QUALITY WEAPONS TRAINING

The implication of carrying a handgun in the public service is simply that the Police Officer will use the gun to enforce the law, if and when forced to do so.

1. Training must be regularly scheduled. Once a Police Officer graduates from the academy and starts regular duties, weapons training is almost nonexistent or haphazard at best. It is important that shooting exercises be scheduled at regular intervals AT LEAST FOUR [4] TIMES A YEAR and that schedule be adhered to. A flexible schedule is no schedule, everything, it seems becomes more important than weapons training. The challenge if for the training coordinator to battle those that "steal" training time and he must have backing to do so. Once the word gets out that weapons training will go ahead as planned the grumbling will subside.

2. The training must be compulsory. This is a real problem. Compulsory training means for every officer. The Commissioner himself would not have to look far to find a excuse not to go to the range. However leaders should lead. If the Commissioner consistently makes exception of himself, his executive Officers and sergeants will start imitating him. When that happens, the whole program will collapse, because anyone who really doesn't want to shoot (and these are usually the ones who most need the training) knows that with a little imagination he/she can usually get out of it. Their is no substitute for having the Commissioner on the range, because if he's their, you can bet all the Deputies, Superintendents, Inspectors and Sergeants will be their too. Executive Officers strap on a gun, go down to the range and actually shoot that days training exercise right along aside your people and accept the score you actually earned. Compulsory weapons training means just that and it starts at the top.

3. The training must be job related. Is our weapons training really relevant? In all areas of law enforcement, the officer must be trained to perform the tasks he will be expected to do on the job. However in the education business their is a bad habit of training people in a sterile environment, and nowhere will you find a more sterile environment than on the range. We know, for instance, that the majority of shooting incidents involving Police Officers take place during hours of darkness or in reduced light. Wouldn't it make more sense, then, to conduct most of the weapons training in reduced light? Why don't we? If we claim to be preparing the Officer for what he/she will actually encounter on the job, the answer is, because we're lazy and afraid to counter tradition.

We all know how important the skillful use of cover is to the survival of an Officer in an shooting incident. Do we routinely require the Officer to use cover during live firing exercises? We are limited only by our sense of commitment and our imagination.

4. The training must be performance oriented. "Train the way you fight, because you fight the way you've been trained". So goes an old military adage, and it's true. Everything that is done routinely on the range will be done on the street. Every habit learned on the range will be applied automatically in the street, for better or worse. Therefore, we should train our Officers to survive. This means Officers don't go around with a empty gun, even on the range. Officers should keep their weapon loaded at all times. No longer should the have to drop their empty brass in buckets at the shooting stations along the course. They should be required to use their duty gear. If they carry speed loaders, they use them, if they carry spares in strips, they use them, ect. They don't reload out of a pocket unless that's where they actually keep their spare ammunition. They should perform on the range as they would in an actual gunfight. To the greatest extent possible they should practice with service ammunition also.

That goes for tactics, too. It's not enough to lecture about individual tactics, like the use of cover. Officers learn tactics like they learn anything else, by doing. The bottom line is anything we can possibly expect them to face in the street, we better train them to do on the range. The training is the test.

5. The training must be realistic. A shooting incident is about as stressful a situation as can be imagined, so what ever the Officer is trained to do, he/she must be able to apply easily under stress. Fine coordination and decision making abilities are severely reduced while under stress. This is why all those slick martial arts tricks that look so easy on the mat become very difficult and don't usually work when applied in actual situations on the street. Since stress has this affect on coordination and mental processes, we must ensure techniques taught to law enforcement Officers will hold up in the most desperate of stressful environments.

In view of the foregoing three things should be eliminated from a weapons training program to the greatest extent possible; [a] Complicated, intricate movements; [b] Visual cues; and [c] Conditional branching. Everything the Officer does with the weapon should involve only general movements with the hands and arms. The more complicated the technique, the higher the probability it will breakdown under stress and, therefore, the more thoroughly it must be ingrained. Officers should be able to do everything by feel and by sound. Everything Officers do with a weapon, they should be able to do in the dark. Remember, they should be trained for all environments, and if they require visual cues before executing a move, they wont be able to function in reduced light or when their night vision is destroyed by muzzle flash and spotlights.

