Ep 127: Be Clear, Not Clever. Medical? Rescue Task Force
Episode 127
Published May 25, 2026
Duration: 24:36
Episode Summary
In this episode, we simplify Rescue Task Force down to what it should be: a team with a medical mission in the warm zone, with its own internal security, using whatever mix of responders you actually have. Bill Godfrey, Kevin Nichols, and Kelly Boaz talk about time versus triage, why labels and new names don’t save lives, and how a mission first definition of RTF helps you focus on getting the right patients out first instead of arguing over who “qualifies.”
Episode Notes
After training more than 32,000 responders in over 2,700 active shooter exercises, we’ve seen Rescue Task Force (RTF) become so focused on who “counts” that it can distract from the actual goal: use the people you have to save as many lives as possible.
In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey talks with instructors Kevin Nichols and Kelly Boaz about a mission‑first definition of RTF that works in big cities and small communities alike: a team with a medical mission operating in an unsecured area, with its own internal security, regardless of which uniforms are on it.
They discuss why time doesn’t apply the same way to every injured person, why judgment at the casualty collection point matters more than labels, and how keeping RTF concepts simple helps responders focus on getting the right patients on the first ambulances instead of debating terminology.
Get the free sample Rescue Task Force SOP and glossary of definitions mentioned in this episode at:
https://ncier.org/asim/checklist
View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/W7HUJCBFWOc
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:After training more than 32,000 responders in over 2,700 active shooter exercises. I can tell you this. We've overcomplicated rescue task force to the point of stupidity. Today, we're gonna give you one workable field definition of a rescue task force that works with whoever you've got on the scene so we can stop arguing about labels and start pulling patients out.
Let's start with the mission. Why does rescue task force even exist to begin with? What's the mission?
Kelly Boaz:
Well, that's simple. It's injured people need to be rescued. It's not a security mission. It goes to our second category and our training is time. Get those folks care and get 'em to the hospital where we can save their lives.
Bill Godfrey:
Kevin.
Kevin Nichols:
Historically we've focused a lot of work on that first priority. The stopping the killing. This speaks that second priority, stopping the dying. Rapidly getting people help in a unsecure area to get them to higher levels of care and promote their survivability.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, but why do we need something different? Why not just have the cops go in and grab 'em and pull 'em out?
Kelly Boaz:
Well, don't you want care to them as quickly as possible? And someone that's trained to do triage and hey, this is a red patient versus a green patient. Someone that can make that quick decision and get 'em to an ambulance exchange point. If that's in fact that they, whether they need to be.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. But guys, why does that even matter? Why does it matter that we've gotta have separate medical mission going in to do it? Why can't the cops just bring them out and throw 'em in the ambulances?
Kelly Boaz:
Well, you're asking two veteran cops that might have an experience on putting a tourniquet on maybe, and can put somebody in a recovery position. But let me throw it back at you. You're the paramedic on the group. What do you say? Doesn't time become critical in your skillset?
Bill Godfrey:
Not only does, it's not just about time. And I think this is one of the places that maybe we went a little bit wrong in kind of messaging over the last decade, that everything is about time. The critical injuries are about time. But not every injury has a clock that is a life-threatening clock. And I think that's a distinction that we've lost.
I remember this vivid conversation I had with a law enforcement guy and we were talking about getting the triage done and doing the treatment and that kind of stuff. And he goes, no, I just want 'em off the scene. Get 'em off my scene. I just want 'em off my scene. And I said, no, you want them to survive. And if we're gonna maximize survivability when we're in the inside, in the warm zone, the rush to get the people out is the rush to get the critical injuries out. Not everybody, not everybody that gets shot needs surgery. There are people walking around all over this country that still have bullets in 'em from years ago that surgeons don't remove.
What is required is that when you're in the casualty collection point and you've applied whatever mass triage, your method you're using, whether it's START, SALT, I don't care. Great, you did that. Now there's eight reds. Which one's going first? Which red needs to go on the first ambulance? And who's gonna go with 'em on that ambulance? What other patients is gonna go with 'em on the ambulance? Which believe it or not, is an extremely local issue because do your ambulances have two medics or is it a medic and an EMT or is it just an EMT in the back? Are they basic life support? Are they advanced life support? Are they the old style ambulances that have the cot and the bench seat so that you can put two stretcher patients in, one on a backboard, one on the cot? Or do you have the newer ambulances that have the captain seats, which are great for safety? But if you've gotta take two laying down patients, that's a problem. That's local knowledge. That's local knowledge. And if you take the time to evacuate everybody out of the hazard area and pile 'em up where the ambulances are parked, how long did that take?
