Texas Peace Officers Need to Reevaluate their ALERRT Training!

[MONGOOSE]

Law enforcement officers have a special burden. In any situation that involves a man with a gun, a CHL holder only has to determine one thing; is the person with the gun a threat to me or others in the immediate area? If the answer is yes, then you fire. You are in the situation, you've seen the initial action, you know what's going on.

When a LEO arrives on the scene they know very little about the situation other than what they've been told by a dispatcher relaying secondhand information from people whose fear colors their reporting. They have to determine who the bad guy(s) is or are, determine whether they represent a current threat and be aware of everyone around them, because they don't even know if there's more than one. In fact, they'd better assume there's more than one, because their life may depend on it.

(It's important to note here that an unobservant or unalert CHL holder wouldn't know this either. CHLers should always keep in mind that the likelihood of a man with a gun having accomplices is high enough to be a concern.)

The Erik Scott shooting at the Costco in Las Vegas is a perfect example of where incorrect information relayed through dispatchers colored the LEOs' assessment of the situation and caused the death of an innocent man.

So the police can't just go in to a situation with guns blazing. They have to be on high alert, assess, under extreme stress, a situation and sort out the threats very quickly, isolate them and then engage, which could mean yelling "put the gun down" or immediately taking the threat out. IOW, while the CHL has watched the situation unfold and has a sound basis for deadly force deployment, the LEO has to include all of the assessment phase AFTER arrival on the scene in a very chaotic and extremely dangerous situation.

An example of this is the Abby Giffords situation. A CHLer arrived on the scene AFTER others had taken the shooter down. He saw a good guy with a gun in his hand (he had disarmed the shooter) and had to decide if he was a threat or not. He decided, correctly, that the man with the gun was not a threat and holstered his weapon.

If police are being trained to go into an active shooter situation with guns blazing, then the trainers, as well as the involved officers, are criminally liable for the outcome, because they are NOT training lawful tactics.

If a CHL r is on the scene with a weapon then he or she is a first resonder that has had even less time and with less info to access a dangerous situation than the second responder LEOs.

[baldeagle]

If a CHL r is on the scene with a weapon then he or she is a first resonder that has had even less time and with less info to access a dangerous situation than the second responder LEOs.

OK, let's look at some hypotheticals, shall we?

You're in a classroom attending a lecture. An armed assailant bursts through the door and begins firing. What information are you missing to know you need to take action?

You're in a classroom attending a lecture. You hear shots being fired somewhere in the building. What information are you missing to know you need to shelter in place and be at the low ready in case the shooter enters your classroom?

You're in a hallway walking when a shooter rounds the corner and points his weapon at you. What information are you missing to know you need to deploy deadly force immediately to survive?

You're in a hallway walking when you hear shots coming from somewhere in the building. What information are you missing to know you need to find cover and be at the low ready in case he rounds the corner?

[MONGOOSE]

If a CHL r is on the scene with a weapon then he or she is a first resonder that has had even less time and with less info to access a dangerous situation than the second responder LEOs.

OK, let's look at some hypotheticals, shall we?

You're in a classroom attending a lecture. An armed assailant bursts through the door and begins firing. What information are you missing to know you need to take action?

You're in a classroom attending a lecture. You hear shots being fired somewhere in the building. What information are you missing to know you need to shelter in place and be at the low ready in case the shooter enters your classroom?

You're in a hallway walking when a shooter rounds the corner and points his weapon at you. What information are you missing to know you need to deploy deadly force immediately to survive?

You're in a hallway walking when you hear shots coming from somewhere in the building. What information are you missing to know you need to find cover and be at the low ready in case he rounds the corner?

And I can give just as many senerios where the CHL r has to access a situation before they act.

[MONGOOSE]

By the way, I don't passively seek cover and protect my butt if I'm not with people to protect. I' seeking the shooter to try and prevent carnage.

[Charlies.Contingency]

By the way, I don't passively seek cover and protect my butt if I'm not with people to protect. I' seeking the shooter to try and prevent carnage.

So if somebody is shooting, you stay in the open? First time I've really heard that. Have you ever been involved in a shooting? Last place I personally want to be, is giving a full silhouette. You can find me behind cover.

