A basic truth of human factors is that action beats reaction. If you ever hear of a shooting in which the criminal suspect’s drawn gun was pointed at the ground when the cop or intended-victim armed citizen shot the suspect before he raised the gun after refusing a lawful command to drop it, consider the following:
When you face an armed Bad Guy, the factors of distance and cover are what you want to be looking for to even the odds.
This would be a good video for a defense attorney to present to jurors in a case where an officer is accused of unlawfully using deadly force in this type of scenario.
Exactly!!
Welcome to Law and Order Fantasy World. Just a few impractical but life-saving suggestions come to mind from the Police Buddy. First, multiple LEOs should be present at armed confrontations, and carry and point carbines or shotguns as intimidation factors, rather than just deploying pea shooters, which do admittedly have their place. Next, turn off the the body cameras, or “accidentally” cover them and mute sound recording. Next, somebody snipe the gun out of the theatrical ADVERSARY’s hands a la the Lone Ranger, preferably from cover. THEN record “drop the gun” if you must, just don’t indicate for whom, followed by some more shots for sound effects. Don’t worry about collateral damage to the ADVERSARY, who is automatically a lethal threat anyway, and who should have had sense enough to put the gun down voluntarily and get away from it, with hands clasped atop the head. Or have a sniper shoot the ADVERSARY’s gun from cover out of the hands after a different LEO shouts “drop the gun.” To heck with giving a perp the chance to shoot you. This is a take-down, not Russian Roulette for LEOs. Watch out for PC police traps set by bystanders with cameras. Pepper spray such de facto trapper accomplices ASAP, and “detain” their devices, and their resisters, if necessary. I am more concerned with LEO survival than having LEOs perform PC policing. No more Mr. Nice Guy, here. Like Patrick Henry, give me law and order, or give me a new governor, and now!
Folks, in case anyone reading this hasn’t had their morning coffee, it appears to be sarcasm.
Reaffirmed. Video cataloged as discoverable instruction.
Stick to the Raylan Givens method of “Drop the Gun”
The Sensible Self Defense blog just posted a case study on this phenomenon a couple of days ago, base on an incident where a bad guy in Chicago shot two CPD officers. They were definitely behind the action-reaction curve!
How is this legally different from the ‘Tueller Drill’, Mas?
The Tueller Drill is one example of action/reaction. In the Tueller premise, there is an opponent with a contact weapon and some distance he must close before he can harm you with it, giving you more of a time gap in which to react than you’d have against an assailant with a remote control weapon such as a gun.
time and again, in scenarios 3 & 4, when the good guy’s pistol is up in the line-of-sight, he cannot see the BG’s hands. The order; “Lemme see your hands” becomes a moot point, when you yourself are blocking your own vision.
Perhaps holding on the pelvis when giving commands might be preferable.
Good video Mas.
Additionally here there is no consequences for the police officer shooting. In the real world that’s a possibile career ending action, criminal charges even? How much more will that delay an officers reaction time?
My first observation was the cop suffered from diarrhea of the mouth. We were taught to say one forceful word at a time commands. DROP…(bang if necessary)THAT…(bang PRN)..WEAPON.
He was wasting brain bandwidth by talking so much. I’m sure that would have interfered with his ability to focus and react. I would like to have seen one scenario run with verbal commands the way Mas teaches. If the guy didn’t obey a lawful command to drop the weapon immediately the cop would be justified in my mind as a juror.
xcelent point. I found myself hinking, s ach scenarioplayed out, hey Copper, tell him ONE TIME then BOOM. Give him sufficient time to decide to res[ond/not. Then its go time. Bad Boy already knows he’s in deep trouble. I found myself counting how many times DTG was hollered.. and each time wondered at which number BG would shift from stall mode to go mode. Excellent point above with respect to the Copper covering critical parts of the scene with his hand and gun. HOW could he see BG’s first twitch of a move to bring the gun onto the target? Our perspective as the viewers here was fine.. I was able to see BG”s first shift in direction as it happened. GG had to wait a lot longer before he could make a decision.
One issue.. watching/listening to the clips I could never tell which gun fired when. They both sounded the same, I had to be told which one fired first. Could not tell from the video.
@ Tionico – “One issue.. watching/listening to the clips I could never tell which gun fired when. They both sounded the same, I had to be told which one fired first. Could not tell from the video.”
I agree. It would take slow-motion analysis to determine, for sure, that action did (indeed) beat reaction.
What you really saw here was what the French call a “coup des deux veuves”. To translate: a reckless attack that makes two widows. The timing was so close that, assuming that both men were on-target with their rapid shots, both men would have taken hits. If the hits were centered, it is likely that two body-bags would have been zipped up and sent to the morgue afterward.
The two lessons that I draw from this demonstration are:
1) If an armed felon does not comply immediately, then one cannot continue to wait and issue repeated orders and chances to comply. Noncompliance must, fairly quickly, be treated as a declared intention to attack. Noncompliance becomes jeopardy for purposes of fulfilling the AOJ triangle. The trouble would be in making a prosecutor and/or jury understand this point afterwards.