Conditional branching is a data processing term that refers to a split in a computer flow chart. In other words, the computer must make a decision and go one way or another. If a trainee is asked to make a lot of critical decisions under stress, he/she will fall apart. So, four or five different shooting techniques taught based on the distance to the target. Rather, only one technique is taught so the officer will master it with the objective that he will shoot that way regardless of the range.

The technique should be step by step and unconditional so the shooter has no decisions to make other than the one to shoot. For the range officer teaching a course, make sure that what you are teaching these people will hold up and serve them well in a high stress environment. Create a stressful environment (to the greatest extent possible) during training and test what you've been teaching.

Old techniques and procedures that do not prove their worth under this kind of testing must be discarded no matter how enshrined or traditional they are. The new generation of electronic targeting equipment is helpful and very necessary. The department should have at least two complete setups.

6. The Training Must Stress the Basics. All education is repetitive. Nearly everything you do routinely, from walking to driving, you learned by repeating it over and over. There is no such thing as instinct shooting. You were no more born with an innate ability to operate a firearm than you were with an innate ability to operate a motor vehicle.

Everything you know about weapons and shooting you learned. You learned it from television, from movies and may be even a little from range training. Unfortunately, most of what is on TV relating to firearms is useless, having not the slightest connection with reality. So, when students report to the range having watched thousands of hours of TV cop shows as they were growing up, the training expert's work is cut out for him. What the trainees learned from watching TV, they will have to unlearn as they learn the proper techniques. It will take a long time.

All their high stress moves must be properly learned and then repeated and repeated until they are so thoroughly ingrained, the student will react properly and automatically when the situation calls for the use of firearms. The basics should be re-practised and restressed during some part of every training exercise. The most important basics are shooting, reloading and use of cover. In shooting, the firing stroke (draw and firing position) and trigger control should be emphasized. The stroke is important because that is what will position the weapon at the point where it will hit. Trigger control is critical, especially with the double action weapons, because a sloppy trigger press will cause a miss even when a shooter has a good stroke.

In our training courses, we should not tell our people to count their rounds. It's too unreliable because when students try to tally their rounds in a high stress environment, they're nearly always wrong. As a rule, they will actually have fired from two to three times as many rounds as they think they have or that they recall firing.

Instead, we should tell them to reload as soon after the initial exchange as they can, regardless of how many rounds they have expended. Our officers should carry a minimum of 12 rounds on their person because instances in which officers have expended more than 12 rounds are almost unheard of.

In domestic gun fighting, encounters are usually violent and over quickly. So, we no longer try to conserve ammunition. We stress to the officer that he must keep his weapon loaded so it will be ready when he needs it. "Load when you want to, not when you have to", we tell them.

Maximum reloading time (with the weapon loaded with empty cases or an empty magazine to a loaded weapon held in a position to fire) for the double action revolver is six seconds using speedloaders; twelve seconds using a dump pouch or loops. Maximum time for magazine changing in autos is three seconds. Reloading should also be practised in the dark.

Trainees should be taught to use cover right from the beginning. The skillful use of cover involves recognizing what constitutes cover, moving to a position of cover, taking maximum advantage of the cover and shooting from behind it. The "jack-in-the-box" technique, which calls for a shooter to extend his head and shoulders out into the open, extend his arms, fire, then withdraw is no longer advocated. In the preferred method, the "Rollout", the shooter gets into a position to fire while still behind cover, then rolls out with his gun, arms and chest; moving as a whole unit, until he sees the target, fires, then rolls back. The shooter should roll out in a different place each time to confuse the adversary about his exact position.

The shotgun, on a scale of zero to ten, zero being the least desirable and ten most desirable. If a bullet resistant vest is a ten a shotgun should be an eleven. More so for our front line, first response patrol Officers. The shotgun is by far the most versatile and effective weapon of law enforcement and should be emphasized and used more than it is now. Law Enforcement administrators should understand that the handgun is a close, defensive weapon. It is not what you use when you get caught flat footed and have to shoot your way out with what you have with you. If you have time, the shotgun is the weapon of choice. If you get into a situation in which the people involved may be armed, and you approach with anything less than a shotgun you must have suicidal tendencies.

7. The Training Must Be Varied and Enjoyable. Boring training is as unnecessary as it is inexcusable. With all the things there are to learn and all the challenges there are to meet there is no reason for any shooter to be bored. Officers at the practice range should look forward to a new challenge every time they have a shooting exercise. They should learn new things, trying new courses all the time. They should know the basics, but be constantly required to apply new things to new situations.

