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Blackwater
Tactical Weekly 3/4/02
IS YOUR FIREARMS TRAINING COMPLETE?
Borelli
Consulting Incorporated (BCI
Do you remember your police academy firearms training?
During the summer of 1986, at the local
county police academy, a basic recruit class enjoyed a whole week
of classroom and range training. Of the almost thirty student officers,
only two or three had a difficult time qualifying on the paper targets
(B27s) as they turned on a timer. The question raised by several
instructors at that time was: How many of those student officers
had been trained to the point where drawing, pointing/aiming their
weapon and firing had become second nature?
In reviewing
quite a few of the area firearms training
programs today, it was discovered that
few of them actually teach firearms handling
and basic shooting skills beyond the
level required to qualify on those
turning paper targets. Sure there were
thosethat included some “move and shoot” drills
and a few others that incorporated reactionary
(steel/metal) targets that fell when the officer shot them. Beyond
that, a group of instructors sat down and had an in-depth discussion
about firearms training and finally agreed on what would comprise
a “complete” firearms
training program.
All basic firearms training
must begin in the classroom with handouts,
overheads, diagrams, cleaning utensils,
and firearms. It seems silly to have
to say, but there should NEVER be ammunition
in the classroom environment. In the
classroom, nomenclature, safe handling
rules, safe storage and transportation
techniques, and operation of the weapon
should be covered. Most of the firearms instructors in the group
agreed that a little more time should be spent on maintenance
since this seems to be an area where most officers tend to neglect
their weapon.
After
the classroom portion is complete and the student officers have
all passed the written test, then the basic skills training on
a firing range can begin. It was a surprise that the group of
instructors agreed on a written test for the classroom portion,
but verifying the successful transfer of knowledge, to a high
degree (most instructors wanted a minimum passing grade of ninety
percent!), was deemed mandatory. If remedial instruction on the
classroom topics covered was necessary, it had to be discovered
prior to getting those student officers onto the firing line.
The firing line is not the place to be answering questions about
handling or function. The firing line is where the student officers
practice and perfect their techniques based on
what they’ve learned in the classroom.
So,
once on the firing line, drills must
be conducted to teach loading, unloading
and reloading; emergency loading; the
basic fundamentals of shooting; shooting
from different positions; clearing malfunctions
and accuracy. To train a student officer
appropriately might take more than the “allotted” amount
of ammunition, but this is an area of
training in which no department can afford
to be cheap. This is also an area where
the firearms instructors themselves have
to be a little cold-blooded. No instructor
wants to wash out a student officer,
especially so far into a basic training
program, but the hard truth is that some
student officers will never master the
art of shooting; the knowledge will also
be hard for them to relate to and remember;
the skills will never become second nature.
They are the student officers who may
have to be washed out of the academy
for their own safety and the safety of
their work mates.
During
this set of basic skills training drills, the instructors/coaches
must watch carefully and correct deficiencies
as they are observed. The goal for this
portion of training is to take all of
the classroom knowledge and use it “in
the real world”. The student officers
may understand what sight alignment or
sight picture means, but can they use
that knowledge toward the placement of
accurate shots? Remembering that habits
are built with every shot fired, it is
imperative from the very beginning of
these drills that the instructors emphasize
several things:
-
Always
be safe! Negligent discharges are
dangerous for everyone and can
be avoided by practicing the safe
shooting rules.
-
Move
to cover! Frequently, on the firing
line, student officers use the
barricades for support. This needs
to be curtailed from the beginning
and the student officers taught the
importance of the cover that barricade
represents.
-
Count
your shots! With the advent of
pistols, which held upwards of fifteen
rounds (or more), keeping track of
the shots fired seemed to hold less
importance. It is important more
now than ever before.
-
Decock your weapon before
moving and keep your finger off the
trigger unless your sights are on target
and you’re prepared to fire.
The group ofinstructors often
commented about the negligent discharges
that occurred as student officers switched
positions or firing hands. This is easily
avoided.
Of
course those aren’t
the only safe shooting rules, but when
teaching basic firearms handling, those
four rules overlap into Officer Survival
and were deemed necessary to teach.
After
many repetitions of drills, which enforce
the basic firearms handling, and shooting
skills, the student officers are usually
fairly satisfied with their scores. A
little competition is usually seen and
this helps motivate the student officers
to greater efforts to fine-tune their
skills. Quite often, department firearms
training stops at this point, with qualifications
complete after the student officers have
fired qualifying scores on these turning
paper targets. Even worse, the “qualifying
score” is often as low as seventy
percent (70%)! Every instructor in the
conversation felt that a minimum of seventy-five
percent (75%) should be implemented with
some instructors feeling that eighty
(80%) or eighty-five (85%) percent should
be a minimum. As the instructor discussion
revealed, shooting paper targets is quite
different from shooting a moving person,
and evaluating the shooter’s judgment
is next to impossible under these circumstances.
In fact, it is often difficult to detect
specific skill sets that the shooter
may not have mastered yet. For those
reasons, the training must move beyond
this point. Departments who are training
their officers only to this level of
shooting competence are hurting the officers
and the agency.
