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E13: Police Shootings and Training Analysis · The Junto Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto Podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I am your host, Edgar Mills. Thanks for joining us.
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Music.
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And today we're going to be talking about some notable police shootings,
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and we're going to juxtapose those to some police training standards and that sort of thing.
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Now, it may seem like I'm jumping on a train here and trying to bash the police all the time.
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I'm not. I'm doing these things in a lead up to a few guests that I have planned down the road.
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So I want to get a lot of information out there first to set these guys up for success.
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So let's just jump into it. First, what I'm going to do is go over a few of
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these notable shootings.
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We're going to kind of summarize them, talk about the dubious impact it had,
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and then try to talk about, like, how could that have been fixed or avoided
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or just had a better outcome.
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I'm sure you all remember because, well, most of these are within the past five years anyway.
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So you guys probably all remember the Breonna Taylor shooting.
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That was in Louisville, Kentucky.
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And that was a Louisville Metro PD executed a no-knock warrant on Breonna Taylor's apartment.
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Now, they were going after her boyfriend, who they suspected of being a drug dealer.
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Now, understand this, people. I have no deep insight as to what may really have
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gone on or not have gone on going based off information that I can research,
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official record, and that sort of thing.
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So some of you may disagree with some things. Some of you may not believe the
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narratives you're given and all these things.
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I'm going off research here, folks.
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I'm not trying to drag anyone through the mud I'm not trying to rehash any anger,
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And I'm certainly not trying to sow any distrust,
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I just want to highlight how things might have been better.
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All right. So we all remember the, so Louisville Metro did a no-knock raid on
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Brianna Taylor's apartment.
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And over 30 shots were fired in this incident. Kenneth Walker,
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the guy who was on the warrant, fired a shot and allegedly fired a shot first.
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And thinking that their house was being robbed.
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And why is this? because the police did a no-knock warrant, and they didn't announce themselves.
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They didn't introduce themselves. They didn't knock on the door,
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police open up, or anything like that, right?
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So he fired, and subsequently the police opened fire, and one cop shot blindly
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through a window. Anyway, Breonna Taylor was killed.
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Turns out no drugs were found in the apartment at all.
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And yeah an innocent life
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was was uh taken there were
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bullets from that fire so 30 i want to
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say 32 bullets were fired bullets went
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through the apartment walls into other apartments fortunately no one else was
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shot but bullets went through other walls now any of you knowing about the four
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universal rules of firearm safety clearly identified a threat and be aware of its surroundings,
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That's to include the backstop.
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Anyway, so what was the dubious elements here?
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Why is this dubious? Why was this a bad thing? Why did it get so much attention?
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Well, first of all, I've said this plenty of times.
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I don't agree with no-knock warrants inside the borders of the United States on American citizens.
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Now, look, if you've got a cartel cell operating inside the borders,
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it might warrant a no-knock raid.
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But an American citizen, I don't think there should be such a thing as a no-knock warrant.
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Because we have the Second Amendment in America. And what exactly happened here
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could happen to anyone, folks.
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If the police bust up in your door without announcing themselves and you're
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an armed, legally armed American citizen, who's wrong in this situation?
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Well, I say the police in this particular situation.
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So the fact that they did a no knock warrant at all and they did not identify
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themselves, that's that's two things that I feel like were like no brainers.
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But then once the gunfire started going off, what happened?
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Yeah, all the sympathetic firing. One guy shot into a window that had a curtain over it.
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He shot blindly, I want to say six rounds, into the window.
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And by the way, that's what killed Breonna Taylor.
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So no officer should be taking blind shots into anything.
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I didn't have that luxury as a Green Beret. I don't think cops should have it,
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especially cops shouldn't have it, inside the borders of the United States.
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And all the sympathetic fire, and that happens, folks. We've seen it.
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That raises questions of proportionality, right?
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Because Taylor, no, not Taylor, Kenneth Walker only fired one round.
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And he did, in fact, hit one of the police in the leg.
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And then what followed was 32 rounds of unsighted fire.
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So I think that's a problem. I think that's a big problem. And I think this
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case has probably been looked at and studied, and hopefully it's being used
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as an example in various police academies.
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So very specific context, the officers, they made entry into the house at about 1240 a.m.
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So that's the wee hours of the morning. They didn't announce their presence.
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They didn't knock and just, or they didn't boot the door open and yell,
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police, police, police.
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So Walker, Kenneth Walker, who, by the way, was a licensed gun owner,
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fired a shot, hit a cop in the leg. and the officers just returned, just blazed up.
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And one guy, I said six rounds, he fired 10 rounds blindly through a covered window.
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Now, in the investigation to follow and the outcome of that,
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one of the officers was charged with wanton endangerment for firing into a neighboring
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apartment, but not for the death of Breonna Taylor, which is kind of crazy.
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No officers were charged for killing her, and the city ended up settling with
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Breonna Taylor's family for a lot of money.
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And as a result, Louisville has since gotten rid of no-knock warrants out of their SOPs.
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Now, so that's a win, at least.
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Obviously, the fallout from that, you know, it was a national,
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there was national protests and stuff like that.
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Mainly talking about the use of excessive force, but also the racial component, right?
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Because Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker are black.
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So that obviously there's always going to be race hustlers who push that.
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And then it was just bad decision making under stress. But after the investigation, no charges were filed.
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So that's an incident that we're going to look at ways this can.
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So what relevant standards can we attach to that?
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Well, according to the Association of Chiefs of Police or something like that,
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the IACP anyway, they have guidelines that, you know, they emphasize accuracy,
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precision in shooting, target identification.
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And they state that officers must ensure that no innocent persons are going
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to be endangered before firing.
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Well, I mean, they can write that, but if the officers aren't executing that,
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that's, so that's a standard that, that was at play that was violated for sure.
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FBI use of force protocols requires that officers assess the threat and use
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deadly force only when lesser means are insufficient.
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So proportionality, and the military has that as well.
