Up until a few years ago, the FBI broke down police ambush killing category of its Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) statistics into two categories: entrapment/premeditated and unprovoked attacks. Now, the LEOKA ambush numbers are strictly under the entrapment/premeditation category. Unprovoked attacks, which I always labeled as impromptu ambush, are a separate number. In my training I continue to combine the two numbers to make them consistent as part of a long timeline analysis.
Entrapment/premeditated ambush attacks
Entrapment/premeditated ambush attacks are the most difficult to defend against. Let’s face it, if our adversary is organized, a little planning will probably get them one or more kills before responding officers realize the nature of the threat and change response tactics. The bad guys know we tend to respond one at a time as part of a staggered response, as we respond from the four compass points. To counter a well-planned premeditated ambush, or worse yet, one involving multiple shooters, a strong field leader will have to take command by radio and physical presence and STOP more officers from stumbling into the kill zone. With officers down in the kill zone the urge for arriving officers to attempt a rescue will be overwhelming.
Note that I use the term kill zone to describe an ambush attack. When ICS/NIMS became mandatory training, firefighters insisted we drop kill zone in favor of the term hot zone. I suggest we use hot zone for most critical incidents but resurrect the term kill zone for a man-made attack, like an ambush or active shooter event. The threat from a criminal actor is even greater than a hazmat spill, for example. A criminal shooter can change the zone based on our response, chemicals or fire can’t.
Unprovoked ambush attacks
Though it varies by the year, unprovoked attacks generally outnumber premeditated ambushes. One of the most common methods for an unprovoked attack is what happened to a young officer friend recently.
This officer, a hard-charging street cop with military combat experience, became involved in a foot pursuit one dark night on the bad side of his notoriously tough jurisdiction. He lost sight of the fleeing criminal around a blind corner but remembered my warning about not busting a blind corner during a foot or vehicle pursuit and slowed his response to “slice the pie” on the corner. But the odds were still in the felon’s favor when he doubled back and got the first shot, landing a .380 round in the officer’s lower torso. The round entered just above the officer’s “junk,” passing from left to right, missing major arteries and ricocheting off his upper right femur (breaking it), ending up just below the skin over his right hip. The hit knocked the officer down to his knee, but he immediately returned fire. Though wounded, the felon attempted to flank the officer and get behind him for a killing shot, only to encounter two other officers. At this point all three officers were in the fight and the felon died in a hailstorm of bullets.
There are many attacks that can fit into the unprovoked attack category, like in 2014 when four NYPD officers were posing for a tourist’s picture and a hatchet-armed madman attacked from behind. Unprovoked attack or deliberate premeditated ambush? Tough to interview a dead felon to determine motive, but it got counted in the unprovoked attack category.
How to lower your risks
The overall trend of ambush attacks is way up from 20 years ago when I first started tracking the issue. An ambush of any kind is the most dangerous threat you will ever face on the street – even the strongest and most alert officers can be caught in one.
Stay alert ALL THE TIME. Regularly check your six and get in the habit of 360-degree awareness, or as one officer in my annual ILEETA ambush seminar suggested, 540-degree alertness (360 degrees around and 180 degrees up and over to provide three-dimensional alertness).
Since such awareness is difficult to maintain alone, work as teams as much as possible, from two-officer buddy teams to full-blown rapid deployment contact teams.
Whenever you are in pursuit of a suspect, be especially careful when you lose sight of them at a corner. Don’t take a corner blindly at full speed, as the suspect might have doubled back and set an impromptu ambush. Slice the corner carefully and be ready to respond instantly to an attack. If they aren’t waiting, then resume the chase at full speed. You will sacrifice a few seconds with the careful clearing of a blind corner, but those few seconds may save your life if the bad guy is waiting in ambush.
Be mad-dog mean
If caught in an ambush, the lesson we have learned from ambush survivors is to counterattack as violently as you possibly can. Turn the attack around and pound your adversary into compliance. De-escalation is for another time and place. To quote Josey Wales, you’ve got to get “plumb, mad-dog mean.”
When you strap on your gun and don your body armor at the beginning of every shift, remember to engage your mental armor as well. Repeat after me: Someday I will die, but not here, not today. Today, I will win the fight!
