Mike Doyle
Founder
Mike is a full-time police officer and tactical medic. He currently works as a K9 handler, SWAT team member, and Police Trainer. Mike started Tactical Tangents as part of his fundamental purpose to save lives. His goal is to enhance the survival of police officers and concerned citizens by helping them become better, smarter, faster, and more efficient. His opinions are for informational purposes only and do not reflect those of his employer or any other government agency.
OODA LOOP
One of the popular models in tactical decision making is the OODA loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. A lot of people tend to over-simplify this concept. They view it as a linear cycle, or a checklist–as if you move from one step to the other. It is a lot more complicated than that. Our individual orientation–which is a product of our identity, training, experience, and our moral compass–drives each step of the process. It controls not only what we see, but where we look. It controls not only what we decide, but provides us with an index of solutions. It describes a two-way interaction with our environment, and shows us that our adversaries have an Orientation, too.
Teamwork
If you look around any professional workplace, you will see several types of leaders–by that I don’t just mean differing leadership styles, although that is part of it–I am talking about the types of leaders in a group who make the difference between a “loose gaggle” and a high-performance team. This discussion is going to focus on the informal leaders–the unappointed low- or middle-man who makes a difference. A new or inexperienced member of the group might be the type of person who owns their mistakes, never makes excuses, and humbly accepts criticism. You might be asking yourself, doesn’t that just make them a good follower?
Burning Alive
If you read some of the news articles about the recent apartment fire in London, you’ll see quite a bit of commentary about the panic encountered by people trapped on the upper floors of the building. Similar to the attacks on 9/11, people can be seen in YouTube videos jumping out of windows from heights that would seemingly guarantee their death.
In July 2016 a police officer in Minnesota stopped a car and the driver informed the officer that he was armed. The driver was apparently reaching for his wallet, but the officer perceived that he was reaching for the gun. The officer gave him instructions to not reach for it, the driver said that he wasn’t, and somewhere in the mix the officer shot and killed him. The driver’s name was Philando Castile. The officer was charged with manslaughter but was acquitted by a jury. He was fired by his agency.
The videos that we have seen do not show exactly how Castile reacted to the officer’s instructions as he reached for his wallet or the gun. What we can tell you is that people do strange things under stress. It is not uncommon for someone to tell a police officer that they have a knife or gun while also reaching for it, as if to illustrate where exactly it is, or maybe to surrender it. While that doesn’t make much sense and is obviously not a good idea—it happens subconsciously and people do it all the time. It is also not uncommon for a person to automatically switch off their thinking brain and activate their emotional brain when self-preservation kicks into gear, and that causes the sort of fight-or-flight response that bypasses rational decision making. There was an indication that Mr. Castile was under the influence of marijuana. Maybe that is true, and maybe his judgment or reaction time (to the officer’s instructions) were affected. But based on the audio from the dash camera footage, he seems fairly calm and reasonable. The crucial point of this incident, that moment when he was doing whatever it was he was doing with his hands, isn’t part of the video that is available for us to see. Did the officer’s sympathetic response cause him to over react? Maybe. And if so, that is a training failure – and a difficult one to fix. But there is too much we can’t see to say for sure.
We don’t have to look very far to find a narrative that Mr. Castile’s race had something to do with it. In fact, the governor of Minnesota said in a statement after the incident that he didn’t think this would have happened if the occupants of the car were a different race. That’s a bold claim. The problem with playing the race card on an individual officer is that we are using generalizations and prejudice against them, which is the same sort of behavior we are trying to defeat. Stop feeding into that narrative. We can have a talk about systemic or institutionalized racism and inequality another time—but when we are looking at situations like this, it is best that we examine the circumstances of that particular case.
Back to the shooting: Do we think criminal culpability was a factor? No, and a jury agreed. Do we think it was acceptable? Also no. You are going to find polarized opinions about this case—one side will say it was justified, they will point to the acquittal and the difficult job that the police have to do. They will point to previous cases where someone acted compliant to entice complacency before carrying out an attack. They will remind you that action is faster than reaction. The other side will demand justice—they will argue that he was influenced by racism, and they’ll point to crime or incarceration statistics or other incidents that got a lot of publicity. They’ll say that cops are trigger happy, and they will point to instances where the police over-reacted or let their ego interfere with their judgment. A use-of-force can be non-criminal and also not acceptable—but both sides of that debate are often too busy trying to be “right” that we struggle to find common ground and understanding with each other. Based on the evidence available to us, this case is questionable—and we won’t ever know what really happened. Questionable doesn’t mean bad, but it also doesn’t mean certainly good. We can demand that the police do better and also acknowledge that the officer might have been spooked, made a mistake, and did not have ill-intent.