[MONGOOSE]

Who said I would stay in the open? Advance yes, cover yes, stupid no.

[Charlies.Contingency]

Who said I would stay in the open? Advance yes, cover yes, stupid no.

By the way, I don't passively seek cover and protect my butt if I'm not with people to protect. I' seeking the shooter to try and prevent carnage.

It was the lack of saying you wouldn't I suppose. You said you don't passively seek cover, and you would be looking for the shooter. Being that cover was being discussed, you made it seem as if you would not seek cover. That is where you confused me.

[MONGOOSE]

No problem

[srothstein]

Mongoose,

EDIT: You and Charles.Contingency discussed this while I was typing the below, so it might be irrelevant, btu I leave it as a message to others who may think of going looking for the shooter.

I strongly recommend you reconsider your plan of action. You do not have any responsibility or legal duty to go looking for the shooter and it places you at a much higher risk than taking cover and staying in place would. When you go into an area where there is an active shooter and you are in civilian clothes with no way to identify yourself as a good guy with a gun, you become the exact person Dr. Blair was talking to. You are in a high probability of being mistaken for the bad guy.I don't think the officers are being taught to enter with guns blazing but their adrenaline and yours are going to lead to a problem fairly quickly.

Consider some of the known effects of stress and adrenaline. One that should concern you when it happens to the police officers is called time distortion. The police officer will yell for you to freeze and then he will pause to see if you comply. he will yell again after a pause. Then he will open fire on you if you do not comply. I know you think this will not be a problem because you will comply, but the officer will think he paused for several seconds each time when it was actually just a minute fraction of a second. My experience with this time distortion came in a shooting where I heard three shots fired with a distinct pause between the shots. My partner said he fired a double tap as quickly as he could and the witness said it was just one shot fired because it sounded like one continuous bang.My shot was between the two my partner fired.

Even worse, and contributing to a potentially deadly scenario is a second common effect of stress. This one is the auditory exclusion effect. When you are under stress because you are getting close to the real shooter, you will not hear things around you. If this gets combined with an extreme focus on the danger (another common effect), you will NOT hear the officer say anything. These combined make it very likely that a very deadly error will occur.

But lets take the best scenario. You go looking for the bad guy. Other people in the area will have no idea that you are a good guy trying to help. They may see your gun and think you are another bad guy. Since you are not a bad guy, you will not be harming these people but some of them are not going to think and will call in to the police where you are. This will delay the police from being able to fully respond to the real bad guy. Even if none of this happens and you get to the area or are intercepted by a police officer near it, and you hear the officer and do comply, it will take him some time to secure you and get you identified as a a good guy. This again delays the officer from dealing with the bad guy. That means more innocent people may get hurt or killed.

Now, it is also possible that the police will be slow and you will be able to get there first and deal with the bad guy. In this case, you will be saving lives. But it is not as likely to happen unless you hear the shots from the room next to you or almost that close. So, I recommend you reconsider and plan on taking cover and staying in place.


Charles,

I used to think the ALERRT program was a good program. I have to admit that it has improved police response to active shooters in general. I have not gone through the program to know everything it teaches. I have since reconsidered after talking with Dr. Blair on campus at Texas State. I was talking with him because I was thinking of trying for a grad assistant position at ALERRT. I decided not to because I can no longer support some of the things they teach. I am very concerned about a trend in law enforcement, including ALERRT, that has officers shooting people with guns who were attempting to leave the area after a shooting.

My understanding of the Garner decision was that deadly force was forbidden when someone was fleeing the scene unless you could show that the danger to society was greater if he was allowed to leave than shooting him would be. The classic example I used was if you stopped the Son of Sam after he was leaving his fourth murder and could show you knew he was the serial killer. Then you could argue that it would be likely he would kill again if he was allowed to leave and that might justify shooting. But even if the guy had a gun and had been involved in a shooting at a single scene, I am not sure you could justify just shooting him when he was leaving, even if he refused to comply with your orders to stop or disarm. Dr. Blair and I discussed this and he claimed that you could not prove he was not headed off to commit another murder so you could justify it that way. I cannot support this type of training.

