Episode Summary

Episode 23: A discussion of Contact Teams, the role of the first arriving law enforcement officers, and the professionalism required to shoulder the immense responsibility of responding to an Active Shooter Event.

Episode Notes

Episode 23: Contact Teams

A discussion of Contact Teams, the role of the first arriving law enforcement officers, and the professionalism required to shoulder the immense responsibility of responding to an Active Shooter Event.

Bill Godfrey:

Welcome back to the next installment of our podcast. Today, we are going to be revisiting a subject that we have not talked about in years on the podcast, and that's contact teams. Today I have with me, Billy Perry, a retired detective and EOD from Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. While he was there, also part of their SWAT team, their dive team, the Marine unit. And even though he is technically retired, not really...

Bill Perry:

Not really.

Bill Godfrey:

Not really...

Bill Perry:

Not really.

Bill Godfrey:

... because you're still training with them...

Bill Perry:

I am, 36 hours a week.

Bill Godfrey:

... on an almost daily basis. Also joining with us, we have Harry Jimenez, who retired from Homeland Security Investigations after 30 years with DHS at the federal level, and is now serving as the deputy chief for Dimmitt County Sheriff's Office. Harry, welcome. Thanks for taking the time.

Harry Jimenez:

Thank you, Bill.

Bill Godfrey:

All right, so Billy, I know that this is a subject that is passionate and dear to your heart. Why? Why so?

Bill Perry:

I think this is a very difficult topic. It's a challenging topic. It's one that we approach with great reverence, with great seriousness, with great thought. And we want to come at this from a position of knowledge and a position of seriousness and with as much reverence as we can muster for it. And it is the contact team. And what does a contact team do and what is their primary job? And in any active incident, our two objectives is to stop the killing and stop the dying. And our community, the law enforcement community, for a long time was really, really, really good at that. And we're still okay at it, but we're we're having challenges or we're have been some times when we have been less than... Suboptimal, we've been suboptimal. And I think with this, and part of it is we're going through and institutional inertia paradigm shift, frankly, where I think some things are changing. And at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to stop that and there are challenges with that.

Bill Godfrey:

You say suboptimal. Without getting into specifics of incidents, can you give me some examples of the types of behavior you're talking about that's not really what we want.

Bill Perry:

Well I think, and we were talking about it-

Bill Godfrey:

Or the reverse of that, Billy. Give me the examples of what we do.

Bill Perry:

Right, exactly. That's where I was going to go with that. You read my mind. We were just talking about it, Harry and I, and one of the things is knowing what our mission is. And that's part of the issue is, as law enforcement we've had mission creep. And what I mean by that is, we're social workers and we're real estate landlords, and for we're civil people and we're traffic crash investigators, and we're... And the list goes on and on and on.

Bill Godfrey:

Like the MacGyver of law enforcement. Mental-

Bill Perry:

Oh, my god. Mental health counselors, absolutely. I mean, we're like a multi-tool. And the problem that is, we do a lot of things okay, but we don't do anything really, really good. And the one thing that differentiates us from everybody is our ability to go in and stop the bad guys, to stop the killing. And we say that, and we say that we're not flippant about this by any means.

Bill Perry:

And the other challenge that we've had with law enforcement is a... I don't even know that it's a watering downright diminishing of our professionalism, or if we got stagnant or where we are, and we want to be treated like professionals. And I say this to the people that are trying to all the time, but what are we doing to improve our professionalism? And are we acting like professionals? And do we know? And I ask every officer, not just every officer supervisor, not just every agency head, ask every officer, do you know what your state statute is for justifiable use of force? And they don't call it a response resistance. They call it use of force. In Florida, it's 776.

Bill Perry:

Do you know what your order is for response to resistance, because most departments and agencies do call it that. Do you know what your weapons platforms are? And do you know what the nomenclature is for every round that you fire and why you use it and what it is, because that's part of the professionalism component. And I say all that, and you say, well, what does that matter? It matters a lot. And I think if you don't know your orders, if you don't know your statutes, if you do not know... If you can't define immediate, imminent, right off the bat and use them in a sentence, then you're behind the eight ball. If you don't know these things that we're talking about... I mean, when it comes to a response to resistance or through periods of time, we have a duty to use force.

