While reading this article, put any competitiveness aside and realize that everyone on any high-performance team has been guilty of falling into a rabbit hole dug by an individual or team’s collective ego. Part of recognizing cracks in the foundation of any team is being able to admit that tactical perfection is not obtainable; the key to being a Tier-One team is always knowing, “We can do better.”
Creating a safe space for open discussion begins with a personal admission. So, here’s my confession: Hi, I’m Chris, and I’ve made tactical decisions driven by my ego. Whether it was a competitive response to a suspect’s actions, a self-centered belief that “ it’s got to be us, ” or an accolades hunt, I’ve been there… but then I changed. This self-awareness was my first step towards avoiding dangerous ego-driven decisions.
Now that I’ve laid my cards on the table, I invite you all to do the same. Let’s all take a moment to reflect and admit, “We have done that as well.” This shared understanding will pave the way for a deeper discussion on why this happens and how we can collectively prevent it from compromising operations, eroding trust, and jeopardizing safety.
When a fluid or static tactical operation starts to unfold, there is an immediate operational assessment period. I am more interested in focusing on the “emotional assessment.”; what thoughts are beginning to creep into our heads as we receive the information? As always, the first one will be, “ Hell, yeah. Game time!! ”. This isn’t a bad thing; it is exactly why we spend hundreds of hours training to deal with these very moments; it’s exciting, and we finally get to use all this equipment.
But…after the first few minutes of hearing the event unfold over the radio, another sound should be increasing volume in your head: the pounding of the ego-hammer. The ego-hammer is heavy, so we don’t want to pick it up. A large number of people don’t even own one. Unfortunately, as tactical professionals, you are not only expected to own one, but you should be able to use it with precision, and it should always be in your kit.
Before we go on, let me explain what the ego-hammer looks like and its function. It’s painted black, of course (but available in storm gray). Its size depends on its owner’s personality and is always very heavy. The function of the ego-hammer is to pound down the owner’s or other team members’ egos when making decisions so they are not ego-driven, which will almost always end in disaster.
So…back to the event. It is unfolding fast, and we want to get involved because we are a tactical team… best of the best. Or, are the very capably trained men and women on patrol, the Gang Unit, Vice Unit, etc., doing a great job handling the situation? Grab that hammer and start pounding away. There are times when tactical support is needed and times when it is not. Some of the best tactical decision-making I saw before retiring was done by a new patrol sergeant working a barricaded felon. While she ran the scene, I sat on the hood of her car, making notification calls for her so she could focus on the task at hand. In the end, her squad got the guy to surrender.
After the incident was done, the sergeant was elated at how her squad performed and asked for any advice on how to run the barricade smoother next time. I told her she had done everything by the numbers and she should be proud of her team. The only advice I gave her was always to know when to hand the ball off to another team and not let ego-driven tactics take over.
People reading this may ask, why not let a tactical team handle the call so it’s safer? Well, the guy barricaded had a knife and was alone in the apartment. The patrol sergeant had established containment; multiple force options were in place; communication had been established with the suspect, and (most importantly) they were doing a great job. There was no reason for a tactical team to nudge them aside except for our own operational ego.
Additionally, like it or not, optics matter. Having a tactical team roll in would have increased our community footprint, starting an unnecessary chain reaction with the media and community members feeling an increased sense of danger. Additionally, the pull of additional resources to support a tactical operation would have been substantial.
Where I see tactical units not using the ego hammer enough is in their operational planning. When patience is not part of the planning, we tend to push a scenario into motion when maybe more time (or another time) would’ve been the better decision. This loss of patience-in-planning also opens us to heavy public scrutiny and civil liability. This does not mean high-violence/low-frequency events such as active shooters, HRT situations, etc., fit into this concept, but those events are the exception, not the norm.
Let’s use a very common example of a wanted felon known to be armed. The default plan: Surround home, start contain-and-callout procedure, establish communications, evacuate surroundings, increase tactical posture, disrupt suspects’ environment, tech plan, gas plan, arrest plan, etc. We all recognize the above scenario and have run through it countless times. But is it always the best? Or did we forget the ego hammer during the planning phase? Also, does this place us into a “need to act” scenario since we have moved all these massive elements into place?