To
truly observe which mechanical skills
have been mastered, it becomes necessary
to put the student officers in a setting
which requires them to think about
other things while required them to
manipulate their weapons at the same
time. This is not a difficult thing
to do. A “Move and Shoot” course
on reactionary targets is easy to set
up and, with proper range management,
can be used to put additional stress
on the shooters. A basic course only
takes twelve targets, maybe a balloon
or two, a couple barricades, a picnic
table, a mailbox (the big kind on city
corners) and a fire hydrant. A safety
note here: using frangible ammunition
when shooting steal targets is mandatory!
It
is common to start the student officer
from a seated position in a police car
and then, on the command of “GO”,
start the timer. The student officer
moves to the first firing position and
then from there to the next, shooting
the targets as required, but choosing
the shooting position and reloading positions
on his own. Knowing that he is shooting
against the clock, and has to score certain
hits, and has limited ammunition, as
the time and stress builds, any weak
skills the shooter has will become abundantly
clear.
This type of training
has several benefits. Above and beyond
providing the instructor(s) with a
tool that allows further evaluation of
basic mechanical and shooting skills,
it forces the student officer to think
beyond handling the weapon. The student
officer has to think about shooting position,
putting the weapon on safe before moving,
counting shots and choosing reloading
positions. It also promotes competition
and camaraderie among the student officers.
That sense of competition puts further
pressure on the shooters to cut their
times and that might show the instructor(s)
which shooters are willing to compromise
good judgment for a few shaved seconds.
That is very important as that sacrificed
judgment will haunt the shooter and
the agency eventually. It is imperative
to correct it as early as possible.
After
all of the student officers have successfully
negotiated the Move and Shoot course,
a certificate can be awarded for the
best score. The score is a combination
of the hits on the target combined with
the shooter’s
time. It is not uncommon for the student
officer with the highest score to be
different from the student officer who
had the best qualifying score on the
turning targets. Remember that stress
and judgment play an important role on
the Move and Shoot course, and that has
a direct impact on the final scores.
The
instructors, at this point, can start
to feel comfortable with the basic
handling and shooting skills of the student
officers. The shooters have demonstrated
their sufficient mastery of basic shooting
fundamentals and their ability to combine
those shooting skills with a low level
of judgment. The basic skills have
been demonstrated at a subconscious level
and the instructors can move those
student officers to the next phase of
training which will have a greater focus
on judgment and communication.
Computer
Simulators are the logical next step
for training. With input from each instructor/coach,
the simulations should be tailored to
test any shortfalls that have been observed
in each student officer’s skills.
Even the highest scoring student officer
is not a perfect shooter. The student
officers should be in the simulation
area accompanied only by the instructor
running the simulation and the instructor
evaluating the student officer’s
performance. It should be remembered
that these simulations is really going
to be the first time the student officers
are exposed to graphic imagery that implicates
their own injury. Actors/Actresses in
those simulations will be attacking them,
or others, with an assortment of lethal
weapons, and if the student officers
don’t respond in a timely fashion,
with appropriate skill, the computer
will say that the student officer received
a lethal injury. That is a large potential
for negative feedback to the student
officer and the instructor must be careful
to provide positive reinforcement to
outweigh the negative impact.
The
important thing to remember is that
as the student officers complete the
simulations, they aren’t
consciously thinking about their firearms
handling and shooting skills. They should
be totally focused on the simulations
presented. This is a prime opportunity
once again, for the instructor(s) to
observe and identify any shortcomings
in the student officer’s basic
shooting skills.
Once
the simulations have been completed,
the final, and most important step
is to provide scenario training. The
types of modified training weapons
available for this are many, but the
important thing is to provide the student
officer with training equipment which
allows him to choose an appropriate
level of force from anywhere on the Use
of Force Continuum. It should not be
considered sufficient to stop a scenario
when the student officer says, “OK:
here, I’d do this.” That
does not adequately serve the training
need.
As
a minimum, the student officer should
be equipped with a working radio, handcuffs,
inert chemical weapon, training baton
and modified firearm. The scenarios
should be run from start to finish
just as if the student officer was
working the street and being dispatched
on a call for service. Back up officers
are sent when requested and as available
on average for the particular department.
The scenarios should be very carefully
choreographed so that the roll players
are non-verbally prompting the desired
behaviors from the student officers.
In this manner, the student officers
are forced to integrate all of their
training: communications, defensive tactics,
call response, officer survival, use
of force, handcuffing, chemical weapon
deployment, impact weapon training and
firearms training. With properly controlled
scenarios, necessary behaviors can be
observed and evaluated on the part of
each student officer. Any faulty behaviors
can be addressed with immediate remedial
training and proper behaviors can be
documented for inclusion in the student
officer’s
training file.
As
firearms instructors, it is important
to remember that it is your responsibility
to train the student officers beyond
the “minimum acceptable” level
of skill. If that officer ever gets in
a shooting on the street, the basic skills
you’ve conditioned into him or
her is what will impact their performance.
If you only teach enough to get enough
holes in the right places on the paper
target, that is what they will take to
the street with them. If you teach enough
to get proper judgment out of them while
they display good weapon skills at the
same time, then you’ve prepared
them much better for the situations they’ll
face in the real world.
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