Police Media Relations

By Brian Thiem

Like many people, I’ve been following the Uvalde school shooting. Many friends have asked me to weigh in on the police response, but I’m reluctant to critique other officers when I wasn’t there and know only a little. Additional details came out a few days ago, which significantly changed the narrative of the police response. I’m sure more will be made available to the public in the days to come.

Although there will certainly be reviews of the police tactics at the scene, preparations that had or had not been done by the school and law enforcement to prepare for critical incidents, command and control of multi-agency major incidents (who was in charge?), and police-media relations.

When I worked for Oakland Police Department, all officers were permitted to talk to the press. However there were rules and protocols. For instance, when I was a Homicide investigator, we were allowed to talk to the media about the homicide we were the primary investigator of. When I commanded the Homicide unit, I was permitted to talk to the media about all the homicide cases we investigated and homicides in general.

I dealt to the media a lot. After a major incident, it was not unusual to see my serious face (only psychopaths smile when talking about murder) on all four major network news programs and read my quotes in the next day’s Bay Area newspapers. Here are some things I learned about police-media relations.

The Media was not my friend—but they weren’t my enemy either. They have a vital role in a free society, and that role is not the same as law enforcement’s. Even though I knew our objectives were sometimes at odds, many journalists became friends—friends I still keep in touch with in retirement. When I took over the Homicide unit, relations with the media were strained, so I reached out to the local affiliates of the major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) and local papers (San Francisco Chronicle and others), and invited their journalists and news directors to my office. I asked what I could do to make their job easier and to improve our relationship. I took many of their suggestions.

Never lie to the Media. That didn’t mean I had to answer all their questions whenever they asked. I wouldn’t tell them, for instance, the caliber of a murder weapon because it could compromise the integrity of the investigation. I wouldn’t tell them a murder victim’s name because they coroner had to first notify the next of kin. When cops lie to the media, they immediately think we’re covering up something. Not only will they then dig harder, but they will also lose any trust they had with the police.

Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. Many times, I rolled up to a major scene and was quickly surrounded by reporters with microphones and cameras in hand asking me what happened. My standard response was, “I just got here—I don’t know,” as I ducked under the yellow tape. Once things settled down and I had handled my job managing the scene, I’d return and tell them what I could.

Admitting you don’t know seems to be an uncommon response to the media these days. There often appears to be a competition among public official at major incidents scenes over who can get the most facetime with the media. I understand it to a degree with politicians who are constantly running for reelection. Getting their faces on TV or their names in print for free beats the cost of campaign adds.

But as professional law enforcement officers, we should not get sucked into this race for information to feed the media. When I see politicians and the heads of law enforcement agencies providing details about a critical incident to the media shortly after a gunman is neutralized, I cringe. In my experience, you can get quick information or accurate information in the aftermath of a critical incident, but not both

.

Explain our processes. I can’t blame the media for wanting to know everything immediately, but it is incumbent upon us in law enforcement to pass on only what we know. Don’t guess. Don’t pass on preliminary information as verified facts. And set realistic expectations. Explain that dozens of officers were on the scene performing dozens of different tasks, and until someone can read and analyze their reports (reports that aren’t written while they’re still working the scene), many details are unavailable. Witnesses need to be interviewed and formal statements taken. Crime scene technicians need to process the scene and collect evidence, which can take days after a major incident. Radio logs, police body cams and cell phone video must be reviewed.

The Uvalde incident was very complex. I counted at least ten law enforcement agencies at that scene. It will take time to sort out exactly who did what and when. It will take even longer to answer the many whys. The details will come out, and it will surely result in some lessons learned and some procedures that can be done better in the future, not only about a police response to and tactics at school shootings, as well as command and control of major incidents, but also about how to better work with the media during and after major critical incidents.  

Militarization of Police

By Brian Thiem
About two months ago, Sacramento Police Officer Tara O’Sullivan was shot during a domestic dispute call by a man with a high-powered rifle. Other officers immediately took cover as the gunman continued shooting, preventing them from rescuing Tara as she lay dying in the back yard of a North Sacramento house.