2) Have good body armor and be sure to wear it. The body armor might be the critical factor to reduce two widows down to just one.
I never considered a career in law-enforcement. With the stuff going on in today’s World, I can’t see how anyone would want it for a career path. The pay does not justify either the physical or legal risks. In addition, the American Left has so poisoned our culture that the valuable work that the police do is unappreciated by large segments of our brainwashed population.
America is a wonderful place for criminals. Lots of money to steal, lax laws which are often not enforced, light sentences, humane treatment in prisons, free legal help, numerous appeals, and they are supported by the media and the Democrat Party. I suppose Mexico is even better for criminals, because in Mexico, the criminal gangs have more power than the government.
The video above shows how our police are even more disadvantaged than we already knew.
Copy the link and save it as a document. Keep a copy on a thumb drive and do any reviewing from the document. That’ll leave the date the document was last viewed at a point where you can demonstrate you knew this BEFORE the incident.
Anyone know how to copy the video itself? Just in case it disappears like a number of other videos have.
I always wondered about OODA loop being constantly interrupted in the officers brain when shouting commands. ..concentrating on reacting to the cues seems a safer hedge than speaking in a life threatening moment. But I guess the point is moot in today’s policing environment, the status quo is to put your commands on LOUD repeat and see how the individual reacts..then play ballastic catchup.
Excellent demonstration. Beyond the key point made about reactionary gap, a second point deserves emphasis: use distance and cover. In a real scenario, the 50 yard dash to the “arena” should have stopped where the officer had cover before rounding the edge of the steel container or “building”. Lean around cover and give your command loudly and distinctly, perhaps twice to ensure he heard you. If you are a LEO, state that clearly.
Context is critical. If you know the full context (e.g. you just saw him shoot a fellow officer), you shooting him without warning is appropriate. But, recall the highly unfortunate incident where a crazed gunman killed an officer, then an armed citizen shot the gunman, then an officer shot the citizen, in the back without warning, on the assumption that he was a confederate of the gunman. The officer knew the man he shot was of a different physical description from the original gunman and did not witness the citizen shooting anyone. The citizen made the mistake of walking over and picking up the gunman’s AR and trying to unload it. There were lessons for all involved. 3 of the 4 won’t get a chance to learn. The officer who shot the citizen was absolved of any criminal wrongdoing. But, he will have to live with the outcome and the knowledge that his judgement, while understandable, killed one of the heroes. Being a cop and making such decisions in the snap of a moment is hard. Very hard.
“Police! Drop. That. Weapon!”, as Mas prescribes, shouted from cover would have likely produced a better outcome in that case. Easy to say in hindsight. And, that officer may have lacked suitable, available cover. LEOs deserve extra latitude. CCW holders need to be doubly aware of context and of what they suspect but don’t know.
Defending yourself from an assault is relatively straightforward and conducted at distances generally less than 5 yards. But, if you think you might need to intervene with an “active shooter”, you should practice 15-25+ yard shots and train to instinctively move to cover/concealment. I think that is a reasonable training goal for sworn officers, who have a duty to intervene.
As Michael de Bethencourt says, you should know the range at which you can hit the target 100% of the time with your chosen EDC and then move within that distance, IF you can do so with reasonable safety. Simply escaping with loved ones in tow is probably the best option for non-LEOs.
A thought for officers with pistols up against perps with rifles: Red Dots are helpful (provided you train with them regularly, and replace batteries on an established schedule).
Respectfully,
Watching the video through reminded me of when the finger in register position if not in the act of firing rule came out. Even if holding someone at gun point. We heard a lot of “We’re gonna get kilt!” comments.
Shooting timers are wonderful things. We had several guys do 10 trials each reacting to the timer from low ready with finger on trigger and finger in register position. What we found was that the spread between high and low shot times for both positions was greater than the average time for finger at register. You’ve gotta raise the handgun, the finger gets to the trigger before the muzzle gets on target. Everyone at least claimed they now realized it didn’t make a difference.
Let’s see. If I was a city cop during this administration, I may conduct myself in the following, career-preserving way. First, stay in the police station. Try to avoid patrolling by any means necessary. If I have to patrol, I won’t see any criminal behavior. If I really do see a criminal, I will look somewhere else. If I am sent to the scene of a shooting, I will drive there as slowly as I can. I may get lost, and have a difficult time finding the crime scene. Once there, I will try to stay in the car. If I have to exit the car, I will not be able to find any suspects. If a victim is screaming for me, I will tell them to take cover and wait for the EMTs.
By not engaging with any criminals, I preserve my life, and can retire after 20 years, and do something else. Also, another benefit of non-engagement is that crime statistics will go down. After all, I will not be arresting any criminals, so fewer arrests equals fewer instances of crime, right?
I will name my new style of policing, “SAFETY FIRST.”
Very interesting.I have been following you for years Mas and you are the gold standard.
One of the most logical strategies I have read regarding a civilan encountering a suspicious person in a parking lot, is to continuously move in an arc. I’m wondering if cover/concealment is unavailable, if maybe circling would similarly help here.
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