Police Officers and Active Shooters

Can your traffic vest be more important than your bulletproof vest during an active shooter?

During an active shooter training scenario (See end of article for the scenario) one point became pretty clear. Cops are probably going to shoot cops. During our realistic scenario almost everyone shot another uniformed officer.

The fact is cops are ramped up and speed to shoot instinctively becomes the most important issue for them. To increase speed, shortcuts are made by officers and one is obviously target identification.

Part of the problem comes from the traditional methods of training. We drill officers to watch the hands and then identify bad guys during scenarios by putting weapons in their hands. We have neglected to teach looking at the whole person first. This causes friendly fire incidents when speed is paramount and all the good guys have weapons in their hands too.

Beliefs vs. Reality

During training we take for granted that we will identify the other police officers because:

Belief: They are wearing uniforms
Reality: In practice uniforms didn’t do much. They are a plain color without immediately apparent police identification on the back or sides. The front isn’t much better. The shiny badge and buttons are small details and are not immediate apparent in your peripheral vision or upon a quick glance. The polo shirt or BDU shirt uniforms were more effective during scenarios because they had “POLICE” in big type on the front and back.

Belief: Other officers are our friends; we know what they look like.
Reality: During active shooters every cop in town drops what they are doing and rushes to the scene. That will include detectives, undercovers, off-duty officers, and officers from other agencies.

If the active shooter happens in a school or mall there will also be SROs or security officers involved. When is the last time you did anything with the local SRO? Most young patrol officers don’t recognize any of them.

Belief: We are moving as a group and not getting separated.
Reality: Cops will be entering the building from different locations and at different times. There will be multiple officers separately searching for the shooter.

Belief: Officers will coordinate their locations, efforts, and intentions by radio, yelling to each other, and using hand signals.
Reality: With fire alarms going off, the physiological effect of auditory exclusion, gunfire, etc. the ability to communicate will be severely hampered. Radio communications can be questionable because there is too much information pouring into a single channel.

The fog of war will be in full effect during this incident so we need to plan for it.

Solution: Use a traffic vest

A simple solution for these problems appears to be wearing your traffic vest when you go in. It is instantly recognizable from all angles.

Additionally, many officers have already done training repetitions not shooting officers wearing traffic vests during Force on Force training because the instructors wear them to identify themselves as off limits. Whether officers realized it or not they were getting training repetitions of not shooting people wearing traffic vests. (See article by Betsy Brantner Smith about this topic.)

The obvious disadvantage for wearing a traffic vest is that officers are more identifiable for the suspect. But the suspect is shooting everything that moves anyway. Looking like a walking traffic cone may actually surprise him and give an officer the half second he or she needs to get shots on target before the suspect reacts.

Update: A new product called DSM safety banners is another solution to this issue. Check out Frank Borelli’s review of them or go to DSM’s website. (Hat tip to Bill Lewis of Tactical Debriefs)

Final Thoughts

I think in the initial phase of an active shooter, the benefits of wearing the traffic vest outweigh the negatives. When things stabilize because the shooter has stopped, is contained, and officers on scene have begun coordinating their efforts effectively you can lose the vest. But in the beginning, it appears as important as your bulletproof vest so wear them both.

source