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And you have to have a clear regard for bystanders. You just can't blaze away
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and not consider the possibility that there's a child on the other side of the
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wall that you just blaze through.
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So the FBI's protocols require a sort of proportionality.
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And then there's situational awareness sort of, I don't want to say standards,
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but general rule of thumb is that most of the time officers will announce themselves.
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But these no knock raids i don't
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know what they expect to happen when they do that
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but that's just that's just asking for violence man
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so even on
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a raid even on a no knock you still have to to assess the
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environment like it's ongoing assessment and you
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have to be mindful of of collateral damage
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man you just have to especially in
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a freaking apartment complex where you got
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let's imagine a three-story apartment
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complex where you live in the middle on the second floor that means you got
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neighbors at least upstairs at least downstairs and probably on one side of
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you so that's and that's sporty for cops I know it is man but that's where that's
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where the training has to you have to be there. You have to be there.
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So those are the sort of relevant standards that we could put against this incident.
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So let's talk about some of the training gaps that we can put against this incident.
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Indiscriminate firing is not okay in any situation. It's just not.
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The police fired 32 rounds in total. 10 of those we know were through a covered
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window. So that tells me that these dudes, based off hearing one gunshot,
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yeah, they were probably scared.
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And of course, why wouldn't you be if somebody's shooting at you?
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But they didn't have the presence of mind to even note that it was just the one shot.
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So anyway, my point is this. The discipline to have what in the Army we call
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tactical patience. and then clear target identification.
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We know that these annual firearms quals that most places do are,
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we know that they're lackluster.
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And they just focus on checking a block and not scenario-based,
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high-stress, complex decision-making, which I think is overall lacking.
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So let's get to that decision-making. once bullets started flying de-escalation
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apparently was just not a thing okay and that's i can see that if somebody took
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a shot at me i would shoot back but not without clearly identifying,
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that's number one number two.
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The de-escalation probably should have started with announcing themselves.
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I just, once again, I can't understand what a no-knock raid does for a police department in America.
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All right, I'm talking about citizens here. All right.
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And then, now I know this to be true, folks.
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When you do dynamic entries, as you should do dynamic entries,
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I'm not advocating this ridiculous limited penetration stuff. and I'm not abdicating.
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What I'm saying is here is when you do a deliberate dynamic entry on a place,
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the fundamentals at play, the principles are surprise, speed, and violence of action.
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Now, being a cop in a residential area.
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You can do the surprise, the speed, and the violence of action,
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but if you can't identify the target before you shoot it, you're going too fast.
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You're outrunning your skill. And I'll tell you this, and I'll stand by it until
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doomsday, skill trumps tactics every time.
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So I saw what I see here is they executed a dynamic entry, but they didn't have
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the skill or discipline to discriminate on the targets,
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which led to a massive overreaction, which led to the death of Miss Breonna Taylor.
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And then there's situational awareness, right? Nevermind decision-making.
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Situational awareness is, these are all the things you're taking in as you're going.
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And everybody, I'm sure, now look, I've been on plenty of no-knock raids,
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folks, but, you know, in combat, yeah, you're amped up.
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When it's go time and you're, and you're doing the countdown to execute.
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Yeah, I get it. You're, you're amped up and you're, you're aware,
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your threat awareness is amped up for sure.
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But you have to also have that, that awareness of civilians and,
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and, and just collateral damage in general.
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I'm a hundred percent in belief that if they would announce themselves,
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would have announced themselves, Breonna Taylor would be alive.
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So what impact overall did that have?
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Well, what impact would more focused training have had there?
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Likely, right? We can't say for sure, but likely. Well, I think if they would, you know, had,
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probably some more high-stress firearms handling, right? Just on the clock, man.
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Just timed, you know, under stress, under time, skill improvement. That's one thing.
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Shoot, no shoot situation. Even in USPSA, you know, you have no shoot targets.
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Now, yeah, they might be drastically different looking, but we've all shot the
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targets with the, they call them the cartoons, you know.
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One guy has a knife one guy's holding like a stapler i
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mean look however you do that you do that i think
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i think that's where training with
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utm and stuff like that comes into play the scenario force on
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force stuff but it has to be controlled of course but skill drills folks skill
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drills to address these these very issues you have to be able to draw fast you
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have to be able to to hit what you're shooting at you have to be able to shoot
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fast but you also have to be able to identify what doesn't need to get shot.
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Yeah. You also have to identify that. Now I can tell you this.
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I used to have a Sergeant Major who, he had no sense of humor about flyers,
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right? Or a low percentage target.
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If somebody hit the hostage, this dude didn't have a sense of humor, man. It was bad.
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It was ass chewing and then run it, run it, run it,
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run it, run it, run it you you have to be able
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to to identify the
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targets folks the threat you have to be able
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to identify the threat not just what's
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in his hand either but demeanor is this
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dude shit scared and his eyes are big and he's got high pucker factor and he
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thought you were breaking into his house but reality he sees that you got police
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written across your chest it do you have the discipline to take that pregnant pause,
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yeah, with a dot on his chest, but not pulling the trigger to give that guy
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an extra half a second to indicate something.
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If he indicates he's going to bring the gun up and shoot, you know, blast him.
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But that's a high level of training, folks. That's high level training right there.
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And I just don't think Louisville had it.
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So more focused training. Now, that being said, that might not be everything, right?
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Training an individual to be his best self doesn't necessarily change sort of
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systemic issues like bad intelligence, for instance.
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That guy had a warrant they had a warrant and and
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found no drugs so how how good was
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the intelligence i don't know and then there's institutional pressures
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you know like the organizational like we need to
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this is going to be an example we need to get this guy off
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streets whatever kind of better planning and
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preparation also might have
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been able to do that but let me tell you something this dude
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a walker kenneth walker
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instead of doing a no knock raid at 12 40
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a.m is there a chance they could
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have just had eyes on his apartment and then picked him up at the 7-eleven you
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know with no incident whatsoever i mean there's eight million different ways
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to do a thing and i think they chose like the what they thought was going to
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be the most sexy way but It turned out to be a flaming disaster.
