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Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 6
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RE: "High and Low Risk" Traffic Stops
I forgot I had written this for my blog on policefacebook, ( now police pulse) I'm also on there as policediver16773 should you want to look up any of my other training tips:
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GENERAL PATROL TIPS
I'm going to write this column in a generally amusing way as I know from experience that when you fail to keep a recruit or rookie's attention, their memory retention goes from 10 to 0 in no time flat!!!
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Carefully choreograph your traffic stops as much as possible to minimize danger.
If patience is the virtue by which police are going to be evaluated in the hereafter, I fear for their well-being. Some cops are in such a rush to get a car stopped that they'll let the driver they're attempting to detain dictate where the traffic stop will take place. Worse, they'll allow suspects to choreograph what happens once the cars have stopped.
Bad Location
Given the opportunity, suspects will lead you as far off the beaten path as possible, or at least to a location that provides them a situational advantage.
Example: A day shift officer finds a vehicle's driver taking an inordinate amount of time to pull over, and when he does, it's beneath a darkened overpass. It occurs to the deputy that perhaps the vehicle's occupants are angling to get him in an area that will offer few witnesses to whatever surprise they have planned for him. He elects to wait for backup and have the people exit the car, rather than approach the vehicle himself. After the men are successfully detained away from the vehicle, a search of it finds a number of firearms inside.
Remember: You pick when and where they're going to stop. If they don't stop until your vehicle and theirs are in a relatively isolated area, don't approach the car until you have sufficient backup on scene. The driver can bitch about the imposition all he wants, but has nobody to blame but himself.
If you do find yourself in such a situation, you're probably going to have some time waiting. Make repeated commands over the P.A. to get the driver to do what you want him to do. And if you suspect something bad is in the air, tape these commands. Such evidence can go far to display both your attempts to get compliance and their refusals.
And things can go south in a hurry. Watch those telltale brake lights. More than one suspect has put a car into reverse and hit the gas with the intention of activating the officer's airbags.
The Approach
If you do make the approach, make sure whatever ambient lighting there is works for you, and not against you. Don't cross in front of your headlights or spotlamps at night.
Regardless of which side of the vehicle you approach, you want to minimize the threat of your getting struck by a passing vehicle. Take full advantage of the road shoulder by getting at least the vehicle you're stopping as far to the right as possible.
Vulnerability
Another thing to watch for on traffic stops: Leaving yourself or your patrol car vulnerable.
One police officer (K DIV) attempted to stop a driver who suddenly abandoned the car on foot. The officer likewise left his patrol car to go in foot pursuit of the suspect, who circled a nearby house and returned to the officer's patrol car which he then stole. The theft of a patrol car carries with it the collateral threat of a suspect arming himself with a shotgun or AR-15 stored inside the vehicle.
One practice that can go a long way toward preventing such problems is not leaving your car keys in the patrol car in the first place. Many officers do so in anticipation of having to suddenly jump back in the car should the driver take off. Unfortunately, for many officers—particularly those in major metropolitan police departments—any ensuing pursuit will probably be cancelled by the watch Sgt. anyway. Overall, I don't see how the relative worth of leaving keys in the car with the ignition running is worth the risk of your detainee or someone else hopping in the ride and taking off with it.
Traffic stops are inherently dangerous. Let's try to do everything possible to keep them from becoming more so.
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YOU HAVE GLOVES USE THEM!!!!!!
Once, while investigating fraudulent credit card usage in a motel, I ended up getting in foot pursuit with one of the suspects. I forgot that I was carrying the damning evidence in my left hand. So when I tackled her, the suspect, seeing this and recognizing its implications for her ill-deserved freedoms, immediately seized the evidence from my hand, threw it into her mouth, and began chewing. Frustrated, I attempted to stop her from destroying the evidence by reaching inside her mouth to retrieve it. ( March 1992)
Dumb move. (And I knew it was a dumb move. I generally refrained from doing this when suspects attempted to swallow illicit drugs, and this woman reminded me why.) She bit into my thumb so hard that her teeth nearly went down to the bone.You would have thought it was a chicken leg from the Colonel.
This was only one of several instances on the job that could have resulted in me contracting a bloodborne disease. And that’s a threat that many of us who wear a badge face every day.
In another incident, I stopped a motorist who exited his car of his own volition. As he walked toward me, the nature of his addiction was so readily apparent that the first thing I asked him was about the location of his hype kit. He told me that it was under the front seat of the vehicle. Assured that at least one potential threat was verbally accounted for, I had the man turnaround so I could conduct a cursory pat down search of his person for my safety. I asked him if he had any weapons or other needles on his person. He said, “No.”
