Reality Based Scenario Ideas

[Guest]

I have been tasked to come up with four or five realistic scenarios for use in our in-service training program. I have a couple of rough ideas, but I would like some suggestions and to hear about any successful scenarios you folks have been through.

The two most common problems we encounter here are alcohol-related things such as drunk and disorderly, DUI, drunken disputes, etc. and domestic violence. Usually alcohol is involved in the domestic situations as well.

One of the scenario ideas I have goes something like this:

Solo officer gets called to the bar because a drunken patron is getting loud and obnoxious. The officer arrives and starts to deal with the drunk, but then the bartender starts to interfere and becomes the problem.

Since I want one of the scenarios to involve the use of deadly force the second idea I have is:

Solo officer gets called to a domestic dispute. No violence has occurred, just arguing. While the officer is interviewing the husband, the husband starts to voice suicidal thoughts and pulls a handgun from his waistband and keeps the gun alongside his leg; the husband does not point the gun at anyone at this point. This scenario can take several directions depending upon the actions of the officer, but eventually the husband will shoot at the officer causing the officer to respond with deadly force. The scenario will ideally end in one of two ways: if after the shooting the officer retreats outside the house it now becomes a barricaded suspect situation and SRT is called out, or the officer remains behind cover and waits for a back-up officer to arrive then together they approach and handcuff the wounded husband. If the officer ever breaks cover before his back-up arrives the wounded husband will shoot at the officer again.

If anyone is uncomfortable with posting scenarios on this public forum, feel free to PM me. Thanks in advance.

[1stWatch]

What About This One

A guy I used to work with worked this call:
Officer responded to minor disturbance call at an apartment complex. The only information given to him was that somebody was slamming the door too loudly at the apartment above where the complainant lived and it was annoying. The officer responded to the call with no cover. When he arrived he found the door in question open. He got out to approach the door and two large individuals ran up to him suddenly from behind the stairwell. One had a large bruise on his face and another had a tooth that was freshly knocked out. They started yelling something unintelligible and pointed up to the apartment. The officer noticed a man in the doorway had a knife to a woman's throat. There was also a big trail of blood oozing from her ear where he had ripped her earring out. The man ordered the officer to go away or he would slit the woman's throat. The two people at the bottom of the stairs started speaking more intelligibly and told the officer the man just got out of prison for family violence aggravated assault and had returned to kill his wife. Their injuries also came from him while they were trying to fight him off, which was remarkable since they were larger than he was. The officer called for cover on his radio, but then had to start negotiating with the man since he got more angry and still had the knife in hand. The man ended up moving the knife aside long enough for the woman to hit is groin and then run downstairs. He dropped the knife when she hit his groin. Once she was downstairs the officer ran up the stairs and tackled the man against the doorway and handcuffed him.

The factors he considered in this call were:
* The nature of the initial call itself
* Preliminary visual investigation
* Solo interaction with a hostile combative
* Positioning and footwork in relation to others and to the physical environment
* Recognizing immediate threats
* Hands on application with disarmed hostile combative

[N. A. Corbier]

A rather cliched one that works to this day:

Officer dispatched to a welfare check call. Officer finds unlocked door, downed person in plain sight. Downed person is unresponsive (This person is dead). Upon entry, it is obvious that the downed person is dead of natural causes. (Diabetic in terminal insulin shock, whatever.)

The trick is that someone was burglarizing the place before you showed up, and they're now holed up in a closet, etc. This will ensure that officers are performing the protective sweep even on "cold" calls and that they are aware of their surroundings during an extreme stressor (presence of dead body). If you have civilian CSI personnel, this will see how "safe" they are.

[aka Bull]

To me the best reality scenario training comes from the very incidents your officers have faced. Go back through the department reports for a year and pick out some of the incidents to use.

