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Thread: Standards for LEOs

  1. #21
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    standards drills

    If your intent is to motivate the troops to do better, don't have crazy tight time limits.

    Your time limits need to be consistent. Are you going to add time if the officer is using a holster with a higher level of retention, or if they are drawing from concealment or encumbered with rain or cold weather gear?

    If you make the time limits too tight the shooters of average ability might just say "I can never go that fast" and check out, OR rush too much and forget to look at the sights and jerk on the trigger. So then maybe they train themselves right into a bad habit that you then have to work to overcome.

    Using a drill that is in common use across the country might be a good idea. The 5x5 drill now used as an alternate classifier by IDPA is a nice little course.

  2. #22
    Member SoCalDep's Avatar
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    Hey guys.

    Boy... such a big subject for typing on a iPad...

    Standards
    Expectations
    Training
    Practice
    Information
    Performance
    Politics
    Motivation
    Context
    Accountability
    Liability
    Employment
    Institutional Inertia
    Industry Inertia

    I’ll stop there I suppose. Like many things, there are many variables that go into law enforcement training. Sometimes the “best” isn’t, and by being the best (high accountability, advanced training) we weed out the poor performers with disregard to the fact that we are nothing more than employees of an organization that has different priorities... and we get to complain that we can’t do what we want because “non-experts” dictate the training. What I’ve seen is that most executives dictate the standards (who passes or fails, or how many), and could care less about the training as long as it meets their standards and is liability minded. I have exactly zero control over standards (this has been made clear to me) but I have a lot of input on training.

    Given the choice, I would rather be allowed to teach what I feel is necessary than teach to a BS test.

    The test should be MINIMUM standards and the training should be for MAXIMUM performance for the individual.

    As for bonus pay, incentives, and the carrot vs the stick, I think it has benefits, but limitations.

    I won’t speak for the other big local police dept that has good guys in good places, so I’ll only say that they have discussed that they (no different than us) feel the culture of firearm proficiency is dwindling. Bonus pay is a good thing, but it’s usually so low most people don’t care. I have heard that the previously mentioned agency has recently raised the bonus pay and that’s super cool... I’d love that to happen to my department, so we’ll see how it plays out.

    In the past few years, we managed to get several new guns approved. One of those was the 1911, which requires expert qualification on our old marksmanship course of fire. We have seen a marked increase in deputies coming to our open practice sessions and now that STIs are authorized I think that will increase. Practice is a good thing... it’s the next level above training, so I’m at least a little positive. When/if pistol optics get authorized in the next few months (will initially require an expert qual) I expect practice to increase again.

    There is so much more to this, but I don’t have time right now... maybe more later.

  3. #23

    The Rangemaster Standards

    Quote Originally Posted by gskip View Post
    Hey dudes.

    I've been working on some new material for our firearms unit and been trying to find some standards that we can hold the guys to. I've looked at and used some of the numbers from Scott Jedlinski's (Modern Samurai Project) Black Belt Patch Standards, but am also looking for other teams/squared away dudes that have standards for general drills. Seems like Gabe White's standards are pretty similar to Scott's.

    I know the FAST is good and I plan to incorporate it in some way, but I am looking for a variety of drills with times and standards, built for LEO's. I've looked through our "Drills, tests, and Practice" Sub forum and found a lot of info, but not a ton of full blown, standards with various drills and times for each.

    Any ideas or links?

    Thanks
    Tom Givens has an excellent layout for standards and all you need is 60 rounds and a 25 yard bay. While it great to ensure hits on the silhouette the Rangemaster test is more about training for lethality over simply making hits. 90% or above is instructor level standards which I think motivates folks to do well.

