Ep 75: When The Response Stalls
Episode 75
Published Apr 8, 2024
Last updated Apr 23, 2026
Duration: 53:00
Episode Summary
Sometimes the response stalls. In order to fix it you need to recognize it’s gone wrong. And in order to recognize it’s gone wrong, you need to know what right is supposed to look like.
Episode Notes
Reality doesn’t always unfold like our training. It can be chaotic and confusing and can stall anywhere in the process. Inaction can be contagious – but so can action. Today Bill Godfrey, Adam Pendley, and Billy Perry discuss how training and leadership can get you back on track.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/UTlGn8ozNAU
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:If you're watching this podcast, you probably are well aware of the active shooter incident management checklist process that we advocate, which describes how we want the response to unfold. Sometimes that's not how it goes, and your response can stall. So how do you pick up the pieces and get back on track? That's today's topic. Stick around.
Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. Sitting next to me is Billy Perry from our law enforcement side. Billy, good to have you back in the house.
Billy Perry:
Good to be back. Thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
And across from us is Adam Pendley, another one of our law enforcement instructors. Adam, good to have you back.
Adam Pendley:
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Bill Godfrey:
Alright, well, so today's topic, we're gonna talk about when things don't go by the numbers. And the response either stalls in that initial phase, those initial moments, or for some reason it comes off the rails. How do you recognize it? How do you recover from that? And then get back on track. Billy, I'm gonna open with you.
Billy Perry:
Okay.
Bill Godfrey:
So let's start with the response stalling in the very, very first few minutes and go from there.
Billy Perry:
Okay. Well, first of all, thanks for addressing this. I mean, it's something that the community has been talking about for a while and what do we do to rectify that? And I think it's a bold topic and I applaud you for addressing it. And some people may get upset and flame it, but whatever.
What do we do? I think it's a multifaceted problem. It's gonna require a challenge to implement changes to answer it. I think first and foremost is knowledge. Truthfully. I think knowing what you have a duty to do, knowing what your primary mission is, having the knowledge base emboldened you to make decisions, and emboldens you to make well thought out, lucid decisions. And I think that's part of it, is knowing what our responsibility is as law enforcement officers.
And more importantly, as law enforcement officers, like we were talking about it in a previous podcast, like my role has transitioned into a guardian of innocence, and what is our role? And as a law enforcement officer, we're guarding innocent little lives, and what our responsibility is ultimately there, the ten amount responsibility, if you will.
Bill Godfrey:
So a very politically correct way to open the topic, beating around the bush a little bit, which surprises me from you.
Billy Perry:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Adam, let's get more to the specifics of what we're really talking about in, I mean, we gotta lay it out the way it is. We used to say all the time-
Billy Perry:
You said it.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, we used to say all the time, for the most part, when active shooter events occur across the country, law enforcement neutralizes the threat pretty quickly. Not always, but generally speaking, that happens pretty well. And we've seen that start to become a problem.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
What happens when and how does that unfold? How does that go wrong in the first minute or two minutes that the first 2, 3, 4 officers are landing on scene?
Adam Pendley:
I mean, I think there's a couple reasons why it can happen, but sometimes it is just the immediate fog of war, like somebody being indecisive about what they should do in this situation. And a lot of these situations don't unfold the same way we train them, right? In training situations, we know that we're gonna be part of that initial contact team. We know what our expectations are, we move down the hallway, we go into the room and we use our simunitions, and we end the thing. Well, reality doesn't unfold that way. And I don't think we prepare a lot of officers to understand that it may be way more chaotic than that. You may be hearing the gunshots that are very loud and very confusing because they're coming from a hallway and echoes and different things, and understanding that now it really is time to do all these things that you've been training to do.
But I also think inaction can be a little contagious. So if you have one or two that don't start making some immediate decisions, and then the ones behind them don't have the information they need to make a decision, and the ones behind them see everyone else holding for some reason, and then they hold. And next thing you have this tragedy of the commons where everyone is now holding, because somewhere along the initial response there was some uncertainty, and that uncertainty just spreads. So.
