Combat Roll in real life...no really!

[Double Naught Spy]

The "combat roll" came up in a thread last yere.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=447091&highlight=combat+roll&page=2

Nobody seemed to be too impressed with the concept and few had very much knowledge of it being used outside of Hollywood movies.

I finally found an example, not a great example, but the only thing like it that I have seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IeRiKDjIDI&feature=related

After a chase by officers, the suspects' truck crashed into a telephone pole. On approaching the vehicle, they see it only has teenagers. At that point, they considered the situation diffused (maybe thinking that they were just joyriding kids?) and start with post accident activities of calling for medical and trying to assess the "kids'" situation inside.

So one officer is watching the the truck. Another has returned to his car. A third has just rolled on scene.

The occupants won't let the officer get the passenger side door open and so the officer walks around to the driver's side and suspects something is amiss and draws his gun, issues commands, and is shot by one of the suspects. He goes down and then escapes to the concealment of the woods by rolling. Unlike the Hollywood version, the injured officer does not enter the roll from standing as he was already down. He enters it from a crawling position He does not bounce up with his gun and join the fight as he lost his gun when he was shot.

I don't know how well he considered his roll option. The roll did keep him below much of the initial shots fired, but he rolled behind the suspects which probably was not ideal given his fellow officers were shooting at the suspects. However, going in that direction took him out of the shooter's field of view that was toward the officers shooting. This meant that the suspects were not likely to try shooting him again.

After the shooting started, the officer that had gone to handle medical draws his gun and aims at the truck. The shooting suspect peers around the rear of the cab and starts shooting at the officer handling medical. The officer was very fortunate as the suspect apparently has a flinch and puts his first few rounds toward the officer into the ground.

So what of the combat roll? While it might have been handy to use as a low level way to traverse the open distance between the officers and the truck, neither of the unwounded officers used it. Only the wounded officer used.

 

[Hook686]

Spray and pray seems to be the handgun technique these days. How would something like this scenario go with revolvers ?

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Not really relevant, but having a revolver or not would not change whether or not the injured officer performed his combat roll.

 

[Hansam]

Was that a combat roll or just rolling for cover because he was in too much shock at the time to get to his feet?

In any case that was a hell of a firefight. The big problem here is that the perp got 107 years in prison. With good behavior he MIGHT actually live long enough to see freedom. People like that should die - not be given a cushy cell for most or all of their natural life.

 

[ltc444]

Combat roll. Sounds to me that the Officers used poor tatics from the start.

 

[NWGlocker]

You're shot, on the ground, completely on the defensive, and either your injuries or the heat of the moment keeps you from getting up. What Hansam said-- looks like he was rolling for any cover or concealment and maybe there were more opportunities on the right of the screen than the left.

I don't know if rolling was better or if it would have been better to get on your feet (if you can) and haul ass out of the way.

 

[Murdock]

He did what he had to do to get out of Dodge. I don't see any training lesson here.

My tactics and training question is WHERE WERE THE PATROL CARBINES?!!! Why was at least one not deployed in the initial response?

To paraphrase Clint Smith, when you ignore the carbine in favor of the pistol you have just traded Ken for Barbie.

 

[Hansam]

My tactics and training question is WHERE WERE THE PATROL CARBINES?!!! Why was at least one not deployed in the initial response?

Answer: Most likely safely locked away in the trunk of the patrol cars.

I think the firefight would have ended a lot sooner if one of the officers had gone for a carbine. Just ONE AR15 would have ended the firefight sooner and more effectively than their glocks.

 

[jibberjabber]

Rolling, combat or otherwise, I see as sometimes necessary but rarely preferable when covering a distance. The wounded officer was either too incapacitated to get up and sprint to safety or his body just reacted to survive. He probably never had the time to ask himself, "now, what manner of retreat should I employ here?"

My favorite Hollywood move is when a perfectly good sprint for cover suddenly turns into a dive-roll halfway. How about a nice spin move or a stutter step??!!

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Was that a combat roll or just rolling for cover because he was in too much shock at the time to get to his feet?

He was shot in the forearm. If that would cause him to not be able to get to his feet, then he probably could not have crawled or rolled. The issue wasn't shock.

As stated in the articles here, the officer rolled out of the line of fire (combat) as his training dictated.
http://forums.officer.com/showthread.php?22501-Perry-PD-Officer-Shot

My tactics and training question is WHERE WERE THE PATROL CARBINES?!!! Why was at least one not deployed in the initial response?

The incident was in 2004. I don't believe Perry PD had patrol carbines then, or not all officers had them.

 

[Gbro]

That looked like a seat of the pants kind of move that was a good heads up critical stress thinking. Even some of us that would not preform a maneuver like that on any given day may do just fine in the heat of the battle, or the deer in the headlights reaction for some.
As for the door not opening, I couldn't see any reaction to someone inside the truck holding it, but the crumpled fender is the likely cause from what I saw.
Last month I was on a EMS run where the chase reached 90+ mph and after going off road through several ditches w/o rolling we loaded the cuffed pt/perp.
After reminding arresting officer of the SOP of a LEO present in our rig when pt. is cuffed, the cuffs came off till later.

