Modern Police Training, Unrealistic Expectations
The Force Science Institute recently reported on a study conducted by several researchers who used the Dallas Police Department as an example of a modern, big city police department’s firearms training and field performance. The researchers were shocked at how poorly the DPD officers did in actual shootings in the field, a reaction generally shared by members of the public at large when they find out how dismal typical police performance with firearms really is, as opposed to the Hollywood movie/TV version of how cops shoot.
The mindset of the researchers can be summed up by this quote from their study: “although the amount- and quality- of firearms training received by officers over the last century has improved considerably, there appears to have been little improvement in shooting accuracy”. Implicit in that quote is an assumption that today’s officers get a lot of firearms training, and that the training received effectively prepares them for armed conflict. Wrong!
First, their findings. From 2003-2017 the Dallas Police Department had 231 Officer Involved Shootings (OIS). A number of these involved multiple officers, so to get a better picture of individual performance, the researchers discarded those and looked only at incidents in which a single officer fired at a single suspect. They found 149 OIS’s that met that criterion.
They looked at hit rates in two ways, “incident level” and “bullet level”. On an “incident level” basis, they found that officers got at least one hit, regardless of the number of rounds fired, in about 54% of the shootings, just barely over half of the time.
However, on a “bullet level” basis, they found that out of 354 shots fired, there was only a 35% hit rate. One half of all officers missed with every shot they fired, including one officer who fired 23 misses and no hits. This means that six out of every ten shots fired was a miss. How does this happen?
Let’s look at this “amount-and quality- of firearms training” in Dallas, which is actually a very representative sample. Officers qualify with their firearms once per year. That’s right, once. The course of fire they “qualify” on is a joke, essentially a sobriety test for anyone with any skill at all with a gun. I, or any other competent private sector trainer, could take a brand new shooter, with no prior training or experience, and have them pass this course of fire at the end of one day of range training. DPD officers receive “firearms training” once every two years, consisting of 50-100 rounds of firing in exercises and scenarios. That’s it.
Now, let’s take someone who does not know how to drive a car. We’ll give them a few days of driving instruction, but only at very low speed in the empty parking lot, with no traffic. They will then not drive at all for a year. After a year, we’ll have them drive the car from Point A to Point B on the parking lot, again with no traffic. Then, again no more driving once they leave the lot. Some nine months after that, they will be directed to respond to a life threatening crisis by jumping in a car and roaring off at 120 miles per hour on an expressway filled with traffic. Think they would do well? That’s exactly what DPD does with their officers when it comes to firearms.
The bottom line is, most police departments don’t care if their officers can shoot well. They don’t care about the officers’ welfare nor about the public’s safety. “Qualification” once per year has been consistently held to be inadequate by U.S. courts, yet it is still the standard in many areas. “Training” every two years is criminally negligent, but that’s “good enough” for these agencies.
Learn from this example. Whether you are a law enforcement officer, or Joe Citizen with a carry permit, the agency you work for or who issued your license is NOT responsible for your life. You are! Seek out competent training. Make time for relevant practice. Handle your emergency life saving equipment often enough to obtain and maintain proficiency with it. Remember that recency trumps almost everything in retention of motor skills, so get to the range more than once a year. One day you may be very glad you “exceeded the mandated standard”.
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Originally Posted by Wayne Dobbs
