SI35 – AMBUSH RECOGNITION/WHAT EVERY COP NEEDS TO KNOW
This is the entire 1hr. 45 min. classroom presentation taught at ILEETA by expert trainer and educator Dick Fairburn from the Illinois State Police Academy.
New program coming this summer! Suicide Prevention/What Every Cop Needs to Know
Over the last three years, more officers have taken their lives than have been lost in the line of duty. We urge you to check out this preview of our new program “Suicide Prevention/What Every Cop Needs to Know”. The full-length program is coming out this summer. It features Sgt.(Ret.) Mark DiBona, and I, Ron Barber, firmly believe there is no greater spokesman who can tackle this huge issue.
A very wise old Milwaukee police academy instructor once said: “Everybody lies (in certain circumstances)…”
Some articles catch my eye more than others, I’ll admit. Every day, there the is deja vu of yesterday’s news, i.e. high-speed pursuits, lengthy standoffs, an intoxicated idiot roaring the wrong way down a highway somewhere, a domestic eruption over what cable channel to view, ad nauseum.
My focus is to always look for stories that can teach something of value or offer up even a scintilla of new information that, perhaps, some law enforcement professionals may not have known.
That grabbed my eyes, as do most stories of murder and mayhem which involve sports, sports celebrities, sports bigwigs–– you get the idea.
Wife (Danielle Redlick) said he stabbed himself.
Danielle Redlick (Orange County Jail)
This story revolved around the woman’s changing stories to police about the stabbing death of her husband and other aspects of his demise that just left me shaking my damned head–– or SMDH in the modern vernacular.
45-year old Danielle Redlick had made a 9-1-1 call to the Orange County S.O. in January to report that her husband “was stiff” and may have had a heart attack.
She then changed her story and said that she and her husband had a fight that led to him “stabbing himself,” that she had run and hidden in the bathroom, come out, and found him in a pool of blood, then realized she couldn’t help him.
She said she laid down next to him and “wondered what to do next.”
Her story was that she had tried to clean up the blood with towels and kept slipping on it in an effort to find her cell phone.
Interestingly, she used her cell phone to make calls two hours before reporting the death to police—11 hours later, including one to an online dating app!
When the police arrived, they:
– noticed the smell of bleach
– found bloody towels surrounding the husband’s body
– noticed that his jeans were stained with blood
– noted some of the stains had circular marks, indicating someone tried to clean them up
– saw a trail of blood leading to the master bedroom
The medical examiner said:
– some of the man’s stab wounds were not self-inflicted
– some of his injuries appeared to be defensive in nature
Investigators further stated, “The wife had been on the phone two hours before calling 9-1-1 despite insisting she had been unable to find it, after slipping and tripping in her husband’s blood.”
Danielle Justine Redlich was arrested on charges of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the death of her husband, Michael.
She had also filed for divorce almost a year earlier saying her marriage “was irretrievably broken,” but the case was dismissed due to lack of action by the woman, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The couple have two children together.
Questions to Reflect On:
How important is it to ask the right questions?
What questions would YOU have asked this subject first?
How important is it to always LISTEN intently to the answers to your questions?
Do you make it a point to ask the same questions but, perhaps, in different ways?
How important is it to document, record those answers?
At a violent crime scene, what do you notice the most?
How aware are you of blood spattering and its characteristics?
How important is it to preserve the crime scene as best as humanly possible?
What should any law enforcement agency teach all officers, in your opinion, about preserving a crime scene?
Where have you seen first-arriving officers make the most mistakes when coming on a crime scene?
At what point do you feel a subject’s story begins to “fall apart”?
If you detect one flaw in a subject’s story, what are the chances or likelihood of there being additional flaws in your opinion?
Years ago, In the Line of Duty had the great good fortune to hire Officer Richard Simpher of the St. Louis Police Department as our technical adviser. Rich was later promoted to sergeant and became director of the St. Louis PD’s Training Academy. He was a no b.s. boss who absolutely knew his stuff, a great cop, a great instructor. On one occasion, Rich had written an analysis of lessons learned for one of our first programs.
He was on-duty and in uniform at the time and wanted me to meet him about three blocks from our office to deliver it. I asked him why the hey couldn’t he just drive to our office and hand me the information. He said that, since he was on-duty, he could not cross the border between St. Louis City and the neighboring suburb where we were located due to p.d. rules and regs.
Right by the book, that was Simpher. Which leads me to the horror story that unfolded here in St. Louis last week.
St. Louis police officer & Russian roulette
Officer Kaitlyn Alix – St. Louis
Two uniformed, on-duty officers had strayed far from their patrol district and had gone to the apartment of one of them. Why, is still anybody’s guess. This was during the midnight hour where s–t so often happens, and this was to be no exception. Once there, they met a 24-year old female officer named Kaitlyn Alix, who was off-duty and not in uniform. I’ve been told, despite her tender years, she was a straight-down-the-line solid young officer.
