Recently released study of OIS and officer accuracy

[iWander]

The research only followed Dallas PD, but I'll bet the results would be similar at almost any agency. Some takeaways? The importance of scenario based training and range training with moving targets. And the fact DPD averaged 10 single officer OIS per year. That didn't include those involving more than one officer or subject.
http://www.policeone.com/police-products/firearms/training/articles/482251006-new-study-on-shooting-accuracy-how-does-your-agency-stack-up/

[JHC]

Wow. Some surprising (to me) patterns. And what the heck IS a sentinel event? This thing I've been saying, I do not think it means what I think it means. :O

[Doc_Glock]

“Overall, about one-third (35 percent) of all officers’ rounds hit the targeted suspect. Most of those who had “perfect marksmanship” fired only one round.”

[okie john]

A sentinel event, Donner and Popovich explain, is “a significant negative outcome,” such as an unjustified use of deadly force.


Okie John

[BehindBlueI's]

“[O]fficers were more accurate when shooting at unarmed suspects.”

Well, no shit, as those are generally going to be contact or near contact shots.


Half the officers “were entirely inaccurate,” including one who fired 23 misses!

*sigh* yeah, everyone's got that guy and he skews the results. Usually running the gun like a sewing machine.

[psalms144.1]

23 misses in a row is impressive. Means at least one reload, unless that was with an AR (even worse) or a Glock 9mm with a 33-rounder...

[Sammy1]

Completely different when rounds are coming at you.

[txdpd]

23 misses in a row is impressive. Means at least one reload, unless that was with an AR (even worse) or a Glock 9mm with a 33-rounder...

IF that’s the one I’m thinking about, it involved a suspect with a rifle, a car for cover, and quite a few rounds getting absorbed by the car. That also allowed a second officer to flank and engage the suspect. If that’s the one, yeah he “missed” a lot.

Unobstructed shoot and misses are a whole different ball park than probable hits getting absorbed by cover, and that’s a whole different ballpark than a probably ND out of the holster due to our staging the trigger training or poor trigger discipline.

I’m glad that someone finally got access to some of out OIS data, it’s too bad that couldn’t do anything useful with it.

[BehindBlueI's]

Completely different when rounds are coming at you.

Hence the need for realistic FoF with pain feedback. It's as close as you can get without actually taking fire.

My police action was so much like a FoF we'd done at in-service my internal voice actually commented on the similarity.

[Jeff22]

I've suffered through a lot of poorly conceived scenario training conducted without much of a plan using actors who often times did not stick to the script they were given, supervised by older female sergeants with large asses who spent much of their career attempting to micro-manage the activity of patrol officers from the safety of their office.

I did not find my participation in such activities to be of value.

Nobody cared that the training was pointless, or that it may have even reinforced bad habits, they were just happy that they could say "look! We did scenario training!"

As a result, I prefer live fire training that has an objective standard. Either you hit the target in the A zone or you did not. Enduring a subjective evaluation of my activities delivered by somebody I had no respect for who had not done a building search or high risk traffic stop in years (or maybe ever) did nothing to build my skills and was a waste of time.

A lot of people who have never done anything like to conduct scenario training because they get to order people around.

I am sure that properly conducted scenario training would be of great value. I would like to participate in some one day.

[Bucky]

IF that’s the one I’m thinking about, it involved a suspect with a rifle, a car for cover, and quite a few rounds getting absorbed by the car. That also allowed a second officer to flank and engage the suspect. If that’s the one, yeah he “missed” a lot.

Unobstructed shoot and misses are a whole different ball park than probable hits getting absorbed by cover, and that’s a whole different ballpark than a probably ND out of the holster due to our staging the trigger training or poor trigger discipline.

I’m glad that someone finally got access to some of out OIS data, it’s too bad that couldn’t do anything useful with it.

Very good point. If one is shooting at, and hitting cover, is that really a miss?

[WobblyPossum]

Very good point. If one is shooting at, and hitting cover, is that really a miss?

That’s the only scenario in which I’ve thought suppressive fire was justified in LE use as opposed to the way it’s performed in a military context. Shooting the cover keeps the suspect’s head down, allowing another officer to flank, and the cover absorbs the rounds, preventing them from ending up in bystanders and fellow officers. I’d not count those as misses.

[BehindBlueI's]

I am sure that properly conducted scenario training would be of great value. I would like to participate in some one day.

Our scenarios are modeled on actual events. Often from our own department, but sometimes from other agencies.

[HCM]

Isn’t this the same study Tom Givens posted about here: https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?34171-Police-Training-Unrealistic-Expectations

[Erick Gelhaus]

It isn’t the first study on this issue. A book from ALERRT on room entry and search methodologies with research looked at multiple previous studies on the subject. The data is there, I’m on the road and don’t have access to the material right now. Roughly, the numbers are consistent.

[GardoneVT]

Not a cop, but statistical analysis is my professional lane. I don’t have an issue with the study’s computational methodology, but applying this data to real world UoF cases is problematic .
First, 10% of the incidents had to be discarded for evaluation due to insufficient bullet trajectory data. Considering the effectively infinite ways a shootout can propagate , that’s valuable and relevant data which can’t be evaluated. Those incidents might be circumstances where officers did deliver a 90% initial hit rate; but we won’t know.

Which brings me to the next point; gunfights are designed to foil efficient statistical analysis.About the only two variables an analyst can count on are human participants and firearms . The rest -age, gender, weapons, participants, time of day, location...are incident dependent; again , the study had to be limited to one-on-one Officer and offender shootouts for practical analysis. Which again means multiple offender/ multiple officer shooting data is ignored, despite both offenders and officers typically operating in teams.

Lastly ; training and tactics can’t be statistically expressed. One would not act the same in using a gun to stop a knife armed offender at 1’ vs a rifle armed assailant at 75 ft. Both will show on paper a single response incident where an officer engaged an armed attacker, but the response tactics are totally different. At close range with a knife armed assailant an officers probably going to shoot more then when carefully engaging a rifle armed shooter at longer range . Yet again, on paper.....”single officer vs assailant”.

While I’m not concluding statistical analysis of UOF cases is doomed to impossibility, careful evaluation of any study is required before drawing conclusions and modifying training appropriately. This study is moderately useful for single vehicle officer agencies with a track record of single subject stops, and next to irrelevant for a two person per vehicle agency in a city with multiple suspect stops.

[AZgunguy]

I am a big fan of force on force training with simunitions so it's more realistic (ie you feel pain if you screw up). When working with the US Marshals Task Force, we did numerous trainings with simunitions and it helped greatly. Our department converted an area to a simunitions shoot house and conducted training there. It made training more realistic and ensured you would know immediately if you screwed up. Can't beat that.