Yesterday, 2 Officers were killed while responsing to a call in Westerville, OH. And, given that Officers all over the country are being attacked and killed, I have a question for those who know more about how LEOs work.
For example, near my home, 2 blocks away is a condo complex. Usually, it is supposedly a hi-end complex, but, seems some low-lives had taken up residence with a young, white, woman who is very much into illegal immigrants. So, the illegalscaused trouble, and the local cops were called. Well, the cops set up near my home, and I saw the regular patrol officers approach the home containing the illegals, just strolling up to the door, they didnt have their weapons drawn, etc. They did not have helmets on, and they were wearing body armor, that barely covered their chests, leaving half their torsos, open. The Tactical Squad had not arrived yet, but the officers were just strolling around, in a very relaxed manner. Luckily, the illegal immigrants in the condo, didnot fight back, and surrendered quietly, and they were arrested. The cops found a whole pile of meth inside the home.
What surprised me about this episode is this: that (1) The Officers seemed to approach the home initially very relaxed, like they were going to McDonalds for their lunch break. (2) The Officers wore almost no body armor or helmets, and just sort of walked up to the front door of the condo, like they were just out for a leisurly stroll.

I am not involved in the LEO business, but, given all the reports of bad hombres all over the country shooting cops on duty, and killing some of them, I wonder why Police Depts. dont mandate that regular patrol officers wear full body armor when they approach a potentially barricaded situation.
I am just saddened that every day I have to hear stories in the news about our Officers all over the country being shot and hurt and killed. The Officers deserve better.

-Sid

I'm not in law enforcement either and have wondered the same thing.
The only thing I can come up with is that it would be potentially uncomfortable, particularly in the summer / South.

I would guess that for everyone of these that makes the news, there are hundreds or thousands that are much more routine. Unless they have some knowledge that an extra risk is likely they probably use what they normally wear.
Serious body armor is heavy and restricts mobility and in most of those situations it probably hinders them.
I'm sure someone with more first hand experience will let us know.

Most contacts with the public, even these days, are trouble free. And Police for the most part, do not want to take on the appearance of an occupying army. And the general public is not comfortable with a routinely armored up appearance.
I used to talk with, deal with and arrest all types of people that I considered to be full on criminals or "street". For a lot of them, contact with LE was "business as usual".
No armor or long gun needed.
Often, dealing with ordinary, everyday citizens was a bigger pain in the ass than dealing with criminals.
I had what called the "Rule of Ten".
If you dealt with 10 people during a shift:
8 contacts were cooperative.
Number 9 was argumentative and nasty.
And number 10? Fights on!

It depends mainly on politics. Training is pretty standard agency to agency. At my work, if you are justified at pointing a pistol at someone, you are justified in pointing a rifle at them. Hence, take the rifle. Some guys carry plate carriers in their front seat. If needed, no one says a thing about donning the carrier before going in on a call. Everyone is mandated to wear soft armor while in uniform. But, the extra plates will stop rifle fire, gives you places to hang extra magazines, medical equipment, etc.

We also preach not rushing to your death. There are occasions that you have to say "fuck it" and roll in fast, but most of the time you have time to set a perimeter, get some sector units together, (generally there is a SWAT guy available to give advice and help guide the plan), and use the safest tactics possible.

Yeah, you don't want to look like an occupying army, but standing on the bodies of dead officers because of public appearance and politics is plain stupid.

An agency near mine refused to allow AR's because they looked scary. Despite the other side being caught more often than not with AKs. But, the discussion on why that agency isn't respected by the public is a discussion for another day.

I would venture to guess that you were unable to see most of the body armor, if they were wearing it. Not all vests get worn on the outside of clothing.
Unless the call dictated an extremely cautious response, most leo's do not respond to a call with their guns drawn. Having said that, a "normal" level of caution varies from officer to officer. I have worked with some who went to extremes both ways. I cannot say who is right or wrong but common sense plays a vital part in staying safe, as well as proper training, fitness level, etc.

1. Very few departments issue ballistic helmets to patrol officers. So that is probably the reason for no helmets. That is a reason I bought my own.

2. Some departments have pool body armor if they have any at all; that means it is assigned to the vehicle (not talking about take home vehicles), not the officer. So they get a "generic one size doesn't fit anyone" size (usually sized for the smallest officers that have ever worked in the department). That is a reason I bought and set up my own.