Bill Godfrey:
Billy, picked that up from there. What are some of the things that you think for the typical patrol officer called upon to do the exceptional, and for whatever reason, those first few seconds, they begin to stall and then like Adam says it, we begin to lose the momentum. It becomes infectious.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Talk a little bit about that.
Billy Perry:
Well, I think we were all talking before we started this that close quarter battle, CQB, is a crazy perishable skill. It is a perishable skill. And I think truthfully, and if we're honest, if we call it a skill, it is not a skill that the majority of patrol officers possess because they don't invest in their craft, truthfully. If they want me to have it, they'll give it to me, they'll assign me to it, they'll send me to it. And I think it's something that they don't really stay current with if they ever got current to begin with. Again, in all candor, having been a trainer for 20 something years in my 31 year career with the sheriff's office, and I think that's number one.
I think number two, again, I think the contagiousness of inaction, inaction is an action. Inaction is an action. It's doing nothing. And I think that is contagious and I think that it makes people second guess. And unless they are very well versed in the knowledge, like for Adam and I, it's Florida State statute 776. If you don't understand justifiable use of force and when you can, when you can't, when you used to have a duty to, then you're gonna freeze. It results in cognitive freezing.
And I think that they're also not emotionally prepared. It's never gonna happen. They don't think it's gonna happen, and they weren't emotionally prepared. Those that train all the time, those at war game, you're still not guaranteed of a result. But it's a much more predictable outcome if they actually do. And if it's something that they take seriously as their craft. And I think that is what incompetence, and I don't mean gross incompetence, that they stumble over two syllable words and drool a lot. I'm talking about they're just incompetent in their CQB skills and in their response to resistance skills. They don't understand when it's time to shoot somebody. Seriously, I mean, when it's time to intervene with force and shoot 'em, go in there and shoot 'em and-
Bill Godfrey:
Stop the behavior.
Billy Perry:
Stop the behavior.
Go in there and shoot 'em, stop their behavior, and be done with it. let them arrest your bullet, let them change their behavior and stop and move on. And I think not understanding that is what leads to the cognitive freezing, and as a result of the cognitive freezing, the physical freezing.
Bill Godfrey:
And that's a really interesting perspective because we've seen not just only in the public safety, community law enforcement, fire, EMS, but also in the military community, they spend a lot of time training that response, training the reaction, training the scenarios, to prepare for "this is what to expect, this is what to see." And Adam, you made a really interesting point that I wanna circle back to, which is, and you didn't say it in these words, but I'm gonna say it, how much of this is a training failure? Because we're not being creative in the scenarios we're giving them, we're giving them the same type of scenarios, the same canned thing on a regular basis, which doesn't, as you said, get them mentally and emotionally prepared to see all of these different elements. Is that a big component of what we're looking at?
Adam Pendley:
Sure, I mean, I think, and you brought up the military, which is also a great point. There's multiple repetitions of having to go up and over or underneath or around and having work as a team or work a solo and all of those various situations that one may face, you have to change it up. And I think you have to change it up frequently in order to start getting that muscle memory.
I heard a story one time or read an article one time about a fire chief in the upstate New York area. Very experienced, he was the first company officer on a passenger train versus a freight train. They had collided, fire, hazmat, and multiple injuries all at once. And as he rolls up, he had a little bit of a freeze. He just looked at it and he's-
Billy Perry:
Overwhelmed.
Adam Pendley:
A little overwhelmed at first. But he said what he did was, he just started doing one piece at a time, right? He started directing some incoming units and just doing those things that he had done on other types of incidents of that magnitude. And it just started to break it down piece by piece.
So I think the same thing for the patrol officers. And one of the things I hate to see, compliments to my previous SWAT operator over here, a lot of times in active shooter training, you have the SWAT team doing the movements through the hallways and the rooms and whatnot. And the reality is, we know they're not gonna typically be the first ones there.
So bringing that training back to patrol and like you said when we opened up, we need to stop assuming that going after the active threat is going to be automatic. I think we're in a little bit of a bell curve. There was a lot of push to really do that. And I think we saw some success in that. And now it's starting to wane again a little bit for some reason in some circumstances. I mean, we hear stories every frequently of very heroic actions, but then we hear some others that are not so good.
