Ep 109: Don't Let a Locked Door Cost Lives
Episode 109
Published Mar 17, 2025
Last updated Mar 5, 2026
Duration: 23:31
Episode Summary
In the case of an active shooter event, every second matters. Breaching is an important tool for law enforcement as well as the fire department. The right tools, techniques and training are crucial.
Episode Notes
In today’s episode, our panel discusses the importance of effective door breaching techniques during emergency situations, such as active shooter incidents. The conversation emphasizes the need for law enforcement to be proficient in using the right tools and methods to quickly gain access to locked areas. Key topics include understanding door types, leveraging alternate entry points like windows, and the importance of training with fire departments. By highlighting these essential skills, the episode underscores the urgency of breaching in life-threatening situations where every second counts.
View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/I1_RzHt5lHY
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:You're called to an active shooter event. You can still hear the gunfire going on, but you can't get inside because of a locked door, what are you gonna do now? That's today's topic, stick around.
Welcome to the "Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast," my name is, Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined today by three of my fellow instructors here at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. On my right, Chad Lake, from the fire/EMS side. Good to have you back in Chad.
Chad Lake:
Thank you for having me back, appreciate it.
Bill Godfrey:
I like this. fire guys on the fire side, law enforcement guys on the law enforcement side, yeah. And across from us is the always faithful, Ron Otterbacher, Ron, good to have you back in.
Ron Otterbacher:
Thank you very much, glad be here.
Bill Godfrey:
And the inimitable, Billy Perry, back in the house.
Billy Perry:
Thanks.
Bill Godfrey:
You know the last time I said, inimitable, the person that transcribes it didn't know how to spell it, I thought that was pretty funny.
Billy Perry:
That is pretty funny.
Bill Godfrey:
Don't ask me to spell it, okay.
Billy Perry:
I won't.
Bill Godfrey:
So today's topic, don't let a locked door cost lives. I set the scenario up, you're dispatched to an event and there's a locked door standing between you and where you need to get to stop the killing. Billy, what are the issues?
Billy Perry:
What are the issues? Is how good are you at breaching? Do you have breaching tools? What agencies have breaching tools? What's your policy on breaching tools? What's your policy on breaching? There you go.
Bill Godfrey:
And did you bring the breaching tool with you?
Billy Perry:
Right, and do you have the willingness, the skills, the knowledge, you know, and the opportunity to do it? And we take it for granted, and we work in law enforcement, for years we worked at not doing it. We would pass it off to the fire station, we would pass it off to the Fire Department, on a check welfare, let's say, and that's a beautiful opportunity to breach a door, beautiful opportunity, and we would pass it off to the Fire Station and or the responding fire units. And we noticed, all of us that were on SWAT, and some others said, "You know, those guys are some amazing breachers." And the joke became that the worst firefighter in the house was a better breacher than us 'cause they do it all the time and they're really, really good at it and they have all the tools.
And you know you don't want your very first breach to be the day that the balloon goes up in the day of the big game. And Ron has a saying, "Try before you pry," and I personally breached an unlocked door for a long time when somebody from the back, or the side, came up and turned the knob and opened it, so.
Bill Godfrey:
Sorry.
Billy Perry:
That's suboptimal.
Bill Godfrey:
You're, yeah, you're not the only one that has that suboptimal history of breaching an unlocked door.
Chad Lake:
Right. Yeah.
Guilty.
Ron Otterbacher:
In your planning have you looked at alternate entry points too?
Billy Perry:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
We've had some, going back to doing narcotic search warrants, that are reinforced that just are damn near impossible to breach and then you go to the side door and you just bust out a little sliding glass window and you walk right in.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
So have you thought about alternate breaching points?
Bill Godfrey:
And I think that's a really good point. You know, obviously, the potential for every second to matter, in an active shooter event, couldn't be more understated. Breaching is an important skill and it can be done very quickly once you have the tools and the person with the knowledge at the door, but there might be a different way through that's faster.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Right, there may be, and you may need to find an alternate route. And if you've done any amount of breaching your first one may have been great, you may have swung a ram and it was super awesome and God love ya, and I'm super happy for you, but by the same token, if you've done a bunch of 'em, and you've hit that one door and you're going, that's got a dead man behind it, that's got a crossbar behind it-
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Billy Perry:
And there's nothing you can do short of a charge.
Chad Lake:
One extra lock can make the difference.
Billy Perry:
Yes, uh-huh. So, you know, or the ubiquitous 4X4 across it, you know, so experience matters.
