Ultimately the zombie would be brought down, either under restraint or as a true “corpse”, and then transported to jail or a hospital. In the next section we’ll discuss how police can upgrade their response if the threat increases.
JUST THE FACTS
K-9 Cops
Dogs have been used for many years by police departments all over the world. Dogs are smart, reliable, versatile, and they possess sensory abilities far beyond those of humans. Dogs have more than twenty times the number of olfactory (smell) receptors than humans do; and these receptors allow dogs to sense odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than anything a human can smell. They can smell a single drop of blood in a five-quart bucket of water. They can track scents through rain, mud, and snow, and they don’t need footprints to track a suspect over rocky ground and even desert sand.
A dog can also differentiate between thousands of commingled smells, which would be like a human trying to smell a single daffodil in a greenhouse filled with every flowering plant known to science.
This ultrasharp sense of smell allows police to employ dogs for search and rescue, bomb and drug detection, tracking, and even locating human remains.
Training a dog to be a professional sniffer is actually fun for the dog. The trainers and handlers use the promise of a favorite toy or play activity as a reward. When a K-9 officer locates something (drugs, bomb, whatever) it signals its handler using a conditioned response, usually barking, sitting, or pawing the ground.
These dogs are very deeply trained and in most modern departments they become both the partner and the property of their officer handlers, usually living at home with them and becoming part of the family. On the job, though, they are very focused and provide a skill set no human can match.
Expert Witness
According to Detective McKinney, K-9 units are a tremendous help in manhunts, especially if the police need to search a wooded area like the one across the street from our medical research center crime scene. “Best-case scenario would be to have multiple dog teams. The handler walks with them through the search area. The handler employs a variety of search patterns and techniques, depending on the size of the area to be searched. In a large forested area like this, the grid search pattern would probably be used. The area is divided up into grids, and personnel are assigned specific portions of the grid to search exhaustively. It usually takes ten minutes or so for San Antonio PD dog teams to get to a scene, though in this zombie scenario it might take considerably longer because the dog teams would probably be coming from the County or State Police. Response time would also be affected by call load. If this happens on a Friday or Saturday night, the dog teams might be otherwise engaged in non-related search missions.”
“Typically, a K-9 handler will want a cover officer going with him,” says Sgt. Ted Krimmel. “If the suspect has blood on his t-shirt and the K-9 handler has witnesses showing him where the subject went into the woods, the track should be a relatively simple affair. Even if the subject has a good lead on K-9, the dogs will either catch up, or he will eventually run into the perimeter officers. In my experience, the dogs actually have an easier time tracking in woods and over land than in urban/suburban settings. The first step after obtaining initial information on the incident, would to decide how large a perimeter to set (based on how long the suspect has been gone, direction of travel, terrain, etc.), then set it as quickly as possible. I like the use of K-9 and probably would have called to get it rolling even before the first units were on scene. The dogs are brought in from various agencies, usually local PDs. In Bucks, for example, there is no county police agency. The Sheriff’s Office here does not have full police powers or training, thus no need for dogs. The deputies transport prisoners from the jail to court, serve civil papers, and make arrests for failure to appear for court. They always help the PDs if asked though. As far as the state goes, I don’t think PSP has that many dogs, if any. Usually, we would use as many dogs as we can get. Timing is based on how far away the dogs are, are the K-9 officers on duty or home on call, etc.”
The Zombie Factor
The Romero zombies seem to want to eat anything, human or not, and so the police dogs might be at risk during a capture. They are trained to bring a suspect down and maintain bite control over them until their handlers take over. In such a struggle, a zombie, who wouldn’t react in fear of the dog and wouldn’t care about the pain of a bite, might be able to successfully accomplish a bite.
The dog would likely react with increased aggression, and its handler/partner would be none too pleased. A bit of zombie stomping might occur at this point.
Whether the dog could become infected is unknown—and never addressed in the Romero films2—though its mouth would carry infectious materials (skin, blood) and it could, therefore, be a danger to its handler. In the earliest stages of an outbreak, this could lead to secondary infections, but once the nature of the infection was understood and the pattern of the spread of infection recognized, this kind of thing would likely not occur again.
More probably the cadaver dogs—those police dogs used to search for body parts in rubble (as in the wreckage at Ground Zero) or remains (in woods, inside the walls of a house, etc.)—might find a new role as zombie sniffers. If they’re trained to bark at the presence of decomposing flesh, then they will become invaluable aids in searching for zombies. The dogs are attracted by cadaverine, a molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction.
Should the crisis continue, it’s reasonable to assume that there would be an intense push to train more and more dogs for this job—not to find the dead, but to detect their approach so that civilians can flee and the police can prepare.
* * *
Zombie Bit My Dog
On the subject of dogs catching the zombie virus, this has been touched on in some films, and in the Dawn of the Dead remake it’s shown that zombies won’t even attack a dog. Although we know that some diseases can be passed on from animals to man, it isn’t that common, as Dr. Bruno Vincent, a world-class expert on prions, tells us: “Luckily, large-scale contamination of human population with contaminated bovine meat (as in Mad Cow Disease) seems not to have occurred since no recent cases have been reported during the last couple of years. This may be due to what we call the ‘species barrier.’ Transmission of prions from one species to another is by far less efficient than intra-species transmission.”