At the time I was not in the habit of wearing gloves and, as I was patting him down, my hand came in contact with the right rear pocket of man's pants. I immediately felt something prick my skin. I didn't have to look to know what had happened. My finger had been punctured by one of the addict’s needles that was shoved into his back pocket.
We ended up taking the man the local hospital where we had his blood drawn—not in a manner to my liking—to make sure that he didn't have any communicable diseases. After sweating the results, I was told that I had nothing to do be worried about. This news, coupled with my own snooping into statistics and discovery that of a thousand accidental contaminated needle punctures perhaps only three percent contract the AIDS virus, gave me some degree of comfort.
I learned later that I had been worried about the wrong disease. AIDS gets all the ink, but the real cop killer among blood borne diseases is Hepatitis C.
To this day, there are any number of officers, both active and retired, who have biological ticking time bombs inside them thanks to their having been punctured or pierced through some professional misadventure.
While other threats are more obvious, bites and needle punctures are among the most omnipresent dangers for just about any cop, working in any capacity. And the reason is Hep C.
Hepatitis C causes cirrhosis and is the number one cause for liver cancer and liver transplants. Some 500,000 Canadians are infected with it. Every year, some 10,000 of these people die as a result of the disease. Compare this with the 15,000 a year who expire from AIDS and you might reasonably wonder why the disease isn’t given commensurate publicity, particularly as the number of Hepatitis C deaths is expected to triple between 2002 and 2012.
Many officers who get infected with the disease through their work nonetheless fail to get the medical coverage and treatment to which they are entitled. Sometimes, it is because the infecting episode was never identified or adequately documented. Also suspect lifestyles associated with the disease—drug usage and promiscuous sex practices—find still other cops hesitant to bring their afflictions to their department’s attentions for fear of political or social reprisal.
Remember, the proverbial ounce of prevention may be worth many pounds of cure. So take some precautions:
• Keep your distance from dirtbags who are determined to live down to the hygienic connotations of their name.
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Stay Calm on the Radio and On the Road
“I NEED HELP, RIGHT AWAY!!! I’M IN A FIGHT!! GET ME ASSISTANCE, RIGHT NOW!! HELP!! This C-CK-SUCKERS TRYING TO KILL ME!!"
How would you react to hearing this impassioned plea over the radio?
One officer who'd been off training for only a few months(4) heard just this type of highly charged request for assistance. Already in the process of transporting a prisoner when he heard the transmission, the rookie felt that the tone of the broadcast was so emergent that it obligated him to respond code 3 to assist. As he did, he drove 140 kph through a red light and broadsided another vehicle.
This single incident can be divided into two cautionary tales.
First, it illustrates how important it is to consider the implications of our radio transmissions. When we key up the radio and speak, we communicate more than mere words; we communicate our state of mind and give some sense of our predicament. When we allow our emotions to get the better of us, we can find ourselves shouting into the radio, cutting ourselves off, or needlessly tying up the frequency by repeating ourselves while our fellow officers are responding code 3 on possibly divergent paths.
Emotionally charged transmissions not only complicate our primary mission—which is to get help—they can also foster unanticipated situations as when officers over drive in their efforts to get to us. This underscores the need to communicate requests for assistance or backup in an even and clear tone.
By multiple accounts, the officer who requested assistance was shouting into his portable radio, suggesting a more emergent situation than he was confronting. While more veteran cops had gotten used to the newbie's emotional requests, newer personnel had not. Indeed, the rookie officer thought that his fellow officer was in dire trouble and decided to roll hard to his location.
This incident shows how important it is for us to recognize how we evaluate the information we receive and how we choose to react to it. In this situation, the rookie’s decision to respond with a prisoner in tow and the manner in which he set about doing so, proved fateful for several parties.
As a result of the collision, both the officer and his prisoner received major injuries and, for a period of time, there was discussion of the officer being the first cop in Canada to be charged for vehicular murder. He ended up plea bargaining down to a summary conviction and found himself medically retired.
Two primary factors caused this tragedy. But it all comes down to adrenaline.
• The officer asking for backup let his adrenaline take over on the radio.
• The responding officer's adrenaline flow led him to over drive and that caused the accident.
How might the responding officer have reacted to a more tempered request for assistance?
Officers should give this situation some thought. No doubt, many cops have been on either side or the equation. If not, the odds are very good that they one day will be. Anticipating and planning for this possibility can help.
It is certainly understandable for rookie officers to feel heightened anxiety when encountering new situations. But as officers are increasingly immersed in a variety of field situations, it is expected that they will respond with ever greater degrees of competency and professional calm.
Responding officers also have to realize that they have to arrive at the scene in one piece if they are going to provide backup. Be on the safe side and wear your seatbelt, only the detectives in TV shows buckle it behind them!!!
To all of my Brothers in Blue, WORK SAFE, NO 11-99's allowed!!
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