Now people would say, oh, we can get that done in five minutes. Sorry, gotta throw the bullshit flag on that. Doesn't happen in five minutes. So now we're talking 10, 15, 20 minutes later, this pile of bodies comes out. Well, what if the first four or five out are the ones that were closest to the door but have nothing to do with being the most seriously injured? And how are you supposed to decide which is the first patient to go in the ambulance?
So yeah, I think not only do we need the medical team to be focused on a medical mission, however that's staffed, I actually think the problem is a little bit broader than what we've been talking about in the past, which is you not only have to go inside and render the care, but you need to figure out how you're gonna package your ambulances. And that's gotta be done in the casually collection point. Because if that first group doesn't go out together, you've just wasted your first ambulance.
Kevin Nichols:
Well, I think you make a lot of good points, Bill. I think the idea that we want to get the most critically injured person off the scene first, even before that you talked about wanting to get patients off my scene versus wanting them to survive. I think a lot of times we lose focus on the mission. We ask people at these trainings, what is your primary objective? Well stop the killing. Stop the dying. Yes. That is an objective. Your primary objective is to save as many lives as possible. And we do that by stopping the killing and stopping the dying.
So yes, stopping the killing. Then we get somebody who has some medical knowledge down range to make the determinations that you're talking about, which is the most, 'cause I don't want a cop who's been to a, or anybody who's been to an eight hour class that does medicine as a hobby, not as their full-time job, making that determination. I want the guy who does medicine every day who has the experience with it and the familiarity with it. Make that decision.
The other thing, pulling people out. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not the paramedic, but if I move those critically injured people, aren't I taking the chance of further exacerbating their injuries and making things worse?
Kelly Boaz:
I actually make it even more simplistic than that is how about if it's me? I love Kevin, he's a great cop, but I'd rather have you there with your knowledge to save me with your training than Kevin or my family members or friends.
Bill Godfrey:
It's an interesting, it's an interesting conundrum and I feel like I may have derailed the, the topic a little bit of why we're here, but maybe not, I don't know. You know, the, the mission is, or the, as you said, the objective is Kevin, to save as many lives as possible. That is about time, but it's not about time for everybody in the injured pool. And that is the whole point of triage. And to both of your points, yes, we've done a lot of work to train cops over the years. I can tell you that no matter how well we've trained them, I'm looking at EMTs and paramedics that have been on the job for many years and they lack the medical judgment, triaging skills that used to be cornerstone to what we do. They've fallen back on these, these gross triage systems of SALT and START and things like that. And that's where some of this is going wrong, even on the experienced medical provider side.
So when you package all of that together, and then we come back to the topic here, the mission, that medical mission that's gonna get done, it's gonna get done by the people that are there. It doesn't matter what the staffing is in Orlando or New York or Los Angeles or Iowa. It doesn't, they're not the same, it's not the same communities, it's not the same staffing, it's not the same availability of training. So you gotta work with what you've got, and my, well, let's just say, here's my definition. It's a team with a medical mission operating in an unsecured environment that has their own internal security moving with 'em. Nothing in there says anything about it being fire department paramedics or fire department EMTs or the county run ambulance service, emt or paramedic being partnered up with a, it could be all cops, it could be a mixture. It doesn't really matter. Depends on who you got there. But it's a medical mission.
Kevin Nichols:
Well, you know, the problems don't go away. One of our very wise instructors, one of his, my favorite quotes of his is, the problems don't go away based on the size of your jurisdiction, you're gonna have the same problems. We have to find a way to address those problems. And we, if we address those problems with this fire department and this police department, or I've been to places, I've trained with places whose plan was, we have tactical paramedics on every shift and we're gonna run tactical paramedics with tactical law enforcement or with law enforcement to run RTFs. As long as you have a medical element that's doing that medical mission and the internal security, what that looks like locally is okay, as long as it works
Bill Godfrey:
And as long as there's not a delay in deploying it.
Kevin Nichols:
Exactly
Bill Godfrey:
'Cause that's the other piece of this
Kelly Boaz:
Delay is key. Delay is key. If there's a delay, then, then there's a problem.
Bill Godfrey:
So Kelly, you said something right at the opening that medical is not a security mission. Talk a little bit more about that.
Bill Godfrey:
So it's not. I'm not going in there as an RTF team and looking for the assailant. I'm going in there looking and trying to render aid to the injured. If I'm part of that RTF team and I'm security, well, my responsibility in that mission is to protect my medics that are on that team so they can render care to the injured. That is my responsibility, that is my mission of the day. But I'm not going in there as an RTF team to an old saying that we have is to go hunting, looking for that bad person. That's not what I'm there to do. I'm there to render, or some members of my team, the right members of my team can render aid to the injured and I can make sure that if an assailant pops out or whatever, that they're protected. Those medics are my primary responsibility on that mission.