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All right, so that's the Breonna Taylor incident. We all know about it.
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We all saw it. You can feel one way or another about it.
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You can assume that Kenneth Walker was guilty if you want.
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But I think you need to be careful about that because if you assume he was guilty
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because he was black or because of this, that, and the other,
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what happens if you find yourself in an ambiguous situation?
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Are we just going to assume you were guilty? Well, that's not what the law says, right?
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So be careful about making your assumptions or just back in the blue no matter what.
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Yeah, back the blue for sure. Law and order. We need some law and order.
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And police are doing a thankless job. That is true. Police are doing a thankless job.
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But they should be held to a higher standard when it comes to lethal force. It's my opinion.
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Okay. Next example. We have Willie McCoy shooting. That was in Vallejo, California.
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I want to say in 2019 or 2020.
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The Vallejo Police Department responded to a call about Willie McCoy as a 20-year-old
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black rapper unconscious in his car at the Taco Bell drive-thru with a gun in his lap,
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officers surrounded the vehicle and when McCoy kind of stirred a little bit,
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because he was asleep in his car mind you when he stirred when he moved officers
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fired 55 rounds in the span of three and a half seconds.
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And yeah, they killed the guy, of course. And ultimately, one officer was disciplined
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for endangering colleagues with reckless firearm handling because,
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you know, possible fratricide or friendly fire, you know.
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Because I imagined, I don't want to be ugly here, I don't know how that went
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down, but I can just imagine them doing a Polish ambush on the guy, right?
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Surrounding the car, everybody shooting inward toward each other.
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And if you're Polish, please don't be upset.
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I apologize.
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No bystanders were injured, but the officer's unsafe firearm hand created a
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risk of friendly fire, right?
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So bullets could have, especially shooting into a car, man.
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I don't care what any of these YouTube dudes have to say.
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You cannot predict accurately what a bullet's going to do once it passes through
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the window or the door of a car or the seat or the, you know what I mean?
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It's unpredictable. And that's the fact. It's unpredictable.
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You can guess and you can get a good percentage of guessing.
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Yeah, shooting through windows, people have a general idea of what's happening.
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But that's just a general idea, man, depending on what the window is made out
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of and all these things. There's so many variables.
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So at any rate, one cop, yeah, friendly fire was a hazard,
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but nobody nobody got shot but what what was the what was dubious about this
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whole thing what well shooting 55 rounds in three seconds,
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How fearful were these dudes? I'm calling that into question, man.
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Like, how scared were they that the minute that dude flinched,
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that they blazed up 55 rounds in the sky?
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That's dubious, folks.
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They seem to have had no plan whatsoever to take this dude.
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They were just meant to go shoot him, I think. And I don't know why, man.
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I don't know why. But there was a, now speaking of proportionality,
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that, that, that was well out of proportion.
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That was well out of proportion. And that leads us again to the sympathetic firing.
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When one guy starts blazing away, everybody else wants to start blazing away.
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And that's, it's unsafe. It's unprofessional.
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Yeah, yeah. So the context was the officers claimed McCoy reached for the gun, right?
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But body camera footage was was inconclusive
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inconclusive so what that
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means it was up for debate if the body camera
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footage wasn't cut and dry if it was
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ambiguous then you know those dudes just basically got away with murder so the
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bar the car was boxed in right he couldn't have gone anywhere in the car the
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way the way it was so six officers all fired and one later fired,
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in a way that it risked hitting okay that guy never mind that guy never mind
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a guy doing bad bad handling shooting toward his partners but six dudes fired
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into this car that was that was in a fixed position was boxed in in 2020 a special
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prosecutor report found that shooting legally justified,
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but, you know, criticized the officer's kind of reckless firearm handling.
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No charges were brought against any of the cops.
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And then the case, again, fueled local protests against the Vallejo PD.
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Use of excessive force. Public and legal scrutiny.
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So the McCoy family filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging excessive force and racial bias.
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And apparently Vallejo has a high rate of officer-involved incidents,
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officer-involved shootings.
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So, you know, is there a culture of, you know, we're just taking a bad guy down?
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Who knows? That could be systemic. It could just be the individual,
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but there were six different officers.
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I've got to imagine there's at least, you know, two or three different value systems in there.
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But I just You know Why do six officers Need to open up On a dude In a car.
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Was pretty much immobile so what
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what training standards were relevant to that right firearms handling
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in general shooting toward your
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your homies is bad pretty much always
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and chaos look man i've i've
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shot and been shot or had
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dudes shoot pretty close proximity to me
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before on my team and and
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sometimes given the you know given whatever situation you're
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in it might it might have to happen that way you know
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that's why you well especially on a team that
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you have a sort of high level of trust in your homies because you have a high
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level of training I feel six rando cops I don't think I would have any trust
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whatsoever but at any rate the four universal rules of firearm safety would
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have mitigated any dangerous firearm handling in that situation,
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And again, the proportionality, I don't think six dudes needed to do this.
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I think one guy could have done that. The guy who felt the most threat, right?
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Not just the dude flinched and six dudes opened up on him.
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Lethal force, as a civilian, what has to be present for you to use lethal force?
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You have to be able to articulate a fear of a loss of life or significant injury, right?
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It's possible that that wasn't there, folks.
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Possible that that wasn't there. And did these guys even remotely try to verbally control this guy?
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Or did they yell at him to wake up, and when he did, they blast him because
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he moved? Kind of a catch-22, right?
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And then just SOP, team SOP development. I don't know if these dudes were all
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seasoned officers. I don't know if they all worked together.
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I don't know if it was just six random patrolmen.
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Somebody needs to be in charge of that crew and whoever that is.
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If you just roll up and you happen to be the main guy, the senior guy, then take control.
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Take charge. Start moving people around.