As why the lackadaisical actions, I couldn't tell you and would guess they had specific information or the possibility that whoever was running the operation until SWAT got there was an idiot. A lot of it is still what has been deemed the Ferguson Effect, you know criticizing the the Police for showing up to a riot with actual riot gear, wearing upgraded body armor and ballistic helmets (as opposed to riot helmets which aren't much protection against rocks and bricks launched at you) after being shot at while on the riot line.

During the recent unrest due to the Shockley verdict here in St. Louis, four times we were specifically ordered to deploy with only flex cuffs; no helmets, no shields, no sticks and no upgraded body armor. Two of those four times, it turned into shit shows. Luckily, only a couple officers sustained minor injuries.

Reality is it is statistically very rare for an officer to be attacked/ambushed without provocation. It does happen, but put it into context of a million officers making hundreds of thousands of contacts a day across the nation. Including thousands of forced entry search warrants every day, almost all without issue.

When it does happen, it is frequently the result of an ambush.

When officers know they are going into a bad situation these days, they usually take a rifle and hard armor. But even that isn’t a guarantee. Four local LEOs were shot last month, one dying, while 3 of them including the deceased, were in full SWAT kit. Ambushed.

For day to day policing, walking around like Army Rangers in Iraq just isn’t appropriate. On many levels. Having rifles and hard plates available for hot situations is common though. When I was a housing officer (working in very violent public housing ghettos), I adapted a concealed soft body armor carrier to hold my level IV plates as well, and wore them every day. So it can be done. But I’ve never known anyone else to do it. Shit was heavy though.

And then there is the issue that many officers are not tactical ninjas to begin with. Your local LaE firearms instructor has several officers he can barely get to shoot a passing score every year.

And some of us use the apparent cluelessness as camouflage. An element of surprise, when actually evaluating threats and identifying cover/concealment as we go. It’s best to be the calmest guy in the gunfight. Skittish rookies scare us.


Also, keep in mind that about half as many officers are dying yearly as during the worst years, I thing the 70s and the 30s. When there were much fewer actually working.

Odmp.org has all the numbers.

1930: 331
1970: 238
2017: 129

For perspective. With only a fraction of the officers working compared to today. Vests and improved medical resources are my guess at the biggest changes. And radios and tactics.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Yeah, you don't want to look like an occupying army, but standing on the bodies of dead officers because of public appearance and politics is plain stupid.

Worth repeating -

What kind of call was it?

A noise complaint or disturbance you are not going to get the SWAT team called out to that.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
What kind of call was it?

A noise complaint or disturbance you are not going to get the SWAT team called out to that.

911 hang up related to a DV.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
What kind of call was it?

A noise complaint or disturbance you are not going to get the SWAT team called out to that.

911 hang up related to a DV.

Here that would have been a 2 officer response. If an actual address was known, they would walk up to the door and listen, then knock.

Dispatch would be trying to call them back.

If no one answered the phone or door, and there was no other information, the officers would leave.

If someone answered the door, the officers would investigate.

It's a very common call. Multiple times a day in even low-medium volume call agencies.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
What kind of call was it?

A noise complaint or disturbance you are not going to get the SWAT team called out to that.

911 hang up related to a DV.

We go to these types of calls multiple times a day. You have to utilize the best officer safety tactics you can, and then roll the dice. Unfortunately rolling around in a full SWAT kit just isn’t feasible.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
What kind of call was it?

A noise complaint or disturbance you are not going to get the SWAT team called out to that.

911 hang up related to a DV.

Here that would have been a 2 officer response. If an actual address was known, they would walk up to the door and listen, then knock.

Dispatch would be trying to call them back.

If no one answered the phone or door, and there was no other information, the officers would leave.

If someone answered the door, the officers would investigate.

It's a very common call. Multiple times a day in even low-medium volume call agencies.

Yep, many times per day. DV is such a wide range.

You cant walk and drive around around in Kevlar helmets and 308 resistant vests, and walk up to the door of every call with a ballistic shield. #1, very few depts can afford to equip regular patrol with all that. #2 you cant look like an occupying force as municipal police, the public wont stand for it, and thats not what police work is about. It aint for everybody, glad my tour hopefully only has about two years to go.

SOB should've been hung at daylight in the public square, start making an example out of them.

Thanks you everybody for your rsponses, especially those who are LEOs or are retired LEOs.
It the case I was talking about, the young white woman called 911 saying that the 3 or 4 illegals she had allowed to "live" in her condo were beating her up, and were holding her hostage in her home. So, the Ann Arbor POlice responded and I watched them show up, approach the condo, etc.

I've had my own rifle armor for a few years now. I have also carried my own tourniquet for years as well.

