This video is apparently sweeping the interwebs at the moment. From a number of captions so far, we see this labeled as an “FBI Alaska SWAT team” and attributing this to the FBI Alaska field office. The only thing that I am sure of, is that this is a law enforcement branch of some entity, within the United States. Whether or not this is an FBI operation or a a local SWAT operation, I can’t tell at the present time. When more information comes out I’m sure we’ll have a better picture of who and where these guys are. Anyways, kick back, and watch how not to go about making entry, or endangering the lives of your teammates.

Okay. Now, my background is from that of the Infantry, and not LE in any sense. I realize although there is some overlap, but the two actually don’t have a ton in common when it comes to specifics such as small arms, tactics, legalities, etc… However, the little that they do is directly evident in this video. So lets go through this step by step.

First, the team is stacked up on this house, preparing to make entry, captions to these videos report that the guy inside is a criminal and armed. Okay, great. Explain why their Humvee is literally parked directly in front of the door? Well, there goes your element of surprise. In addition, with the zoom out at the start of the video, I only see this Humvee in addition to maybe two suburban SUVs that it looks like they drove in. Where is the security cordon? Inner and outer? Then, as the team begins to make entry, one of their AR carbines is left, LEANING against the garage door. Along with a smoke or flashbang grenade I might add. Now comes our first mistake, breacher slips and is thrown completely out of the way, almost knocking himself unconscious against the Humvee right behind him. At this point in the game this four man team could have already been down one casualty, before even making a successful entry into the house.

Now, the breaching method/tool has completely failed the initial thrusts, and the two man comes up to assist the one man. Who’s got security on the doorway/fatal front? Especially one with a glass window where a shooter could easily see on the other side and shoot out of. I will give the one man credit for trying a different breaching location at the bottom of the door after realizing breaking the lock wasn’t enough. Notice, the rifle is still leaning against the garage door…

Now the door has been breached, but the team is completely disorganized. One of the guys is walking back to get the grenade he left behind along with the rifle, the one and two men have lost any depth of view on the door, while the assistant driver is actually the only guy looking into a house with smoke billowing out of it, and it looks like he doesn’t have a weapon drawn. So essentially, there isn’t a single weapon trained on the one avenue of approach that the entire team announced their presence at.

So finally the team has regained composure, and has stacked up near the garage. I think the AR rifle is still leaning against the door by the way. Whatever depth of view they had previously, down that alley, into the door, above them, is now completely gone. In addition to any sort of rear security as well, which was actually never there to begin with.

This is where the video ends, having been made by a neighbor about a block away from the scene of the action. Thankfully, and hopefully, there were no deaths or injuries from either the LE side or the criminal side of the operation. It appears that the criminal was arrested without conflict, as I’m sure there would have been a video of a gunfight if it had broken out.