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Don't just everybody just kind
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of, okay, we're going to Polish ambush this dude. If he moves, blast him.
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That's not leadership at all.
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So someone needs to the senior guy
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or even not even necessarily the senior guy
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just the most experienced guy but you have no
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way of knowing that the senior guy needs to take charge and
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and come up and have a better plan for fire control measures fire control measures
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folks that's a thing that's a thing and what so what training gaps could have
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helped mitigate if any well,
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firearms discipline man the friggin four universal rules of firearm safety don't
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point anything you don't want to shoot you finger off trigger not a trigger
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guard to have sights aligned on target clearly identify the threat and be aware
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of its surroundings so this incident kind of Yeah.
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Highlighted insufficient firearms training. Yep.
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And again, yearly qualifications are just checking the block.
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That's all they're really doing.
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Over-reliance on lethal force, again. Now, when I carry on about how cops need
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more firearms training, they need to be the most proficient firearms handlers out there. They do.
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But that also means knowing when not to use lethal force.
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And increased skill level will help you feel more comfortable making decisions
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not to use lethal force. because you know that you can pick it up whenever you need it.
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Whereas if you're a marginally trained guy or officer, female, whatever,
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you may not have the confidence in your skill level to kind of de-escalate with
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the possible need to re-escalate, right?
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And the fact that six officers shot 55 rounds, I still, that's just bizarre.
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Couldn't one of those guys have a taser or something? I mean,
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I wasn't there, you know, wasn't there.
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But it just, it seems crazy that that's, they went from zero to,
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to zero to 55 rounds in like three seconds.
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So they might have, you know, I don't know. That might be a,
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that might be a department culture right there. I don't know. Yeah.
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And then sort of a lack of team SOP development, teamwork, small unit tactics.
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I don't know, again, how many of those guys worked together before or have never. Who knows?
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But I know even as an infantryman, we practice approaching a vehicle as a fire
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team, how to not flag each other and still get maximum fire into the car if necessary.
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And then only firing if there was a legit threat.
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And then, you know, the guy pulling security is probably the most likely guy to fire, not everybody.
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I mean, that's an infantry skill. That's an infantry skill.
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So what I'm saying is if that's a basic infantry skill, why on earth isn't there a basic police skill?
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Yeah. Team SOP development. Teamwork. Small unit tactics.
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Turn a battle drill. anything that can be made into a battle drill should now
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why is that why why should you have battle drills in regards to the cops it's
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decision making it kind of refines your decision making.
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But sadly the the cops are faced with multiple different unknown things there
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but but still battle drill that's that's an action you take if right if this
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happens i go into battle drill this Right?
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Approaching a vehicle and clearing the vehicle, that's essentially a battle drill.
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Impact. What impact? What kind of more focused training can we have?
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Well, scenario-based training with multiple officers involved in these scenarios.
31:08
And holding them to a standard, by the way. Don't have no bullcrap half-assing
31:12
just because it's with UTM.
31:15
Right? Emphasize communication.
31:17
Emphasize muscle discipline. Right? Right.
31:21
Emphasize who who needs to fire versus who doesn't. You know,
31:25
who has the best shot versus who's just firing into the damn car.
31:29
If you've ever done a training scenario like that. Right. Why haven't you if
31:33
you haven't? But like the guys in the car are not responding.
31:37
That should prompt an action from you. Not as soon as he moves, you blast him.
31:44
Verbal commands, non-lethals, I think that would have saved a day there.
31:49
Verbal commands and non-lethals probably would have saved a day there. Probably.
31:53
But I don't know, folks. I'm just giving an opinion.
31:59
Cultural factors. What is Vallejo PD?
32:03
They have a culture of high violence. They have a higher rate of officer-involved shootings than most.
32:11
So what does that tell you? Either you got a bunch of aggressive cops or you
32:15
got a bunch of untrained cops.
32:17
One or the other. Maybe both, which is double dangerous.
32:23
So there's food for thought there, folks. Six cops shooting into a car on one guy.
32:29
Food for thought. Food for thought. All right.
32:32
Now let's you guys drive with me to Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
32:38
Duante Wright. Everybody remembers that one. This was in 2021.
32:44
And Daunte Wright was a traffic stop by the Brooklyn Center police officer named
32:50
well I ain't gonna name her name yeah Kim Potter fatally shot Daunte Wright
32:55
who's a 20 year old black dude after she mistook her firearm for a taser,
33:03
she stopped she stopped this guy for an expired tag,
33:07
and he had an outstanding warrant so he was gonna go to jail He resisted arrest
33:14
and attempted to flee. All right.
33:17
Now we see a clear escalation.
33:21
That caused Ms. Kim Potter to pull out her, what she thought was her taser to
33:28
drop Dante, but it wasn't her taser at all.
33:33
And she killed Dante. She was the sole victim. There wasn't any fratricide or
33:39
any innocent civilians or anything like that.
33:42
It did occur in a public area. and there was a risk to people standing around
33:49
there because she didn't even know she had her gun in her hand.
33:54
So that's clearly very, is it a training failure?
34:00
I mean, to some of us, that just seems so obvious that how could you mistake
34:06
your taser for your pistol?
34:09
The dubious element of this whole thing, obviously, is that, right?
34:15
So she either doesn't have her firearm in her hand enough to know what it feels
34:19
like, or she don't have her taser in her hand enough to know what it feels like.
34:23
And this, folks, is a 26-year veteran.
34:28
26-year veteran of the police force.
34:33
So good on her for using the levels of escalation, right?
34:37
Non-lethal, or thinking she was using the non-lethal, but she didn't.
34:43
Body camera footage showed that She was even yelling taser, taser,
34:47
taser before she pulled the, pulled the daggum trigger, man.
34:51
So now her firearm was out in front of her face that she should be able to clearly
34:57
see that it was not a bright yellow thing in her hand, but a,
35:03
but a, but a black firearm.
35:06
Yeah. And then she says, Oh, I grabbed the wrong gun. Oh.