It's fine to have some "never before" or "seldom occurred" scenarios to test the thinking skills of an officer, but I prefer to see how well they handle those calls that have actually been dealt with by officers. It gives officers not exposed to these calls an idea of what they may face and at the same time can give veteran officers time to consider different ways of handling such calls.

We do this regularly in our monthly training block. It's definitely aiding our rookie officers.

[Charger]

...Solo officer gets called to the bar because a drunken patron is getting loud and obnoxious. The officer arrives and starts to deal with the drunk, but then the bartender starts to interfere and becomes the problem...

That brings back memories... The PD I used to do a lot of my training through had a very similar sim-con training scenario.. Except that the bartender didn't just become a problem, he drew a gun from under the counter when the Ofc.'s back was turned...

Bull hit the nail on the head though... The best way to come up with sim-con scenarios is to go through actual calls your people have responded to, for the very reasons he mentioned.. And then just throw a couple of 'extreme' ones into the mix for good measure..

[Guest]

Bull and Bridegate, I couldn't agree with you more about using real-life incidents as training scenarios.

However, the tiny island I work on is pretty much Sleepy Hollow! Not much happens here, which is why training is so very important to us. In the 60+ years the U.S. Army has had a presence on Kwajalein there has never been a single officer-involved-shooting, so we have no real-life incidents to base many of these scenarios on. That is why I am asking for ideas.

The bartender scenario really did happen to one of our officers a few months ago.

A few other ideas I have are a burglar alarm response that is an actual burglary and the suspects are still inside; a rape call where the suspect is gone but the officers have to find, collect, and preserve evidence as well as take care of the victim; a workplace violence incident where a fired employee physically attacks his former boss in the presence of the officer, but no weapons are involved.

I like Nathan's dead body/burglary idea; I am going to work that one in. Thanks to everybody who responded.

[Bill Warnock]

Histfan71.
In your training as Nathan and others have suggested, you need not dream up scenarios there are a plethora of real life situations that will serve your cause better. Examples that come to mind are those instances where law enforcement or security officers committing one or more of the Ten Deadly Sins has been grievously injured or killed. Worse yet, innocent lives have or could be placed at risk by the violations.
When I was in the sheriff’s academy in 1970, we had a field problem and my solution was failure to pay heed to the 21-foot rule as taught in the Air Police Academy in 1968. The guest instructor belittled the 21-foot rule stating it was just a myth dreamed up by some crazy cop somewhere in a western state. Two weeks to the day of our field problem the guest instructor was knifed to death while trying to draw his service weapon.
A newly trained Air Force dog handler responded to a request to use the dog in a warehouse break-in.
Walking down one of the aisles, the dog stopped sat and looked up at the ceiling. The team walked down the aisle three times and the dog displayed the same behavior. The young man excoriated his dog. A supervisor and a former K-9 handler told the airman his dog was alerting to a person or persons hiding above the ceiling tiles. In a loud voice the supervisor called for a 20-foot stepladder, so the dog could climb to the ceiling. A panic stricken voice pleaded not to send the dog up, he would come down the same way he went up, a catwalk. The burglar said his partner in the ceiling had fainted. A very important lesson learned - learn what your dog is trying to explain through its actions. Two people were taken into custody and appeared before a federal Magistrate the next day.
I believe things like that would serve you well.
Enjoy the day,
Bill

[N. A. Corbier]

Its not scenerio based, but that's a good section for a training block. Introduce and reenforce K9 interaction! When the handler says, "Stop for the dog," that means you stop too.

I watched a police K9 lock on a rookie police officer before being told "NO" really loudly by all of us. The dog was "middle aged" for a K9, and understood he was locked on the wrong target, so he diverted to the next available target. Thankfully, he was in search mode, not in "run the bad guy down and latch on" mode.

[ACP01]

An idea for the "domestic possible deadly force" is from a real situation.

Officer called in on domestic, male answers door obiously intoxicated, female in background crying with torn blouse bleeding from the nose.

