MA "shoot house" fail, citizen shot

[Erick Gelhaus]

Civilian invited to observe police firearms training was shot after target was put in wrong place

https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/08/athol_police_accidential_shoot.html

There are probably a bunch of lessons here - citizen in the shoot house, lack of instructor currency/competency, not really a shoot house, no walk-through, after lunch concerns. What else?

[DocGKR]

Yeah....."shoot house", what a sad display of ignorance by those folks.

Tarps and paper targets do not contain/stop/deter projectiles fired in unsafe directions.

[LSP552]

There are a lot of nuances in shoot house target placement. You can help reduce or encourage shooting outside a zone of responsibility. Movement SOPs play a role. Improper placement can have a serious impact on safety, even in a real shoot house, much less a pretend facility.

Anytime there is a break or shift in the focus of training, it’s the instructor’s responsibility to do a hard stop and safety reset. Breaks and shifts in focus (dry vs life fire as an example) require starting over with a safety evaluation and brief as appropriate.

There is a reason having a dedicated safety officer who isn’t teaching is a good thing in scenario type training.

In the 90’s, the LSP Academy tragically killed a student from another agency by failing to do this during officer survival scenario training. A role player had to leave for court and returned later to the training location. The role player walked into the scenario area with a loaded gun and shot and killed a student. So much fail there and easily prevented.

[Lon]

So much fail. Pisses me off. Gives us all a black eye when something like this happens.

[TAZ]

Not sure that an IDPA stage with tarps for walls should be used in the same sentence as shoot house.

As much as I hate paperwork, I’m wondering if some form of check list would have minimized this. Not that people can’t forget to do one, but it might minimize things.

Each run could have a checklist. Time of run, people running it, max points possible, safety check,... kind of like running the event like a documented stage.

I feel for the officers and victim. Hope the guy comes through and has nothing more than a crazy story to tell.

[Sammy1]

There were mistakes made and the PD is lucky there were no deaths. I applaud the instructors for being creative and trying to do more with what they had, just not enough safety considerations and checks. Sad thing about Massachusetts, other than borrowing a range at Ft. Devens there are basically no municipal police ranges.

[Odin Bravo One]

I’ve had to decline invites to assist with smaller agencies house training for reasons just like this. When discussing safety protocols and control measures, there is still way too much “Well, we just do XYZ and have never had any problems”.

I’m happy to provide observations that can improve training value and Officer safety, but I’ll only talk to a brick wall so many times before you just gotta get clear before the wall collapses under its own stupidity and takes you with it.

[Jim Watson]

Agree with TAZ. I have shot in real shoot houses for training and competition, I have shot match stages in temporary enclosures on regular ranges. You must be careful arranging a real shoot house, you must be extremely careful in setting up improvisations. A spectator with no involvement is a risk.

[jnc36rcpd]

The county range has a shoot house. While I'm sure the cool guys of SWAT and their buddies have done live fire, most use it strictly for Simunition. The range we utilize has a Simunition house that obviously cannot be used for live fire. While I see significant value in live fire houses and the risk of force-on-force devolving into paintball, incidents like this make me understand why some agencies avoid live fire houses.

[Lon]

The county range has a shoot house. While I'm sure the cool guys of SWAT and their buddies have done live fire, most use it strictly for Simunition. The range we utilize has a Simunition house that obviously cannot be used for live fire. While I see significant value in live fire houses and the risk of force-on-force devolving into paintball, incidents like this make me understand why some agencies avoid live fire houses.

I don’t see any real benefit in a shoot house over a sim scenario house. We’re gonna be building a scenario house at our place soon. A department can buy ALOT of sim equipment and ammo for decades with what a commercial shoot house costs.

[UNM1136]

I don’t see any real benefit in a shoot house over a sim scenario house. We’re gonna be building a scenario house at our place soon. A department can buy ALOT of sim equipment and ammo for decades with what a commercial shoot house costs.

A real problem is when the largest agency in the state sets up a tire house, and then fails to maintain it. Built from trash and sand, something we have a lot of around here, with SWAT shooters for labor. That tire house lasted for 15 years before codes problems at the range house (and some other....amusing...issues popped up). The regular users complained about the porosity of the walls of the structure for years without warning other agencies using it....

