On November 11, 2023, Austin Texas Police officers responded to a call of a stabbing. The Caller advised that there were several subjects that had been stabbed. When officers arrived, they made contact with one of the victims who advised two additional family members were still inside the residence with the suspect. Patrol officers forced entry into the residence and were immediately met with gun fire from within the residence. APD SWAT was requested to assist, upon arrival an emergency entry...

Decision Making Excercise #3

On the afternoon of July 11, 2022, at about 1400 hrs, two Hamilton County Ohio Sheriff’s Detectives observed an escapee from the River City Correctional Facility in Cincinnati, in the parking lot of the Baymont Inn hotel. Although they were unable to make a positive identification before the suspect entered the hotel, they contacted the Mason Police Department for support. A Mason officer learned that the female observed in the parking lot with the suspect (whom she had just met) was re...

Imagine if you could train your brain to give you better situational awareness, see and hear more, and improve your tactical decision-making abilities? Although this sounds like science fiction, it is quickly becoming a science fact in the emerging field of brain training for tactical operators. On this episode of The Debrief we will explore the science of brain training for tactical operators with three experts in the Field, Jeff Selleg from the National Tactical Officers Associa...

The topic of resilience for first responders has fortunately become a more common discussion. As the rate of suicides, addiction and burnout rise, discussions of grit or internal fortitude against adversity have become a frequent topic for articles, speeches and conference courses. My guest today knows a great deal about this topic. Justin Dodge is a 28-year veteran of the Denver Police Department (DPD) with 19 of those years spent on SWAT as an operator, assistant team lea...

In this episode, Josh Wofford instructs a DME: Decision Making Exercise to accompany the Parkland episode of The Debrief.A decision making exercise places you in the position of a leader on scene at a critical incident, and allows you to make decisions as if you were there. The purpose of the decision making exercises is to tap into the collective knowledge of your team.Instructions: Listen to the DME before listening to the full Parkland Debrief Episode. Pause after each set of questions and...

On February 14, 2018, an active killer attacked the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida killing 17 people and wounding another 17 people. The shooter then managed to flee the scene by slipping in with other students. The shooter was apprehended without incident over an hour later. In the months and years that followed this incident there was a firestorm of media coverage and legal actions directed at responding law enforcement agencies not on...

For our final episode of 2024's "Summer Lookback" series, we revisit episode 4 featuring Brent Stratton and Marcus Sprague. Brent is the Assistant Chief at a Southern California Police Department and the President of the California Tactical Officers Association (CATO). Marcus is a recently retired Lieutenant at a Northern California PD and the Vice President of CATO. Both Brent and Marcus are graduates of the CARO Strategic Leadership Program.To view the original episode, its...

This episode in our summer lookback series features Lt. Lee McMillion. Lee is currently one of the two Lieutenants leading the Los Angeles Police Departments Metropolitan Division D-Platoon. Which is also known as LAPD SWAT. In total, Lee has spent 33 years as a Los Angeles Policeman of which 23 years have been spent at Metro, 21 with D-Platoon. Lee is one of only three men to have ever served at all possible ranks at D Platoon (Officer, Plus 1, Sgt, and Lt.). L...

The third episode in our 2024 Summer lookback series features Buddy Brown. Buddy works for the York County Sherriff’s Office in South Carolina. Buddy has worked patrol, narcotics and training and spent more than 18 years on the York County regional SWAT team. On January 16, 2018, York County responded to a domestic violence call that led a suspect on the run in the woods behind a residential area. By the time the night was over Det. Mike Doty would be murdered by the suspect and three ot...

The second episode in our "2024 Summer Flashback" series features a legend in the tactical community with a list of career accomplishments that would take an entire podcast of their own. Mike Hillman was one of the original founders of LAPD SWAT, a Deputy Chief at LAPD, the Assistant Sheriff in Orange County California and a Chief of Police for the Los Angeles Port Police. He was one of the founders of the National Tactical Officers Association, headed security for the Los Angeles Dodgers, an...

The first episode in our "2024 Summer Flashback" series features not just the first episode of this podcast, but the man who inspired the project as a whole. Not only was Sid Heale a legend in the special tactics’ community, he was a retired CWO5 in the United States Marine Corps serving numerous combat deployments including the Vietnam War, The Gulf War, and Operation United Shield in Somalia. Sid was also a retired Commander from the LA County Sheriff’s Department, had worked in the Special...