Bill Perry:

We can use force and we can't use force. And I say that all the time to people. And I'll say them again for you in a better order. We can't use force. If something happened and we cannot use force in this response to resistance. Then there may be another instance where you can. You can use force in response to resistance. And number three, you have a duty to use force. And if you ask, "Well, when's that duty to use force?" Well if you have something with... Here's another term that if you don't know, you need to rethink some things. If you're receiving actionable intelligence and you do not act on that, that's a problem. Because that's what our one job. That's what we can do that nobody else can do. Fire fighters can't do that.

Bill Perry:

I mean, you're not equipped for that. And we're not saying be cowboys or cowgirls or cow people. We're not saying go in and be loose cannons. Not at all, not anything, not to be reckless. And it's dangerous, but if you have actionable intelligence, you've got to make an entry. You've got to go in and do things. And alerts, and I know our department, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, 100%. If you're there, it's one person and you're there, we make one person entries. Alert says that. And if that's something that your agency doesn't do, that's something you need to take up with your agency. But we have to go in and do that. We have to stop the killing. Once we stop the killing, then we stop the dying.

Bill Perry:

And we had to undergo another paradigm shift a while back about the golden hour. And we didn't know anything about the clock. And Harry will tell you, we would high five. Man, we've done okay here. But now we know, now is when the work really starts. Well, if you impede that, if you impede that golden hour with your slow response to that, man, that's a challenge.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah.

Bill Perry:

And that's where we lose ground with it, because...

Bill Godfrey:

Well, it's one of the key elements that we address right at the very opening of our classes is to get everybody focused on the reality that it's not just about the bad guy. Yes, we have to stop the threat. We have to neutralize the threat. Absolutely, that's critical. But that's not the only thing that kills people. The clock kills people, time kills people. And the example we say in class is, what good does it do to get the bad guy quickly if the bullets that he fired are still killing people because they're bleeding to death because we failed to get that medical point. But because I don't want to get us off on a tangent necessarily into the RTFs a little bit. Harry, Billy mentioned this idea of getting in and getting down range and dealing with it. And yeah, you said it's dangerous.

Bill Perry:

It's dangerous.

Bill Godfrey:

It is. Police officers are going to get shot at. They can get killed by getting shot. Firefighters can get killed in a burning building. Paramedics and EMTs can get killed by COVID or AIDS or anything else. So we all have these jobs and we know the potential is that there is deadly consequences that can come our way. And we're not flippant about that, not at all.

Bill Perry:

Not at all, not at all.

Bill Godfrey:

Not at all. It's just one of those realities that when you pin on the badge, whichever badge you're pinning on, you come to terms with.

Bill Perry:

Michelle Cook said it well.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah. Yeah, she did. Harry, what are your thoughts on this?

Harry Jimenez:

Absolutely. I'm with Billy. Let's start with the last point. You're a law enforcement officer. The day that you strap that gun to your waist early in the morning to go to your beat or in the middle of the day because you have a night shift, you know the responsibility you have and you need to understand what are your authorities, when do you need to act? And many times, and as we go around the nation talking to law enforcement officers and all the first responders... And we asked them, we have these conversations. We say, "How do you feel? What's happening in your neighborhoods, in your communities?" We understand that many officers may find themselves... If they don't understand what are their authorities and responsibilities with that weapon, in a case of an active shooter, for example, going through that door, being solo entry or coming in with two or three officers or creating a contact team right outside the door to go in and engage and neutralize that threat, they're going to hesitate. And hesitation is going to kill you, and it's going to kill more people because those bullets are killing.

Bill Perry:

Active shooters are a different animal. And the reason I say that is because they are. It's completely different than anything else we do. And I think one of the big myths that has been propagated in law enforcement is, and we hear it all over, we hear everywhere we are, is, well, the most important thing is that I go home at night. And no, it's not. No, it's not. Nobody told you to do this. You went through a lot to do this. And the law enforcement officers code of ethics, when I learned it, it was 256 words. Now it's a little bit more, they've altered it a little bit. But nowhere in there does it say anything about you going home at night. Your daughters go home at night. Your sons go home at night. My daughter goes home at night. And honestly, the active shooter time is a weird time, because if you as a law enforcement officer are taking fire, it's actually good.