35:11
Deontay Wright was unarmed. He did resist and he created a perceived threat.
35:15
I don't, yeah, she wasn't wrong in being threatened for him resisting and all that kind of stuff.
35:22
And it was an outstanding warrant, which I don't know for what,
35:25
but this happened right in the midst of all the George Floyd stuff,
35:30
which we've talked about on here a little bit.
35:33
So the outcome of that, she was convicted of first and second degree manslaughter
35:38
and sentenced to two years. She did resign, and the city settled with Dante
35:44
Wright's family for a lot of money.
35:47
And the case prompted Minnesota to mandate stricter taser training.
35:53
Now, I think mandating stricter firearms training versus stricter taser training, I mean, both for sure.
36:01
But again, if you wrongfully shoot somebody with a taser, you know,
36:06
it just sucks for them a little bit. They're not dead.
36:10
The shooting occurred near Minneapolis, and that's where the Derek Chauvin trial
36:16
was going on, and all that was sparking a bunch of racial protests.
36:21
So then the public scrutiny there was just out of control, because it seemed
36:29
like for a little while there, there was just one after the other getting highlighted
36:32
on the news, arguably by design.
36:35
But so Dante Wright's family wanted to argue that it was a racially motivated stop and all that stuff.
36:40
But I mean, if you got warrants and you're riding around to expire tags, I mean, come on, man.
36:47
That doesn't excuse that. That's not a death sentence, however.
36:51
Standards were at play here? What relevant standards were at play?
36:56
Well, firearms handling. Now, this was all point blank range, right?
37:01
But she clearly didn't make the distinction between a lethal firearm and a frigging taser.
37:09
And that's just a, that's a blatant. And look, whatever the training program
37:15
is, the officer has responsibility here.
37:20
And i tell this to my students all the time look you come
37:23
out here and give me money if you don't implement what i teach you
37:26
you know you're just giving me money you you have to
37:29
implement the things that you learn that you're
37:32
taught use a
37:35
deadly fort yeah she she thought she
37:38
was doing the right thing she thought she was which
37:41
is a bigger problem so this problem here wasn't malice
37:45
it was incompetence outright and then
37:48
under stress right she clearly was so overwhelmed with
37:52
events she was so overwhelmed with events
37:55
she weren't wasn't able to manage her stress she
37:59
wasn't able to act to to see that i
38:02
don't have a big yellow thing in my
38:04
hand i she was yelling taser so she
38:08
clearly goes through emotions right when she's in training her once a year training
38:12
for taser using her taser taser taser taser and then pop and then popped a dude
38:20
so she either doesn't have enough training over 26 years or she doesn't pay
38:26
attention one or the other.
38:31
How often officers train with their tasers like I can't imagine it's that much because,
38:39
they only train with a their their lethal firearm most
38:42
of them are just once a year unless you go out by yourself
38:45
you know on your own so I wonder
38:48
if if it's even worse with tasers
38:51
I wonder huh so then stress management um we talked about that and then just
38:58
misjudgment right escalation like i said i thought she was kind of doing the
39:02
right thing she just thought she was she thought she was too she just wasn't
39:07
but i i don't know could could that have,
39:11
what would have happened what if the guy would have just ran away and she didn't blast him,
39:17
there this one's this one's a hard one because she just straight up grabbed
39:21
the wrong gun and just didn't realize it and that is unexcusable unexcusable
39:26
all right that's enough of that so Let's look at some common threads across
39:32
each of these instances we just talked about.
39:35
One of the common themes is excessive or misjudged force. The other two cases
39:40
were excessive force for sure.
39:42
Excessive rounds fired into the targets.
39:45
And then this last one was just straight up misjudgment. But they were all disproportionate.
39:53
And they all lead to some kind of training failure.
39:59
Be it mechanical skills of shooting or just situational awareness and decision-making under stress.
40:07
So some of the things that these agencies need to think about is high-stress
40:13
firearms handling, not just these qualifications that they do, but...
40:21
High stress. You can't replicate somebody trying to kill you,
40:24
but UTMs hurt pretty good.
40:27
You know, UTM rounds or simunition rounds, they hurt pretty good, right?
40:31
They hurt enough that you should be getting the lesson there.
40:36
You should be intimate. As a police officer, you should be absolutely intimate with your firearm.
40:45
You should be absolutely intimate with your firearm.
40:48
And we but there's no excuse for
40:51
reaching for your taser and coming out with
40:53
your glock and not knowing it immediately no excuse
40:57
and then and then some
40:59
of the small unit tactics uh team SOP development because when you got six dudes
41:04
and they all six think they that they're the main character there's no telling
41:08
what's going to happen somebody's got to be in charge somebody's got to take
41:11
charge and when you when you build battle drills and you build SOPs you know
41:17
you can't SOP everything.
41:19
You got to let situations develop. However, that's the foundation.
41:24
The SOPs and the battle drills are the foundation of, of what you do from there.
41:29
Do you know what I'm saying?
41:31
And these, man, it just, it kills me with these, these police like certifications
41:38
and, and, and then the, the, excuse me, requalification.
41:42
I've seen guys with resumes, you know, they got 30-odd certifications on their
41:47
resume for, you know, freaking taser this and beanbag that and all these things, man.
41:56
All these things. They get all these certifications and all they do is just check the block.
42:02
You go take a couple hours of training and you never get another piece of training
42:07
on it. It's just to check the block.
42:10
Residual risk, bystanders, friendly fire.
42:14
Each one of these incidents put someone else in danger. Each one did.
42:22
One it was shooting through apartment walls into other apartments with the with
42:30
the the dude in the car it was like six officers surrounding the car shooting
42:37
at each other shooting toward each other,
42:42
and then with this last one um with the mistaken identity on the firearm versus
42:47
taser that was in a public space, man.
42:49
She didn't realize she had a lethal killing machine in her hand.
42:55
Man, that's just so bizarre. So you could talk about all kinds of training to address those things.
