Hello Fellow Warriors and welcome to my first of, hopefully, many assessments on police tactics and training. I’m excited to be starting this project, so we are going to jump right in.
As you can see two Officers are arriving on the scene. Immediately you can identify a man wielding a knife as they exit their squad car and try to take control of the situation. They order the suspect to drop the knife as they should, but the suspect is refusing to follow their commands. Already, the officers are losing control of the situation and their choice of actions is becoming limited very quickly. This is a problem, you’re an officer, it is your responsibility to get control of the situation.
What could they have done differently, you may ask? Well, I am sure most of you reading this are familiar with the term, “Ladder of force,” but for those who are not, I will explain. The ladder of force is what we, in law enforcement, use to prevent suspects from starting or continuing in criminal activity. The first rung of this ladder is, often enough, to deter most criminal activity; Police physically being somewhere. It is referred to as “Presence.” The last rung on this ladder is deadly force. That is pretty self-explanatory, but the goal should be to use it as little as possible. Now, what’s in the middle? That depends on you, or your department. Normally, the next step is verbal commands, followed by non-compliant restraint techniques, also known as, putting your hands on somebody to get them to do what you want them to do. After this, it gets a little tricky, because not everybody is going to have the tools necessary. There is OC spray, a taser, a baton, or even a K-9 (dog). These are known as less than lethal force. Finally, we climb to the top, known as lethal force. That being said, there are times when it is necessary to skip rungs on this ladder. Unfortunately, you may have to immediately start at the top in certain situations.
Now that we understand “Ladder of force.” We can get a better look at what the officers did correct and what they need to improve on in the future. We see these officers did immediately start giving the suspect verbal commands as soon as they arrived on the scene, but we can also see that he is refusing to follow their commands. This is when it’s time to use the ladder. He has a knife and it’s probably not a good idea to go hands-on, however, we could use other less than lethal force methods, such as a tazer. We can see that at the end of the video the officer has a taser in his hands, so they have this tool available to them. I can not understand why they let things spiral out of control before exploring options, such as the tazer. Unfortunately, these officers relied on verbal commands to the point where there was nothing less than deadly force available to them. They failed to gain control of the situation and it cost one the suspect his life. This is a failure because they are there to save lives, everyone’s life, no matter if they are bad or good. Remember your the authority, if they are not listening to your commands use your tools that are at your disposal. Don’t make your partner take shots centimeters over your head because you both couldn’t control a controllable situation.
I hope this was both educational and entertaining. I want to help educate young officers out there and assist in guiding them to an honorable career they can be proud of. If anyone has any questions or comments, please don’t be afraid to reply below. I am more than happy to engage and please stay safe out there.
This isnt bad for a first blog. Keep up the good work