Bill Godfrey:

Because they're not sure they're not shooting at someone else?

Harry Jimenez:

Innocent people.

Bill Perry:

And I mean, that's an uncomfortable reality. And they go, "Are you saying I get shot at?" No, but I'm saying if you are, it's better than... But I mean, it just, it is what it is. And again, we're not being flippant about it. We're just being real. And you have got to know, you've got to know what constitutes actionable intelligence, especially in your jurisdiction. Because ours is very free and open and it is gunfire, it's brass, bodies and blood. It is calls for help. It is moans. It is intelligence that a forcible felony is taking place in a room with them. All that. We're going to make entry, I'm telling you. I know we will. I mean, and I think we owe that. We owe that to our community. And I think we have to know those time periods and we have to know our job and our craft, and we have to take it so seriously. And it is such a serious and a sombering and a sobering topic.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah, absolutely. Billy, you've got a very, very strong SWAT and technical background. And Harry, I introduced you as Homeland Security Investigations, which belies your tactical background. And I don't want to share all those details publicly, but you're not... You wore a suit nice, and I have to tell the audience, the first time I met Harry at a training exercise, I had met him at the pre-brief and the safety briefing the night before, and he's a fed and a full suit. And the next morning he's in tactical gear with a shotgun slung over his chest. And I thought, okay, this guy's not the fed I'm usually seeing to. But Harry, when we think about tactics, and I'm going to ask both of you this, is safety in numbers? I mean, if you're the only guy there, you go in. I get that. I get that. But what about the second, the third guy, the fourth guy showing up, is there safety in trying to link up on a team? Maybe. Okay?

Bill Perry:

And one of the rules for learning and for what we do, where we are, is to stay together, communicate because it's always good to have a friend. And I say that, and I say that honestly, and I say that very candidly. And I think it's one of the things about C3 is we address the hard issues, frankly. And I think it's real, and I think it's one of the things that lends to its validity. And frankly, why I'm here and I think why Harry is here too, because we do talk honestly and candidly and forthrightly about things and we do address the tough subjects. And every firefighter's not the same and every police officer is not the same. Every school teacher is not the same. Every nurse isn't the same and every doctor is not the same. And so, yeah, man, I mean, there may be four officers and you're like, "Oh, I won the lottery today." And then there may be four officers are like, "Hey guys, block traffic." I mean...

Harry Jimenez:

Can you control traffic? Can you set up a perimeter for me?

Bill Perry:

And that's a hard truth. And those people that are real, that are listening are like, yes, that is so true.

Harry Jimenez:

Billy, but that's the reason why, this is the reason why. It's true. We all know it. And I know the listeners are going to be thinking, I can identify who's that guy in my department.

Bill Perry:

Yeah, exactly. And if you can't, it's you.

Harry Jimenez:

But the reality is that's the reason why it's so important that the professional development component-

Bill Perry:

The professional component, I agree, absolutely.

Harry Jimenez:

Because you have to continue growing.

Bill Perry:

Knowledge is power.

Harry Jimenez:

You have to be able to, when you arrive to a door and the shots have been fired and you and I are the first two officers and we need to link up, we might not need to talk. If we have trained together, if we have the basic threshold, here it is. This is my baseline of training. We look at each other, we know what we need to do, we link and we do God's work.

Bill Perry:

Absolutely.

Harry Jimenez:

However, If you're not training, if you don't know your codes, if you don't know if you are rightfully using your firearm, you're going to hesitate. And hesitation is going to cost lives.

Bill Perry:

And it's more than that. And it has to be able to be performed in an autonomous environment. This is a line level. I mean, you think about it, the most basic law enforcement officer runs around with a firearm on every day. And you don't have to call every time, "Hey, I'm about to be in a shooting. Is that good?" You don't do that. I mean, you need to be able to operate autonomously, and the same thing holds true in these situations. And you can't be ordered, don't make entry. This has to be something that you have to equip your people with to act on an autonomous level, competently, professionally and efficiently. And that leads us back into the other arenas. I mean, and I say this to the people I instruct all the time, what's the percentage of shots being fired that miss? Zero, because every round hits something and we're responsible for 100% of it.

Harry Jimenez:

100%.

