Photo: Mark W. Clark
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You don't have to be on a call for someone to ambush you. In early December 2011, lone police officer Deriek W. Crouse sat in his police vehicle after conducting a traffic stop inside the Virginia Tech campus. A male unrelated to the traffic stop walked up to the vehicle and shot the officer as he sat there, killing him. This is yet another example of an officer being ambushed while on duty. Could this officer have done something to give him a chance to survive this ambush?
In last month's The Winning Edge article, "Urban Counter-ambush Tactics," I discussed how to anticipate and respond to ambushes when arriving on calls in an urban environment. In this related article, I will discuss how to handle ambushes while in your car, including tactics that could have helped this Virginia Tech officer.
Police Vehicles as Targets
Police vehicles are magnets that attract all sorts of people's attention, including those who want to find an officer to kill. Any traffic stop, whether involving motorists or pedestrians, will put officers in the limelight and will expose them to possible ambushes or attacks. Here the concept of "contact and cover" is most important.
The contact officer will do most of the work during the stop. The cover officer will cover. Nothing else. If you are a one-officer car you will do everything, and covering yourself will be the most time-consuming and tiresome job. But don’t compromise.
Never sit in your police car to write a citation or access your MDC during a traffic stop. Use your radio to make inquiries, and do so while in a position of advantage. I usually stand at the right rear of my police vehicle, with the armored passenger side door open as cover. From that vantage point I can maintain an eye on the violator and his vehicle, and I can see anyone approaching me on foot or in a vehicle. Looking up from the citation you're writing every 10 seconds and looking around is a practiced skill. Practice it.
The police vehicle is a big target for a determined sniper, yet many officers act as if they are attached to their police vehicles by an invisible umbilical cord. Police vehicles do not make good cover unless you are fortunate enough to have the engine block between you and the shooter. A moving target is harder to hit, so if you’re being fired on and cannot get out of your vehicle, keep moving and accelerate away from the location, and turn away from the street you're on (into another street or a driveway) in order to reduce the size of the kill zone.
If you are in a residential neighborhood and you are being shot at by an unseen shooter, immediately turn left or right into a driveway and drive all the way up as far into the location as you can. If there are no driveways, drive over the curb toward the space between two houses. Immediately exit the police vehicle and try to locate the shooter.
At this point, breathe. Don't panic.
The last thing an officer should ever do is scream incoherently for help on the radio. This will only bring other officers into the kill zone, without any helpful information. Do request assistance or help, but ask responding officers to set up a large containment of the area until you can ascertain the suspect's location. If you know the direction the shots came from, have officers respond to your location from the opposite direction on foot via backyards or alleys. This is important: Have them stay off the street.
If you are being fired upon from the upper floor or the rooftop of a multi-story building, hit the accelerator and drive toward the building. This will reduce the angle of the kill zone because the shooter will have to reveal more and more of himself as he tries to keep the police car in his sights below his location. If necessary, drive the police car into the building’s lobby. In this situation, have responding officers take control of the rooftops of the adjoining buildings and contain the building where the suspect is located.
Unless the suspect presents an immediate threat to others, this situation should be handled by trained SWAT personnel. Officers should contain the area and begin to get intelligence information, building plans, etc., that will assist SWAT personnel with their mission.
Emergency Lights
Whenever possible, turn off your police vehicle emergency lights immediately upon arrival at or near a call location, especially at night. Several police vehicles parked at a call location with their emergency lights flashing red/blue hues into the darkness is something you should only ever see on cop shows on TV.
In reality, activated emergency lights at a call location only serve to attract unnecessary people to your call location like moths are attracted to a light bulb. Additionally, emergency lights in modern police vehicles are very bright, and these super-bright emergency LED lights deprive you of your night vision as well as make your police car an even more visible target.