Within minutes, numerous officers responded, but they were unable to get to Tara without subjecting themselves to gunfire.

I can only imagine the sense of utter helplessness felt by Tara and her fellow officers as she lay dying in that backyard while rifle rounds pinged around them, her brother officers wanting to rush to her aid, but knowing that doing so meant certain death.

Those officers were armed with handguns, firearms that are effective out to about 20 yards. They wore concealable Kevlar vests that covered a fraction of their bodies and were only capable of stopping the most common handgun rounds. The rifle bullets the gunman was firing would punch right through them.

It was nearly an hour before the department was able to enter the kill zone with an armored vehicle called a Bearcat and evacuate Tara. Whether Tara was already dead at that time or died en route to the hospital hasn’t been determined or hasn’t been publicly released.

I’ve heard and read too many politicians, activists, and media outlets decrying the so-called militarization of law enforcement—the acquisition of armored vehicles and other tools and weapons beyond what a uniformed police officer uses, and related training for major tactical situations.

Earlier this year, the Alameda County (in which Oakland, the city where I worked for 25 years, is located) voted to eliminate SWAT-type scenarios from a regional law enforcement training exercise that is attended by law enforcement agencies from around the state because it “promotes the militarization of police.”

As a tactical commander and the commander of the special operations section for several years toward the end of my police career, I oversaw hundreds of SWAT operations, and through formal Risk Analysis processes, I determined the circumstances under which specialized tactical teams and equipment was appropriate. Those decisions required balancing resources (personnel, overtime) with officer and community safety, while weighing community expectations and concerns.

Therefore, I cringe when I see news reports of heavily armed FBI SWAT teams serving a search warrant at the house of a white-collar crime suspect, or SWAT teams using armored vehicles with a battering ram for routine search warrants.

The debate over police acquiring and deploying heavy tactical equipment and weapons and engaging in training exercises focusing on terrorist attacks and active shooters should continue in our communities. However, I know some Sacramento police officers who wished they had an armored vehicle closer and more specially trained tactical officers with rifles as they were pinned down by a crazed gunman and their sister lay dying nearby.

Police Response to School Shootings

 

Brian Thiem: Within hours of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida last month, I heard the cries of countless people telling how the police should respond to school shootings and how they could’ve done better. The voices came from the media, politicians (this includes those wearing police uniforms (usually with stars on the collars), academics, and half the population with social media accounts.

 

People asked me to condemn the deputies who staged outside because we all know (we’re all experts about how police should do policing), cops should immediately rush inside. Right?

 

Well, it’s not that simple.   

 

I was a lieutenant with the Oakland Police Department and the commander of Special Operations (SWAT) in April 1999 when the shooting at Columbine High School occurred. The next day, I talked to an old Army buddy who worked for a suburban Denver police department and was one of the responding SWAT officers. I visited him shortly thereafter and recall his frustration over having to wait outside the school while the carnage continued inside. But that was the standard operating procedure for SWAT teams at that time.

 

Police tactics, equipment, procedures, and training normally evolve in response to past failures. Back in the 1960’s, SWAT teams were being formed in cities such as Philadelphia and Los Angeles in response to criminal incidents that were beyond the ability of the average patrol officer armed with revolvers and occasional shotguns—incidents which too often left officers, and sometimes innocent citizens, dead. Rushing into bank robberies in progress sometimes resulted in forced hostage situations and unnecessary gunfights. But brave officers are supposed to rush in, right?  

 

In the 1970s, departments began training officers at critical incidents to surround the area, contain it, and wait for SWAT, with their trained and properly equipped operators, snipers, and negotiators. When SWAT arrived, they would set up a command post, collected intelligence, and try to negotiate with the bad guys before using force. Shootings of cops, bad guys, and innocent bystanders dropped dramatically with these new tactics and training.