Bill Perry:

And we should be, and that's okay. And we don't get the luxury of spraying and praying. We have to-

Harry Jimenez:

But the problem is that you go to some departments, and the first thing that they answer to that is, "Well, each bullet has a lawyer attached to it." That's hesitation.

Bill Perry:

It is.

Harry Jimenez:

That's doubt.

Bill Perry:

And honestly, and it doesn't. And we were talking about this the other day, or actually last night. A lot of people go, "Well, there's liability in this." Well, the liability is not really what you think it is. And anytime somebody says that in a class that I'm in where they're like, "They're a liability." All stop. Stop, break at your Google machine.

Bill Godfrey:

Folks, he's not kidding. I've been in class with him where he's done it.

Bill Perry:

All stop. Break out your Google machine and find the last time somebody was successfully litigated for that. It doesn't. The liability lies where you don't really think it does, and it's much more common since the applicated than people think.

Harry Jimenez:

And of course, we're talking about contact teams, we know that if we have to get to a point where we have a situation and we're rolling in and we arrive, you might be the first person going through the door. You might be by yourself. But at the same time, we hope that more officers come to respond to that call for help. And it can be from different jurisdictions, it can be detectives in plain clothes.

Bill Perry:

[crosstalk 00:16:23].

Harry Jimenez:

Exactly, so you want to be able to say-

Bill Perry:

Good job, by the way, San Bernardino.

Harry Jimenez:

Yes, shout out. So we have one, two, three, four officers. We teach and we try to get them anything from two to four officers to start creating that contact team. Because you're moving together, you'll be able to put hands on patients.

Bill Perry:

Sure.

Harry Jimenez:

But most of most important is, you want to stop the shooting and stop that threat.

Bill Perry:

Here's the thing. And I introduced this, I taught a class last Thursday and Friday, and we were talking about the clock. And I could see the light come on when I said, "You do realize that the clock, that golden hour didn't start when you stopped the bad guy. The golden hour started when the bad guy started."

Harry Jimenez:

Yeah.

Bill Perry:

So see, that's the thing that we-

Bill Godfrey:

The clock starts when the bleeding starts.

Bill Perry:

And that's what we lose sight of. We think, once we engage them... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and that's it. And again, and we say it, who our enemy is and who we're fighting, and it is bad. Now, all this to say that we can't have 19 individual, well-meaning, lone wolf soldiers running around.

Bill Godfrey:

I was actually just going to ask you about that. So, I mean, we've talked about being the first guy, being the officer through the door. Let's go a little deeper in the stack, second, third, fourth. What does that look like?

Bill Perry:

Second, third, and fourth, hopefully they're going to get there about the same time. Now, we don't do the diamond stuff anymore. I mean, we do different movements and whatnot, but we do train on that in our agency. And if you don't, if you're not training... It's like finances. If you're not planning, if you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail. And I'll say something with this, and frankly, this is one of those things where you really can't afford not to invest in this for your agency. And I don't mean just the management side of it, I mean the boots on the ground side of it too. And that's part of the challenge that we're seeing. But I think with the second, third, fourth, hopefully they're going to be there with them. Once we get in the fifth or sixth, somebody needs to start driving this train.

Harry Jimenez:

Oh, absolutely. You're expecting that fifth person... We call it the fifth man.

Bill Perry:

We do call it the fifth man.

Harry Jimenez:

And of course, the way we teach, we allow the communities to adapt too. It could be the six, seven, eight, nine.

Bill Perry:

That's what I was going to say, because everything we do in law enforcement is a tense and uncertain, rapidly developing situation. Everything's fluid, dynamic, it's a it's ever changing.

Bill Godfrey:

Can you slow that down and say that again? Because when they go to transcribe the podcast, they're not going to know what you just said.

Bill Perry:

Tense and uncertain, rapidly developing situation that is fluid and dynamic in nature.

Bill Godfrey:

Thank you.

Bill Perry:

You're welcome.

Bill Godfrey:

Carry on.

Bill Perry:

My southern-ness catches up sometimes. So anyway, at the end of the day, somebody has to drive that, and the king doesn't always wear the crown. And again, if Tactical Tammy is the one that shows up as fifth person, you're like, "Thank goodness she's here. She's going to be the one that goes in there and eats this." I'm not going to pull her aside and have her drive the train if... Does that make sense? Admin Andy is right behind her and he's an amazing person at doing the other... It's fluid and it can move.

