TRAINING SPOTLIGHT
Forcible entry for patrol:
Critical, deployable and
continually dismissed
If you cannot get in how you can save anyone?
What are your patrol capabilities of forcible
entry?
These are the first two questions I ask when
I teach or lecture on this topic. To the second
question, the response in almost every lecture
or class throughout the lower 48 is zero. Forcible
entry is the most overlooked topic in response
JOHN
to an active shooter/emergency response. How
DAPKINS JR. many times have you attended a course or lecture on the topic and the first action taken is to
tabletop the entry? Active shooter for patrol is a perfect example of this.
I have attended and/or been a part of hundreds of these exercises, and the topic of forcible entry is almost never discussed.
How many times do you see the training or lecture pick up with
everyone in the hallway going over TEMS, down officer rescue,
direct threat, hall boss/no hall boss and the list goes on forever?
Meanwhile, the most important topic – forcible entry – is rarely
discussed and almost never offered as part of training in the
patrol officer response. I can buy you any rifle you want with
all the bells and whistles and the coolest latest plate carrier etc.
and send you to train with Master Chief Chalker or any other
expert in the field for as many lessons as you want, but in the
end, if you cannot get inside, none of it means anything.
Before we go any further into the article, I first must address
the fact that my law enforcement (LE) brother Nick Kelmentowicz and I hold numerous patents in the LE/military field and,
of course, we believe we have invented and produce a better
mouse trap that saves lives more efficiently. I address this issue
for two reasons; the first is the flag some of you will throw right
away, saying, “Here we go – another business writing about its
product in article form, trying to make it look like it’s not an ad.”
I throw the flag on these articles all the time. The second reason is to simply state we have more than a combined 50 years
of forcible entry experience in the field, which leads me to the
last portion of this intro: None of us, including myself, wants to
hear anything on a topic from someone who has no expertise
in it.
Forcible entry is not just for the horrible terrorist or active
shooter attacks occurring; how many times does a patrol officer have to force open a door in his or her career? The answer
is many times, when dealing with such calls as an unresponsive subject in a locked dwelling, an EDP in a dwelling, smoke
conditions, water conditions, welfare checks – the list is endless
depending on the size of your agency and its capabilities.
Officers in areas across Pennsylvania, Idaho and Arkansas
have to travel great distances to get to emergencies, and need
to act when they arrive. Adding the forcible entry capability to
your patrol division will reduce injury and saves lives. “How
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