Look, we can’t all be super high-speed Navy SEALs or Delta Force commandos. Going commando doesn’t make you one. We can’t all look good in a 5.11 starter kit or have 3% body fat and wear a beard like Thor. But we can learn how to effectively clear rooms without being a complete tactical dunce and getting ourselves or someone else killed in the process.
Whether you like it or not, you need to know how to clear rooms and hallways. What if you find an open door at a closed business and have to check it for the owner or you need to clear a house to make it safe for detectives? Or maybe you have to clear your own home when something goes bump in the night. These things will happen and you’ll need to know the basics. They’re not that difficult. You can do it.
Here are eight foundational principles that you can easily learn, remember, and do. I understand that there are many ways to skin this cat, and even more opinions on which way is better. Don’t get lost in the weeds and send me hate mail. These are just some basics.
PART I: Principles
1. Communicate
Don’t get wrapped around the axle with tactical talk. Just speak clearly, simply, and plainly. Let your partners know what you see, what you’re going to do, or what you need. Keep it simple, stupid, because if you don’t, you won’t have communication, you’ll have confusion.
2. Manage your muzzle
All the morale patches, sunglasses, and tactical beards in the world won’t make you a high-speed operator if you’re pointing your muzzle at your teammates. In close quarters, you need to be hyper-vigilant as to where you’re pointing that thing. Just because your barrel is pointing down, doesn’t mean it’s automatically a safe direction. If someone’s knees or toes are getting lasered or you’re stepping over someone you’ve detained, you are setting you and your teammates up for failure when the proverbial poop hits the fan. Get to know and practice different ready positions, to include the high-ready or port position, which has your muzzle up where you can see it.
3. Ready Position
Keep your gun at either the low-ready or the high-ready / port. If you’re looking down the sights of your gun when you’re clearing rooms and hallways, you are obstructing your own vision and you could miss something. Moving from a ready position to a firing position should only take a fraction of a second. You may argue that a fraction of a second is the difference between life and death. I wouldn’t disagree with that, however, I would argue that the fraction of a second lost is in exchange for a wider field of view so we don’t shoot the wrong person or overlook a critical piece of information, like a threat lying in wait.
4. Threshold evaluations
What the heck is a threshold evaluation anyway? Were you taught to “slice the pie” in the Academy? I hope so, but if not, slicing the pie is a slow and methodical way of clearing a room from outside the doorway, inch by inch, slice by slice. A threshold evaluation sounds way more tactical, but it’s the same concept. You should be double-arm’s length off the door frame as you move in an arc from one side of the door frame to the other, clearing the room as you move and communicating what you see. We watch way too many movies and see too many YouTube videos of cops in action with no critique of their bad tactics. Sure, they look cool, but often times are unnecessarily putting themselves in harm’s way. Don’t go barging into a room without doing a threshold evaluation first unless you are rescuing a hostage. I don’t know about you, but of all the rooms I’ve cleared over the years, there’s hasn’t been a single hostage in there yet. Slow the bleep down and slice that pie before going in. We can clear 80-90% of a room without ever putting a toe into it.
5. Two men to a room
No exceptions. Sure, I’ve seen raid-jacket-wearing FBI desk jockeys and CSI detectives clear rooms by themselves on TV, and they alway win. It must be okay because they wore mirrored sunglasses, had a sexy five o’clock shadow, and were wearing a sweet plate carrier with lots of pouches attached to them, right? Wrong. You can’t effectively clear a room by yourself. If someone is lying in wait for you in that room, it’s game over for you.
6. Don’t over-penetrate
Gross, what does that mean? If I walk two or three steps into an empty gymnasium, can I see and clear it from there? Or do I need to walk 50 feet inside the gym? Two or three steps is all I need. The same is true of a bedroom. I don’t need to go more than two or three steps into a room to clear it. If I go in too far, and there is a threat in there, I could put myself in my partner’s line of fire and take his gun out of the fight or expose myself to an angle I didn’t account for. Two or three steps in and to one side of the doorway is all you need, just never stop in the doorway. Ideally, the best place to end up is a couple of steps into the room to one side the doorway and off the wall. Once two men are in the room, clearing around furniture, inside closets, or dealing with connecting rooms can be done systematically after the initial entry is made.
7. Do only one thing at a time
You can’t open a door and be ready to fight at the same time. You can’t cover an open door or other threat-area while taking one hand off your weapon to point at something. You can’t lift up a bed to look under it and cover it at the same time. We’ve all done it, and when we did, we were stupid. If your job is to open the door, just open the door. If your job is to cover something, just cover it. If you see something, say so, don’t take a hand off your gun to point. You need two people to clear a threat area like a closet, bed, couch, and the like. When you divide your attention between two things you are no longer effective at either of them.
8. Commit to your area of responsibility
I’ve done it and I’ve seen it done a million times. There is something in our human nature that causes us to look at people when we are talking to them or to turn our head when we hear a noise. This may be natural, but it’s a habit we have to break if we are to commit to our area of responsibility while clearing rooms. If I’m up front as the first man or the point man, I cannot take my eyes off of my area of responsibility. The same goes for when I’m covering a door or a hallway or I’m the rear guard. That is my job. If I turn my head and look at the guys behind me to tell them something, I have just failed to do my job and have put us all at risk. If I turn and look because guys somewhere behind me find a suspect and start yelling, again, I just failed. I have to stay committed and focused on my area of responsibility, whatever that is at that moment. We must be like horses wearing blinders. We cannot let peripheral things distract us from our singular focus.
Be sure to check out Part II: Tactics
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- Do you feel like tactics aren’t for you?
- Are you cutting corners when clearing rooms?
- Do you have bad tactical habits that you need to break?
- What training opportunities can you pursue to improve your tactics?
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