Bill Godfrey:
So Kelly, I'm gonna take that a step further and put you on the spot a little bit. So it's fairly obvious when you talk about a rescue task force and you're staffing it with some cops and some EMS people, wherever they came from, fire department, ambulance service, doesn't really matter, that's a fairly straightforward expectation that people have when you say rescue task force. But what if it's staffed with only cops? So for example, you're a career law enforcement officer. You're also the certified EMT that works on an ambulance every week. If you and Kevin are on a rescue task force and Kevin's pulling security and you're the medical element, you're both cops, is it still a rescue task force?
Kelly Boaz:
I believe it is, right? Because I'm still taking care of those injured folks. I don't care what we call it. But yeah, that's my job for that particular, I did not enter that structure or that area as a contact team. I entered it as a rescue task force team. So I'm gonna look at Kevin to protect me as I'm doing my skills to the patients and trying to save their life.
Bill Godfrey:
Because your weapon is holstered. You're carrying medical gear.
Kelly Boaz:
And that is that, those are my tools of the trade on that specific mission right there and then. I'm the most senior medically trained person on that task force. If it's Kevin and I, he's gonna look to me and what I can do and I'm looking to him for what he can do. And the bottom line is the folks that we're trying to save to not only do a quick triage, but to get 'em to the hospital where their lives are gonna be saved.
Kevin Nichols:
It goes back to the mission. It really is. What makes it a rescue task force is the mission. And as you pointed out in your definition is it is a team with a medical mission. They're not there to do security work, they're there to do medicine and that's what makes it an RTF.
Bill Godfrey:
And so when all of these other groups that do training and, you know, set out expectations and naming, oh, you can't call it an RTF if it's all cops now it's a police rescue team or a law enforcement rescue. I've heard so many names of this that it's overwhelming. Isn't it important that when we're training the people in the field to keep this as simple as possible and equip them with the tools to make it work with what they've got?
Kelly Boaz:
Consistency beats intensity every single time. And absolutely, I don't care what you call it. We call it a rescue task force for many reasons. Because we've learned that that is a good name to identify that person as. But why are we getting into minutiae of that? You are there to rescue those injured at the best ability that you can and keep it simple. Just keep it simple.
Kevin Nichols:
I think what Kelly talks about, you know, a rose by any other name, I get that point. But also I think to your point, consistency matters. And if we're going to have multiple agencies and multiple jurisdictions and multiple, multiple different disciplines using plain language. One of the things NIMS did when it first got widespread in 2001 was a common operating language, a plain language mandate. So calling them, having them named the right thing and everybody calling them the same thing, I think is important.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. You know, it's funny you mention NIMS. It's all too often, you know, the fire service gets sometimes rightfully so criticized for being very rigid when it comes to NIMS and ICS. The funny thing is, is we equally get it wrong on the fire service side and we rationalize and make up things that when you go back to NIMS doctrine, and ICS doctrine don't actually hold true. And in this particular case, rescue task force. Well, the difference between a strike team and a task force is defined by ICS is a strike team, is a grouping of like resources and a task force is a grouping of dissimilar resources.
And so the idea of a rescue task force was born out of the need of the mission, a medical mission, but it needed to travel with its own security so that we weren't caught up trying to coordinate a contact team to provide cover for a medical team moving in. And thus we have a task force because we have a different blending of resources. But I think many people in the field got completely and totally wrapped around the axle about, well if it's law enforcement and it's fire EMS, that's a task force. But if it's all cops, it's no longer a task force. Oy oy. It's still a medical mission with sec. There are people with different purposes.
Kelly Boaz:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
And they're to do different work. That is the very definition of a task force. Am I wrong? Kelly, you've been, I mean your time with the FBI, you had to deal with a little bit of ICS and NIMS doctrine in your day. You tell me, do you, is this, are we just getting wrapped around the axle over something stupid?
Kelly Boaz:
Absolutely. We are. We need to keep it simple. And again, why are we, why are we defining the minutia? There's really no reason for it. You said it best. This is a, this is a set of team members with different disciplines. Now I'm a task force and I'm there to do a specific mission, period, the end. I can tell you, being a veteran of some active shooter situations, I don't care what you call it, but I've heard it say get those rescue guys in here with a security element right now. Right? That's an RTF, that's an RTF by definition. And it saved lives.
Kevin Nichols:
I agree. I mean it all boils down to the mission. There is a task that has to be performed. There are people who are injured and we have to do something about that, and we have to do something about that in a timely fashion. We don't have time to secure it and make it a cold zone. We've already taught, we've studied that ad nauseum. We don't have the time to make that happen. How are we gonna do that? The most efficient way is having that combined arms, you know, dissimilar tactics with a mission to go in and rescue those people using a task force to go in and do rescues, makes it a rescue task force. It doesn't matter who's standing on it, it matters the mission.
