Folks, please forgive my vocabulary. I have two excuses for using profanity: 1. In my background, profanity was often the most articulate, efficient method of communicating an idea to an often concept- challenged listener; 2. Long ago in days of old when knights of various sorts roamed our nation – when men were men and women were women; a criminal psychologist professor of mine told us it is better to blurt out exactly how you feel rather than hold it inside to fester until years later when it could manifest itself as “panic attacks” – and, as you can see, I have managed to avoid those!. and 3. a great cleric once said he would trust a man more who curses an arm’s length openly than a hypocrite who calls himself a Christian and conceals his sins. ……OK, that’s three (no comments about being a Marine, please)
My lunch was ruined today by reading the latest article on the death of Border Patrol Agent Ivie in the Sunday, October 20, 2012 edition of the Sierra Vista paper. The front page article was titled “Radios may have played role in BP shooting”. It takes four or five columns offering the alibi that “dead space” in the area prevented Agent Ivie and the other two agents -a male and a female- from knowing they were is such close proximity. It was seconded by the apparent FBI’s County Sycophant, Acting Sheriff Rothrock. Well, in the lexicon of a good ‘ol Texas boy who is a good friend of mine: “That dog don’t hunt”. And here’s why:
I was a Special Forces communications specialist for several years on an operational detachment. The training to be awarded that military occupational specialty was extensive. We learned about “dead zones” – and obstacle gain; elliptical polarization and frequency optimization through the “F” layers of the atmosphere based on time of day and altitude temperatures, ad nauseum. I’ve made commo from Africa back to Ft. Bragg using long wire morse code and data burst…and been interrupted by a Masai cattle stampede trampling my equipment. I was responsible for intra-team communications in a variety of terrain around the world. Many of our overseas missions involved border security operations preventing hostile forces from crossing our allies frontiers. The Border Patrol’s communication equipment is voice-based. This means the electro-magnetic impulses (EMI) -their voice transmissions- are line-of-sight dependent. They are augmented by reflector/retransmitting antennas. When I first started working at the Douglas Port of Entry I asked both CCSO and BP if there were a lot of “dead spots” in their area of operations. Both said they had no difficulty communicating either with dispatch or between themselves -only rarely in very distant locations masked by the mountains (but resolved by the re-transmitters). Even this can be overcome on clear nights when voice transmissions can bounce off the ionosphere – that’s why I can sometimes hear KOMA AM-Oklahoma City on cool, clear nights. Our cheap, little, pocket two-way radios at the Port of Entry could be heard between cargo and the secondary inspection area – and that was transmitting through a building.
Line-of-sight voice transmissions are very similar to the trajectory of small arms fire….the kind the border patrol uses. So, the alibi so subserviently supported by Rothrock and others with limited -at best- knowledge of the technical aspects of radio communications serves only to fog the final analysis. Never in my time as a communications specialist conducting tactical border operations in any terrain around the world was my team unable to communicate with each other during patrols unless they did not have line-of-sight due to terrain. And by terrain I don’t mean heavy brush I mean solid earth like hills – which was not the case in Ivie’s shooting. Small arms fire is more limited by heavy brush than line-of-sight voice communications – particularly if you are close enough to actually see the other person. So, as I’ve said before, the real questions regarding Agent Ivie’s death should be targeted toward procedures and whether they were followed.
Such as: 1. Agent Ivie -and all BP agents- are taught “Escalation of Force” in making apprehensions. That means upon initial contact -like they’ve done simce the inception of the Border Patrol- the agent immediately declares “Border Patrol! Hands Up!” or words to that effect. That is so ingrained during the academy and by repetition in the field as to become automatic. Nothing is so brow-beaten into the brains of all law enforcement officers’ as escalation of force. Agent Ivie’s instantaneous firing at “armed persons” on a 90+ percent night illumination without first declaring himself and commanding them to drop their weapons really begs credulity. There has been no mention of this anywhere. Why? 2. With the ability of every agent to communicate with the dispatcher and between themselves, why didn’t both the dispatcher and Ivie know that the male and female agents were “that close”? Standard procedure in almost all levels of law enforcement agencies in responding to sensor alerts is to “go to channel xxx” in order to be able to communicate and not hinder normal radio traffic on the operational frequency. Knowing that, a. there is already an agent on site; and b. there are agents responding, SOP would dictate they communicate closely with each to prevent exactly what happened. Someone obviously didn’t. Why? As I mentioned, the “heavy brush” would not come even close to hindering several kilowatts or megahertz of electro-magnetic impulse particularly if they were -obviously- well within small arms range. Why didn’t Ivie and dispatch know those two were there? 3. How is it that the responding male and female agents were able to link up without shooting each other ……”in heavy brush”?
4. If the area in which the shooting occurred was so “high traffic”, was there infra-red cameras dedicated to that avenue of approach as any good tactician would do? If so, what does the video show. If there was video being monitored (supposedly) by someone at the station why didn’t that person vector in the responding agents and advise Ivie?
In order to get at the truth someone needs to challenge the basic facts as they were given by the surviving agents – and review the pertinent radio traffic of the incident recorded back at the station ……to match them up. Agent Ivie suddenly opening fire on fellow agents he “didn’t know were that close” is counter-intuitive and highly suspect.
The Border Patrol publishes annual summaries of agent-involved shootings. They are available to the public. The most intriguing thing I’ve read in those while I was working on the border is that -like most police officers- they rarely hit what they are shooting at in instinctive, reactionary shootings. It’s because their training specifically prohibits that kind of shooting. And, like the FAA says about airplanes, so it is in officer-involved shootings: there is almost always more than one cause for a crash.