  4. #24
    Member rsa-otc's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TGS View Post
    Something to keep in mind:


    My agency is going through this right now. We've transitioned from SIG P229s to the Glock 19M and Glock 26. Our qual courses are purposed to shoot from our duty carry, so there's no hand-jamming mags for specific strings of fire. All of the reloads and strings of fire match up with loadout of carrying two 15 round reloads and a 15+1 in the gun. So, our FTU is taking advantage of updating the qual by also making it more stringent. Previously we only had to fire 2 rounds at 25 yards, which you could completely throw into the berm and still have no trouble passing. Now it's 8 rounds, and if you throw those into the berm you're already failing. In addition the mag changes are also a lot tighter. To any decent shooter it's fine, but it's just short enough that if you're one of those LEOs with poor gun handling that doesn't really know how to reload your gun efficiently (Ever see the guys carry mags backwards or facing in random directions?), you're likely going to miss your entire follow up string. Finally, there is now a WHO string instead of just a SHO string, and women in particular (for whatever reason, I don't know) seem to be throwing shots like crazy on the WHO string.

    The result is that we're seeing a 20% failure rate on the Glock 26, and a 10% failure rate on the Glock 19. Even though the review board has formally passed the course, we're still shooting the old course. I think we can all figure out why its being hung up behind the scenes, and who the majority of those failing the course are and what positions in the command structure they likely hold …..

    In any case, the FTU is already taking about a gun a month from agents who fail the old course. So to take those ~12 failures a year and make it 600 failures per year is a complete non-starter.
    The Army is going though this now with the new Rifle Qualification course that Ash Hess has been touting on Primary & Secondary. I had heard rumors that is wasn't being successfully implemented. I was with my daughter this past weekend and asked her what she heard. She related that it was just tried by her unit which is going through a deployment process and it was a complete failure. They are set to deploy in less then 30 days. They had no time to do any remedial training and it didn't go well and was scrapped. There was no way they were dead lining a significant portion of her 4,000 man unit and they went back to the old qualifications.

    Any time you make the Standards harder you need to train up to them before you put them out there for realzees. Also expect those who are barely hanging on under the old easier standards to fall by the wayside. If your organization loses personnel over this expect heat from the upper management. A good plan would be to implement the new program incrementally over a period of time to bring everyone up to speed.

    A smaller organization will have a better shot at this compared to one such as the Army or even TGS's organization. Since the person who designed it has immediate control over it and they are motivated to make it work. Instructors and managers further away from the planning will in most cases make a luke warm attempt.

    One thing to keep in mind most times it is easier to get a new student to meet the new standards compared to someone who has ingrained bad habits that need to be vigorously squashed. Give me a clean slate anytime.
    Last edited by rsa-otc; 09-18-2019 at 12:17 PM.
    Scott
    Only Hits Count - The Faster the Hit the more it Counts!!!!!!; DELIVER THE SHOT!
    Stephen Hillier - "An amateur practices until he can do it right, a professional practices until he can't do it wrong."

  5. #25
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    If possible, I'll come back later with some comments on this, but there's already a ton of good stuff to consider here. I will say one thing about pay bonuses for shooting skills that isn't normally considered. When LAPD started doing this back in the Depression, they were offering what amounted to a 10-12% of gross pay bonus for shooting at top levels. That kind of money generated some incentive along with a general cultural condition that you expected your cops to be good shots and to use that skill liberally on the local problem children. Times are clearly different, but I bet a 10% bump in monthly pay would generate quite a bit of interest today, too.
    Regional Government Sales Manager for Aimpoint, Inc. USA
    Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)

  6. #26

    Standards Drills

    I was first introduced to the concept of standards drills at the old HK International Training Division (ITD). The ITD conducted the standards drills in two ways - 1) as your passport to a certificate out of the course - still had to shoot to qualify, though; 2) as your passport to enter a higher level course - i.e. had to demo operator's standards to enter instructor course, had to demo instructor standards (w/gas mask IIRC) to get into Master Instructor.

