Backcountry Tactics and Tracking Training Program

1. What they did

Two instructors at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, describe the Backcountry Tactics and Tracking Training Program (BTTTP). They argue that recent high-profile cases, in which police had to track murder suspects into rural country, show that law enforcement needs trained trackers and tracking teams. Most tactical teams are used to working in towns and are less confident and less skilled in rural areas.

FLETC started the program in 2005. It is a one-week course covering:

• Land navigation and Global Positioning System (GPS)
• Tracking
• Principles of camouflage
• Crime scene investigation
• Tactical team movement

Teaching is scenario based. The course began at FLETC’s Artesia, New Mexico, site and is usually held on one of two ranches in New Mexico. Because agencies in the eastern United States asked for training in terrain like their own, it is now also offered through FLETC’s Glynco, Georgia, site, with the same curriculum and instructors from both sites. It has also been taught in Utah, West Virginia, California, Mississippi and South Carolina. The authors illustrate the skills with examples from real cases.

2. What they found

The article reports no study results. It describes what the course teaches and gives examples of tracking in police work:

• Reading a crime scene: students document tracks, including measurements of the imprint and of stride or gait, on a tracking card. This helps confirm sign during a track, can be used as evidence, and stride measurements can be used for “micro-tracking” to find the next sign. In one example, a normal stride to and from a homicide scene suggests the suspect walked there and away with no fear of being seen.
• Contaminated scenes: a tracker can eliminate the first responders’ footprints and isolate the one track not linked to them, which would be the suspect’s.
• Footwear evidence: using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) footprint database, a footprint can be matched to a suspect’s footwear by its wear pattern. Footprints can also show how fast someone left the scene.
• Marijuana grow sites: trackers can follow a person from a parked vehicle carrying fertiliser and plastic pipe to the grow site, as in one case on the grounds of an international airport.
• Team tracking: the tracker is protected by a team. A controller directly behind them sets the speed and movement, flankers clear threats ahead and pick up any tracks that branch off, and a rear cover guards against counter-tracking. Students learn the “one plus one” theory: if the team thinks it is following one suspect, what happens when a second person joins? Sometimes suspects walk in the same track, and an experienced tracker looks for this.
• How many people fled: a deputy chased what he thought was one suspect, met two, and was shot in the head. The course trains officers to tell how many people actually left a scene, and stresses how dangerous it is for an officer to run after a suspect who has bailed out of a car after a pursuit, unless several officers cover them.
• A missing child: the authors note that night tracking, although risky, may be needed when looking for an abducted or lost child. A Utah police sergeant, who also teaches on the course, found the footprint of a missing or abducted 11-year-old girl (autistic and partially blind) in a puddle in front of her house and, with a team, tracked her for an hour and a half into about 1,000 acres of sagebrush in rain and blowing wind. She was found hiding in a sagebrush, cold and suffering from exposure, and made a full recovery.
• Night tracking: students try red, blue or subdued yellow lights, depending on what their eyes accept, and sometimes infrared with night vision. A light held on the end of a stick avoids a glow around the tracker’s body that would make them a target.
• Navigation: GPS does not always work, so students learn compass navigation to fix exact locations for air evacuation, evidence and the start point of a track.

3. What they concluded

• Tracking is “a mindset, a way of life”, and a skill that fades if it is not used regularly.
• Agencies working in rural areas need trained trackers or tracking teams to investigate and safely apprehend suspects, and the same tactics carry over to search and recovery.
• Students are told on the first day that they “will never look at the ground the same after this class.”

4. How tracking was or was not used

The whole article is about tracking people. Students learn to identify and tell apart different tracks, document footprints, imprint measurements and stride, and follow a trail as part of a protected team, by day and at night. The case examples include trailing suspects and a missing child, and isolating a suspect’s footprints at a crime scene.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. No certification or test of the instructors’ or students’ tracking skill is described. The first author is described as the program’s team leader since its start and a senior instructor, with 21 years in criminal investigations and special operations units in Florida and Arkansas before joining FLETC. The second author is a branch chief in FLETC’s Operational Skills Branch and a former Georgia Department of Natural Resources conservation ranger. The article refers to “the experienced tracker” without saying how experience is measured.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Tracking card and “tracking box” exercise to record imprint and stride measurements
• FBI footprint database for matching footwear wear patterns
• GPS, with compass land navigation as a backup
• Coloured lights (red, blue, subdued yellow), infrared lights with night vision, and a light on a stick for night tracking
• Changing the angle of light to show a track more clearly
• Hand signals (“ON TRACK”), team formations and cover-to-cover movement; plotting the team’s location and the Point Last Seen (PLS) for Incident Command
• Camouflage and concealment for intelligence gathering