Harry Jimenez:

And the main thing is, we understand that, like you say, we don't want 10, 15, 20 lone wolves running around the school or running around a building or running around a mall. Like what happened in El Paso, you have everybody responding to the Walmart shooting. Well, somebody there pumped the brakes, call dispatch, say, "Okay, I got tactical. I have at least four officers inside." Let them know on the radio. And you can ask tactical, "Send me the next four officers to my location. I'm going to be at the corner off the parking lot." So you can then, that person makes another contact team and starts slowing things down.

Bill Perry:

Absolutely. Let me bring up another thing before we forget it, discrimination. That's another thing that we are sorely lacking in law enforcement today is discrimination. And I mean, discriminatory shooting. A lot of agencies have a five step discrimination process, whole body, hands, belt, waistline, immediate area and demeanor, looking at the whole body, the hands the belt, about what's on demeanor. I mean, because we're not just looking for guns. Because a lot of good people have guns. Lots of good people have guns.

Bill Godfrey:

In Texas, almost everybody carries.

Bill Perry:

Right. Regardless of what you-

Bill Godfrey:

I didn't think you were allowed in Texas if you didn't have one.

Bill Perry:

Right. Inconvenient truth, it really does. And so a lot of good people do have guns. A lot of retired off duty officers, a lot of people that are really good and they do fix things, the White Settlement Church.

Bill Godfrey:

Absolutely.

Bill Perry:

I mean, there's absolutely there's a lot of things that happen.

Harry Jimenez:

Sutherland Springs.

Bill Perry:

Sutherland Springs, exactly.

Harry Jimenez:

[crosstalk 00:21:14].

Bill Perry:

So, I mean at the end of the day, so that's why you don't just look for gun and then engage it. Because you need to look for the whole body, the hands, the belt, waistline. You're looking for markings, looking for demeanor. You're looking for all that. Well, we do six. We do a face, whole body, hands, belt, waistline and demeanor. And the reason being is because I can go, "Harry, I'm done." I don't have to say, "Wait a minute, man. I'm looking at your whole body, your hands, your belt, waistline and demeanor." So but I think that's something we need to do. And the reason I bring that up here is because when you're moving through, just because you see somebody with a gun, it doesn't mean you need to service them, because you need to discriminate them. And this is something that if you're not teaching your department... Now this is libelous. This is something that is liability ridden.

Bill Godfrey:

Oh, that's okay. I'm thinking about all the letters I'm going to get on this podcast, but go right ahead.

Bill Perry:

You're welcome. It's all true and defendable.

Bill Godfrey:

Amen.

Bill Perry:

Right. The Safety Priority Matrix is defendable in court. It used to be called the Priority of Life Scale, now it's the Safety Priority Matrix. Again, professionalism. But I think when you're moving through, you need to be able to discriminate. You need to be able to link up with your initial contact team because they're going to be owning that position where the bad person is. That way you can start. They're going to own that. And that's great. And then we're going to start looking for other survivors and then we start clearing the building after we set cordons and we set up CCPs. If you don't know what a CCP is, if you do not know what an AEP is, if the most junior grunt officer that you've got does not know CCP, AEP, RTF, and imminent, immediate, all these words that I've been saying, step it up. Then end.

Harry Jimenez:

And not only that, you bring an example about discrimination, and it happens. And this is another conversation that we have as we go around the nation teaching these classes, especially in the advanced. We provide the students with several scenarios. And many people approach us and ask us, "Well, the shooter stopped shooting. Can we shoot the bad guy?" Because somewhere along the line in their training, they're being told that if the individual is actively engaging, they can put the tread down. And they miss the whole picture that that person has the means to do harm, had a gun.

Bill Perry:

Hence, eminent and immediate.

Harry Jimenez:

Eminent and immediate. They have already their capacity, capability and intention...

Bill Perry:

And propensity.

Harry Jimenez:

... to conduct violent events and hurt people. And they just turn around and start babbling and calling names. And many officers stop in their tracks thinking, can I service this individual?