According to reports, one of the uniformed cops, for whatever reason, brandished a gun. Initially, the public was told it was not his sidearm. Then, that was walked back, and whose gun it was remains a mystery. He is reported to have unloaded the gun of all bullets, then put a single bullet back into the chamber, spun it and fired towards a wall or ceiling. Nothing. At this point, his partner is said to have started to leave the room and head out of the apartment, reportedly not wanting to have anything to do with the goings-on. Officer Alix, by accounts, then took the gun, pointed it at the officer’s head and pulled the trigger. Again, nothing. Then, the officer, Nathaniel Hedren, apparently took the gun back, pointed it at Officer Alix’ chest, pulled the trigger, the gun fired, and she was struck mortally.
Initial Details On The Situation
At first, we were told by the SLMPD it was a “tragic accident”. That didn’t last too long, though, before it became an apparent lethal game of Russian Roulette. Now, with a young cop’s life snuffed out and multiple lives ruined, the questions beg for answers.
What in God’s name were they REALLY doing?
Where was their supervisor?
Did the uniformed officers lie about their whereabouts?
Did they even bother to call out of service?
If the gun hadn’t discharged on the third pull, would they have kept going?
The Real Question: Was it really a deadly game of Russian Roulette at all? Or did Officer Hendren get furious when Officer Alix took the gun, pointed it at him and pulled the trigger?
Kaitlyn Alix Husband
First reports indicated there were others in the apartment. Since then, nothing to support or deny that. The p.d. didn’t order immediate blood draws of the involved parties, a decision that has angered the City Prosecutor, who has had her knives out for coppers from day one anyway. Where did Officer Hedren get the black eye he was photographed with after his arrest? Was it really from head-butting and smashing a cruiser windshield after he’d realized what he had done?
A friend of mine is a recently retired second generation St. Louis officer, and was a damned good cop. He actually had left the p.d., pursued other business opportunities, then re-joined again at age 50, passing every other recruit in the rigorous physical testing. That feat made national news at the time. He told me how furious he was that the second uniformed officer had started to leave the apartment without trying to stop the seemingly insane actions that were taking place.
“Ron,” he said, “I’m not very big (stature), but I’ll be damned if I would have left the apartment without trying to do something to end that craziness”.
Other cops who’ve chimed in on blogs agree that the second uniform is equally as liable, in their minds, as the first uniform, Hendren, who (seemingly) started the deadly ball rolling. Plus, many other officers are blogging regarding their skepticism about the entire tragedy as it’s being laid out to the public. “I call b.s. alert” seems to be the litany of many of them. My buddy also pointed out that the three officers involved had about five years’ total experience, among all three of them. The two uniforms were 29-years old.
I have my serious doubts about an insane game of Russian Roulette taking place, but only time will, hopefully, tell. Alcohol? Drugs? Anger? Rage? Jealousy?
About officer Katlyn Alix
The dead officer was married, her husband, also a St. Louis cop, was not at the apartment. What I do say with a fairly high-degree of certainty is that had Sgt. Simpher been at the helm of the training academy when these young officers went through, this tragedy would never have happened. That’s just my dime’s worth of opinion. However, there’s only one Simpher, and who knows about the mettle and maturity of some recruits, who, honest to God, knows?
Sgt. Adam Plantinga of the San Francisco P.D. who has written the excellent “400 Things Cops Know” is quoted saying “some cops are beyond salvaging”. I asked him what he meant by that statement, and he told me that “…certain new, newer officers may be too tentative, too slow to pat down, or they allow suspects to get too close, they can (often) be re-trained. However, if it’s an integrity issue, I don’t know how to fix it. If a new officer in a critical incident freezes while their partner is in a struggle, and they’re standing 10 feet away like a witness, those people need to take a hard look at themselves, because ‘the job’ may not be in their DNA”. I will add to that my very humble opinion that some cops just do not get it.
This career is a ‘calling’ God’s calling to me. Officers are given great powers, life and death, in some cases over their fellow man and woman. For some officers, whether of tender years or with whiskers, taking advantage of that with stupidity, or outright insane actions, selfish, unthinking, blatant immaturity, disgusting breaking of the rules, or flat out thumbing their noses at societal decency and norms can come with an horrific and a dear price.
That’s why I stick to my ‘guns’ when I titled this blog what I did, because, to me, it affects every cop in the nation, not just St. Louis coppers who’ve come under almost unremitting attack from so many sides for so many years.
Time for mandatory training in maturity, civility and, yes, maybe even a primer on life’s simple rules for survival and longevity.
Everyone, I mean, everyone took a step backward during a tragic midnight last week in old Saint Louis. Maybe, it’s the overwhelming amount of information so readily available on the internet, but I just do not remember ever reading about such insanity when our WW2, Korean and Vietnam vets joined the force, do you?
Ron Barber is President of In the Line of Duty (www.lineofduty.com) which
is America’s sole producer of reality-based video and online training for
