Attic Tactics By Warren Wilson SUMMARY
Hard-to-reach places like attics require their own set of tactics. Gathering intel is the first step before actually attempting to penetrate into an attic for a suspect who is possibly armed. Several concepts and techniques are better than just climbing blindly into the void.
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Warren Wilson is a Lieutenant with the Enid Police Department inOklahoma. He is a former SWAT team member/leader and has been in law enforcement for 17 years.
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The author urges slow and deliberate movements when clearing an attic.
Tactics Attic
How to breach hard-to-reach places
22 The Police Marksman Sep-Oct 2014
’d always thought SWAT guys wore helmets for protection against glancing bullet impacts and blunt force trauma. It turns out helmets have another use: to protect against falling light fi xtures. My team was recently assigned to make our way to an attic entrance and begin negotiations with a reportedly shotgun-wielding suspect. We were able to do just that and we took the suspect into custody without incident. But it was after the suspect was in custody that the sky fell. T ere’s a tactical principle known as “plus one.” It reasons that cops should always as- sume there is one more suspect, in addition to any who are located, and that we should keep searching until every possible hiding spot has been checked. We needed to clear the attic and secure any weapons that may be found. And by “we” I mean a few of our younger, more svelte SWAT team members who, unlike me, have more agility than a garbage truck. In doing so, one of our guys missed a rafter and stepped through the ceiling directly above me. It was an uncomfortable reminder of the lack of bal- listic protection that would have been aff orded to us by the ceiling materials. If the suspect had started fi ring downward, team members would have been left to depend on their per-
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