PD Developments and Revelations from a Qual Day

[heyscooter]

I'm a new firearms instructor (don't hate me) at my department we have 2 quals a year (one day and one night) we have a practice shoot before each quals and one 4 hour training block a year. We have pretty good latitude in our training but coming from a shooting background I was surprised by the amount of people who don't shoot on there own, don't come to our practice, and have no real desire to get better. I've seen some atrocious things at the range that are just ridiculous. I train on my own and all of the instructors make ourselves available to work with anyone that asks but it's few and far between. But I've decided that I will try my best to get my officers better and hope something sticks.

One thing I just started with my group of shooters: Dry fire practice. I hold an optional 20 minute training session every week. The concept is a low impact (not a lot of time), routine way to eventually teach shooters that doing a 2/3/4 a year live fire qual scheme is not feasible to improve (or maintain) proficiency. It took a classroom session and some discussion to sell it, but it's less about finding the will to do live fire range time and more of the mental inception of trying to show how a little bit of time each week may improve some accuracy, mechanics, and speed in some places. Most shooters at the level Im instructing are not aware of how much dry fire can be a benefit. PM me if you want specifics on how I built it.

[AMC]

The bottom line is this.....Police Firearms training is a pathetic joke in the overwhelming majority of agencies. Pockets of competence stand out like gold bars in fertilizer piles. It has always been this way, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. In fact, as a profession we are being pushed by political forces in exactly the opposite direction. Away from use of force training, towards de-escalation and avoidance. Our new policy actually endorses "running away" as a valid force option, rather than having to get physical with a subject. "Training", such as it is, is being focused in that direction. In the meantime, we aggressively pursue and hire candidates who are literally under 5' and 100 pounds with their gear on.....and then fail to train them. All of this continues for two primary reasons: First, LE decision makers don't really know anything about this stuff, but don't want to admit it, and second.....no one cares. Society through it's political leadership has decided at this point in time to trade suspect injuries and fatalities for the same among police ranks.....for the simple reason that no one riots when a cop is killed. Brutal truth, but there ya go.

[Grouse870]

One thing I just started with my group of shooters: Dry fire practice. I hold an optional 20 minute training session every week. The concept is a low impact (not a lot of time), routine way to eventually teach shooters that doing a 2/3/4 a year live fire qual scheme is not feasible to improve (or maintain) proficiency. It took a classroom session and some discussion to sell it, but it's less about finding the will to do live fire range time and more of the mental inception of trying to show how a little bit of time each week may improve some accuracy, mechanics, and speed in some places. Most shooters at the level Im instructing are not aware of how much dry fire can be a benefit. PM me if you want specifics on how I built it.

I like that idea. Not sure how well it would fly here. We do dry fire at the range a lot. I just started doing the dot torture drill with my officers which opened a bunch of there eyes