Complacency Kills

If history has ever taught us anything it is that complacency can kill and forgetting past lessons is the path to failure. When you look at the Bomb Technician mission worldwide you will see many different Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP's) employed. These will vary by region and have a lot to do with the type of threat that region is encountering. The reality is that the more IED's a region deals with the more lessons learned which leads to improved TTP's. The downside is that in regions where you do not have that many IED's complacency can creep in and create TTP's that can be dangerous.

I worked for an agency that for an extended period of time were kicking in doors and hunting fugitives with no loss of life. This was a dangerous job but over a long period nobody was killed, and this led to what I like to call "Complacency Creep". As time passed nobody was wearing a vest, shields stayed in the cars and the only helmet was a baseball cap. The harsh reality is that if nobody is getting killed or injured your guard starts to drop and your TTP's become more geared for a lower level threat. We payed a very hard price for this because in a very short period of time we lost several Deputies and Task Force Officers. The agency had to sit down and go back over basic TTP's and ensure that things we should have always been doing were enforced. This was a perfect example of complacency creep due to letting our guard down. Sadly, history shows that when this happens the corrective action does not happen until after you suffer a loss of life.

To avoid this in any job that is high risk you have to be very vigilant and always ensure that the baseline TTP's are enforced. Having a well written Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a good start but you should always conduct reviews and assessments to ensure that the SOP is being followed. The groups who at the most risk for this complacency creep are the ones who are not dealing with a high level of threat. In many parts of the world IED's are just not that common where in other parts that are a day to day nightmare. The groups that are at risk for letting their guard down are the ones where the number of threats is low. This is where you can find that complacency starts creeping in.

In regions that have a very low number of actual IED's the majority of calls will be suspect or suspicious packages. This can be an unattended bag or backpack outside of a building or even an odd package being mailed to a facility. These kinds of calls over time can create a mindset that allows complacency to creep in. Overtime your guard goes down and the TTP's become more focused with dealing with a low-level threat vs a high-level threat. Assessing each call and threat is a part of the process but we always have to keep the baseline TTP's in place when dealing with an IED threat and never let our guard down.

A perfect example of this was when I was in the Marines, we covered four counties as the Bomb Squad. During the summer it was not uncommon to have the kids at the high school to call in a bomb threat so they could go to the beach. One summer we got a call on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and finally on Friday. We had responded all week and conducted a complete sweep of the school with the base K-9. By the time this happened again on Friday we almost did not go, and we definitely had our guard down (complacency had creeped in). We thought "here we go again" in our heads and went out on that call with a mindset that the threat was low.

When we got there, we came face to face with a device with a timer sitting in the stairwell. It turned out to be a hoax device after we blew it apart, but you can image our shock to show up expecting another boring search only to encounter a very real looking IED. It was not in a package so we could see right away what it was. However just imagine if it had been in a unattended backpack in that stairwell. We would have had no idea from the initial observation that inside of that backpack was a ticking bomb. Even worse what if it was a real timed IED in that backpack how would we reacted? Would we have just thought "Some kid just left it" and treated it like no big deal because our guard was already down. When you think about it and rationalize your mindset you realize that you were screwing up mentality by thinking it was nothing. That is a recipe for failure in the counter IED world and where tried and proven TTP's can be neglected.

The point I am trying to make is that as Bomb technicians we are always going to deal with suspect or suspicious packages and the vast majority are going to turn out to be nothing. Where we have to be vigilant in not letting our guard down and always treating every call like it is a full up IED trying to kill us. Regions that typically only deal with non threat calls will develop a mindset and TTP's geared for a low threat scenario. Things like "Time on Target" become something that is typically thrown out the window when we let complacency creep in. If you spend your entire career dealing with just suspect packages you have to treat each and every one exactly the same and follow your TTP's to the letter.

Almost all TTP's in the Bomb Technician world were developed because we learned a lesson the hard way and loss of life occurred. We have to always remember that and never let the unattended package become the "here we go again" mindset. Developing weak TTP's around a non threat unattended bag scenario is a recipe for disaster. Each and every call you have to treat like it is a full up IED threat and that needs to become the "culture". The best approach and test for any downrange TTP is measuring it against the device being timed an counting down to zero. If what you are doing right now puts you at risk in that kind of scenario what you are doing is not a solid tactic, technique, and procedure. As SGTMAJ Hathner always said "Stay alert, Stay Alive, it is as simple as that!"

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