Billy Perry:
Suboptimal.
Adam Pendley:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. And in fairness, I think we also have what I'm gonna call, the outlier scenarios that are not the ones that we commonly think about. They're not the ones that we commonly train for. And it's hard enough when you're put into a situation and you're expected to synthesize the answer to a question that you've not faced before, especially when you're under immense duress and time pressures and everything else.
One of the things I wanna talk about for a minute to frame out the rest of our discussion for those, and Carla, I'm gonna hold this up for this camera across the table here, is an infographic that we put together in conjunction with the National Tactical Officers Association.
So years ago, they developed the priority life or the safety priority that establishes a level of thinking. And we didn't create that or invent that or anything else. That was all NTOA. All we did was just put together the infographic to depict this. But at the top of the food chain, if you will, is the hostages. And I also wanna be clear that when we say the word "hostage," and even this picture as somebody that's got a gun to their head, we don't mean literal hostage with somebody with their arm around you and the gun to the head. We mean a hostage of the situation. A hostage of the situation. So if people are not able to get medical care or escape a threat or things like that, they have become a hostage of the situation.
Right below them is the innocence. This would be the bystanders or people that are in a position to be a collateral damage. So if you think of a school situation, the primary classroom or classrooms where the attack occurs, they would be hostages of the situation, but the other classrooms down the hallways, they would be considered part of the innocent.
Below them is the responders. And then finally at the bottom is the suspect or the threat. And the idea here is that you ask yourself the question, whatever your plan is, and as you mentioned the plan may be to do nothing, but whatever that plan is, you weigh it and say who benefits and who suffers.
So for example, if you come up with a plan where the hostages and the innocence are in a position to benefit, but we are putting the responders at risk and the responders may suffer, this plan fits within that safety priority and becomes a valid way of evaluating it. And then the flip of that would be we decide not to do something and the hostages continue to suffer, the innocent suffer, but who benefits is the responders, that's not a good plan.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
We need to go back and rethink that plan. So with that is the framework for the rest of the discussion. Let's talk about some of those scenarios where it's not the clear cut, you get in, there's somebody shooting, you've got a clear field of fire, no background. Let's talk about the simple and then work our way down. And I'm gonna ask you to go there in terms of engaging a threat and stopping their behavior.
Billy Perry:
I think that's huge. And I think knowing, again, when you can, when you can't, having good information from the get go, and it is such a important decision. And I think that's one of the things that, again, if you've not prepared in advance, if you're not well versed, if you don't know your operations orders for response to resistance and you don't know whatever state statute you're under, you're setting yourself up for failure in that arena.
I think if you are armed with intelligence and you are armed with knowledge and a clear understanding of what your primary mission is, and I think as law enforcement officers, I think we've gone away from that.
When I was a liaison officer, the law enforcement officer code of ethics had 256 words, has changed a little bit now, but nowhere in there does it say anything about you going home at night. Nowhere, nowhere. Yet we've had this weird subculture of going "most important thing is we go home at night." No, it's not, is that innocence go home at night. The people you are charged with protecting. Nobody voluntold you to do this. You went through a lot of hoops just to do this.
And I think knowing what that is, and I think understanding, if I take a sampling, 'cause I do it, when I take a sampling of patrol officers and I say, "Define a barricaded suspect and define an active suspect." And then I'll throw a subtle nuance in like we were talking about before. If a shooter goes into a room and shoots a bunch of people and then stops, locks the door, is he barricaded? And we're like, no. Well, so many officers will say, yeah, he is and if this another. If there are people bleeding in there and if they're in the golden hour, it is still an active incident.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'm gonna pause you there because I think this is a really important distinction that we're finding ourselves talking about a lot more. We've taught law enforcement over the last, I'd say probably 20 years, and we as a group have been doing it for well over a decade now, that it's the active threat, it's the active threat, the driving forces to move to the sound of gunfire and the active killing, the act of killing or attempting to kill. And I think it's important to note that what you just said, if a suspect is not actively shooting but has shot and has injured people-
Billy Perry:
And they're actively dying.
