arm's reach, it needs to be removed ASAP. If this author wants to just make general recommendations about other scenarios, fine... he can what-if all he wants. But to suggest that in this specific incident that we've all watched at least 30 times by now, I'm just not seeing where he gets off saying that. If the video showed Wilson fumbling and indecisive in the immediate vicinity of the BG, I could probably be convinced that he should just cover the BG, but I just don't come to conclusion after watching the video.

[American Man]

Originally Posted by Bartholomew Roberts

Well, I didn’t take it that way. I assumed some level of common sense was implied in implementing these recommendations. Perhaps we should rename the 21st century as the “autistic” century since it seems commonly assumed norms from my childhood are no longer understood?

Edited to add:

In retrospect, that seems dismissive of the points you raised and it was. One issue with Internet communication is that things that seem obvious to me, might not seem obvious to you and vice versa. And as we all become aware of this, we default into this super-tedious stage where we have to spell-out “Well, of course, don’t touch the oven if it is flaming hot.”

I didn’t read the comments as “never try to disarm the bad guy” or even the milder interpretations of that expressed here. For example, you wpuldn’t remove the officer involved in the shooting if he was the only officer (or even second or third); but once you’ve got seven people there and the threat is clearly over, that officer needs to decompress somewhere else.

I didn't talk down any of your 1-4 points. I did not talk down the other recommendations the author had. I had a big problem with him specifically using this video as the basis of his "what should have been done is this... covering the guy instead". If there is going to be any hesitation, let it arise from something happening on the scene and not pre programmed in some set in stone ROE/SOP.

I have my critiques of a couple things in the video, but others have already noted it in a few posts. I don't feel the need to comment on what I agree with. All of these plans have the best of intentions and if I have a problem I'll state it. Some people with their comments, opinions, especially people in a position of authority, can influence someone not so experienced into thinking their wrong way is the right way. It really needs to be case by case... again, I'll refer to that video that he referred to and I just didn't see it that way. Maybe he should stick to expounding on multiple scenarios in a class room environment and not use the actions of Wilson, who seemed pretty competent approaching the BG. I figured the author should know better.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

You know what, let’s just shut down this whole thread since there are apparently mods here who feel free to delete my posts without a “by your leave” or even an explanation of what terms I’ve violated.

[Aguila Blanca]

Closed at the OP's request.