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JUST THE FACTS
SWAT on the Job
Police departments are tough, but when the ante gets upped and the standard training, arms, and equipment a patrol officer has at his or her disposal are not appropriate to the needs of the situation, there is a fallback plan: SWAT.
Expert Witness
SWAT (special weapons and tactics) is an acronym used by many police departments, and refers to a military-style approach to crime fighting. Other acronyms include SRT (special response team), QRT (quick response team), HRT (hostage rescue team), and others. Ted Krimmel is a member of SERT (South Central Bucks Emergency Response Team), and he shares a few of the differences between the film/TV version of SWAT and the real thing. “In films you often see the SWAT team at odds with the situation negotiator, but in reality the negotiator is a part of the team working with tactical to resolve the situation. You also see SWAT guys being all trigger-happy, but that just isn’t so. In fact the life expectancy of suspects, hostages, and other involved persons rises significantly upon SWAT arrival.”
SWAT Alley Fight by Jonathan Maberry
Modern police officers are highly trained, heavily armed, and thoroughly conditioned to stay calm and efficient in all circumstances.
Michael E. Witzgall, a former Dallas SWAT officer and now a tactical training consultant, agrees that the pop culture perception of SWAT is skewed. “First and foremost while we are the apex A-type personality, we are not the Neanderthals Hollywood has made us out to be. Most of us are well educated and have very stable family lives (divorce ra
te in SWAT is very low). Nor do we have the ‘kill them all, let God sort them out’ mentality.”
This opinion is echoed by Walt Stenning, Ph.D., former head of the psychology department at Texas A&M University, who says: “Generally speaking, a sound tactical operator (SWAT officer) is a very intelligent individual who performs well in an independent and/or team environment. These people must be able to think quickly and correctly without caving to exterior pressures.”3
Sgt. Krimmel says that SWAT does, however, come prepared. “At a minimum, each officer carries a handgun (Glock or new S&W M&P in 9mm, .40 or .45), extra ammunition, handcuffs, gas mask, tactical body armor, ballistic helmet, eye protection, radio, gloves, knee and elbow pads, small tools, a good knife, a flashbang, a smoke grenade, OC spray, a small mirror, water, and a nomex hood. Depending on their assignment, they will also carry a long gun, typically a shotgun or Colt M-4 Commando machine gun (shortened M-16 variant). If not carrying a long gun, they might be carrying a less lethal shotgun, a 40 mm gas gun that fires both gas projectiles and less lethal projectiles, a pole camera, a ballistic shield or breaching equipment. Some officers carry a small revolver or pistol as a backup. Snipers carry Remington 700 sniper rifles in .308. We just got TASERs, but haven’t fully implemented them yet.”
The Zombie Factor
So, how then would a SWAT team respond to zombies in the streets attacking civilians? Witzgall observes, “Since I have no practical experience with zombies (most tactical commanders do not) after I changed my underwear, I would treat the situation by using our most basic operational concepts of contain, isolate, and control.”
This means:
Contain: Keep the zombies from spreading to greater areas.
Isolate: Get zombies away from innocent people.
Control: Make the zombies move where we want them to go.
* * *
Bruce Bohne: Andy Takes Aim
In the remake of Dawn of the Dead, actor Bruce Bohne plays Andy, the owner of a gun shop located across the street from the mall. His character, who has virtually no dialogue in the film except for a wry message scrawled on a dry-erase board, nonetheless gained a huge fan following (particularly among gun enthusiasts and law enforcement officers) because of the character’s superb skill with a rifle. In one of the most bizarre (and darkly hilarious) scenes, the survivors in the mall select zombies for Andy to shoot based on their resemblance to celebrities, including Jay Leno, Rosie O’Donnell, and Burt Reynolds.
I asked Bruce to comment on the significance of his role in the film. “I think the addition of Andy and his gun shop was a brilliant creative stroke for the plot. It moved some of the action from the confines of the mall; it gave the main cast hope and reason for attempting a breakout (arming themselves with Andy’s guns); and it provided what many fans have told me was a favorite part of the film—the celebrity shooting.”
Despite his involvement in such a landmark horror flick, Bohne says, “I’ve never been a huge horror movie fan, but have certainly seen my share of them. Zack Snyder’s Dawn is the kind of horror I like best, with a great sense of humor along with the requisite blood and gore.” He said he also liked the faster zombies. “It just makes it more in-your-face, amped-up, whoa-look-out-behind-you scarifying—which I like.”
On the DVD release, Andy was given a far more complex backstory in a video short, The Lost Tape: Andy’s Terrifying Last Days Revealed.
And when I asked him about seeing the original Night, he said, “That was almost 40 years ago. I was in 10th grade and saw it at a drive-in movie theater with a carload of beer-guzzling high school buddies, so my memory of it is a bit, um, hazy.”
