AAR: Milwaukee COPS & 10-32 Solutions Force-onForce/CCW Decision Making

Training Training AAR's
1

After Action Report
Milwaukee COPS and
10-32 Solutions
Force-on-Force/Decision Making
3-13 and 3-14-15
Milwaukee, WI

Eighteen students joined us this past weekend for our first Force-on-Force class. We were glad to welcome almost half of our students…eight…for the first time. We hope you learned a thing or two, and hope you come back.

Before going too far, I want to thank Scott, Jonsey and the staff of the Air soft Arena and Tactical Toy Store, USA. Without your facility and support this would not have been possible. Paul, Jerry, Jay, Sebastian…you guys got shot dozens of times and simply walked away…and that, my friends, is bad-ass!

Force-on-Force is a logical “next step” after significant range training and experience. It pits students against live role players, in scripted, supervised scenarios, each of which is designed to highlight one or two specific learning points, while eliciting thought, decision making and articulation. It forces students to interact with real people…people that move, yell and swear at you. People that can’t hear you or just run away, or maybe simply stand there blocking your car. Unlike paper targets, live role players shoot back, and airsoft can sting. Unlike the typical shooting class, your targets move, and not every scenario ends with gunfire. Scenarios can take turns quickly, depending on the actions of the student.

But make no mistake; this is not a juvenile free-for-all.

The day started with a deadly force review and a few real-life examples. All students were familiar with the requirements for the use of deadly force, but it’s a serious topic, and a good review is always in order.

We had a dedicated safety officer that ensured participants didn’t inadvertently pick up live weapons and bring them into the arena. After a safety review and safety check, students were allowed into the Arena.

Once checked and inside the Arena, each student was an active participant in at least three scenarios, and all were able to not only watch other students, but to take part in each debrief. Even though not actively participating, students learned by watching, listening and de-briefing. Watching your peers go through similar, but different scenarios gives startling examples of how your perspective, your life experience and other things can influence how you interpret what you see; likewise the general un-reliability of eyewitnesses is on stark display. We also saw how just a little experience can enhance our ability to see, remember and report on events.

The best examples of perspective and life experience came from different students, after running the same scenario. The scenario was, while strolling through the park one beautiful day, (the sun is shining, the birds are singing….) you come upon an unknown male holding another unknown male, at gunpoint, on the ground, while giving commands to “stop, don’t move,” etc… Depending on your angle of approach, you may, or may not, see the officers’ badge on his belt. A difference of a couple steps made all the difference in the world. In the same scenario, two other students, using life experiences, mentioned that when they heard the commands, they assumed it was an undercover cop, and this affected their reaction. They still took cover and still called 911, but it was under the assumption that the guy with the gun was indeed a police officer making an arrest. The assumption turned out to be correct when the dispatcher told the student that there was an operation going on in the area. This particular scenario also showed us the inherent risks when getting involved in third party disputes, as one student shot the officer.

First impressions are lasting ones, and the first impression the police get of your incident, will likely be your call to 911. As part of the scenario, students were given cell phones and asked to call 911 after their incident. Initially students had no idea what to say, but after the third scenario, most had it down pretty well. Sometimes the student called in what ultimately turned out to be a non-event, like a joke between co-workers. Sometimes students were simply good witnesses to a third-party event. Sometimes the “dispatcher” got things wrong and accused the victim of being the suspect, or flip-flopped clothing descriptions. These things can and do happen in dynamic, high-stress situations, and I think it’s a pretty important portion of our training that needs to get more repetitions.

These two training days went down very well, and I want to thank all of our students for doing a very good job and paying attention.

I know of no other local companies offering Force-on-Force scenario training, and we have tentatively scheduled an additional class at The Airsoft Arena.
Please get a hold of myself or Chad with any questions. We are looking forward to seeing you.

Kevin L. Eyre
Milwaukee Community Outreach Partners, LLC
5114 South 27th Street
#210791
Milwaukee, WI, 53221
414-943-COPS (2677)
www.milwaukeecops.com
kevin@milwaukeecops.com

Chad Halvorson
10-32 Solutions
W21180 Halvorson Rd
Strum WI 54770
608-561-1032
www.10-32solutions.com

2

10-32 Solutions/Milwaukee COPS CCW Scenarios AAR

March 13 and 14 were the inaugural CCW Scenario classes that Milwaukee COPS and 10-32 Solutions partnered up to offer. Scenarios have been a valuable tool for law enforcement. It allows for training to be conducted in areas where no range is needed or available in any weather, and they can be shorter in duration. Scenarios apply all the parts of the Combat Triangle or Pillars, whichever you subscribe to, and can be structured to address specific skills that need to be worked on. They require a substantial investment in safety equipment and tools on our part as well as extra personnel, and we hope it will be worth it. The firearms safety classes required for Wisconsin CCW permits often don’t address legalities, and the general public rarely gets the opportunity to work through use of force questions beyond simple “What-if?” discussions.