Bill Godfrey:
And is denying them medical care and rescue, they are still actively killing.
Adam Pendley:
Yes.
Billy Perry:
A hundred percent.
Bill Godfrey:
Because the trigger they already pulled is actively killing and they're denying you access to intercede and save lives.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
That is actively killing. And I think that in fairness, I can't really remember five, seven years ago having that discussion, that specific scenario. And I think that's one of the tragedies of our industry, both on the law enforcement and the fire/EMS side, is we miss opportunities to look at case studies not so much for what actually happened. Yes, that's important, but for the circumstances. And we draw from that and say, okay, what happened yesterday, if I'm faced with this tomorrow, what's my plan?
Billy Perry:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
What's the use of force?
Billy Perry:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
What's the level of authorization? What's the risk? Who's getting weighed out here? And if we don't talk about that ahead of time, that's an awful lot to process moment of.
Adam Pendley:
Right. And I think just knowing that you have to take action and to extend on the thing that Billy was just talking about, this idea that the most important thing that you can do is, is that you go home at night, that's to keep you from doing something dumb. The safety of officers is still a priority. We just need to understand that innocence and those that are being threatened and killed by this...
Suspect. Suspect, yeah. That's right. We have to do something about that. We have to go in and take action and it may be at the risk of grave harm, right? And we signed up to do that and it's very important. And that's the first thing they have to understand. Then you have to understand what your authorities are and then you have to take action. And you have to understand that it's gonna be under circumstances that you may not have seen before. You probably haven't seen before. And you need to put pieces of training together and make a decision.
My cousin, many, many years ago, was a law enforcement officer. He was telling a story one time of a car that was parked. They had been trailing this person because he had been making bomb threats or something along those lines. The window was rolled up. He approached him in the parking lot and he said to me, he said, "You know, I decided that this gun needed to be in his ear rather than outside the car." So he broke the window and put the gun right up to his head to get him to stop doing what he was doing.
And I just remember thinking that that idea that you have to get in there and take action and it may not be something that's part of the training or plan, but you are gonna stop that behavior like we've said many times. And again, did not put too fine of a point on it, we have to know that there are bigger priorities than pausing or worrying about the safety of our approach and other things. We gotta get there and take action. So.
Billy Perry:
And I think it is, and it's cognitive freezing on so many levels because you have to be competent enough professionally to realize when that dropdown menu appears in your subconscious, check, check, check, check, check I can do this and prepare to do it. And you have to be able to shoot accurately enough to do it.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Billy Perry:
And I think you've now developed the perfect storm. 'Cause again, having been in the academy and in the training division, been out at the range, watched our peers shoot, how do we shoot?
Adam Pendley:
Is poorly the correct answer?
Billy Perry:
Poorly? That's a very generous answer. And the thing is, when you look, what's the percentage of shots that miss? It's zero 'cause every shot hits something and we're responsible for all of them. You can tell a lot by an officer when you look at their weapons platforms, when you look at their rifle, do they have a rifle? Do they understand why they need a rifle? Again, we're refer back to the podcast, why do we have a rifle? How much more accurate is it? Because this is what we're all talking about. Every incident we're talking about is a rifle mission. It is not a handgun mission, not just for the over penetration issues, but for the inherent accuracy issues.
So I think that's huge. And I think, it's a barometer and a litmus test of what they actually understand and what their propensity for engagement is, truthfully.
Bill Godfrey:
I think the other piece of this that I don't wanna lose sight of is that everything you said absolutely correct. You gotta go through the Rolodex. if you will,
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
and say, okay, can I do this? Can I do this? And make that decision. So you've got the brain function, the cognitive load, but you also, we can't deny and we must acknowledge that there is an enormous amount of stress and it is frightening. It is scary.
I did my career in the fire service and I had no wish to die. I had no wish to die and I really wasn't okay with dying. That was never part of really what I wanted to do. There are things that did not scare me and there were things that did. And I know internally, I was more afraid of being labeled a coward than I was getting killed.