I think that the warning from Dr. Blair is just a poorly worded caution as you say and that he is not training officers to just run in and shoot people with guns. I know my discussion with him did not include just shooting the suspect without a warning even when you knew he was the active shooter walking away from that scene. BTW, my statements above are paraphrasing and not a direct quote. I could have misunderstood or misremember this. My impression of Dr. Blair was that he was a good guy. I know he is a strong supporter of citizen possession and carrying of firearms, including guns on campus. You may be able to get him to clarify his warning if you get to talk to him.

I do think that the ALERRT program may be teaching officers to be a little quicker on the trigger than I would think is right, but it might be more a matter of degree than a real disagreement on basic points. I had the same discussion with an Air Force officer about how the SPs at Lackland were being trained and their program is much freer with shooting than the civilian police training is.

[MONGOOSE]

I believe if I have taken on the responsibility to carry, I have a moral responsibility to seek out the shooter. If I am home and have my wife by my side then my back goes to the wall and the intruder will have to seek me out.

[Excaliber]

Mongoose,

EDIT: You and Charles.Contingency discussed this while I was typing the below, so it might be irrelevant, btu I leave it as a message to others who may think of going looking for the shooter.

I strongly recommend you reconsider your plan of action. You do not have any responsibility or legal duty to go looking for the shooter and it places you at a much higher risk than taking cover and staying in place would. When you go into an area where there is an active shooter and you are in civilian clothes with no way to identify yourself as a good guy with a gun, you become the exact person Dr. Blair was talking to. You are in a high probability of being mistaken for the bad guy.I don't think the officers are being taught to enter with guns blazing but their adrenaline and yours are going to lead to a problem fairly quickly.

Consider some of the known effects of stress and adrenaline. One that should concern you when it happens to the police officers is called time distortion. The police officer will yell for you to freeze and then he will pause to see if you comply. he will yell again after a pause. Then he will open fire on you if you do not comply. I know you think this will not be a problem because you will comply, but the officer will think he paused for several seconds each time when it was actually just a minute fraction of a second. My experience with this time distortion came in a shooting where I heard three shots fired with a distinct pause between the shots. My partner said he fired a double tap as quickly as he could and the witness said it was just one shot fired because it sounded like one continuous bang.My shot was between the two my partner fired.

Even worse, and contributing to a potentially deadly scenario is a second common effect of stress. This one is the auditory exclusion effect. When you are under stress because you are getting close to the real shooter, you will not hear things around you. If this gets combined with an extreme focus on the danger (another common effect), you will NOT hear the officer say anything. These combined make it very likely that a very deadly error will occur.

But lets take the best scenario. You go looking for the bad guy. Other people in the area will have no idea that you are a good guy trying to help. They may see your gun and think you are another bad guy. Since you are not a bad guy, you will not be harming these people but some of them are not going to think and will call in to the police where you are. This will delay the police from being able to fully respond to the real bad guy. Even if none of this happens and you get to the area or are intercepted by a police officer near it, and you hear the officer and do comply, it will take him some time to secure you and get you identified as a a good guy. This again delays the officer from dealing with the bad guy. That means more innocent people may get hurt or killed.

Now, it is also possible that the police will be slow and you will be able to get there first and deal with the bad guy. In this case, you will be saving lives. But it is not as likely to happen unless you hear the shots from the room next to you or almost that close. So, I recommend you reconsider and plan on taking cover and staying in place.


Charles,

I used to think the ALERRT program was a good program. I have to admit that it has improved police response to active shooters in general. I have not gone through the program to know everything it teaches. I have since reconsidered after talking with Dr. Blair on campus at Texas State. I was talking with him because I was thinking of trying for a grad assistant position at ALERRT. I decided not to because I can no longer support some of the things they teach. I am very concerned about a trend in law enforcement, including ALERRT, that has officers shooting people with guns who were attempting to leave the area after a shooting.

My understanding of the Garner decision was that deadly force was forbidden when someone was fleeing the scene unless you could show that the danger to society was greater if he was allowed to leave than shooting him would be. The classic example I used was if you stopped the Son of Sam after he was leaving his fourth murder and could show you knew he was the serial killer. Then you could argue that it would be likely he would kill again if he was allowed to leave and that might justify shooting. But even if the guy had a gun and had been involved in a shooting at a single scene, I am not sure you could justify just shooting him when he was leaving, even if he refused to comply with your orders to stop or disarm. Dr. Blair and I discussed this and he claimed that you could not prove he was not headed off to commit another murder so you could justify it that way. I cannot support this type of training.