    I liked the idea, so upon my return from my very first ITD course, I sat down with my partner and we thought out what generic skills we felt an officer carrying a pistol ought to possess, which were not adequately tested by our qualification course. Recognizing we had time constraints - couldn't spend all day running standards drills, we dovetailed them into a slot when half the range group (other relay) was doing other training, this gave us workable numbers. This is what we came up with:

    1) Admin Load (shooter has 3 mags - one loaded with three, others with two; shooter admin loads mag of three)

    2) On buzzer, draw, fire two, in-battery reload, fire two, recover to holster (shooter is handed a mag of one and told to stage it as first reload BEFORE beginning this stage)

    3) On buzzer, draw, fire two [B]out-of-battery reload[/B, ]fire two (pistol should lock back empty, instructor tells shooter to drop slide on empty chamber, shooter is then handed a mag of two to insert into the mag well)

    4) On buzzer, draw, fire, DUH - Fail-to-fire, properly clear/remediate and fire two (shooter is again instructed to leave slide to rear and is handed a fired case to set up a fail-to eject stove-pipe style, student is then given a mag of two to insert into mag well)

    5) From pressed out position with finger on trigger, on buzzer identify Fail-to-eject, properly clear/remediate and fire two (shooter is again instructed to leave slide to rear, is handed a fired case FROM THE SHOOTER'S WEAPON, and instructed to insert that case into their pistol's chamber, shooter is then handed a mag of four rounds and instructed to insert the magazine fully, then let the slide go forward)

    6) From pressed out position with finger on trigger, on buzzer identify Fail-to-extract, properly clear/remediate and fire two, recover to holster (the shooter should have two rounds in the pistol, Sigs often dropped a round from the mag during the FTEx, so they often only had one in the chamber)

    7) Admin unload.

    After we identified the drills, my partner and I, who had worked together about 20 years at that point, had one of the biggest arguments of our working career, I wanted to time the range staff as they at DELIBERATE SPEED accomplished the drills to set our initial times, my partner wanted to start with a clean slate and develop our times from the initial class's times using their first standard deviation. We started the program his way, and reset the standards based off the compiled populations first standard deviation, after each class for the first year, then we reset the standards annually.

    Unlike HK ITD, which conducted the standards drills en masse and allowed students multiple reps to accomplish the standard, we tested one recruit at a time, and allowed them two reps to pass, conducting a third rep to get a time to report.

    We were the State's academy, our admin determined that we were not able to hold student officers back for failing to meet the standards if they shot a qualifying score on our qualification. As a result, we provided an explanatory letter with the officer's times and an annotation as to whether they met the standard. Some agencies actually used the info for remedial training, others, well, not so much. We felt we were fulfilling our mission to the best of our ability by the measures we took.

    I just realized that I didn't specify that we shot the drills from 5 yards and the rounds the student fired had to hit within either the four or five ring of our qual target.
    Last edited by DDTSGM; 09-18-2019 at 05:39 PM.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by rsa-otc View Post
    The Army is going though this now with the new Rifle Qualification course that Ash Hess has been touting on Primary & Secondary. I had heard rumors that is wasn't being successfully implemented. I was with my daughter this past weekend and asked her what she heard. She related that it was just tried by her unit which is going through a deployment process and it was a complete failure. They are set to deploy in less then 30 days. They had no time to do any remedial training and it didn't go well and was scrapped. There was no way they were dead lining a significant portion of her 4,000 man unit and they went back to the old qualifications.

    Any time you make the Standards harder you need to train up to them before you put them out there for realzees. Also expect those who are barely hanging on under the old easier standards to fall by the wayside. If your organization loses personnel over this expect heat from the upper management. A good plan would be to implement the new program incrementally over a period of time to bring everyone up to speed.

    A smaller organization will have a better shot at this compared to one such as the Army or even TGS's organization. Since the person who designed it has immediate control over it and they are motivated to make it work. Instructors and managers further away from the planning will in most cases make a luke warm attempt.

    One thing to keep in mind most times it is easier to get a new student to meet the new standards compared to someone who has ingrained bad habits that need to be vigorously squashed. Give me a clean slate anytime.
    Generally it is best to field test it and get an idea of what is do-able and what needs to be fixed. Then you know it's already been done and have data and best practices before full implementation.

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