Room/area/alley-clearing patrol tactics discussion

So in waiting for "quitting time" here I got to thinking...

Something I've had the opportunity to practice in my job has been tactics for clearing rooms in small teams. (I've actually never done this in real life, by the way, except for going behind people who were doing it and looking for things) Anyway this past weekend I had the opportunity to practice room-clearing with the Salinas SWAT guys.

I totally realize that we're not likely to raid houses in small teams armed with rifles or pistols. But what I was thinking is that there are aspects to how people do this that could adapt to patroling pretty well. From my experience with people the extent to which small unit tactics usually factor into patrols is kind of minimal -- but it doesn't have to be.

The essence of what happens during room clearing (or alley, or any finite area of space with a defined entry point) from the point of view of the (potential) bad guys already occupying that space is this -- 2-4 people seem to almost magically appear and instantly dominate the area.

That's achieved by the people on the team training a bit, synchronizing their actions, moving in certain ways, dividing up responsibilities, etc. It's a very fluid and dynamic thing in practice, not something where a leader is constantly telling people what to do or where people are guessing at what to do.

If you would, let me go with the example of a room as I try to talk through it briefly, but consider that "a room" could be an alley or basically any enclosed area with a defined entry point. You could actually even consider an entire city block as a (gigantic) room with a (gigantic) entryway.

What happens in room clearing is first the team stages out of view of anyone inside the room or "stacks." For soldiers it looks sort of like this:

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We'll go with a cop model, just because it's easier to illustrate, though:

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...and we're making an assumption here, which you wouldn't necessarily make in real life -- namely that every area except the room to be cleared is secure or someone else is responsible for it.

Anyway, the team here needs to do two things. The first is to avoid letting the people in the room know they're coming, which means noise discipline and not doing things like let their feet stick out beyond cover and be visible. The next thing they need to do is coordinate their action so they move simultaneously.

There are a bunch of ways to do that. Some include a tap or squeeze from the rear guy to the guy in front of him to let him know he's ready as well as a weird thing where the guy in front rocks back and the last guy rocks forward after rocking back to acknowledge being ready. However the signal is passed, the first guy decides when to move and the next guy(s) immediately follow.

The guy entering will usually pick the hardest direction of travel towards one or the other of the nearest corners of the room. This is because if the next guy goes in via the most difficult path he might get hung up and not be there to cover the first guy. (There's dissent on this point, though... the military way is usually "the path of least resistance" for whatever reason)

In any case, the important thing is that first guy is never wrong, whichever way he chooses and the guy after him always chooses to go the opposite way.

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At first when entering the room each person's intitial focus is on moving toward and clearing their corner (called "digging out the corner"), then they focus on ensuring everything is clear to the far opposing wall, then they position and announced "RIGHT SIDE CLEAR!" or "RIGHT CLEAR!" and vice versa. In an RLSH scenario you could simply announce this quietly, I'd think... or if your area wasn't "clear" announce why not quietly.

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Above the shaded areas represent the areas that each person is focused on or covering and, as you can see, they overlap.

Like I said, we assumed behind them was clear, but if it wasn't, then you'd want at least a third guy to simply step in and cover the rear:

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That's basically how it goes. There are nuances and introducing additional people goes about the same, but with more moving people, pretty much. And there's a way of sidestepping to slowly scan beyond an entryway called "slicing the pie" that minimizing how much of yourself you expose to potential observation... but anyway, there's the basic idea.

Now think about it applied to places that aren't rooms:

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There's (probably) no threat in the pics above, but if there were and you approached it with this kind of concerted and coordinated action --

1. Everyone on your team would understand the situation much faster than the bad guy(s)
2. You would all appear at once primed to take action
3. Your odds of dominating the situation would increase tremendously (IMO)

So... I thought I'd throw this out there and see what people think. It might not always be worth the trouble (I would feel moronic doing this where I live, for example), but it's definitely tactically more efficient than people just sort of lollygagging their way around a corner or through an alley randomly trying to look like they're doing something important and tactical as if they know what they're doing.

Any thoughts?

seems sound advice. Though you said there is no threat in the pics above when clearly there is a guy holding an assault rifle in one of them. But I guess for your perspective he is on your team..

Uh... yeah...

Actually I couldn't tell from the thumbnail that it was that particular pic I was posting, but same difference.

This is a more military-oriented discussion in case my explanation was wonky: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

And again the main thing I'm suggesting people consider here is just basically synchronized movement and sectors where they focus their attention...