I think that the warning from Dr. Blair is just a poorly worded caution as you say and that he is not training officers to just run in and shoot people with guns. I know my discussion with him did not include just shooting the suspect without a warning even when you knew he was the active shooter walking away from that scene. BTW, my statements above are paraphrasing and not a direct quote. I could have misunderstood or misremember this. My impression of Dr. Blair was that he was a good guy. I know he is a strong supporter of citizen possession and carrying of firearms, including guns on campus. You may be able to get him to clarify his warning if you get to talk to him.

I do think that the ALERRT program may be teaching officers to be a little quicker on the trigger than I would think is right, but it might be more a matter of degree than a real disagreement on basic points. I had the same discussion with an Air Force officer about how the SPs at Lackland were being trained and their program is much freer with shooting than the civilian police training is.

All of your points on the effects of stress and the potential for misidentification of a good guy as a bad guy are valid, and your first hand experience with the psychobiological effects of stress during a shooting clearly reinforce your points with a real world experience of a type that only a small handful of the folks on this board can truthfully say they've been through.

With that said, there are ways to mitigate some of the risks you cite. Examples would be keeping the gun concealed until getting close to the shooter (which brings in its own complexities) and asking people who see you with the gun to call 911 and tell them a lawfully armed citizen is present and moving to engage the shooter with a description so arriving officers will be expecting to see a good guy with a gun.

Another factor to consider is that in the first two or three minutes of an incident, there's a relatively low risk of being misidentified by police because in most cases they couldn't have been notified, traveled to the scene, and entered in that time. However, every minute thereafter increases the risk that arriving officers will enter aggressively and make a tragic misidentification. For them, it would be something they would regret for the rest of their lives. For the would be hero, it would be much worse.

I would neither encourage nor discourage someone who is in a position to stop an active shooter to take direct action. This is a very personal decision with very high risks but also a very real potential for saving innocent lives. However, I would suggest a moment of soul searching before coming to that decision. If someone undertakes this with the knowledge that he may be giving his life for others and is willing to accept all the consequences for him and his family that go with it, I would applaud his courage. If he has visions of giving interviews on all the talk shows and being awarded a superman cape, I would suggest he reconsider because he's about to make a really bad decision that is highly unlikely to turn out the way he thinks it will.

[srothstein]

Excaliber,

You, as usual, make some very good points. You are obviously correct that all of the risks I mention can be mitigated with a little prior planning and correct action at the time. You are also correct about the odds of police being there in the first two to three minutes. I think most agencies still consider three minutes as a good response time for an emergency call, and that is from the time the officer in the car gets the call. There is always a delay between the call coming in and the police officer being dispatched and that does not include the delay of getting someone to actually call it in.

Most important, the decision is a personal one and no one should fault a CHL from making either decision in this situation. I would not fault a CHL for trying to help and I would not fault them for staying put or leaving the area instead of going and looking for the bad guy.

I guess the only real difference between us on this is that I do counsel people to not go looking for the bad guy. I generally think the risks are greater than the benefits. In the interests of full disclosure and having posted my advice earlier, I should admit that my training and experience, both military and law enforcement, has been to move towards the sounds of the guns. I would probably not take my own advice if I were in that kind of situation myself.

[Excaliber]

Excaliber,

You, as usual, make some very good points. You are obviously correct that all of the risks I mention can be mitigated with a little prior planning and correct action at the time. You are also correct about the odds of police being there in the first two to three minutes. I think most agencies still consider three minutes as a good response time for an emergency call, and that is from the time the officer in the car gets the call. There is always a delay between the call coming in and the police officer being dispatched and that does not include the delay of getting someone to actually call it in.

Most important, the decision is a personal one and no one should fault a CHL from making either decision in this situation. I would not fault a CHL for trying to help and I would not fault them for staying put or leaving the area instead of going and looking for the bad guy.