 

[Murdock]

When I attended the combined carbine/pistol course at Thunder Ranch a classmate related a late-night incident where he thwarted an armed robbery at a convenience store as it was about to unfold. His teenage son was inside buying a soft drink while he and his wife waited in the parking lot. A car pulled in with headlights off, and one man got out and began sidling along the outside wall to peek in the window.

He had his wife call 911 from their car in the parking lot when he confronted the BG. There were 3 additional armed perps in the car, one of whom had a AK, it was later found.

Things were getting very tense, as the BG really didn't want to keep his hand off the pistol he had in his belt, when every cop car in that small western city seemed to show up at once. Two felons in the car went back to the big house for being in possession of firearms. Two more were illegals who got sent home.

I asked him how many of the cops exited their vehicles with rifles. He said, "Every one of them."

He now carries two spare mags for his 1911 instead of only one.
.

 

[kraigwy]

My tactics and training question is WHERE WERE THE PATROL CARBINES?!!! Why was at least one not deployed in the initial response?

Cops don't walk around carrying a rifle or shotgun on calls. I'm sure if he knew he would have needed a long gun everything would be different, like "stand off" behind cover.

But that's not practical. 99% of the time a long gun would just be in the way.

More common when you have problems dragging someone from a car they come out fighting not shooting. Pain in the butt rolling around the ground trying to subue some one if you are hanging onto a rifle or shotgun.

Cops don't normally get involved in situations where distance requires a rifle. Certainly not on traffic stops.

Learn to use the service pistol/revolver, learn to use the service pistol/revolver with one hand, learn with both hands.

You just don't know. If I knew, I'd be with a rifle at a distance I had the advantage.

We're not talking about infantry, we're talking about street cops.

 

[Scharfschuetzer]

Hind sight is always 20/20, but my take from a training standpoint is that the officers could have positioned their cars so as to avoid having to cross a danger area in order to see the driver's side of the vehicle. I believe that there was adaquate room to do so and if done properly, the primary officer could have have issued his orders from the cover of his vehicle and placed his engine block between himself and the miscreants. Ideally, both sides of the PU should have been covered from behind vehicular cover.

With the adrenal glans pumping, it's easy to charge into a situation as depicted, but that is not always the right answer as this case demonstrates. Were I still a PD training officer, I'd certainly use this footage as a "what not to do" and to support the tactics that we taught.

Time was on the officers' side here and there was probably no need to advance on a car with occupants obviously intent on escape. The PU was going no where and this was a classic case for felony stop tactics which may have prevented gun fire to begin with.

I do agree on the use of a supporting carbine here as it would have given the officers a stand off distance advantage from which they could have then controlled the situation. If eventually needed, an officer could advance under the cover of the supporting long gun, but I think that it would have been best to wait it out given the nature of the stop.

That said, I'm glad it all turned out OK for the officers and that the miscreants are all lodged at government expense.

 

[Hansam]

the miscreants are all lodged at government expense.

Not at the government's expense - at the taxpayer's expense.

At least one of those miscreants should be seeing the firing line, electric chair, gas chamber or lethal dose bed...

 

[manta49]

I tought the police would be better armed in America. The way the police are armed here below.

 

[kraigwy]

Apparently no one has read Peel or O.W. Wilson's works on Police Administration.

Do we really want our police militarized?

 

[Murdock]

Cops don't walk around carrying a rifle or shotgun on calls. I'm sure if he knew he would have needed a long gun everything would be different, like "stand off" behind cover.

I wouldn't expect them to. But I thought that's why the long gun -- carbine or SGN -- is kept in a locked mount in the front seat. And the case in question wasn't a "call", but a pursuit.

 

[briandg]

That was pretty interesting in a lot of aspects. That truck offered a lot of protection and cover.

The first question that came to mind was whether or not to just empty the handgun into the cab of the truck and maybe put down all of the passengers, or allow them to be used as human shields?

One gun? 4 guns? who knows?

One guy with a gun hiding behind 3 people in a vehicle creates for me a really hard scene to read. I'm still not sure if I'd have emptied a shotgun into the cab of that truck hoping to stop him from shooting. There were a lot of bullets through that rear window, so obviously, the people on the scene made the decision to treat them as combatants rather than hostages or bystanders.

That really was a scenario that called for combat shotguns.

If there was any single thing I'd fault those guys for, it would be that the first officer lost his gun, and that loose cannon just disappeared from the radar and was retrieved by the bad guy. Second, that bullhockey about getting trapped next to the barrier while the bag guy shot under it could have gotten that cop killed. The wheel wasn't cover. That was just poorly handled. They should have stayed back from the vehicle, IMO, until it was completely under control. they had no intel on what other weapons were on scene, and the people in the car could have had anything up to a full auto mac.

Glad that I wasn't part of it.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

We're not talking about infantry, we're talking about street cops.

Apparently no one has read Peel or O.W. Wilson's works on Police Administration.

Do we really want our police militarized?

Well, our bad guys are getting militarized and we have laws to keep our military from taking care of them, if by militarized you mean having long guns.

One thing is certain, a combat roll with a long gun while wounded would be more difficult to accomplish successfully.

How would something like this scenario go with revolvers ?

Asked and answered above.