43:04
And then in context of like systemic problems, right?
43:08
All of those alleged some kind of racial bias because all the victims there were black.
43:13
Not all the cops were black or white. There was a mix in each of those incidents.
43:21
But like the Vallejo Police Department, that kind of, they have an inordinate
43:26
amount of officer-involved shooting.
43:28
So that kind of implies that there's a culture around there of,
43:31
you know, I can see them being like, oh, yeah, we take it to the bad guy.
43:35
I can see them thinking that way. But that's not always right,
43:39
man. It's not always right.
43:40
Because even bad guys have constitutional rights. so
43:45
it's hard to train away
43:48
some of these deeper deep-rooted systemic
43:52
cultural issues you can legislate it away yeah it's illegal to to uh to be biased
44:04
on a on on the base of race or whatever,
44:09
but you don't know a person's heart.
44:12
So if you've got a racist cop on your department and he's going around shooting
44:15
black guys, if he's got like three or four officer-involved shootings in the
44:20
past two years, hey guy, dial it back a little bit.
44:24
You can't train away somebody's character flaws unless they want to change.
44:34
So the role of training is critical. it's critical
44:37
it's critical and the cops they need more
44:40
focused training in fight with firearms that's that's
44:43
mechanical skill that's muzzle discipline
44:48
that's moving around with a gun that's target discrimination even weapon differentiation
44:55
man like you gotta know now most most agencies you have your your taser on one
45:00
side and your firearm on the other Or, you know,
45:04
stress management and decision-making under stress.
45:08
That stuff can be trained. De-escalation can be trained. Yeah, it can be trained.
45:16
Based training is good. You still need a high level of skill.
45:21
Your skill trumps tactics. I said that and I will continue to say it. Skill trumps tactics.
45:28
But unless you do these scenario based training drills, I think what the scenarios
45:34
do is they give you a little Rolodex of, okay, this went this way,
45:38
this worked, or this didn't.
45:41
So let's reset and do it again. I think you're just building a little database
45:45
because most people don't know how they're going to react in a situation until it happens.
45:52
But if you've had a chance to run through a similar situation,
45:56
you know, under time, under stress,
45:58
that'll start to get in there and build your little neural pathways and all
46:01
those things to give you sort of a, okay, directions to go while I'm,
46:08
you know, I still need to solve this on the go, but I'm not having to solve
46:11
it from scratch. I have a little, have a little bit.
46:13
The more scenarios you can build in, now you can't replicate everything,
46:17
but you can take scenarios that have happened before and replicate those.
46:24
There's a channel on YouTube called Active Self-Protection, ASP,
46:28
and they have videos of shootings from all over the world, man.
46:32
And in one of my classes, I do, I take about four or five videos that happen
46:37
of shootings that happen in and around the Atlanta area.
46:41
And then I recreate those scenarios for my students. I see how they, how they react to them.
46:47
And it's a very, it's, it's a very effective way to build scenarios because
46:54
it's based off literal, real things that have happened.
46:57
And it gives them an opportunity to, you know, give it a go and fail and then give it a go again.
47:06
And then to start to build up their, their decision-making process on under stress.
47:11
It's, it's very good. It's very good that we do that.
47:16
You just can't, you just, it's impossible to emphasize how important training
47:21
is and then just how little of it that they get.
47:27
Minnesota ended up, their TASER training, they upped their TASER training mandate,
47:33
and that obviously was a net gain.
47:38
The more training you do on a thing, obviously, the more efficient you're going
47:42
to be with it, and the less errors were reported statewide on that because of that incident.
47:47
In departments, again, I talked about semi-munitions or UTM,
47:52
they report fewer bystander injuries because that's the thing they train to think about.
48:00
What are some limitations on training? Training cannot fully mitigate everything,
48:06
right? Like in the Breonna Taylor case, it's arguable that that was a bad warrant, right?
48:13
That the intel that got that warrant approved was probably inadequate.
48:19
So training, firearms training alone can't fix that.
48:23
That's the intel guys doing their job correctly, intel analysts.
48:27
And the cops working the confidential informants who are giving them information
48:33
and trying to ascertain whether it's legit or not.
48:37
All right, that's a whole different training, right? That's a whole different
48:40
part of knowing your job.
48:44
And then like department culture. Now, good training leads to confidence.
48:53
And confidence, I think, helps mitigate any of this.
48:58
These, these reactions, these aggressive reactions, I think the more,
49:04
now, not just confidence, but skill that confidence based in your skill,
49:09
not just bravado, not just, you know,
49:12
testosterone and frigging monster confidence.
49:16
I mean, like literal confidence in your skill to help you be more,
49:20
more judicious with that skill.
49:23
But these departments that have a culture of violating rights, for instance.
49:30
You can't train that away necessarily. That's things that have to be talked
49:35
about philosophically.
49:36
That's leadership setting the tone and holding people accountable if they are overly aggressive.
49:43
Now, I don't mind a bad guy getting scuffed up. They need to have some consequence
49:49
when they're out there doing savagery.
49:51
But almost nothing short of murder justifies murder, right?
49:58
Yeah, I don't mind a bad guy getting the boots put to him if he's a legitimate bad guy.
50:05
But again, my department culture might be a little looser than someone else's.
50:09
But all my guys are going to be highly trained and they're not going to accidentally shoot somebody.
50:15
FBI notes that only 40% of agencies consistently report use of force data.
50:24
Even have to report use of force incidents, you know, on a, on a larger scale,
50:30
well, whatever, then, then nobody's going to call you out on it.
50:34
Then it's just going to be this once in a blue moon where something shows up
50:38
on, you know, on TikTok or something.
50:40
And then you, you fight through that, you mitigate it, you settle with a family.
50:45
So with the $12 million settled with Breonna Taylor's family,
50:48
how much of that could have went to some training and mitigated that whole incident.
50:53
Now, here's one that I'm going to elaborate on a little bit.
