The Next Level of Tactical Awareness: Getting Left of Bang

1. What they did

In this short article for police officers, Patrick Van Horne, a former United States Marine Corps infantry captain who led a Combat Hunter training team after deployments to Iraq, introduces the ideas he was about to teach at the Illinois Tactical Officers Association (ITOA) annual training conference.

He pictures a timeline. “Bang” sits in the middle: the event you want to prevent, such as a drug deal, a shooting or a bombing. Being “right of bang” means the event has happened and you are reacting. Being “left of bang” means you have spotted the warning signs early enough to step in first. He presents left of bang not just as a point on a timeline but as a state of mind that calls for a fresh look at situational awareness.

He argues that this higher level of awareness needs two skills: knowing what to look for, and knowing how to look for it.

2. What they found

The article sets out a method rather than findings.

Information hunting, not information hoping

• We have been “people watching” all our lives, but are rarely taught what particular behaviours mean, why they matter, or how to set things up so they are easier to see.
• Officers cannot rely on a passive process or hope that criminals reveal themselves. “Information hunting” means observing deliberately, in a way that supports quick decisions with limited time and information.
• The author draws on Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear: we notice far more than we consciously attend to, so when something does stand out, it deserves attention.

What to look for: four pillars of observable behaviour

• Individual people.
• Groups of people.
• How people interact with the environment.
• The collective mood of everyone present.

These pillars focus attention only on behaviour that helps decisions on the ground (the “search principle” in decision-making research). They help less experienced officers see what a new call has in common with earlier ones and avoid being distracted by less important behaviour.

How to look: Baseline + Anomaly = Decision

A baseline is what is normal for the place, the situation or the people being observed. An anomaly is anything that departs from it, and once one is found, a decision is needed. Anomalies cannot be recognised without first having a baseline, which the author calls one of the most important elements of situational awareness. Officers set the baseline by asking three questions:

• “What is going on here?” Use the four pillars to describe what is happening.
• “What would make someone stand out?” Imagine being the criminal and how your behaviour would differ from the baseline.
• “What are you going to do about it?” Decide in advance how to respond to each anomaly you have thought of.

These can be answered before arriving on scene. They prepare officers mentally, encourage a bias for action, and mean responses are thought through before the officer is in a stressful situation, where decision-making suffers.

3. What they concluded

• The Marine Corps had to find new methods in 2007 to identify an enemy who blended in with the local population in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author sees clear parallels with what police officers face every day.
• A behavioural approach to tactical awareness can shorten the time officers need to become effective, and increase observed arrests, by teaching which behaviours should draw attention and how to make them easier to see.
• For experienced officers, the same principles give a vocabulary, backed by science, to explain and justify why a person drew their attention. The author says this is important because unexplained “hunches” leave the public to make its own assumptions about police actions. He promises more on this in the next newsletter.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• The four pillars of observable behaviour as a simple checklist for reading a scene.
• The three baseline questions, answered before arrival, as a way to plan responses before stress sets in.