This was held at the Airsoft Arena, a 40,000 square foot facility located in the basement of the Mitchell Mall in the center of Milwaukee. It is the type of area that students were strongly advised to lock their doors when they got off of the freeway, and like clockwork I heard the KaTHUNK of the door locks when Kevin hit a certain intersection. The Airsoft Arena’s location of the mall is like a geode-rough looking, ordinary, and something most people wouldn’t take a second look at. But crack open a geode, and inside is a spectacular sparkling beauty. That is what our location gave us. We had structures and barricades and adverse lighting. There was enough space to allow two groups to separate, and the structures inside allowed us to get creative in how we set the stage for the students. The same area allowed students to visualize walking through the park, to clearing from their bedroom to investigate a noise on the other side of the house where a loved one slept.

Kevin’s excellent AAR hits a number of points already. One I will echo is the excellent learning opportunity I get in observing what students do. I wrote the scenarios to give the roleplayers a direction or two that would address the main ways I anticipated the students would react, but in the end there were still a couple where the actions taken or not taken surprised me. One example was where two students chose not to engage a person in the act of killing another person using a club. One of the reasons given was he feared it was an undercover officer using a baton. I also wrote them to try and provide shoot and no-shoot opportunities so that not every scenario was going to get the students used to pulling a trigger. The hesitation of many to use deadly force was a common occurrence. The liberal media’s mentality of trigger-happy permit holders turning Wisconsin streets into re-plays of the OK Corral was not evident with our students. Most of the time, articulation for why they didn’t act followed the theme of personal choices that were made about who they were going to stick their neck out for if it wasn’t their family, or good observations based on what they saw or didn’t see for imminent threat.

What sometimes was an equal concern is when deadly force wasn’t used that should have been used. One student continued to retreat while aiming a pistol at two threats who continued moving towards them. Tunnel vision entered into their performance, and it along with adrenaline affected their ability to process the incident. The same scenario with a different student found them doing the exact same retreat, and I had to end it when the student was standing there aiming a pistol at an armed threat aiming at him and sitting on the cell phone calling 911. It turned into an excellent learning experience for him as well as the rest of the group, as did all of the round-robin debriefs. The ability to go through training such as this led to students sometimes learning when they actually could or couldn’t use force.

The scenarios were also a test of how much students remembered instructions during previous classes. One scenario was set up with the roleplayer so that they would not cease being a threat until the students weapon went to slide lock. The intent was for the student to demonstrate shooting until the threat stopped. Many did, and it was interesting to note a couple of students who have been to our classes before fail to do this. One got into a good rhythm of firing a single shot after each shot from the deranged role player. The other only fired a couple and expected the scenario to stop because he got two good center hits. Again, good discussions and learning experiences all around at the debrief.
Students got to see firsthand how what they saw, heard or perceived sometimes was different than what others saw and heard, and sometimes different than what was actually said or done. These small and short scenarios got adrenaline flowing for some, and it showed how a little adrenaline could play havoc with the ability to hear, observe, and recollect. Many experienced tunnel vision. One student zeroed in on an unarmed roleplayer demanding money, failing to also take in the armed roleplayer friend a few feet behind the unarmed one. One experienced auditory exclusion.

The Saturday class got to go through a well-designed drill that the Friday class didn’t get time for. We decided that it was worth adjusting the class to get this one in. Named the Wall Drill, it was written by a WI DCI agent and a police supervisor in the region and I was helped run it during firearms training blocks for some academy classes. The premise is that the student starts behind a 6-foot portable wall with a pistol at low ready. They are instructed to step out and they are faced with a roleplayer in front of them. The student needs to take control of what they see and don’t see, and when control has been established the instructor tells the student to step back. The roleplayer quickly grabs the next prob, and the process is repeated for about five or six quick, rapid decision making scenarios. The entire process only takes about 2-3 minutes. There are no-shoot and shoot decisions built in, and two of the no-shoots also provide an opportunity for the instructor to evaluate reflexive fire tendencies the student may exhibit. A Tueller Drill is built in, as is a no-shoot decision involving a deaf person with a hammer and unable to hear commands from the student. It was written with the focus on an LEO making contact with someone, and I am working to fine tune it for CCW mindsets. I’ve seen a number of student responses over the times that I’ve administered this drill, including the role player chasing the academy student around the wall in circles with a firearm as the student fled and did not engage. It’s a very interesting drill to work with. Something also worth noting is that students commonly did not engage a threat advancing with a knife until they were about 8-10 feet away.

Overall, Kevin and I were immensely pleased at how these turned out, and we are looking forward to working with more of these.