When we default to this plan, are we doing it because it’s the safest or because we want to deploy? Too often, residences are damaged, families are displaced, communities are disrupted, and force posturing leads to… force application. That same above felon…Does he go to work? Does he go to the store? Does he walk his dog? Does he visit his girlfriend? What is the severity of the prior felonies? When I would ask my team or other teams these questions, they knew I was pulling out the ego hammer and probably going to slow it down to reassess the best tool to use.
This didn’t make me very popular at times, but popularity was not what the Department or the public cared about. What mattered more was “Why Here, Why Now?” and whether we were being driven by our egos rather than the actual situation. This is the part where teams say, “Are we going to let this guy run around the city shooting people?” or “What about the graveyard shift patrol officer who may unknowingly come across this guy?”
Those are valid questions, but there are other questions: Does he know… that we know, he’s in the home? Whose house is it? Who’s in the house? We know he has ‘a’ gun, but how many are in the home? Are the guns in the home assault rifles or scoped rifles? Who lives in the surrounding homes, elderly couples or friends of the suspect? When we bring out the ego-hammer during the planning phase, these questions tend to start getting answered, and more times than not, the plan changes. Or, if we answer all the questions and a large tactical deployment is the best tool, proceed with the original tactical plan.
Ego-driven tactics are dangerous and usually result in unnecessary force applications or tragedy. The old saying,’ we are our own worst enemy,’ is especially true regarding institutional competitiveness; this almost always leads us into ego-driven tactics. Police officers have strong personalities to do their jobs because of what they face daily. But that same great quality can easily become our biggest stumbling block.
In all my years working as a police supervisor in specialty units, I found that the biggest mistakes and tragedies were almost always caused by unit competitiveness: incredibly talented teams pushing something because they did not want to hand it off for various reasons. The “it has to be us“ attitude is purely ego-driven and dangerous for us and our community. Call it big brother vs little brother, or team dynamics, or hierarchy, blah blah blah, it’s all ego. Not wanting to hand something off is no different than showing up to take something over…ego.
I do not believe in using the word ‘hierarchy’ within a police department; it fuels competitiveness and ego-driven tactics. Using the word alienates teams and individuals, whether they are on patrol, detective units, or tactical teams. When you break down who works in all these teams, they are the same people. The only tangible difference comes down to training and experience…not hierarchy.
Professional tactical planning has nothing to do with hierarchy; it has to do with the right tool for the job. I used to assess operations with the question, sledgehammer or scalpel? What will accomplish this goal safely and with as little community disruption as possible? Was it a scalpel or a sledgehammer response? Sometimes, it is several tons of armor; sometimes, it is nighttime open-area apprehension; sometimes, it is a traffic stop.
A team’s ability to read a situation and choose the best tool is what makes them elite, especially when ‘they’ recognize they are not the right tool and hand it off to another team. This is what separates elite teams from ego-driven teams; the elite teams know how and when to swing the ego-hammer.
Another ego-driven rabbit hole is the ‘we need the reps’ speech. On numerous occasions, I would hear teams clashing over who would conduct an operation: SWAT, Gangs, Street Detectives, Tactical Apprehension, etc. During the arguments, the teams would make their case, and eventually, someone would utter, “ We need the reps.” I’ve never believed in making game day a practice field; reps are for the range, the shoot house, the driving track, and the whiteboard. A tactical mentor of mine used to say, “Work backward from the shooting because that’s what Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor are going to do.” It makes me wonder, if an operation went bad and I was asked to justify my teams’ actions, how would “we needed the reps” go over as an explanation?
In this article, I’ve saved one crucial aspect for last. Elite teams require courageous leadership to make high-caliber decisions consistently. Team leaders must be brave enough to confidently say “no” to their teams and stand by those decisions. I recall an incident involving a former colleague who grew weary of his team’s constant complaints about non-deployment on specific operations. Finally, he declared, “The next tactical officer who complains about non-deployment will have the honor of returning to patrol by the end of the week” — ego-hammer. This supervisor’s ability to assess operations objectively, acknowledge when their team wasn’t the best fit, and delegate the operation to a more suitable team showed exemplary courageous leadership.
Though the idea of a large hammer being used to crush down ego is just a visual analogy, most of us realize the hammer represents – professional maturity. It took years for me to mature as a police officer and not pout or throw temper tantrums with my peers. What changed it for me was mentorship by elite people and wanting to be one of those elite people. They showed me that professional maturity wins the big games, results in true teamwork, and keeps people safe. These people no longer need an imaginary hammer to make great decisions because they are truly… the elite.
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Stay Safe…