This actually gets into something I was wanting to dabble into. Regularly scheduled drills and training. I know the NYI do some practice stuff. Those are the only pics I have ever seen of them actually. But I would like to see some of the teams who patrol together do some drills and such. Post up some info on what works and what doesnt in a team environment.

Excellent post and I too would be interested in hearing more on team drills.

I like this. I'm always wanting to check out dark alleyways. We do tend to lollygag in them though. I will bring this up to mr. Xtreme before our next training session (probably tonight).

Excellent post.

This reminds me of the "radar" exercises that I did when I first started out. I would basically try to do patrols as stealthily as possible, and really decide what stealth means. Stealth means knowing how many eyeballs there are that could see you and where those eyeballs are pointed at.

I would go through an apartment complex at night in the most Zimmer way possible, climbing walls and beams and over fences. Any time I did any maneuver I wouldn't want to be seen doing it, and I just built the habit of looking into the darkness and spot the person sitting out smoking a cigarette, or in windows, in cars, out walking a dog, whatever. It's definitely helped me.

Not directly related but thought I'd share. Know what's up or get eaten by the big fish.

This makes me think of the training we did for cell extractions at the academy.

Theres nothing quite as intense as unlocking the door to a cell with a group of inmates who are ready to kick your butt and know that your job is to enter the cell and remove them.

We were taught that the first person has to press in and open the doorway for everyone else to enter. Since you can only enter one at a time you have to push everyone backward away from the door until all the officers involved have entered and the inmates have been secured.

Often times the inmates in a situation like this will rush the door as soon as its unlocked and attempt to get the upper hand so its double dangerous for the officer unlocking the door...he can get slammed in the cell door as its pushed open OR he is an east target for a cheap shot/sucker punch, a stabbing/shanking, or even a possible hostage situation.

We usually had one or two officers with pepper spray drawn and ready to fire at the first sign of movement.

I only had to participate in a few cell extractions, but they were always intense. The inmats know they are going to be removed against their will (for court, transfer to another facility, etc) and are determined to hurt as many people as they can in the process. The officers are in a sticky situation because they have to use the minimum force necessary and that means taking a hit sometimes.

The only cell extraction I ever saw that didnt go badly was because of the pepper spray...the inmates got violent before the cell was unlocked and they were sprayed. They were still trying to fight so the Lt. gave them the option to surrender when they were ready and shut the door. It only took about a minute before everyone in the cell was ready to be cuffed and removed.

And I hate pepper spray...I was coughing up cayenne for hours after that...never spray it indoors if you have another option.

Great post, Eon.

Crossfire, I can imagine.

Crossfire the Crusader wrote:

We were taught that the first person has to press in and open the doorway for everyone else to enter. Since you can only enter one at a time you have to push everyone backward away from the door until all the officers involved have entered and the inmates have been secured.

That's a good point. It reminded me of something I didn't bring up at all -- in this context the doorway/entrance is called "the fatal funnel" because if anyone, especially the first guy, is indecisive about going through and commiting to a direction everyone ends up massed together near the room opening as an easy target. When I said the first guy is never wrong, actually there is one thing he can do wrong, which is be like "I'm going to go right... no wait, left... no... right..."

Absolutely. When doing a cell extraction, not only do the COs get assigned areas to clear, they are also assigned body parts to secure right arm, right leg, left arm, left leg, and head. If any one of those guys freezes up, it puts everyone else in the group at risk.

Love it. Thanks for posting this, E0N. I've always been curious about different tactics SWAT teams use so if you have any other useful information please don't hesitate to share. Diagrams were a big help too but might I suggest placing a red dot on each blue circle to show each person's current perspective? I realize the shading does as well but it couldn't hurt.

Also Urban I think we should totally develop some working tactics and roles for each person and different scenarios. If I remember correctly Mr. Xtreme once told me he had experience and some good ideas of these things which he was going to put in that RLSH manual hes planning to write. I'm curious to know what he knows so we can incorporate that as well. Just a thought.

The only other things we practiced with SWAT this past weekend was high risk traffic stops and vehicle searches... which I couldn't really think of a way to reasonably adapt to this stuff.

I guess people could consider arrest positions for the suspect while/if doing a citizen's arrest...

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The pic is just one I found online, but it's the position they used. Resistance is met with a "faceplant." Honestly, I never heard the word "faceplant" so many times in one day in my life, but I kind of understand why. Salinas has a ton of gang activity.

But I wouldn't take quite the same liberty's with that that cops can get away with, if I were you.

Just remember "I was in fear for my life, officer."

moved to information section.