Bill Godfrey:
It does. Chad, you know, you and I on the fire side, a lot of time spent learning breaching from fire school, and then coming back to it and revisiting it, from cars, to house doors, to commercial doors, things like that. What are the big takeaways in your mind that law enforcement really oughta know about breaching that's some of the most common challenges?
Chad Lake:
I think honestly, the tools are great, but the tools are useless without the technique.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Chad Lake:
The technique has to be there because otherwise you're just holding a piece of steel.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
So if you can learn the certain techniques, and as you are prying a door, what are you looking for? Are you looking for alternate mechanisms? Are you looking at the flexibility of the door and are you on the right spot of the door, do you have to start low and work your way high? So learning the techniques and really what to look for, is probably the key, more importantly than the tool itself. The tool will do the job-
Bill Godfrey:
Right.
Chad Lake:
It's just the techniques and how to overcome some of your obstacles.
Ron Otterbacher:
And I've actually seen where teams have approached an outward-opening door with a ram, trying to use a ram to get in.
Chad Lake:
Right, size it up.
Ron Otterbacher:
You gotta understand-
Chad Lake:
The size up is incredible.
Ron Otterbacher:
What you're dealing with.
Billy Perry:
I was literally about to say that. I have an 11 and 13-year-old son and when we're walking to a door, when we're going to a store, wherever, I'll say, "Where are the hinges?" And I have trained them-
Chad Lake:
Yes.
Billy Perry:
To start looking at hinges. If you see hinges, it's a pull door, if you don't see hinges, it's a push door, and like you said, you can show up with a sledge until the cows come home, if you're looking at hinges, it's gonna be a long day.
Chad Lake:
It's gonna be a long tiring day.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
And that's another thing, especially when you're trying to make entry, as far as a contact team goes, how much energy are you using to breach a door and then once it's open, how spent are you?
Billy Perry:
The answer is all of it.
Chad Lake:
All of it.
Billy Perry:
Yes, yeah, you're using all of it.
Chad Lake:
You are using all of it.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
But then are you forcing a, or breaching a residential door, versus a commercial door.
Billy Perry:
Commercial door.
Chad Lake:
Which is again-
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
A very different operation.
Chad Lake:
One person, two person, three person, I mean, there's a lot of ...
Billy Perry:
And setting and picking and prying is a lot different than ramming and hammering.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
Or going to a mobile home door.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Ron Otterbacher:
They always created problems even if you knew how to pry 'em.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
They would tend to bend or buckle-
Ron Otterbacher:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
Rather than, they would go into pieces instead of-
Chad Lake:
Yeah, you're peeling it away before you're doing your thing.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
You're just taking out the layers.
Bill Godfrey:
I do think you guys hit on a couple of important things that I wanna highlight. One is, is it an inward-opening door, or an outward-opening door, that really kinda matters?
Billy Perry:
It's important.
Bill Godfrey:
On the importance level, it's kind of up there.
Chad Lake:
Oh yes, it is.
Bill Godfrey:
The construction of the door, is it a wood door, is it a metal door? And what's the construction of the door frame that it's attached to. Generally speaking, on residential construction, you're a lot more likely to run into wood doors.
Billy Perry:
Or thin steel.
Bill Godfrey:
Thin steel.
Chad Lake:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
And even sometimes when you run into metal doors, or fiberglass doors on home construction, they're mounted on wood jams. Whereas in commercial it's usually metal, steel, maybe glass, but something a little bit heavier duty. The other thing that I'd like to talk about a little bit is in times in past when we've worked with law enforcement on breaching techniques, they are enamored with the Halligan tool, which is a fantastic tool.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
It has so many uses and it's so valuable, but it almost always requires a sledgehammer, or a flathead ax.
Chad Lake:
Some type of striking tool with it.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
To beat it into place.
Billy Perry:
A big impact tool.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
You have to marry it together.
Bill Godfrey:
And the biggest gap I see for those in law enforcement that say, "Yeah, but I have a Halligan," is they've got a Halligan with no impact tool.
Billy Perry:
No setting tool.
Bill Godfrey:
No setting tool, yeah. How common is that versus, I guess carrying no tools at all, where do you guys see that on the law enforcement side?
Billy Perry:
I haven't seen it that much. I have seen it, but it belies inexperience.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Billy Perry:
It's the old tell me you've never breached a door with that without telling me you've never breached a door with that, and that is the example. And when we were teaching it, in my agency, there was a breaching block and we would say, "Spend your own money." And that may be unpopular now, but go to Harbor Freight, we consider impact and pry tools, dumb tools. I'm a technician, as y'all know, and I wouldn't use a lot of really cheap tools on fine projects, but for dumb tools, impact tools, gimme Harbor Freight all day.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, a 4.99 sledge will work just fine.