I guess the only real difference between us on this is that I do counsel people to not go looking for the bad guy. I generally think the risks are greater than the benefits. In the interests of full disclosure and having posted my advice earlier, I should admit that my training and experience, both military and law enforcement, has been to move towards the sounds of the guns. I would probably not take my own advice if I were in that kind of situation myself.

Steve,

I think you and I are very much in agreement. I wouldn't encourage a CHL to go looking for the gunman either, but if he pretty much knows where he is and believes he can make a reasonably safe unobserved approach, doesn't have a hero complex, and wants to try, there's a decision to be made based on the circumstances and the level of skill, judgment, and preparation that person believes he has.

At one end of that scale we have the person who shoots at least once a month, is in reasonably good shape, takes dynamic handgun training classes on his own, and is carrying a G19 chamber loaded with two spare mags. At the other end is the person whose last trip to the range was for CHL qualification, is 80 pounds overweight, has taken no training for making judgments and shooting in dynamic situations, and is carrying a Ruger LCP in .380 with chamber empty and no spare ammo. The gentleman with the G17 has a reasonable chance of success in stopping the shooter. The gentleman with the LCP would likely end up as part of the body count.

There is an alternate protective tactic that can reduce casualties with less risk than a seek and engage attempt, and it can be successful with a more limited skillset and less than ideal weapons: area denial or containment. Depending on the layout of the site, an armed person who takes up a position of cover with a clear field of fire toward the approach to that area (e.g., inside a hall doorway near the intersection with a lobby or another hall) can keep a shooter from storming into that area and protect everyone beyond that point. In similar fashion, if the shooter is in a room off a hallway, a defensive position in another doorway 30 feet away can dominate the funnel point from the shooter's location into the hall and keep him from searching out additional victims.

This option requires no tactical movement skills, maintains distance for both safety and time to assess approaching persons, and can be successful even with a smaller firearm because a shooter attempting to enter the controlled area under fire would run a very high risk of taking rounds while the good guy would be difficult to engage successfully if he uses his cover properly. A police officer used this tactic in the Trolley Mall shooting where he used his subcompact off duty pistol (a 3" Kimber .45) with only 6 rounds and no spare ammunition to keep a shotgun armed active shooter contained until arriving units could engage him.

To maintain safety in that situation it would be critical to make sure either the defender or someone else calls 911 and gives the location and description of the good guy so officers know not to fire at the first sight of a gun, and to communicate that to everyone in the area so they do not attempt to attack him . The good guy would also need to immediately holster up and let dispatch know he's done so as soon as police are in position to approach his location. Done right, this option can save a lot of lives with a more palatable level of risk for the good guy.

[Glockster]

Excaliber,

You, as usual, make some very good points. You are obviously correct that all of the risks I mention can be mitigated with a little prior planning and correct action at the time. You are also correct about the odds of police being there in the first two to three minutes. I think most agencies still consider three minutes as a good response time for an emergency call, and that is from the time the officer in the car gets the call. There is always a delay between the call coming in and the police officer being dispatched and that does not include the delay of getting someone to actually call it in.

Most important, the decision is a personal one and no one should fault a CHL from making either decision in this situation. I would not fault a CHL for trying to help and I would not fault them for staying put or leaving the area instead of going and looking for the bad guy.

I guess the only real difference between us on this is that I do counsel people to not go looking for the bad guy. I generally think the risks are greater than the benefits. In the interests of full disclosure and having posted my advice earlier, I should admit that my training and experience, both military and law enforcement, has been to move towards the sounds of the guns. I would probably not take my own advice if I were in that kind of situation myself.

I think that your last paragraph makes what is probably the most critical statement of this whole discussion. I believe that way too many holders of a CHL or other state permit believe that just because they have qualified for that and shot at the range, that they are then fully prepared to respond in the heat of the moment to that kind of a threat. Then there is military experience and law enforcement experience, which provides a whole different set of qualifications. I am glad that someone with the right qualifications and experience is ready, willing, and able to move towards the sound. And I think that anyone lacking those qualifications may well receive a serious reality check one day if they believe that their limited experience somehow has prepared them to go look for the bad guy. Note that I said go look for, and I wasn't speaking about responding if the bad guy comes to you.