50:59
Over-reliance on militarized training may also exacerbate escalation of force.
51:06
Now, what are you calling militarized training?
51:09
I tell you this, shooting a gun, and I've said this on other podcasts,
51:15
Once the decision to pull the trigger has been made,
51:19
shooting is functionally the same, whether it's combat, whether it's self-defense,
51:28
whether it's a police incident, or whether it's a competition out on the range on the weekend.
51:36
The skill is the skill. So to call it militarized training is just a fluff. That's a fluff word.
51:46
The skill is the skill rules of engagement are rules of engagement.
51:51
Cops have different ones than different ones than soldiers most of the time.
51:57
So, so militarized training is a little, that's a little misnomer.
52:01
It's not really, it's not really militarized training to be proficient with your firearm.
52:07
Your cops are armed professionals. They carry guns all day, every day. And,
52:13
if you want to call it militarized training, what does that mean?
52:18
And that assumes that soldiers are able just to go march through a town and just murder everybody.
52:25
And that just ain't the case, folks.
52:27
In SF, you know, you've got to account for every single round.
52:31
You know, just go get to murder civilians. And believe me, if you killed a civilian,
52:34
every gunfight gets a, what is it, 15-6 investigation? Is that what it's called?
52:41
Every gunfight gets an investigation, folks. just like with the cops.
52:45
So I would get away from thinking of militarized training as a thing.
52:51
It's not militarized training at all.
52:53
Small unit tactics is small unit tactics. You apply whatever tactic goes to
52:58
whatever your situation is.
53:00
Now I'll give you an example of militarized training that went south is Ruby Ridge.
53:06
Yeah, you had cops cruising around in the wood line like they were snipers,
53:11
sniper observer teams, and then they ended up smoking Randy Weaver's wife by
53:17
accident or on purpose. Either way, unacceptable.
53:22
All right, so what can we do? As police, what can we do?
53:27
We can have mandates for more frequent training.
53:35
You know as opposed to doing a qual once a year or twice a year you could do it quarterly.
53:42
Or you could let your qual be the check the box and then just actually do real
53:47
training and then just do your qual once a year you know whatever the qual don't
53:51
mean anything that's just some way to get numbers to say okay you're good to
53:56
go even though it's it's it's poor standards.
54:01
So enhanced training protocols, just that's it, man.
54:04
You do more scenario-based training, do more skill drill training,
54:10
squeeze in de-escalation in there, right?
54:15
Have, have non-threats in your scenario.
54:19
And then what, what else? Enhanced training, team-based drills, Right.
54:23
Small unit tactics have training days where you have rando patrol officers come
54:32
together and work on, you know, sort of SOPs.
54:36
And when I say SOP, I mean agency wide. Right.
54:39
And, you know, let your SWAT team sort of set the pace for that and then have
54:43
patrol cops come and learn these these SOPs and work on their skills.
54:49
Work out how you're going to have a chain of command Work out how your chain
54:53
of command is going to work In any given situation Work on succinct Short And
55:01
effective communication.
55:06
All right. Minimal talking. Say what needs to be said to who it needs to be said to.
55:11
All right. Communication. Small unit tactics and good communication. And then policy, right?
55:17
Never mind with increased training standards, but more focused policies when it comes to no knock.
55:25
Again, I don't agree with no knock warrants, folks.
55:28
Yeah, you can take me up on that. You can give me a call.
55:31
I don't think in America we should be doing no knock warrants. you
55:35
know traffic stop escalations we've all
55:37
seen the videos where cop walks up
55:40
on a on the to the driver door you know
55:44
bad guy pulls a gun that hey that's that's
55:47
a hairy situation i get it the only way to defeat that situation is skill build
55:53
your skill that will build your confidence so that you already have in your
55:59
mind what you're going to do should that bad thing happen And then policy for, you know,
56:05
reporting the use of force reporting.
56:08
And that's higher level stuff. Yeah. I think the police should be held accountable at every level.
56:15
I think police should wear body cameras every time, all the time.
56:20
I think that would only work serve to help the police so as to get rid of any ambiguity.
56:26
But what that does, that means the police has to be on P's and Q's.
56:31
All right. So now you just have to be a more professional officer and folks,
56:36
there ain't nothing wrong with that.
56:38
All right, man, that was kind of a long rant there, but I'm going to wrap this
56:43
up. I'm going to wrap it up.
56:45
So we talked about Brianna Taylor, that incident.
56:49
We talked about Willie McCoy and then we talked about Dante Wright and these all had their own.
56:56
And I picked, I specifically picked these incidents, folks, because they were all dubious incidents.
57:02
There's plenty of legitimate officer-involved shootings out there.
57:06
Don't get me wrong, I'm not just crapping on the police, but these are ones
57:11
that could have been prevented.
57:12
And any time life can be preserved, it needs to be preserved.
57:17
Each of these incidents illustrated deficiencies with firearms handling,
57:23
lethal force decision-making, escalation or de-escalation, and situational awareness,
57:31
being acutely aware of what's going on around you.
57:36
Situations, there was a good opportunity for innocent bystanders to be injured or fratricide.
57:43
So, you know, I always lean on training.
57:48
I always lean on training because I do it for a living. Yeah,
57:51
but I've seen the effects of excellent training versus poor training.
57:56
So get the agencies need to start thinking about more focused training, emphasizing stress,
58:03
emphasizing decision-making on the move, becoming more intimate with their firearms
58:09
and their tools, the tools of the trade, right?
58:12
Their taser and their firearm and their freaking baton and their pepper spray
58:16
and all that stuff in their AR-15.
58:20
All right, the two ones that are lethal there, your pistol and your AR,
58:23
you should be an absolute expert with those firearms without question,
58:30
because you're walking around not only with lethal force on your hip or in your
58:36
car and the ability to use it at any time,
58:39
but then in many cases, you have the force of law that allows you to get away
58:47
with something that a civilian wouldn't get away with when it comes to negligence.
58:53
All right. So that's unacceptable to me.