Bill Perry:

And if you can, if that's what's needed or it doesn't, if they will allow us to take them into custody, I'm all about taking them into custody. Let's take them into custody.

Bill Godfrey:

It's amazing how often that is happening now. Yeah, I was going to say, that is a shift we've seen in the data over the last few years.

Bill Perry:

That is a shift.

Bill Godfrey:

We have fewer that are committing suicide. The rate of suicide is... Well, nosediving is too strong a way to say it, but it is substantially decreased. And the one that's increased is the ones that are being taken to custody and the ones that are fleeing.

Harry Jimenez:

No, absolutely. And if you look, if you look, yeah, the numbers of suicidal, suicide... Ending by suicide on active shooter was like a third, and it went down in the twenties. But what went up was the fact that they're now engaging the responding officers.

Bill Perry:

Yes.

Harry Jimenez:

They might be barricading. They might be moving to another place. Which takes us to, if you have a good tactical person and understand that that individual moved to a second floor, you still have people dying in the first floor, but you can still conduct saving lives on the first floor.

Bill Perry:

If we have people that service and handle it.

Harry Jimenez:

Exactly.

Bill Perry:

Yeah, I think that that's 100% true. And I think one of the other paradigm shifts that we've had to explain to officers is if they do escape, which that's another one, that's a win.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah, because they're not killing people.

Bill Perry:

They're not killing people right now. And we have a whole slew of really aggressive, crazy detectives for us that are going to go find that person. And I mean, they're really good at it. They're going to find them. And I mean, let them go do that, but mission accomplished. We've stopped the killing. We've stopped the dying.

Bill Godfrey:

You've raised an issue that I want to talk, but before we run out of time. I want both of you to talk about it a little bit. So if you have an active shooter event, you make your entry, team, no team, whatever the case may be, you neutralize the threat because a threat's presenting, that's pretty clear, cut and dry. And of course, our priority is number one, stop the killing, neutralize the threat. Number two, rescue number three clear. Can you talk a little bit about those instances where it was an active shooter event, but you get there, you've made entry and the shooting has stopped. You don't know where the bad guy is. You don't know whether he is self terminated, left the scene, holed up, hostage, barricade, but the shooting has stopped.

Bill Godfrey:

And one of the things that we see so often that is very difficult, it happens in training, happens in real life, is that ability to switch, to say, okay, we've gone from an active threat to not an active threat. There may still be a threat and present, but now it's a question mark. Can we talk a little bit about that process and that transition and changing gears and moving to the rescue?

Bill Perry:

Well, advanced is the basics mastered. So all we do is we revert to SIM, we set up security, we have an immediate action plan in the event they do come back or we get more actionable intelligence, and we do medical. It's seriously that simple.

Harry Jimenez:

Absolutely. If you don't have an active threat, you don't have the driving force that we call it, right?

Bill Godfrey:

Which you were calling actionable intelligence.

Harry Jimenez:

Exactly, actionable intelligence. Now you have body armor, you have weapons, for your partners, you can make an area secure enough, make that a warm scenario. It's not hot anymore, bullets are not flying, and you can take care of the people that are bleeding. You need to save lives. And you're going to have the rest of the time to search and find that shooter. If he went away, you're going to get an intel. If it's barricaded, you're going to find out, but you cannot stop and be inactive because when you stop, the clock is ticking. People are bleeding, people are dying.

Bill Perry:

You know what I liken this to, and Adam Pendley is the one that addressed that initially likened it this way to me is, it's a normal shooting in the city.

Bill Godfrey:

Explain.

Bill Perry:

It's on a bigger scale. I mean, we have a lot of shootings where we are, and the shooter's generally not there when we get there.

Bill Godfrey:

Weird.

Bill Perry:

And the shooter's generally not there when y'all get there in the ambulance.

Bill Godfrey:

That's right. But you know we would be there.

Bill Perry:

Right. But you get there, there's nothing stopping him from circling around and coming back.

Bill Godfrey:

Right.

Bill Perry:

But we don't think about that. It's no different, but you've got officers there and we're setting up security. We have an immediate action plan, even if it's ad hoc.

Harry Jimenez:

And we're applying medical.