* * *
“To achieve my first goal of containment,” says Witzgall, “I would use a series of ever tightening phase lines along each route of advancement and egress. This would mean that all streets would have SWAT teams holding the line. To keep zombies from moving into buildings, I would place patrol officers inside each building with orders to lock and barricade doors and windows. Anything making entry without contacting the officers first, would be shot. Civilians would be allowed to pass through our lines and proceed to medical & evacuation points. There would be several lines of defense. As my first phase line repels the zombies, my second line would pass through the line and pursue the zombies for approximately 50 yards. At that point the next phase line would hold as the previous line advances. By using this leap-frog method it would be hoped that I could drive the zombies into a location of my choice thus isolating them from civilians. Keeping the pressure on, we would eventually begin to control all the zombies’ movement. If the terrain is used correctly—and the zombies are not allowed to break out, as my units close in an inner perimeter will gradually form. If the zombies break through or push a phase line back, that phase will egress and join the rearmost lines, tripling that line’s strength.”
Sgt. Krimmel’s tactics are slightly different, showing the range and flexibility of this kind of response. “In response to a dozen zombies chasing civilians down the street, first I would establish they are in fact, zombies. Working off the assumption that the zombies are already dead and that the bite of a zombie will cause death or serious bodily injury, as SERT commander, I would authorize the use of any force needed to stop the zombies. I would send snipers to high ground or rooftops to deal with the zombies via head shots. On the ground, I would use SERT officers with M-4s and shotguns riding on top of our various armored vehicles, carrying as much ammunition as they can. I would set up a wide perimeter using uniformed patrol officers and K-9s. Most of our patrol officers carry shotguns and some assault rifles. They would have the same rules of engagement as the SERT officers. I’d also advise bringing personally owned axes and swords (the PD doesn’t issue them), in case ammunition supplies run low. You don’t have to re-load axes and swords. I’d also utilize helicopter or other aircraft if they were available.”
Krimmel also commented on how SERT might handle a more contained situation. In our zombie scenario we’ve seen an infected person wearing doctor scrubs walking away from a medical research center. Naturally this building, being part of the crime scene, would be searched. If the zombie infection started there, then the entire building and all of its occupants would become part of a different kind of crime scene, and the tactical teams would be called in.
“Upon arrival,” Krimmel says, “we would set a perimeter of SERT officers with M-4s and K-9 units and put out as many snipers as available. While this was going on, we would attempt to find out in detail what has occurred, who may be involved, how many suspects and their descriptions, what type of weapons they may be armed with, do they have hostages, backgrounds on the hostages, who might have a grudge against the business owner, what kind of hazardous materials may be stored inside, if they have security cameras inside, can we view the cameras via the Internet, and I would find the maintenance man for the building and keep him with me. Nobody will know the building better than him. We would make arrangements to have EMS treat and evacuate the injured to local hospitals. We would have fire apparatus sent to standby. At some point, we would start making attempts at communication with the occupants, find out what they want and advise them to surrender. If communication failed, eventually we would make entry in an attempt to arrest the occupants and rescue any civilians. While making entry would certainly be a last resort, we certainly would not wait too long. Waiting too long would endanger any injured civilians and possibly give the suspects a chance to fortify their position, endangering the SERT officers further. Upon entry, we would probably utilize K-9 to quickly locate any hostiles and then take necessary steps to take them into custody. Should this turn into a zombie situation, I would have to make arrangements to safely house the injured in case they turn into zombies. I would call the CDC for guidance as well as the FBI and the rest of the alphabet agencies.”
I asked my experts to comment on the movie set piece of cops being overwhelmed. “The biggest thing to remember here,” sa
ys Krimmel, “is we train to tactically retreat when necessary. Obviously, the whole concept of retreat is looked down on by people who have no concept how to win a fight. We look at retreat as a necessary element of eventual victory (or live to fight another day). In the event an element of the SERT team was overwhelmed or even a single member was injured, they would notify command of their situation. Any injured members would be evacuated ASAP with available non-injured members providing cover fire. On every single mission we take, we have a Rescue Team on standby. That team is usually staffed by SERT officers and TEMS (tactical emergency medical services). We have a combination of sworn police TEMS and select members of local rescue squads. The rescue team’s sole function is to go to a SERT element that is in trouble and assist as needed, particularly with respect to injured officers. We train ‘officer down’ rescues on a regular basis, using shields, armored vehicles, and natural cover to effect the rescues. Upon activation of the rescue team, the original mission (hostage rescue, high risk warrant) takes a secondary role to the mission of providing safety to the SERT element that is in trouble.”
Witzgall has an equally high opinion of what the modern military would do when faced with this same kind of problem. He says, “A contemporary infantry squad (12 men) can deliver or has on call more munitions than a WWII infantry company (200 men). Unless ordered to DIP (Die in Place) being overrun is not very likely. An infantry unit will break contact before that is allowed to happen. As for the headshots they always talk about in zombie films…. If ya put enough rounds down range (as only our military can) head hits will most certainly happen. Also, you may only kill a zombie with headshots, but I would like to see him walk with his legs blown off.