I should have been more specific. The CCS safehouses are routinely a meatgrinder for me; without safer combat to skill up, how does one get Liberals to survive them?
Usually sending 6 medium-AGI but unskilled liberals to CCS safehouses is fine, provided they all have Assault Rifles and optional body armor. If you skimp on the weapons, they'll take more damage if they get unlucky. You can also just get them up to 50 juice or so to give them some quick stat boosts before sending them in, or if you're rolling in money you can train their dodge skill up a bit first.
Uh-oh.
Kevlar Heart, Elite Liberal Black Belt and captain of the Miami Dodgers, ground up to Dodge/Agility 19 (the factories are your friend!) and he still can't reliably dodge police 9mm fire. The problem isn't low Dodge IMO, but low weapon skill.
Army Veterans typically have a few points of Rifle. Look for 3-6 or so and train everyone up--even 2 points is much better than 0. Covert-wheelbarrow the Army Base and you should have plenty of Army Body Armor & M4s--though M16s do more damage, the M4s have an accuracy bonus, which for low-skill people is much more useful. Of course, include your Veteran in the hit squad so xe levels up too.
Nobody, not even the Founder, goes expecting serious combat unarmored. Kevlar Heart ground Dodge at the factory--
Nonunion Workers with Chains, not a particularly dangerous fight for an Elite Liberal Black Belt--wearing Army and later Heavy armor. My assault squads routinely wear Army armor. You can't First Aid yourself, or at least there's enough of a penalty that I've never seen my people do it in action.
Next training point: First Aid in the squad can be the difference between a fatality and 2-3 levels of First Aid XP back at the safehouse. Get a Doctor or Nurse (preferably one per Liberal safehouse) and cross-train everyone to at least 3-4 points of First Aid. Stopping the bleeding when someone doesn't Dodge is worth a fair amount of First Aid XP (that isn't capped by injury level, incidentally), so after a few times you should have pretty good field medics.
Perhaps most importantly: don't be afraid to leave. Send the squad in a car to facilitate escapes. Get in, get bloody (ideally theirs), get out before you have a car chase. Takes about 15-20 kills to take a CCS safehouse; figure about 4-5 fights on average. Just as you're getting the momentum up, they break.
It typically takes 3-6 kills (depending on the Liberal's skill) to level up. Once Rifle gets to 10 or so, switch to the M16 so you get a little better penetration against Soldiers and Hardened Veterans.
If you're training a non-Rifle weapon, such as Martial Arts, Sword, or Shotgun*, have no more than two users of that weapon in the squad, have them go first, and make sure that there are high-skill Rifle people to shoot "cleanup". Protip: melee damage is a function of the user's Strength. I don't issue swords unless the carrier has 12 or higher STR.
*Shotguns rip up unarmored targets but aren't that good against anything better than the "Body Armor" kevlar T-shirt. .44 Mag has better penetration and thus makes Pistol somewhat safer--you can get away with 3 or so if need be, but the 6-shot limitation can be an issue if you're just getting started. After the 50th raid or so you'll have stacks of Aslt/Rifle magazines.