Billy Perry:
I take a 4.99 sledge, cut the handle off a little bit, and a crowbar. The thing is though, you do not wanna use those tools the first time on an active shooter hostage rescue. You wanna do that, regrettably, on granny or grandpa that's dropped dead in the kitchen and you're forcing entry, after they've lived a long and healthy life, and you're finding 'em, that's when you wanna take advantage of that.
Bill Godfrey:
Sure.
Billy Perry:
Any of those times.
Bill Godfrey:
I would also say, I think, there are actually a number of really well-designed door props for doing training on breaching. And not every Fire Department, but there are a lot of Fire Departments that have these door-breaching props where they can configure it for all different kinds of techniques and teach you in very short order. And most firefighters across this country would be happy to take some time to teach a cop, or two, or three, just informally, some quick down and dirty techniques for getting through some of these doors. Don't you think so too?
Chad Lake:
Oh, nothing's gonna make a firefighter happier than teaching some of your law enforcement brothers and sisters something you're good at-
Billy Perry:
How to break something.
Chad Lake:
Oh yeah, it's great.
Billy Perry:
That you're really, really good at.
Chad Lake:
Yeah, and you're good, right, just make sure that the ones teaching it can do it.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
You know, but that is like, that's the ultimate ego booster for us firefighters is like, "You won't believe what I just did, I just taught a bunch of cops how to force a door and they didn't know anything, but now they do." But it's a great, great training.
Billy Perry:
Our SWAT team had one that that had the nylon pins you could put in that would break the sheer pins, and you put a different number in there, and that's good, but again, that requires time away from the beat.
Bill Godfrey:
The task, yeah.
Billy Perry:
That requires training. Whereas if you carry your $10 worth of dumb tools, or $20 worth now, and you do breach every time, 20 years ago like we wouldn't do it, in our agency a lot of people wouldn't do it, 'cause they didn't wanna run an information report on damaged property. Did you ever run into that?
Ron Otterbacher:
Yes, sir.
Billy Perry:
And, write it!
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Billy Perry:
It's quick and it's for the good of the order, it's for the good of the community, it's for the good of everybody.
Chad Lake:
Can you just go to an acquired structure that's about to be knocked down and you have, you a hotel that's about to be decommissioned, and you have all these doors and you can even add extra obstacles there, you can put some drop bars on some of your doors. It's really cheap, a cheap way of-
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
And you have hundreds of doors and you can change it all up. You can throw a drop bar, you can throw a wedge on the bottom of it so somebody just wedged that door, how do you overcome that? And you have that opportunity to, and it's essentially free training. You might have to write up a safety plan and get it approved, but it's-
Billy Perry:
And a waiver.
Chad Lake:
Almost free-
Yeah. And a waiver.
Billy Perry:
Sign a waiver.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Billy Perry:
The only challenge with that is it's still time away.
Bill Godfrey:
It's time away,
Billy Perry:
It is time away.
Bill Godfrey:
You know to your point, Billy, I think not only what you're saying, but I would also add this on. You know granny's down, welfare check, not answering, often the Fire Department is dispatched to that as well, or they're dispatched to it first and then they call law enforcement because they don't wanna, they don't wanna make entry without a law enforcement officer there.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
If you're the law enforcement officer that's there, and they got the breaching tools, ask them to coach you through it.
Billy Perry:
100%.
Chad Lake:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Ask them to let you do it.
Chad Lake:
Absolutely.
Billy Perry:
Or say, "This is what I've bought for breaching, can I use this?" Because if I asked you that, well, you know, you would help me.
Chad Lake:
All day.
Billy Perry:
All day, and try your stuff, if you've got it, you know, and get used to using it. If you don't use theirs and go that's, "I wanna buy one of those." And because I'm telling ya, we passed it off, forever, to the Fire Department. And again, exponentially better breachers than we will ever be. You know you could almost race through a structure cutting holes through walls, I've seen you guys- And cutting holes through walls quicker than we could going down a hallway, you know what I mean, so.
Bill Godfrey:
There is a lot of that you have to do in the fire service, that's for sure.
Chad Lake:
There is.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
The other thing I would say though, and this going back to, what Ron kind of opened with, is you can obviously breach and force your way through a door, but somebody at least think about the alternate means of getting in. You know windows, very common, in most cases they're pretty easy to breach and break, the one thing you've gotta remember to do is once you break out the window to rake the frame to try to get rid of whatever glass is there.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
And if you've got a towel, or a blanket, or something like that, that you can put over the sill, so that you don't get glass as you cross through all the better. The corner of the window is typically a great place to strike, not the center of the window. You wanna strike it with kind of a sharp point that, or not, I shouldn't say sharp point, but a point that's gonna focus the energy really well. What other things about, alternate ways other than going through the door?
