Deputies practice high risk stops

Deputy Brian Kottich knows first hand that there isn’t any such thing as a routine traffic stop.

During his law enforcement career, he has encountered car occupants with weapons numerous times.

The most recent instance was when he was dispatched to a call of a suicidal man off of S. Broad Street. The man had accidentally shot off a gun in his home and threatened suicide.

When Kottich arrived, the man’s wife was standing outside the truck begging her husband to give her the gun. Another woman was in a car behind the man and was escorted to safety while deputies had the man at gunpoint.

Once the woman got the gun away from her husband, she started walking toward Kottich with it in her hands. The man then was taken into custody without further incident.

“When she brought it back, you could tell she was no threat,” Kottich said, demonstrating that the woman was holding the weapon in two hands with palms up. “I had a couple of minutes before I got to the call to prepare myself.”

He said he ran possible scenarios over in his head during the trip.

However, deputies don’t always know in advance that they are dealing with an armed person so that they have time to prepare.

That’s why deputies from the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office trained Monday at the Fremont Lakes State Recreation Area for high risk traffic stops.

Deputy Craig Harbaugh ran the training and put the deputies through several different traffic stop scenarios, starting with a traffic stop for speeding where deputies did not know there was a gun in the truck. The deputies used realistic Airsoft guns that fire plastic BBs to make the training more realistic and took turns playing the bad guys.

“There is absolutely no such thing as a routine traffic stop,” Harbaugh said. “You may have just stopped a vehicle with somebody who just murdered somebody. You don’t know. It’s not necessarily a high risk stop but then it goes south.”

Another scenario was that after an assault where the suspect said he had a gun and was going to kill someone.

Because deputies were aware the man would be armed, they waited for backup when they made the traffic stop.

In the scenario, one man jumped out of the passenger side and started shooting at the deputies, who were in a cover position behind their car doors. Deputies returned fire, “killing” the man. Then, the second man came out of the truck and wouldn’t follow orders, but he eventually was taken into custody.

“If you don’t train realistically, you train to fail,” Harbaugh said. “It can be an eight hour shift with seven hours of pure boredom and then this happens.”

He said deputies average about one high risk traffic stop a month.

Harbaugh also has had to deal with armed suspects in the past.

In 2001, he said he stopped a guy for having a headlight out and the man thought he had a warrant for sexual assault. When Harbaugh stopped the man’s vehicle, the man got out and shot himself in the chest.

“What’s going through your head is safety -- remember your training,” Harbaugh said. “The No. 1 rule is to make sure you go home at the end of your shift, but when weapons are involved, it becomes a public safety issue. These training situations gear us up for the real thing. It helps us make our officers safer.”