Finally this year, my agency is NOT giving us all individual rifle armor and tourniquets, but doing a one size fits all and assigning each to a car. So we're at least that far. But our officers range from 5'5" 160lbs to 6'9" 275lbs, so good luck making it fit. I will be keeping my own to use at work. It's set up the way I like it and fits me.

We're also the only agency around here that doesn't carrier Tasers. City Council was afraid we'd just tase all the black residents for fun. So we'll just keep pepper spraying them and hitting them with our metal pipes. It took six years of fighting them so we can have weapon mounted lights on our handguns and even longer to allow us to start wearing external carriers for our body armor. It's all we look too militaristic. My first 15 years here we were only allowed to wear dress uniform pants on duty, no bdus. Looks too scary.

My frame of reference spans 49 years. Here is my summary of the evolution of officer safety trends in that time. Please keep in mind that there are about 17,000 law enforcement agencies and more than 800,000 officers in the U.S. so these observations may not reflect what happened in every agency. I speak from the perspective of having been a street cop, SWAT officer, trainer, and police administrator. I always look for mistakes that were made as a way of avoiding future deaths.

When I first entered the field in 1969 there were about 250 officers killed. Anarchists were running amok and blowing up banks, the Black Panthers were ambushing officers on principle, and narcotics traffickers were heavily armed and dangerous. Violent movies and television of the 70's reflected, though often inaccurately, the violence on the streets.

Law Enforcement agencies and the Feds were looking for ways to diminish the threat to officers. A tremendous amount of money was poured into research for such things as developing effective handgun ammunition, communications services, instant data systems, less lethal devices, vehicle design, and body armor. It seems ironic following the Obama administration that the Federal Government had once conducted studies to develop the most effective handgun cartridge. (The FBI continues to do so today).

Grants were made available for higher education for police officers. The need for special training and equipment for high risk situations resulted in a trend toward SWAT teams nationwide. Works such as Pierce Brooks' Officer Down, Code 3, and Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field, incidents such as the Newhall Incident and the FBI Firefight in Miami ignited a wave of officer survival training that swept the country throughout the 80's and 90's. Caliber Press produced a series of books and training programs beginning with Street Survival: Tactics for Armed Encounters that became required reading in many police academies. The value of these works was that they took a clear eyed look at mistakes that were made by officers who were killed and injured in lethal encounters. In most incidents errors were found that contributed to officer survival failure. One of the most glaring mistakes involves the approach to danger.

Firearms training took on new importance, body armor became standard, SWAT teams continued to professionalize, and agencies continued to look for equipment that would reduce the risk to officers. National police organizations set a goal to reduce the number of officers killed to less than 100.

Not everyone liked what they saw happening in their police departments. SWAT-like uniforms, armored vehicles, and military type weapons and tactics made some feel like the police were becoming like occupying armies. Some police administrators even thought Officer Survival training was scaring the hell out of recruits and making them believe there was a bad guy behind every door. Most law abiding citizens supported the police but detractors saw these officers as jack-booted thugs in the making, despite the trend toward Community Oriented Policing in the 1990's. But one thing could not be denied: the number of officers killed in the line of duty plummeted to less than half.

By 9/11, officers who had ridden the wave of changes in officer survival training, tactics, and equipment had matured. Many senior command officers had been SWAT officers, or at least had undergone officer survival training. When post 9/11 funding was made available for equipment and training, they knew what they wanted and needed. The level of equipment and training reached levels never seen before in many communities. Patrol rifles became commonplace. And the number of officers killed continued to fall. A mindset of officer survival was set in the police culture, and was a spoken priority of police leaders.

So along comes the Obama Administration, BLM, and the anti-police crowd in general. For 8 years law enforcement was slammed over the use of force, armored vehicles, and their hard stance against crime and criminals. Almost every agency was impacted in some way by the Camden Beer Summit, the Ferguson Effect, the Baltimore Effect, and on and on. Police tactics, training, and equipment were tempered by pressure from uninformed influencers. More training was conducted to emphasize the warm and fuzzy side of policing at the cost of officer survival training. There seemed to be a systematic dismantling of the officer survival mindset at the same time the police and communities were becoming more polarized.

The line between the social and tactical aspects of policing becomes blurry when leadership is confused. Timidity has to set the stage for more tactical misjudgments and mistakes. Modern police must find the balance between the martial aspects and the social aspects of policing, but must never let up on the absolute duty to protect the officer on the street.

Congratulations, Sir! That is the best written summary of the situation I have seen to date.

As as retired LEO, I thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts up here for all to learn from!

Don