When officer states noise complaint recieved male says nothing going on here and starts to close door. Officer puts hand up to door asks woman if she is ok. She just starts crying more and shaking.

Male again says nothing going on and tells officer to get the h3ll outta here.
Officer says let the lady answer, male takes swing at officer. Officer counters and starts to cuff male. Woman picks up object and starts to beat officer for "hurting her husband."

Even after being hit repeatedly about the head and shoulders officer was able to unholster weapon and shoot woman.

What did the officer do wrong?
What did he do right?

[Bill Warnock]

An idea for the "domestic possible deadly force" is from a real situation.

Officer called in on domestic, male answers door obiously intoxicated, female in background crying with torn blouse bleeding from the nose.

When officer states noise complaint recieved male says nothing going on here and starts to close door. Officer puts hand up to door asks woman if she is ok. She just starts crying more and shaking.

Male again says nothing going on and tells officer to get the h3ll outta here.
Officer says let the lady answer, male takes swing at officer. Officer counters and starts to cuff male. Woman picks up object and starts to beat officer for "hurting her husband."

Even after being hit repeatedly about the head and shoulders officer was able to unholster weapon and shoot woman.

What did the officer do wrong?
What did he do right?

ACP01.
An event like that happened to two members of our department. There were two officers responding to a "domestic disturbance" call. Pulling the man off the battered and nearly naked woman one proceeded to cuff the man and suddenly the woman charged the officer with a frying pan. The second officer disarmed the woman and cuffed her.
The husband was charged to domestic battery and the wife was charged with attempted batter of a law enforcement officer. The responding officers transported the man and we transported the woman to county jail.
The Domestic Relations county court judge, remanded them to the care of social services. Our county psychologist conducted a debriefing and said it was a natural instinct for the woman to defend her husband. A lesson learned!
In this instant cited case, the officer made one mistake by not leaving the scene and not calling for backup; however, there is an important caveat, the officer used correct judgment if he suspected the woman was going to sustain further injury and intervened. Judgments and actions must be made in split seconds and the outcomes are not always clear-cut or peacefully concluded. He was correct in defending himself by employing deadly force when attacked.
Enjoy the day,
Bill

[bigdog]

Rule #1 if you think it could be a domestic call for backup. More officers are killed at domestic violence calls than anyother call they go to. When the wife or husband sees the other going to jail its not uncommon for the husband/wife to attack the officer. Other than that I think he did everything right. I agree with ACP01 if the officer felt the suspect was going to cause more injury to the woman he was right to intervene.

[N. A. Corbier]

Rapid intervention in domestic violence situations is dangerous, but sometimes necessary. I've had to play this game before. Unfortunately, the only way you can remain safe - alone - when having to rapidly intervene in a knock-down drag out domestic is... to treat it like any other fight in progress.

1. Attack both targets from the side. Stack them. Don't get inbetween the two, now they both are able to attack you! And they will.

2. Both parties get cuffed to protect themselves and others. This is where articulation comes into play. "They were both fighting each other, and they didn't stop upon my arrival. I handcuffed them both to protect them from taking advantage of each other's helplessness."

3. Be realisitic about the situation. If the combatants aren't going to cause each other harm that requires a trip to the hospital by the time backup shows up, stay out of it.

4. Hose em. Use the distraction of OC to neutralize both parties.

and

5. There are always two sides to a fight. Neutralize both sides. You're not there to investigate a crime of domestic violence. You're there to protect both persons from each other. Hook em up for domestic disorderly (breach of peace) if you need a criminal reason to.

[Mall Director]

I can honestly say this is an area I need to include more detail in on new hire training, and training period. We train so mauch as it is, but we always need more training, and more detailed training! The trick is never to foget that these are excellent training areas to cover, no matter what sector we are in!

[born_2_code]

yes, i truly agree. in life you should never think that you have learnt everything. crime is always evolving, to the antagonist must keep up with the pace. At Jidem Security, it's the same thing.