Billy Perry:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
And that in a number of situations, I'm being honest, I can remember thinking, I really don't want to go do this, but I'm gonna go do it because the other option is worse. Does that translate similarly
Billy Perry:
Oh, a hundred percent.
Bill Godfrey:
for law enforcement
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
Does that still fit in the culture today?
Billy Perry:
Yeah. Well, I don't know about the culture today. I know I did things for Mickey because I didn't want to embarrass Mickey Milley, and I did things that I didn't want to embarrass Johnny Weber. And I know for a fact it did. And Gabe Rose and I have a saying, "There are things worse than dying." and you're hitting on a couple of 'em. And that's a hundred percent true.
And I don't know if it's just a cultural change, I don't know, I don't want to think that's what it is. But, I think, yeah, I think just understanding that it is stressful, but again, that's something that can be overcome by training and through mental preparation. You have also heard me say, how many times. We are not fighting rogue members of Seal Team Six.
Bill Godfrey:
Right.
Billy Perry:
We are fighting genetic disasters that live in their parents' garage, primarily.
Bill Godfrey:
All exactly true. And I think the other thing to remember is, is that while it may be frightening, I think you said it earlier, we're not talking about doing something stupid.
Billy Perry:
No.
Adam Pendley:
Right, totally.
Bill Godfrey:
We're not talking about running into a hail of automatic weapon fire
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
when there are no hostages and no civilians at risk.
Billy Perry:
Correct.
Adam Pendley:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
That's dumb. That's dumb.
Billy Perry:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
We're not talking about that. So we're not talking about taking stupid risks or taking unnecessary risks.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
But risk is inherent with what we all signed on to do.
Billy Perry:
Well, what we do is dangerous.
Adam Pendley:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
It certainly can be.
Billy Perry:
It can.
And I tell my men all the time, this is the day we pay, you know, we're called to pay the piper. They bring us cupcakes and everything else and treat us like kings all the time. The bills due.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Billy Perry:
Time to pay the bill.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Well, I've heard it said another way, and maybe a more positive way is that, no, seriously, I mean, because I know the people that are sitting at this table at least and many, many, many of the people we've worked with is that if there was never another active shooter in this country again, I'd be completely okay with that. But if I were on the job and
Bill Godfrey:
Shut operations down and move on.
Adam Pendley:
But if I were on the job and one of 'em occurs, I wanna be there.
Billy Perry:
Yes!
Adam Pendley:
I wanna be there to make a difference. Same thing in the fire service. There are many, many, many fire crews that they don't want somebody's house to burn down, but goodness knows if they get the call, they want to be there.
Billy Perry:
I agree.
Adam Pendley:
And if you don't have that attitude, if you don't have that belief in your soul that if this bad thing happens, I want to be there to make a difference, if you don't have that, you might not be in the right career.
Billy Perry:
I agree. I've referenced Gabe Rose several times. And he calls me every time he does the class. And my boss knows what I'm about to say. I pray every morning that we do not have an active shooter anywhere in the country. However, if we do, let it be here. Let it be here 'cause our kids will be fine. And that's a hard line. But it's a true one. And if Gabe's working at another school, I'm like, let Gabe have one maybe. But I mean, you know, I'm ahead.
But at the end of the day, that is something. And I've had people say I hope you never have to. And I agree. However, I would much rather service somebody run at the front of the school 18.2 yards away from my desk. I'd much rather do that and have the kids know Mr. Billy burned one down right, there than have them watch their classmates in the classroom. Seriously.
Adam Pendley:
Yeah, absolutely.
Billy Perry:
But again, that's something that's addressing it realistically. Not focusing on it in the sense of I'm obsessed with it by any means. But I mean, it is what it is.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so I'm gonna shift gears here 'cause I think we've hit on this point hard enough. So, shit went sideways, the response is stalled. We're not doing what we need to do for whatever reason this happened. How do we get it back on track?
Billy Perry:
Somebody has to be bold enough to reach down and say, "You know what? I understand my statute. I understand my orders. More importantly, I understand safety priority matrix and I understand what's right and wrong. And this is the time to do something." They're about to write a song about me. Let's go do this.