Getting stuck in a groove is how PPC evolved. When the PPC (Practical Police Course) was shot to the exclusion of any other course, special PPC guns and PPC holsters, neither of which have the slightest utility outside the PPC range, became popular. Shooters started using "wadcutters" that barely had enough velocity to cut through the target paper. Barricades that were supposed to be used as cover were, and in some places still are, being used as a support for the gun. The whole thing has degenerated into irrelevance. Don't let this happen to your program.

Keep it fresh by introducing new challenges. One standard exercise guaranteed to spice up a range exercise is shooting up a car. The best way to show students how to use a vehicle for cover is to drag an expendable vehicle onto the range and actually use it as a prop. (The vehicle can be one of the department's tow-aways or a "bomb" from a local salvage yard.) The students can practice firing from the vehicle or from behind it, and if someone inadvertently hits it, no harm is done. This exercise is useful for demonstrating the incredible resistance of most cars to penetration by handgun bullets. Each student is given the opportunity to test the penetration of his weapon and ammunition.

Training videos are another addition that can be used to add zest to the training session. Run courses in abandoned houses, expendable caravans, buses even junk yards. Set up jungle lanes in wooded sites. Such props can be used to teach tactics. Role-playing exercises and guest lecturers are also useful. As range officer, if you are really doing your job, your people should be looking forward to every training exercise and should not be saying things like, "Do we have to shoot again?".

8. The Training Must Be Complete. Just as there is more to successful gun fighting than just launching bullets, there is more to weapons training than merely teaching the physical operation of the weapon. The complete weapons training program should include shooting (handgun and shotgun), reloading, tactics and legal and psychological implications.

Students need to know not only how to shoot, but when and when not to shoot. No police officer is ready for the street unless he can hit any reasonable target with his handgun or shotgun on demand and under stress. A good stroke and a good trigger will produce a hit. In training, don't only do a lot of shooting, do a lot of hitting. Reloading should be learned along with shooting. Tactics include recognition of danger signs, use of cover, movement, target identification (decision-making) and situation engineering. Again, it's not enough merely to talk about tactics.

Training scenarios must be set up that compel the shooters to use the individual tactics being taught. Human figure targets are very useful for teaching target recognition a wide selection is available. The departments must have a policy with regard to the use of deadly force. Every Officer must understand what the policy is and be trained accordingly. Topics such as the shooter's psychological reaction to violent death must also be addressed.

9. The Training Must Be Documented. No one can deny the usefulness of carefully maintained records in a civil or criminal case. Whenever an officer shoots someone in the line of duty, the department may be sued. Not only will the state be sued, but each of the Officers involved the Commissioner, the training officer, the manufacturer of the ammunition anyone the injured party thinks he can get money from. You can't avoid being sued, but you can avoid being sued successfully. Neat, carefully maintained training records look impressive in court and convey the impression of conscientiousness and professionalism. Every weapons training session, no matter how small or informal must be carefully recorded, with every attending officer properly credited. If the training officer on the stand responds to a question about the department's weapons training program with, "Well, sir, we qualify once a year", it's all downhill from there.

10. The Training Must Be Cost effective. Training is as difficult to sell as life insurance, because that's what it really is. When the politician spend money, they want to see something for it If equipment is purchased, they can see physically where the money has been spent. But, when dollars go toward training, results are the only tangible evidence. Since it's so difficult to get money committed to training, as much quality training as possible should be squeezed out of each dollar. Some savings can be gleaned through dry-fire practice, since it does not consume ammunition.

Skip-shooting is also an excellent exercise. An exciting part of any training exercise is a bowling pin shoot a reactive target is always good therapy for the shooter. The bowling pins can be had at nominal cost Steel falling plates make another excellent reactive target that can be used over and over and can be made at low cost. Quality training doesn't just happen, you have to make it happen. Even the expenditure of a lot of money on new training equipment will not automatically guarantee good training.

What will guarantee good training is a firm commitment to it that begins with the top people. Until now, most of the safety and training innovations have come about because the staff demanded up-to-date training and equipment, not because it was pushed on them by superiors. This is not as it should be. The department leadership should be pushing for better training all the time. They should be open to new ideas, new techniques, new equipment. Law enforcement personnel will live or die as a result of the training they have received. Don't wait until more Officers are involved in a shooting incidents to provide quality training the time for that training is NOW.

Michael KAY.

Media Watch