Even more on Woods' shooting injury

Cal Skinner has continued to do a great job in obtaining and publishing information about the shooting injury of Deputy Eric Woods on March 15th at the shooting range of the McHenry County Sheriff's Department.

Today's posting at www.mchenrycountyblog.com includes a diagram, a useless photo (not Cal's fault) provided by the sheriff's department, and a March 15th memo written by Lt. Cedergren. Sections of the memo are Situation, Incident, Analysis, Contributing Factors and Remediation's (sic) Recommended.

Go to McHenry County Blog for today's article, which Cal has published as received. It is dated March 15, and Cal wrote that he received it on March 31.

OK, let's take apart the Contributing Factors and Recommendations:

"Target was placed too far forward."

Look at the diagram on Cal's blog. The target was four feet inside the room. Deputy Hart was inside the room. The barrel of his 5.56 cal. rifle is within two feet of the steel "vicious dog" target. Woods is just to the left of the target. Woods is lucky he's not dead. Why did Hart shoot on a steel target only two feet away? Had there been no range safety training about close shooting on steel targets?

"Dep. Woods took an unintended position, by-passing a lethal target and standing next to it."

Why didn't Woods "engage" (shoot) the vicious-dog target? Where is Woods' report?

"Dep. Hart engaged a target with another team member standing next to it."

Look at the diagram! Injury to the deputy to the left of the steel dog-target was almost guaranteed. While training exercises should be realistic and practical, they should be held to a higher standard of safety of fellow officers than an actual entry incident.

"It happened too quickly for range officers to recognize the problem and call cease fire."

Pardon my English, but what kind of crap is that statement? The duty of the range officer is to inspect range conditions before the exercise commenced. Either they didn't do it, or they were negligent in their inspection. And didn't they position the targets or direction their placement? Exactly which range officer was responsible for positioning the metal dog-target only four feet inside the door?

"The range officers did not have a clear view of the room."

What were they doing? Ordering pizza? Their job, their duty, their responsibility was to be where they could observe the room!

"Range officers and SWAT members did not fully understand the effects of frangible ammunition on reactive targets."

What? Why not? A careful analysis of that Contributing Factor reveals that there was no competent range officer present and that command personnel were allowing unqualified staffers to conduct operations at the range without required information and training.

And now on to Remediation's (sic) Recommended...

"Provide training on frangible ammunition and steel targets."

No doubt about the need for that!

"Purchase 2 platforms to place at the sides of the sets for 2 range officers to stand on."

Maybe with bulletproof glass on the front, too.

"Signal to stop will be a whistle. The range officers on the platforms will have their whistles in their mouth."

That wasn't already in place? Look at the diagram for the number of observers present on March 15. Was there any action plan among them as to who would call a "Cease fire", if warranted?

"Determine minimum safe lateral distance from target and incorporate it."

Hasn't this already been well-established in the tactical shooting world? Any shooter knows you don't fire on a steel target two feet away! You can't pass the buck here. Does the negligence move up a notch, if no consideration of that safe distance was given?

"Create more reaction time by moving targets further back from point of entry."

This one is hard to figure out. The targets aren't moving, which is what would create the "reaction" time; i.e., the time before a moving "target" would be on top of the deputy. The attempt with this recommendation seems to be to create less chance of ricochet.

What was the set-up for this exercise? Were instructions that every "target" would be armed and shooting at the SWAT team entering the room? What did "engage" mean in the deputies' reports? If it meant that the every deputy fired on a target, how did that deputy decide to fire?

Are SWAT team members trained to automatically fire when they enter a room? I doubt it.

"Paint a failsafe line on the ground and not allow any participant beyond that line. Show the line to the participants prior to the start of live fire."

I'd love to read the candid reactions of SWAT team members to that recommendation. That one makes no sense to me, at all. Isn't the idea of training to instill alertness and fluid team tactics in SWAT team members? The idea is that they do not know exactly what they will encounter, when they enter a building.

And what is the drill, should a team member be shot? In a real-life situation, they are not going to call out to the bad guys for a cease-fire. Training should include who cares for the injured deputy, and how he is removed to safety.

I didn't see that addressed anywhere in the Recommendations.