TRAINING
Training while we work: Situational awareness
JUSTIN R. NIELSEN
On a dark, cool summer night, two U. S. Army Infantrymen led a squad of Iraqi ESU officers on a house-to-house search for insurgents through a neighborhood in the south district of Kirkuk. As the team approached a gate leading into the courtyard of one home, an American soldier took point and slowly opened the gate. Within a moment, a man began shouting from the home and presented a handgun out the first-floor window next to the front door. Commands were being shouted in Arabic from the officers on the street, telling the man to surrender. One of the American soldiers began to acquire a sight picture, and transitioned his M4 carbine from safe to semi-preparing to engage his threat. A number of red dots from the rifles on the street began to converge on the subject in the window, but in a moment the situation would drastically change.
One of the American soldiers began to instruct the officers on the street not to shoot. He observed that there were two women standing behind this man, and the circumstances became apparent: The man with the gun was not an insurgent, but a husband and father who was trying to protect his family from what he thought was a home invasion in an almost lawless and war-torn country. I was the soldier in that scenario, and without the endless time I had invested preparing for urban operations behind that rifle, the ending to the story could have been very different. I was processing a thousand things in those few moments, but never once did I doubt that I had complete and absolute control of the situation.
The United States Army is recognized in the global military community for its ability to produce the best-trained soldiers and leaders the world has ever seen. There is a lot that law enforcement can take away from the methods used, and lessons that can be learned to help better prepare officers for the ever-growing demands and challenges that we face in our field. I have spent the past 12 years working to enhance my capabilities as an instructor to better prepare my students to face a confrontation with the most advantageous results. I spent eight years in the Army; seven of those were as a career soldier and Staff Sergeant. I deployed twice, once to Iraq for 15 months with the 25th Light Infantry Division and again to Afghanistan with the Army’ s 10th Mountain Division. My survival during those 27 months overseas came down to two things: training to be proficient in my scope of practice, and making a conscious effort to assess what was going on around me at all times.
What if?
The amount of information we are asked to process when arriving at a critical incident can sometimes feel like drinking from a waterfall. This is especially true for newer officers who have less experience in handling emergencies or confrontations. A good way to place yourself in a tactical advantage is to reduce the number of factors you have to consider regarding the scene. By familiarizing yourself with your environment, you gain confidence in what is known versus unknown. Working in the known reduces the number of things you have to process under significant stress. You’ re more comfortable in that environment and therefore can focus your attention elsewhere.
Every time we step out of the patrol car, we are afforded an opportunity to become more curious than we were during the last call. It is all about becoming deliberate in consciously absorbing what can be seen around you. The next time you are sent to take a report in any structure or building in your town, become fully conscious and deliberate in assessing everything around you. Pay attention to which way the doors open, if they have a window and what that window affords you versus someone looking out as you approach the building. Pay attention to where the lights are and how they cast your shadows should you have to respond there at night. As you enter the building, assess the corners on either side of that threshold and look up and look down. Look for places you could move to that would afford you cover or concealment. As you walk the halls, pay close attention to where the hallways intersect and how much ground you would have to cover in the open to maneuver from point A to point B. Each of these factors will now require less effort for you to process under stress, and therefore place you at an advantage to give more of your attention to your threat. If you find yourself in a confrontation in those same hallways the next week, you may save yourself crucial seconds— even minutes— in assessing the environment while you’ re moving because of your previous effort in just looking around with intent on a low-stress call. If that call comes, your mind will begin to recall all those things you looked for the last time you walked through there and allow you to devote more of your focus to performing target discrimination and threat analyses.
All too often, officers will respond to a call for service and miss that opportunity to consciously familiarize themselves with and absorb what they are seeing around them. But if you commit to this type of mindset, you will see that in time it becomes routine. Before you know it, you will be making these assessments without effort. As I mentioned in my story, I was standing in a position of cover and concealment when I opened that gate in Iraq, because I had stood in that very same spot only a few days before. I remembered what was afforded to me and was able to focus my attention on what was happening in front of me. d
Officer Justin R. Nielsen, a member of Verona Local 72, is a Certified MOI( Method of Instruction) and a Certified Range Instructor. He served eight years in the U. S. Army; seven of those years were as a career soldier and Staff Sergeant. During those years, he was deployed to Iraq and to Afghanistan.
64 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ FEBRUARY 2017