Bill Perry:

And we're doing medical. So honestly, as soon as we don't get actionable intelligence, we're pushing. If we're pushing and we're pushing and everything's quiet, we don't have actionable intelligence, then we're going to set up the corridors, the cordons, the CCPs, the APs. People know what that means, and then start rescuing and then start because the clock is running. That's what you have to understand. The clock has been running since before you were dispatched. Let that sink in. Before the radio call went out, the clock had already started.

Harry Jimenez:

And our job is to save lives.

Bill Perry:

Period.

Bill Godfrey:

One of the things that I've seen happen in training, in the scenarios that we're running, and I love to see it, because you meet a lot of officers who haven't really, I guess, mentally walked through this issue of changing gears. They're expecting to find the bad guy, and now we don't really know. We haven't found them and we don't know what's going on, but we've got to change gears. But what I love to see, and I love when I see the students, the participants of the training, when they hit this reality that, okay, contact team one and two are going to support the rescue and the medical operation, and we're going to get some RTFs down range.

Bill Perry:

If you don't know what an RTF is, fix that.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah, and then contacts three and four are going to be working on clearing. They're going to do some more work to look for bad guys.

Bill Perry:

Or are there other survivors that are hiding?

Bill Godfrey:

Exactly.

Bill Perry:

You're clearing for survivors.

Bill Godfrey:

And finding that. And by the way, if you're wondering about the terms, I'm with Billy. Hit the website because we define all that stuff there. But CCP is a Casualty Collection Point. This is a point inside your downrange area, your threat area, where you set up security, you get a secured room and it becomes a warm zone. It may be in an island of a hot zone, but it's a warm zone where we can assemble casualties and provide treatment, and then ultimately work on evacuating them out. The AEP, the Ambulance Exchange Point, this is an area where we do the handoff from the rescue task forces that are working in the warm zones to the ambulance. And it's not always in a cold zone. And sometimes we need, in fact oftentimes, we need to secure that Ambulance Exchange Point so that we can operate.

Bill Perry:

And if you're really good and efficient, they're close.

Bill Godfrey:

Exactly, because carrying people sucks.

Bill Perry:

Right up there with the root canals and alimony.

Bill Godfrey:

But here's the reason why we do that is the clock. Again, if you set up a shuttle operation, you are burning precious minutes. And not two or three, but 10 or 15.

Bill Perry:

On a clock that has already been running before you got notified of the incident.

Bill Godfrey:

Yes.

Bill Perry:

Before you ever acknowledged, before you ever made your way there, before you ever did anything, that clock has been going. I'm going to hammer that home.

Bill Godfrey:

Absolutely. Harry, final thoughts. We've got to wrap up.

Harry Jimenez:

We're here to save lives. We owe to our communities that we secure and protect to be professional, to maintain continuous education, to get ready for that day. We hope that you have a 20, 25, 30 year career and you never have to encounter that day, but you need to train for that day because it's going to be the time that is going to kill people, and you can shave seconds, precious seconds from that time.

Bill Godfrey:

Absolutely. Billy?

Bill Perry:

Unfortunate truth, sometimes response resistance, some times the judicious application of force saves lives. Sorry, not sorry. It is what it is.

Bill Godfrey:

There it is. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening in. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.

Bill Perry:

Thank you.

Harry Jimenez:

Thank you.

Bill Perry:

And thank you for addressing this seriously sensitive subject that we have crossed over as a community and as a nation.

Bill Godfrey:

We've got to talk about it.

Harry Jimenez:

Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much.

Bill Godfrey:

And I realize to a certain degree, there's probably a dozen different things that we've talked about or said here that could be pointed to and said, "Hey, it's politically incorrect." And I get that, but that doesn't change the reality that people get killed if you don't do the job.

Bill Perry:

They're dead.

Bill Godfrey:

If you don't take care of business, people end up dying. And we didn't end up in this business to just watch people die.

Bill Perry:

Fact. And one of my heroes has a saying, "There are things worse than dying." And my omission, to me, would be much worse than something else.

Bill Godfrey:

Yeah. Billy, Harry, thanks for coming in today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. Please, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast already, please hit the subscribe button. Make sure that you get notice of that. If you have any questions for us, please reach out through the website or give us a call at the office. Until next time, stay safe.