Yeah, I think sims is the way to go for 95%+ of training. There is way more bang for the buck with FOF vs. Shoothouse with stationary targets. And something my agency needs to realize...

pat

[Hambo]

I don’t see any real benefit in a shoot house over a sim scenario house. We’re gonna be building a scenario house at our place soon. A department can buy ALOT of sim equipment and ammo for decades with what a commercial shoot house costs.

IMO the best training (non-live fire/sims) we did was in real buildings in the city. I've never seen a shoot house that included all the potential threat areas you have in real buildings. The shoot house added very real danger outside of real operations. I think there is some value in that, but scenarios need to have a training point and remain realistic, i.e. not a USPSA zombie apocalypse shoot.

[Zincwarrior]

Hey if you're not prepared for the Zombies, then you are not prepared!

[Lon]

.....but scenarios need to have a training point and remain realistic, i.e. not a USPSA zombie apocalypse shoot.

This times a gazillion.

Earlier this month we did active shooter training for our agency, the sheriffs office and our local drug task force. We got lots of positive feedback from the SO and drug guys about how our scenarios were designed. Lots of comments about “unwinable” and “scenarios designed to kill you” from previous trainings they had been to. They kept expecting us to do something to fuck with them and we had to reassure them that our scenarios are designed so that if you use proper tactics and techniques, then they are completely winnable. Use improper tactics, etc. and you’ll get shot of course, but the default setting isn’t “kill every officer that comes through”. What do you learn/teach by doing that?

We had one scenario that featured an armed school staff member who was injured, but still armed and “on the phone” with our dispatch. They had engaged bad guy and were covering down the hall where the bad guy was last seen. He was the first person they came across. Which is a completely realistic scenario in OH since quite a few schools have armed staff in plainclothes. You could tell who hadn’t thought about that before the scenario. They tried to ask a bunch of questions after getting their briefing. I paraphrased a line I heard from Tom - “this is a come as you are event, you should have thought about how to handle this before today”. After everyone went thru the scenario we had a good group discussion on how to handle it.

Sorry for thread drift. One of my pet peaves.

[UNM1136]

^^^^^^^

We have learned a lot from our academy days 20 years ago. Back then you got off duty cops to do everything they could to screw with cadets...With the explanation that "it could happen" and "just preparing them for reality", despite no one ever being able to point to a call in their careers where things went down that crazy. No, the goal was to screw with cadets, period.

I questioned Pat Rogers about his desire to have scenario training so tightly scripted, and he pointed out that the scenarios that have specific educational objectives can easily illustrate what the students are learning, and all scenarios need to have educational objectives. Most of the the training we do is designed to be educational, so scenarios without specific objectives are a waste of time.

pat

[Lon]

^^^^^^^
I questioned Pat Rogers about his desire to have scenario training so tightly scripted, and he pointed out that the scenarios that have specific educational objectives can easily illustrate what the students are learning, and all scenarios need to have educational objectives. Most of the the training we do is designed to be educational, so scenarios without specific objectives are a waste of time.

pat

It’s a regret of mine that I never got to train with Pat. He was spot on. Tightly scripted scenarios with role players who won’t go off script are the key to good FoF training. Bad role players just screw everything up. Not everyone can do it.

[HCM]

It’s a regret of mine that I never got to train with Pat. He was spot on. Tightly scripted scenarios with role players who won’t go off script are the key to good FoF training. Bad role players just screw everything up. Not everyone can do it.

It’s often a necessity but in general Cops make the worst role players.

[Lon]

It’s often a necessity but in general Cops make the worst role players.

Lotsa truth to that. Classes on how to be a good role player should be a thing.

[JustOneGun]

What everyone else said. How it's set up. Safety officers for each shooter and safety officers to keep people from wandering around the range.

I also like turning targets. Making them all go away is an added safety measure when people start doing really stupid things. I found that many officers get more ass-ed up with the shoot house than they do with force on force.