Bill Godfrey:
We don't need to rename it a rescue team because it's three cops today or four cops or whatever it is. You know, Kelly, I like the way you, the way you said it when you were distinguishing between the security mission of a contact team and the medical mission of a rescue task force. It's a mindset when you're going in, and I think the challenges that we've seen is when you ask contact teams to essentially function as a rescue task force, they get literal role confusion. And you either end up with none of them doing medical and all pulling security or the flip side, which I don't know which one is worse. They all jump in in medical and now nobody's pulling security and you've completely, you know, put yourselves at risk.
Kelly Boaz:
Yeah, absolutely. If I'm going in as a security element with, and I like to call my medics, that is my job, that is my function. I'm gonna do everything I can in my power to protect them so they can do their job. If I'm going in as a contact person, well, my function is different, then I'm going in to stop the thread or neutralize the threat. It is a mindset. What is my mission and I'm gonna carry it out.
Bill Godfrey:
Likewise, we've got a very similar situation with the contact teams, with all of these different names that have been created for essentially what boils down to base tactics, protected island, cordons, you know, all of the... Yeah. Contact teams solve all those problems. And so if you've got your medical team and your security teams and they've got the building blocks, then let them do what needs to be done given the lay of land that incident with the staffing that they've got. Am I wrong?
Kevin Nichols:
No, I think it, a lot of it deals with your local perspective. What works for you and your, and your jurisdiction and your agency. But really it's a differentiation without a difference. We're calling them different things, but they perform the same mission. And I think that's where your, where your focus should be. Let's define it. Let's, mandate it. Let's get it down and make sure everybody's on the same page and let's do it that way.
Kelly Boaz:
And the names that we have, contact team, rescue task force team, ambulance exchange points, they're so simplistic. And when bullets are flying and people are bleeding, you know what I want? I want simplicity because I'm not gonna remember what's this fantasy island or whatever you called it earlier. I'm not gonna remember that. I can remember, hey, I'm part of a contact team or I'm on a rescue task force team. Good, let me go to work.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, that's a really, really interesting point. Let's talk about, let's pull at that thread a little bit, Kelly, on how we've overcomplicated it. I think we've made our case for why it's overcomplicated, but why does that matter? How does over complication turn into killing people? Are people dying?
Kevin Nichols:
It's the element of confusion, fog of war. People call fog of war. You know, the idea that Murphy's law, things that go wrong, all of that's gonna happen. And when, you know, one of my favorite instructors talks about how stress makes you stupid. And when you're under stress, your brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to work. So keeping things as simple as possible, keeping things uniform and, and easy means I'm better able to work through the thought process and solve problems and save lives.
Kelly Boaz:
I mean, let's face it, we are trying to train disciplines to go into at best controlled chaos because that's what it is. We're trying to control it, but it's chaos. When I start adding these things, well, all I'm doing is putting more chaos in a situation that doesn't need to be there.
Bill Godfrey:
Amen. I feel like we're in church testifying.
Yeah. At, at the end of the day, if you get everybody wrapped around the axle with a bunch of names that they don't remember, can't recall, they don't remember the differences, all that kind of stuff. Who ends up suffering are the very people that we're supposed to be there trying to help and save. And it's not just the injured, you know, the people that are uninjured don't wanna be stuck inside that building any longer than they need to be. But if we can't get our collective act together, take care of the injured, and then take care of the uninjured, you know, shame on us. We really have to ask what it is it that we're doing, why are we there?
Kevin Nichols:
At the end of the day, if you've got a team that has a medical mission that's working in a warm zone and has a security element, whatever that looks out like, that is a rescue task force.
Kelly Boaz:
Yeah, man, call 'em whatever you want. Just get them moving and rescue these people.
Bill Godfrey:
At the end of the day, simplicity matters. We need to do what we need to do as quickly as possible. We need to figure out who the most critically injured are and prioritize their evacuation from the scene, their transport to a hospital, to a surgeon so that we can save every saveable life, because that's what this is about. And for everything that we've said here today, and I think Kelly, what you illustrated so poignantly is simplicity matters in these things. We don't need a name for every little thing. We need to wrap these up with a set of tools and move on and get it done.
Thank you gentlemen for coming in and talking about this important topic. I think it's really, really critical and I appreciate your time.
And for those of you that are listening, we have available a number of our resources on our website, including a sample procedure, SOP, that you can download for free as well as a glossary of definitions all available on the website.
If you have any questions or comments, please send 'em to us at info@c3pathways.com. That's info@c3pathways.com. Thank you to our producer, Karla Torres, and until next time, stay safe.