NDD is making good sense and a really good point. However, could it be that LEO see themselves as the first line of defense against terrorists both foreign and domestic. I believe it's easy for police officers to get caught up in a seige mentality, and no wonder - their fellow countrymen are the ones who present the greatest dangers to them.

I can see why SWAT Squad is a better name than the Tinkerbell Team, but when you come right down to it does it matter as long as the job gets done. Are SWAT guys operators in the military sense of the word? Is the Rapid Deployment Force made up of operators? Would Special Forces still be special if they were called, oh maybe (howler monkeys;))Unique Teams.

One of the most interesting parts of the hanafi incident was watching our bosses tell the FBI to piss off. We were two blks from the Feebs HQS and they were literally standing on our perimeter with all of their HRT team gear. We (the DC police) would not let them play. I think that had a lot to do with a peaceful outcome. The Feds feel no accountability to local neighborhoods. I have always been leery of getting federal funds into SWAT. Once you take the money, they tend to call the tune that is best for Wash DC not the locality. We had an incident up here not to long ago. A Camboadian immigrant in his 50's got into it with local cops. Next thing he's surrounded by guys in you cant see me rags with automatic weapons. The camboadian ends up dead and the cops shot another cop. Does anyone think that Camboadian may have flashed to an earlier time in his life. Found out later he had worked with US forces fighting Communists. That is the kind of info a beat cop would have known. In our rush to standardize a show force it seems that people are expecting a big SWAT presence and are preparing for it. The level of violence with just continue to increase here at home until someone is smart enough to ratchet things down and take a few breaths.
Oh and by the way RL I sat in front of a couple of DC juries and if it were not for a couple of smart judges I probably would be sharing a cell with NDD.

Just saw this one reference buzz words for operations:

Blue - Law Enforcement
Green - Military
Blue-green - Military peacekeeping
Green-blue - Rural/Narcotics Law Enforcement (erradication?)
In recent years the colors blur together

I'm disappointed that magenta, Psy War's favorite color, hasn't been included yet. I think there is some discrimination against peach as well. I always liked the color peach.

eye receptor cones have absorption peaks near 565 nm (red), 535 nm (green) and 445 nm (blue).

I'm late to the party......

NDD, in your first post you mentioned

"Another case is the death and wounding of the Robin Sage guys. I don't know all the details, but there is a problem there. We've been working that area non-stop since 1952. There's no excuse."

From what I read on this it was a tragic event caused by the lack of common sense on the trainee's fault. (Attempting to conceal weapons and then attempting a gun grab of the officer.) Lack of communication between the department and the military didn't help either.

Not trying to stir old wounds. NDD, are you privy to info on this situation that I am not? And from your post you believe this situation to be the fault of the LEO's?

Would you like to discuss this here or in a new thread? Any other questions you might have for someone with "coperator" experience? :D


Surgicalcric-

I don't really know you, so forgive me if I've taken some of your posts the wrong way. I detect a definite anti-leo slant to a number of your posts. This really isn't too surprising, you being a firefighter and all.

What Regiment are you referring to?

Kinda seems like a condescending, ignorant statement from someone with your limited military background, but what do I know? Just another dumb ex-cop/Ragnar guy.

Sure, we can discuss it here.

What I am saying is that this is not a heavily populated area. But what population there is sees Ft. Bragg as the focal point. In those hills, people have been supporting and participating in those exercises for years.

The SWC guys know a lot of them by name and go deer hunting, etc. Its not like its Seattle or NYC.

So when you are in that area. and see young males in good shape with short hair, the first thing you should think is "Robin Sage". Not terrorism, not drug dealers, not anything else.

Now I'm not saying you assume that and approach with out caution. What I am saying is you approach ensuring they understand you are not part of the play of the problem.

Yes, there was probably a comms mistake. But it didn't have to end in the deaths of two soldiers. I don't know anything other than what was reported in the press, but this isn't the first time this has happened.

I can't remember a soldier ever shooting an LEO, its probably happened, but I don't remember it.

What I'm saying is like others have said, they don't know their surroundings or their situation. And people are getting killed because of it.

What I'm saying is, you don't look for zebras in a horse corral in Montana. If you're in Hoffman and it looks like a soldier and acts like a soldier - its probably a soldier. not an Islamic terrorist.

Edit to add - if you'll read my post, I don't not blame the LEO. I don't know who is at fault. I said "There's no excuse and there's a problem." You don't agree or just assumed I was cop bashing?

NDD,

I don't know all the specifics, and having never been there, I don't have the insight that you do on it. I see what you are saying, and I also agree that it was a very sad, tragic outcome.

For the sake of discussion, I could speculate that possibly the Deputy thought the two were white supremacists?

Here's the CNN article I found.

cnn

I found this last part disturbing.

Moore County authorities were not scheduled to be part of Saturday's exercise, Kolb said.

"Moore County has never participated in such an exercise and was never told of any such training scenarios," the sheriff's department statement said. "This is a tragic incident ,and our heart-felt prayers go out to the families of all involved."

