Supervisory Ineptitude in Tactical Policing
Supervisory Ineptitude 1 Supervisory Ineptitude: To reduce the risk of liability to individual police officers, the departments they work for and the municipalities for in which they work, tactical police supervisors should be required to have a minimum number of training hours before they can operate in tactical situations. Harry Truman English 3345 Professor Mark October 3, 2002 Supervisory Ineptitude 2 On July 8, 2002 at 7:45 am a calm morning silence is broken by the sound of gunfire. ... It has been argued in the tactical police community that supervisors need to be as competent if not more so than their subordinates. ... Once the hostage taker made entry he knew that Supervisory Ineptitude 3 there were more people in there than just the bank manager. ... In this situation, the first special weapons and tactics supervisors to make the scene is one who has had no formal training in the deployment or management of a tactical police unit. ... It is wrong to assign a supervisor to plan or command a tactical or Supervisory Ineptitude 4 high risk operation if that individual does not have at least as much expertise, experience and training as the swat team memebers who must execute the plan. To avoid this problem, any person who will be in charge of planning or supervising a tactical operation should receive the same training as the swat team members they will be commanding. ... He or she must have tactical experience. This is necessary so that each and every person involved in the planning and supervision of a tactical or high risk operation will be using the same tactics and operating procedures. ... State of the art training and equipment will not benefit the swat team members involved in a tactical operation if the supervisor in charge of the operation is ignorant as to the capabilities of the team and equipment or as to the existence of basic tactical procedures. ... Inexperienced and untrained supervisors in charge of a tactical or high risk operation will make judgment errors, due to their ineptitude. ... In this day and age when the criminal element has at least as much access to sophisticated information and equipment as do the police officers we must not lose our tactical advantage. ... We also must insist that the peopole in charge of planning Supervisory Ineptitude 5 and supervising tactical and high risk operations have the same high level of experience and training as the team members. ... Further, the success or failure rests heavily on command and supervisory personnel.