58:56
So training, training, training, training, training, training, training, training.
59:01
Skill trumps tactics. Have the skill first. Build the SOPs to help navigate the tactics.
59:08
Work under stress in scenario-based situations.
59:13
And then again, the training alone, right? We're talking about agency,
59:17
the culture of an agency. Leadership is responsible here, folks.
59:21
Leadership is responsible to set the tone,
59:25
to set the tone, to set the tone of excellence or to set the tone of complacency
59:31
or to set the tone of max violence or to set the tone of soft on crime.
59:37
All of those things are out there. The leadership is who's responsible for that.
59:42
You should have policies that hold officers accountable, that they're fair,
59:47
but hold officers accountable.
59:49
Don't let officers slide with negligence.
59:53
Don't let officers slide with negligence. Don't let your culture support underlying
1:00:02
racism or underlying biases.
1:00:05
Don't do it. Don't let your department do that. Call it out.
1:00:11
It's all about individual accountability. And for cops, it's all about agency
1:00:14
accountability. Be a professional. Be a professional.
1:00:19
All right, folks. I know that may have seemed like a rant.
1:00:23
Probably was a little bit. But in my later years here, I'm finding that poor
1:00:29
training is not only like, it's getting to the point that it makes me angry.
1:00:33
It's getting to the point that the excuses wear thin, folks.
1:00:39
I understand there's a difference between reasons and excuses,
1:00:43
but if you're an armed professional, you have no excuses.
1:00:47
You should thrive to be the best out there.
1:00:53
You should thrive to be the best shooter in your squad, in your element,
1:01:00
in your section, whatever it is, on your team.
1:01:05
You should challenge others to be the best.
1:01:09
Because you have a responsibility to the general public.
1:01:13
The job of law enforcement, in my opinion, is to protect individual rights.
1:01:21
Now, obviously, the job of law enforcement is to solve crime.
1:01:26
I don't know how much prevent crime it does, but it's definitely meant to solve crime.
1:01:31
But in my opinion, a part of that is protecting individual rights,
1:01:36
not violating them, Not being so shit scared when you approach a vehicle that
1:01:41
when the guy moves, you blast him.
1:01:44
All right. You police are meant to be held to a higher standard.
1:01:50
Is that unfair? If you think it is, give me a call. If you think it is, give me a call.
1:01:57
Edgar Mills at OspreyshootingSolutions.com. The police are meant to be held
1:02:02
to a higher standard. You carry lethality on your hip.
1:02:06
So do I. I'm a concealed carrier. I carry lethality with me every day.
1:02:10
I wouldn't be able to get away with some of the stuff that cops get away with, right?
1:02:15
Well, the authority, authority, whatever about authority. I train.
1:02:20
I train to be precise. I train to be fast, and I train to be precise.
1:02:26
And that's not a far leap, folks. That is not a big stretch for police to get
1:02:31
the training they need to be at the skill level they need to be at.
1:02:35
But like I said, folks, thanks for listening to this episode.
1:02:38
I'm not doing this just to bash on cops. I'm doing this to set up.
1:02:42
It's not a series, but I'm going to have some law enforcement guys coming on pretty soon.
1:02:48
And I'm excited about that because I really want to see what they have to say.
1:02:56
And I thank you guys for listening. I appreciate it.
1:03:01
Topics you'd like to hear about, or you think that I should research and get
1:03:05
on and pontificate on, you know, let me know, please hit me up.
1:03:09
We can go to thejunetopodcast.com or hit me at edgarmills.ospreyshootingsolutions.com for your suggestions.
1:03:17
If you have any blog entries, if you want to write a paper on a topic that you're
1:03:22
passionate about, just make sure it's fairly well edited that,
1:03:27
you know, it's at, you know, a ninth grade level or so.
1:03:32
Send that in to me and I'll put it up on the website, on the blog.
1:03:36
If you want to be a guest on the podcast or know someone who's interesting that
1:03:43
you would like to get on the podcast, hit me up.
1:03:47
I'm happy to entertain interesting humans.
1:03:52
And what else? We got some stuff. We We've got Libertarian Range Day coming
1:03:55
up this Saturday, so please jump in that. I'm sure there's more seats available.
1:03:59
So we're going to shoot for, you know, much of the day.
1:04:03
And then we're going to head over to Andy's house, who's a Libertarian member, party member.
1:04:08
And we're going to head over there and have some hot dogs and hamburgers and
1:04:12
a couple of cold drinks and talk about life, love and politics and whatnot.
1:04:18
The following weekend is the Everyday Carry course. That is full,
1:04:23
but I've got a standby list going.
1:04:26
So if someone drops from that, activate the standby list.
1:04:33
Unfortunately, usually one or two people cancel without letting me know.
1:04:37
And it's just no call, no show.
1:04:39
And that's tragic. That's unprofessional that people do that.
1:04:41
But anyway, I do have a standby list for that.
1:04:45
Let's see. And then I think we have at the end of the month a wildcard day.
1:04:52
And that's just a series of skill drills and then we do the blackjack 33 challenge
1:04:58
which is a six-stage drill for score to try to earn a coin that no one has yet by the way,
1:05:07
and as far as the junto podcast i don't think i'm gonna go ahead and share with
1:05:14
you i got a friend who's going to be on the podcast with me i believe the next
1:05:18
episode we're going to record this weekend.
1:05:21
And he is a musician from Australia and he's a world traveler and he's just
1:05:26
a generally interesting dude.
1:05:28
So I'm going to have him on to kind of talk about his life and music and things like that.
1:05:33
So stay tuned and, and, and listen out for some, for some good stuff.
1:05:39
I appreciate you guys. I love you guys. We are at 5,000 listeners now.
1:05:44
I'm stoked about that. Let's try to get that to 10,000.
1:05:47
Please like, follow, share, and all the things on all the platforms.
1:05:54
And you guys take care. Stay safe. I love you guys.
1:05:59
Music.