Episode 23: Contact Teams

A discussion of Contact Teams, the role of the first arriving law enforcement officers, and the professionalism required to shoulder the immense responsibility of responding to an Active Shooter Event.

Bill Godfrey:

Welcome back to the next installment of our podcast. Today, we are going to be revisiting a subject that we have not talked about in years on the podcast, and that's contact teams. Today I have with me, Billy Perry, a retired detective and EOD from Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. While he was there, also part of their SWAT team, their dive team, the Marine unit. And even though he is technically retired, not really...

Bill Perry:

Not really.

Bill Godfrey:

Not really...

Bill Perry:

Not really.

Bill Godfrey:

... because you're still training with them...

Bill Perry:

I am, 36 hours a week.

Bill Godfrey:

... on an almost daily basis. Also joining with us, we have Harry Jimenez, who retired from Homeland Security Investigations after 30 years with DHS at the federal level, and is now serving as the deputy chief for Dimmitt County Sheriff's Office. Harry, welcome. Thanks for taking the time.

Harry Jimenez:

Thank you, Bill.

Bill Godfrey:

All right, so Billy, I know that this is a subject that is passionate and dear to your heart. Why? Why so?

Bill Perry:

I think this is a very difficult topic. It's a challenging topic. It's one that we approach with great reverence, with great seriousness, with great thought. And we want to come at this from a position of knowledge and a position of seriousness and with as much reverence as we can muster for it. And it is the contact team. And what does a contact team do and what is their primary job? And in any active incident, our two objectives is to stop the killing and stop the dying. And our community, the law enforcement community, for a long time was really, really, really good at that. And we're still okay at it, but we're we're having challenges or we're have been some times when we have been less than... Suboptimal, we've been suboptimal. And I think with this, and part of it is we're going through and institutional inertia paradigm shift, frankly, where I think some things are changing. And at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to stop that and there are challenges with that.

Bill Godfrey:

You say suboptimal. Without getting into specifics of incidents, can you give me some examples of the types of behavior you're talking about that's not really what we want.

Bill Perry:

Well I think, and we were talking about it-

Bill Godfrey:

Or the reverse of that, Billy. Give me the examples of what we do.

Bill Perry:

Right, exactly. That's where I was going to go with that. You read my mind. We were just talking about it, Harry and I, and one of the things is knowing what our mission is. And that's part of the issue is, as law enforcement we've had mission creep. And what I mean by that is, we're social workers and we're real estate landlords, and for we're civil people and we're traffic crash investigators, and we're... And the list goes on and on and on.

Bill Godfrey:

Like the MacGyver of law enforcement. Mental-

Bill Perry:

Oh, my god. Mental health counselors, absolutely. I mean, we're like a multi-tool. And the problem that is, we do a lot of things okay, but we don't do anything really, really good. And the one thing that differentiates us from everybody is our ability to go in and stop the bad guys, to stop the killing. And we say that, and we say that we're not flippant about this by any means.

Bill Perry:

And the other challenge that we've had with law enforcement is a... I don't even know that it's a watering downright diminishing of our professionalism, or if we got stagnant or where we are, and we want to be treated like professionals. And I say this to the people that are trying to all the time, but what are we doing to improve our professionalism? And are we acting like professionals? And do we know? And I ask every officer, not just every officer supervisor, not just every agency head, ask every officer, do you know what your state statute is for justifiable use of force? And they don't call it a response resistance. They call it use of force. In Florida, it's 776.

Bill Perry:

Do you know what your order is for response to resistance, because most departments and agencies do call it that. Do you know what your weapons platforms are? And do you know what the nomenclature is for every round t...