Chad Lake:
Well I think, well, real quick with the window thing too, is have one person go through the window and then go unlock the door.
Ron Otterbacher:
Yes.
Chad Lake:
There's no need for everybody to come through and, you know like you said, the hazards with the broken glass, check those sliders. If it's commercial, a lot of times you can almost just lift that little commercial door up off the hinges with a Halligan, or a pry tool, and you can bring it out and you can open that up. You have your K tools, you have your R tools, you can take out the lock, just the cylinder lock-
Bill Godfrey:
Yep.
Chad Lake:
And you can just jimmy that lock. There's so many different options you have.
Bill Godfrey:
I wanna say, have you seen that video of the truckee guy that demonstrates how to remove the, with a pair of vice grips, for the commercial cylinder lock?
Chad Lake:
Oh, yes.
Bill Godfrey:
It's like less than seven seconds out and the door is open.
Chad Lake:
But the problem is that's not the fun thing.
Bill Godfrey:
No.
Chad Lake:
I wanna break stuff-
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
And you have to have that self control. It's like, listen, I wanna come back and I wanna break this door so bad because that's what we strive on, but it's like you're forcing that door, I'm just gonna go open up that slider and I'm gonna walk in because you know what, I still have work to do.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Chad Lake:
And now I'm not tired.
Bill Godfrey:
Let's not forget we were called to an active shooter event.
Chad Lake:
Correct.
Billy Perry:
Right, right, and that's what I was about to say, and I'll, for breaching the window, I'm gonna do that under the, and you may do that to gain entry into the house, I'm gonna do that like I'm porting it, and I think that's something that even patrol officers can do. Have one person standing by to take control of the room with a rifle, let somebody else port it, let them-
Bill Godfrey:
What do you mean when you say, "Port it?"
Billy Perry:
Break the window so that they, you're putting a muzzle in the room.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay.
Billy Perry:
'Cause I can shoot everything in that room without making entry. The three places you're getting in a gunfight are outside a room, inside a room, and in the doorway, or the window. And outside's better, inside's second best, worst is in the window, or in the doorway. But I can put a muzzle in there, I can port it, and I can engage everything in there, and that's just, that's what you would do if there was actual nefarious activity taking place in that room. Ron can port it, I'm gonna be posted up with a muzzle ready to go in and engage whoever's in there. And then go in, like you said, all right, this is how we would do it, and then go in and open the door and make things happen.
Bill Godfrey:
So Billy, I don't wanna leave this topic without talking for a few moments about explosive breaches. You know you as a long time bomb squad guy, and SWAT guy, know far more than any of us will about those tools. What are the pros and cons of explosive breaches? When is there a good, good call, good need for that, versus, yeah, that's the wrong application?
Billy Perry:
The good time is if you've got time to set it up. The fact-
Bill Godfrey:
How long does it take?
Billy Perry:
Longer than you think. You wanna say seconds, but seconds is a long time. The fastest breach you can have, obviously, is opening the door. The second fastest is a mechanical breach. The third fastest is a shotgun, probably, and then explosive. 'Cause you have to place a charge, you have to back off, you have to put the Nonel, put the firing wire out and then initiate it, or you can set it up before and have it there on a prop stick, or whatever. But there are counter indications to a breaching charge. Like it can be a challenge if the door's wet, as an example, just simple things. If you're using a water charge, when everybody makes entry, they're making entry on a slick floor, now it's wet. If you use a-
Bill Godfrey:
I never thought about that.
Billy Perry:
If you have a hockey puck, which is a piece of conveyor belt with a coiled up deck cord you put on there, that's dry open, but you're still gonna, you're gonna have firing, initiating, Nonel, or whatever, that's gonna be a trip hazard when you're making entry. And there you still have to run up, place it along the frame between the locks, or just over the locks, or just below the locks, depending on where they are, the latching mechanism, feed their Nonel, get to your MS, Minimum Safe Distance, your MSD, and then initiate it and let it go.
So the fastest is opening the door, the second fastest is a mechanical breach, always. And you can actually pour it like drywall, like you can put water charges on drywall between studs and shoot it, when I say shoot it, initiate the charge, and it'll blow a hole through the drywall that you can immediately put a muzzle in and shoot somebody in the room without ever making entry.