Season 3 of The Debrief featured an impressive roster of guests, including: Andy Stumpf of Cleared Hot Podcast, former Delta Force operator Pete Blaber, and Lionel D. of Belgium’s elite Group Dianne (DSU). These guests, and others, provided an extensive body of knowledge and experience surrounding leadership, tactical decision making, and cognitive performance.With this season now wrapped, and in keeping with our standard policy, we will be taking the summer off from new content. During this ...

My guest today is Brittany Loney the founder and CEO of Elite Cognition. Brittany has almost 20 years of experience training high performing operators from communities as diverse as elite SOF warriors, professional and Olympic athletes, high-level coaches, and corporate executives. She also has over 14 years of experience training Special Operations Forces (SOF) and was the first cognitive performance coach embedded within a United States Special Operations Command (USASOC) Tactical Human Opt...

There may be no US tactical and rescue unit more well known than the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit or ESU. Featuring a mission set that ranges from high angle ropes work to water rescue, from high-risk search warrants to hostage rescue, and from CBRN response to counter terrorism, ESU has sometimes been described as 911 for NYPD. My guest today is Joe Bucchignano (pron: Buck-ig-nano). Joe started his emergency service career in 1997, working as an EMT and completing paramedic scho...

The evolution of special tactics in the United States is a complicated story whose roots lie in the violent social and political environment of the late 1960s. Highly unusual and televised events like the Texas tower sniper in 1966 and the Munich Massacre in 1972 created the need to develop special units to respond to events that were beyond the capabilities of patrol officers. While Southern California often receives all the credit for the development of special tactics, because ...

My guest today is Lionel D. Lio is a retired team leader who spent 15 years with the Belgian National Police - Directorate of Special Units, or DSU, also know as Group Diane. I am excited to have Lio on The Debrief because his former unit is a fantastic team who are constantly on the front lines for European counter terrorism operations, like the one we will discuss today. The operation we will be debriefing is a proactive warrant service against a Jihadist terror cell located in the small...

In late August of 2020 the Kentucky State Police Special Response Team attempted to execute search and arrest warrants on a family compound in Johnson Hollow, a heavily wooded and very rural area of Kentucky.  The suspect, who was being sought on potential murder and drug related charges, had hiding locations and weapons throughout the compound and had built a series of hardened firing positions from which to attack officers.  In the 48 hours that followed, the team would have two Officer...

My guest today is Dr. Dan Dworkis.  Dan is a board-certified emergency physician, an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the founder of The Emergency Mind Project, and the Chief Medical Officer at the Mission Critical Team Institute. Dan performed his emergency medicine residency with Harvard Medical School at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham Health and holds an MD and PhD in molecular...

Welcome to Battle Proven Leadership.  My guest today is Bill Kirst.  Bill is an author, poet, podcast host and one of LinkedIn’s Top Thought Leadership Voices on Change Management. Bill authors a monthly newsletter called “Leading Change in the Era of AI” which poses powerful questions while untangling the complex concerns posed by Artificial Intelligence.   Bill has worked at Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, the University of Washington and for nearly two decades has led companies, institutions, and...

My guest today is Rich Diviney. Rich is a retired Navy SEAL officer whose career spanned more than twenty years and included more than thirteen overseas deployments – eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the officer in charge of training for an elite Navy SEAL command, Rich spearheaded the creation of a directorate that fused physical, mental, and emotional disciplines. Since his retirement, Rich has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant with the Chapman & CO....

Pete Blaber commanded at every level of one of the most elite counter-terrorist organizations in the world, The US Army’s First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta. His time with The Unit included most of recent history’s significant military and political events (Panama, Colombia, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq). In 2006 Pete retired from the military and transitioned from leading elite combat teams around the globe, to leading elite corporate teams for one of the world's...

My guest today is Dr Claire Park. Dr. Park is a Consultant in Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine for London HEMS, and Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at Kings College Hospital in London. She is also an army consultant with over 20 years of deployed military experience. Claire is the Medical Adviser to the Specialist Firearms teams of the Metropolitan Police Service and has worked closely with all of the emergency services in London on developing the joint response to high threat incidents,...