Either way—we have to do better. All of us. Rather than blindly defend every use of force that makes its way on to YouTube, police officers should offer perspective, build understanding, and train hard to make sure we avoid mistakes in the future. Citizens and the media might remember that police officers are human—that when influenced by self-preservation, emotions often sidestep reason. That isn’t an excuse for what happened—but something we must account for when we examine criminal culpability, as the jury did in this case. Community leaders should render support to give police departments the funding, resources, and expertise they need for adequate training—not the sort of training to fill political check-boxes that they can brag about to the press, but high-quality proficiency training that will enhance public safety as much as officer safety. And all of us should remember that we stand among each other—this isn’t about the thin blue line—there a big beautiful banner for which we stand, and it’s red, white, and blue.
If you want to hear more about this discussion, make sure you go find Episode 8 of our Podcast on any podcast app or by clicking here.
About the author:
Mike Doyle is a full-time police officer and tactical medic. He works as a K9 handler, SWAT team member, and Police Trainer. Mike started Tactical Tangents as part of his fundamental purpose to save lives. His goal is to enhance the survival of police officers and concerned citizens by helping them become better, smarter, faster, and more efficient. His opinions are for informational purposes only and do not reflect those of his employer or any other government agency.
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Whether you’re a cop or an armed citizen that’s put into the position like this officer you only have a split second to decide what actions to take. Take a defensive position then you may shoot a person when no threat is apparent or be offensive and find yourself being shot at or worse. I think the officer should’ve waited a second longer before he shot the guy because the officer had the advantage of being in the open with his gun drawn. Even if the driver had a weapon and was intent on doing harm he was at a tactical disadvantage and the officer would’ve had a little time to see what the drivers intent was. But again I wasn’t there and can only speculate. I know I’d let the scene play put a little longer before I ended a mans life.
No mention of Philando’s CHL?
Yeah, I listen to Elected officials and believe everything they say. Especially when it was Gov. Goofy. I too have credentials and titles, to go along with my name, but if one listens to politicians, I guess you would also believe celebrities and get all your medical advice from people who believe essential oils are the cure all.
“Mike” is clueless.
Yanez described the pistol to a “T” to the responding supervisor prior to its recovery. The defense tried to show at trial that the pistol could not be seen if in the pocket of an identical pair of shorts. SURPRISE! The butt of the gun stuck out from the top. I had questions about the justification until I saw the dashcam. What I saw in Yanez’ actions was a cop who clearly thought he was about to be shot and responded accordingly and appropriately.
The jury was 10 whites and 2 blacks.
And “screaming at volume 11” is a training failure? After just having been forced to kill another human being? “Officer Mike”, you are pathetic. I also seriously question your “credentials”.
Credentials are a funny thing. I have some, though, if you’re curious. What about you?
That said, the point of the article is to illustrate that there is some gray area in there – the point of the article isn’t to flame Ofc. Yanez, but it is to demonstrate that there is some gray area between bad and good. -Mike
Oh, YOUR credentials? If you have such great credentials, why can’t you put YOUR real name to the article, you coward?
You could not be more inaccurate in your recounting of this incident. You clearly did very little research.
What am I getting wrong, Joe? I’m open to feedback and to see things differently if you have more info.
Also, I updated my bio with my full name if it makes you feel better 😉 If there’s a better source of info on the shooting I’m all ears.
We need to do a better job training cops to prevent them from over and under reacting–and we need to do a better job of seeing that use of force can be judged anywhere on the spectrum between bad and good. The world is not black and white. If you have more details than I have, I’d welcome you on to our podcast to talk about them.
Mike also made no reference to the information officer Yanez had before he even made the stop. Mike failed to mention anything that the officer believed the driver fit the description of an armed robbery suspect of a gas station that had recently taken place in the same area. If I missed that in Mike’s interpretation or MMQB of how the incident happened I’ll stand corrected. Nice judgement from someone that wasn’t even there.
If he thought he was an armed robbery suspect, why not a high-risk stop? It’s not like there’s a question the dude was armed–he told the officer he was. I think we need to take a step back and understand the purpose of this article. I’m not saying the officer was “bad,” I’m saying that he might have gotten spooked. The entire purpose of this website and the TacTangents project/podcast is to help cops get better. We’re not just trying to bash the dude, we’re trying to help both sides understand nuance a little better. How can we do a better job of that? -Mike
Race was at least a contributing factor. The officer is a St Anthony officer which is an almost exclusively white smallish city bordering NE Minneapolis a blue collar mostly white section of Minneapolis. St Anthony officers are notoriously vigilant in stopping vehicles and people that don’t look like they belong in St. Anthony. In my 50 years I’ve been stopped in St Anthony no less than 10 times and this is was due to being white with long hair and a crappy vehicle in my youth. This incident went down in Falcoln Heights an even smaller little slice of a city that is exclusively white that St Anthony was contracted to patrol since they’re too small to run their own department… Food for thought…
The Officer’s last name was Yanez the guy in the car was named Castile and Race was an issue???
There you have our… critical analysis from an expert with years of experience. Pay attention to this man, Mike.
Not sure I totally understand your comment. Pay attention to who? -Mike