Ron Otterbacher:
And the other thing we haven't discussed, and we've talked about it many times, find a person, especially in a commercial building, who's got the biggest set of keys and have them hand you the key and go unlock it, you know. Oftentimes we overlook the obvious and if we just take a second as we're looking at things, "You got a key to this door? "Yeah, here it is right here." Okay, now we're good.
Chad Lake:
Or do they have a Knox Box?
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
You know a little Knox Box, we have the key, open it up, and there's your master keys for the whole entire structure.
Bill Godfrey:
You hope.
Billy Perry:
And will tell you this also-
Bill Godfrey:
You hope.
You hope.
Billy Perry:
You hope. I will tell you that as, where I work now, which is at a school, we've done extensive training with the keys and even the armed guards that I have that work for me, when we're making entry and they use these keys, their entire shifts cannot do it during a training exercise.
Chad Lake:
Yeah, a key ring of 20 keys and-
Bill Godfrey:
Your hands shaking too much.
Billy Perry:
Right. 'Cause you know narrowing of the visual cone, loss of fine motor skills, auditory exclusion, it all happens, and it happens to everybody. And that's good guys, bad guys, everybody, but yeah, so that's why I think, and it is important, but you can train out of that, but you've got to train to train out of that.
Bill Godfrey:
And there has to be some repetition too.
Billy Perry:
Has to be.
Chad Lake:
Always.
Bill Godfrey:
One rep is not gonna get it done.
Billy Perry:
No.
Chad Lake:
No.
Ron Otterbacher:
No.
Billy Perry:
Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. And if you're practicing wrong, all you're doing is cementing wrong, so.
Chad Lake:
And I think you have to account for a lot bad days.
Billy Perry:
I was experiencing that.
Chad Lake:
Everybody's gonna have a bad day.
Billy Perry:
Sure.
Chad Lake:
I can hit this door 20 times and 19 outta the 20 times, I'm in it in 30 seconds.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
Now one day, for some reason.
Billy Perry:
You're a firefighter, I'd bet 10. I'd bet you'd be in it in 10 seconds, seriously.
Chad Lake:
Maybe.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
Depending on the challenges, of course.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Chad Lake:
But it could just be that one off day I have, and that's another thing is, and that's the whole point of the team, is swallow your pride.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Chad Lake:
I'm forcing this door, I'm forcing this door, I'm trying to breach and it's just not working, pass that tool on.
Ron Otterbacher:
Absolutely.
Chad Lake:
Right, pass the tool.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
Swallow your pride and say, "Okay, I lost today, I took that L."
Billy Perry:
Right.
Chad Lake:
But that's gonna make me, next day, following weeks and months, I'm not gonna lose again.
Billy Perry:
On my unlocked door my team was saying, "You're doing great, Billy, you're doing great, Billy"-
Chad Lake:
Keep going, keep pushing.
Billy Perry:
"You're doing great," and I'm like, "I don't feel great." And a guy from the back of the stack came up and opened the door, yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Thankfully for him you were too tired to punch him.
Billy Perry:
I didn't say...
Bill Godfrey:
All right, as we wrap this one up, any last thoughts? 'Cause I, we wanna be very clear, there's no reason that a locked door should cost-
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Lives when we're responding. Now one of the things we didn't talk about was how a locked door can prevent an attacker from gaining access. There's been a number of instances where a locked door, they bypass that room and they go to a different target, so you should expect to run into locked doors.
Billy Perry:
Sure.
Bill Godfrey:
When it's an active shooter environment. You may or may not get master keys, you may get a key ring that's so many keys that for all practical purposes you don't, it's taking too long to get through 'em, all of those kinds of things. But any other last minute thoughts on this one before we wrap it up?
Billy Perry:
So a couple of really, really, really key points. Number one, have the tools to do it. Number two, work on having the mindset to do it, and by that I mean be decisive. Know when you can, when you can't, when you have a duty to, and know what constitutes that, seriously. Like one of the things that we never thought we would have to discuss is active bleeding is an active incident.
Bill Godfrey:
That's a good point.
Billy Perry:
And just because there may not be, actionable intelligence, or may not be gunfire, there may not be whatever, if they are bleeding in there that is breachable.
Chad Lake:
Yep.
Billy Perry:
Correct, every, 100% of the time, and just know that. Knowledge is power. And you know you've heard me say, "Courage, competence, incompetence, and competence, are all contagious." And if you're incompetent and you're not courageous it's, you know, does that make sense? And I would much rather be competent and courageous and have that be competent, be contagious around my peers.
Bill Godfrey:
Well said. Well said.
I think we'll leave it there. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming together to talk about this topic. Thank you to our producer, Karla Torres. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know, we love hearing the feedback. If there's something you think we can help you with, give us a call. And until next time, stay safe.