 

Those basic principles of contain, isolate, and negotiate proved successful for many years, but those tactics failed miserably at Columbine. When I returned from Colorado, I brainstormed the Columbine scenario with my fellow tactical commanders and SWAT sergeants and made a presentation at the next Bay Area Tactical Commanders meeting. I advocated sending SWAT officers into the scene immediately upon their arrival without establishing a perimeter, setting up a command post, gathering intel, or developing detailed plans. This was a radical concept in 1999, and the opposition was strong, especially from the San Francisco Field Office’s SWAT Team tactical commanders.

 

Nevertheless, we pushed forward. That summer, the OPD Tactical Operations Team hosted the Grass Valley SWAT competition and training, and we included a school shooting scenario for the 20-some SWAT teams from around the Western US. In the school shooting exercise, teams were required to move toward the gunfire as rapidly as possible, bypassing wounded civilians and those still in danger, rushing through danger areas without clearing them, and taking enormous personal risks to get to the shooters and stop the bloodshed. This was totally contrary to the way we’d been trained as police officers and SWAT cops: treat and evacuate wounded citizens, protect civilians still in danger, methodically search and secure rooms before moving past them, and contain suspects and offer them a chance to surrender before assaulting. However, by the end of that day, we saw what worked and what didn’t, and learned that our new tactical procedures succeeded, despite the enormous risk to the responders.

 

Although we’d like to think we were the first SWAT team to develop these new tactics, we later discovered similar movements were occurring around the nation, and soon, this was the standard operating procedure for what would be called Active Shooter Situations. But SWAT teams weren’t necessarily the solution to these situations.

 

Knowing that it would take too long for our part-time SWAT team to arrive and assemble, Oakland PD soon took this a step further and began training all officers in the department to respond to active shooter situations. The policy called for officers to enter in 3-officer teams, move toward the gunfire, and contain or neutralize the suspect or suspects the best they could with the weapons and tools they had. We established training for the entire department using paintball guns and Simunitions for realism, allowing officers to experience what it was like to shoot and be shot as they move rapidly toward armed adversaries.

 

As a former Army officer and police supervisor and commander, I know that merely establishing policy, especially when it deals with how to operate in tactical situations, without the resultant training and continuous refresher training, is a recipe for failure. When bullets start flying in combat, most soldiers (and police officers) will react the way they were trained. As a leader, I also know that if they fail, it is normally the fault of bad policy and poor training, not the individual soldier or police officer.

 

Maybe I was blessed to have worked with the finest men and women in the world at Oakland PD, but I rarely encountered an officer acting cowardly. To the contrary, in my role as a sergeant and lieutenant, I often had to hold them back to prevent them from rushing into danger unnecessarily or too quickly.

 

I have no doubt that if a school shooting had occurred on my watch, the first officer on the scene would wait for the next two to arrive, and the team would head toward the gunfire. They’d know there could be multiple shooters who might have superior weapons. They’d know there could be explosive booby traps that they’d never see in time as they rushed through the buildings to save lives. They’d know a shooter could ambush and gun them down as they pass and that their Kevlar vests wouldn’t stop a rifle bullet. Active shooter situations are dangerous—damn dangerous.

 

As I write this, it’s still unclear exactly why officers and deputies staged outside the school, but I suspect the fault lies more with failures in leadership, policy, and training than cowardice on the part of the officers. It’s easy for those who never faced a life-threatening situation to label others as cowards for not handling it the way Hollywood heroes do in the movies. It’s quite another to face a situation where gunshots are sounding, but you don’t know where they’re coming from and whether there’s one ill-trained teenage shooter or multiple skilled gunmen.  

 

I hope that once all the facts come out, the blaming and political posturing will stop, and law enforcement agencies can learn from this, as we did with Columbine, and do whatever is necessary to respond better when (I’d like to say “if” but I’ve been a cop too long to be that optimistic) it happens the next time.