If this is true, it's pretty sad the lack of communication.


Without divulging opsec, are you or anyone else at liberty to discuss what instructions Robin Sage trainees are given in regards to LE contact while on exercises?

I know in the two JTF-6 missions I did, we were told that all local LE agencies had been notified of our presence. But we were also instructed to comply with the instructions of any leo to the letter.

Officials at Fort Bragg said Robin Sage has a 30-year history in central North Carolina and a tradition of involvement with the civilian community. All candidates for the Green Berets must participate in the 38-day exercise, an unconventional warfare scenario set in the fictional country of Pineland.

Local civilians are enlisted in role-playing, as are non-special operations soldiers from the U.S. Army base. All ammunition used in the exercise is blank, Army officials said, adding there was no safety risk to civilians or their property.

from your article.

Two studs in an unmarked car in Robbins, North Carolina. Think he ran the plates before he pulled them over? Probably a rental on a government card.

Butler was unaware the exercise was underway, while the soldiers believed the deputy was part of the training exercise, according to the sheriff's department statement.


This is what I'm talking about, right here. If I'm this deputy, there's no way in hell I'm not going to know about a scheduled exercise involving dozens of guys with M16s running around in my county. If the Army didn't tell the locals, maybe they should have. But this guy didn't make an effort to find out either.

This is the same article I saw. It doesn't give nearly enough information to find out what happened.

Unfortunately, just like the case of a guy in my company, we'll never know but one side of the story, becuase the other side doesn't have any witnesses.

NDD-

No way of finding that out just from a license check. It *might* show up as a rental company that you recognize, might not.


For your second post,

"If I'm this deputy, there's no way in hell I'm not going to know about a scheduled exercise involving dozens of guys with M16s running around in my county. If the Army didn't tell the locals, maybe they should have. But this guy didn't make an effort to find out either."

I defer to the article-

"Moore County has never participated in such an exercise and was never told of any such training scenarios," the sheriff's department statement said. "This is a tragic incident ,and our heart-felt prayers go out to the families of all involved."

I'm not so sure that this statement is true. The statement implies that they never had any knowledge of any training exercises.

If it's as rural as what you say, it's definitely possible for a deputy not to know about exercises going on.

At Ft. Lewis, I know that the Roy and Yelm city cops aren't told everytime soldiers are running around the woods near there cities. But then again, soldiers at lewis almost always wear BDU's.

NDD, what was the protocol for the Robin Sage trainees if they ran into LE?

Slow down NDD, quit chewing the cocoa-I mean coffee beans...:D

You may want to calibrate that detection device of yours as I believe you are reading something into what I have posted. To help you better understand I will clarify.

1.) I am anything but anti-LEO. The comments you have quoted were about SWAT operators, not LEO in general. I also stated the problems were related to those I have worked with.

2.) Ranger Regiment...Is there any other? :D

3.) Again made the comment in context to those I know and it was not a blanket statement. The SWAT guys here have an attitude similar to that of a few of the Regiment guys I know.

My lack of experience in the military does not preclude me from detecting common attitudes among former members of military units or select LEO units and drawing the conclusion they are similar. You would not have to be a firefighter to make an observation that select firefighters are lazy, fat-asses yet believe they are God's gift to the fire service. I stand by my statements.


I hope this clears it up for you.

I don't know what they do now, when I went through, it was all rural. We avoided the cops like any other civilian and didn't have vehicles. Obviously something has changed.

The only thing obvious to me is that there was no communication.

The part that I don't like is the "chip". I don't understand why current and former LEOs think everybody is picking on them all the time. Not all, but most I have seen on here and SOCNET. If I wanted to pick on LEOs, I would go over to one of their boards and do it.

I'm also a little tired of the concept that LEOs are above question. Soldiers certainly aren't. I have yet to see anybody try to justify NDs resulting in death, the sale of classified information, that terrorist that threw the hand grenades in the tent, etc. When a soldier gets in trouble with the law for major things like murder, etc., other soldiers don't make excuses for him.

Even in this article, you don't see the Army making excuses, but the Sheriff's Department certainly is. IMO, and that's all it is, they're not telling the full story. But there's no way to know is there? Its his word against two dead guys.

This deputy is really good with a gun though. Rural guy in a small town with probably minimal training manages to fight off a Special Forces soldier in H2H and shoot him, then shoot another before he can get to a weapon?

Look, like I said before. I have a lot of respect for the LEO community. And I imagine most of the problems are caused by administration rather than the officer in the street.

All this goes back to poor hiring policies, low pay, piss poor training, and an attitude. There are undoubtely thousands of very professional LEOs making sacrifices to keep the streets as safe as possible. But there are also those 20 year-old wannabes riding around looking for trouble.

Why is it so hard to admit that when you give a kid a gun, a car with lights on it, and pretty much carte blanche from prosecution for all but the most serious crimes, there's going to be considerable abuse?