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Thread: Training "Use of Force"

  1. #21
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    It is difficult to design a training method to assist people to conceptualize how things go in atypical events. Your audience could be police recruits in the Academy, or citizens, or members of a jury. Most people have "normal" life experiences which means that they probably have not had that much experience in dealing with violent or drunk or drugged or crazy people.

    Properly designed scenario training can help. I've been subjected to so much poorly designed and poorly conducted scenario training in my life that I'm traumatized . . .
    Last edited by Jeff22; 09-24-2019 at 03:01 AM.

  2. #22
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    Oct 2013
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    East Greenwich, RI
    Quote Originally Posted by blues View Post
    That's not bad, and it's a clever rendition...but I don't think it makes things any simpler than the "continuum"...though I do agree that term can be misleading for some.

    Perhaps it would just be simpler to explain appropriate force and let their brains absorb and understand the reasoning...since they'd need to articulate it at some point in any case.
    All models attempt to simplify concepts. I think it’s hard to capture all the nuances of UOF with a single model. I’m old school and liked the continuum, but it can’t stand alone. Not sure any model can.

  3. #23
    Use of Force (UoF), as I have always used it, is kind of an alacarte’ thing. There is no one single continuum or wheel that can encompass it.

    As I draw closer to retirement with 28 years of training & experience this is my opinion, and my opinion only, and doesn’t represent any agency, model, or policy.

    Since 1989, in the US Army MP school, I have been indoctrinated with Use of Force policies, continuums, wheels, and yes, even the pyramid. I have been involved in many incidents over these years wherein I was Mirandized because of my own actions, read Garrity because of my own actions, or had to provide a witness statement just because I was there. I have trained many new recruits over these years, two of which have been involved in OIS’…and one of those trained another recruit who was then subsequently involved in a shooting. They were all justified because they were able to articulate what they did and why they did it. No matter what level UoF you use you need to be able to articulate it and articulate it well. If you cannot you are screwed. Part of my duties now includes administration of our FTO program. I encourage all my FTO’s to go over every report these new people write and get as much detail in them as they can. This is how I trained my people when I was on the road. It helps with articulation later should they become involved in a critical incident. When they have a UoF incident I encourage them to be very specific about the suspects actions and then very specific about their own actions and how they felt about the suspects actions. If an officer has a reasonable fear for their life, and they can articulate it well, they will be justified in any of the levels of force on any continuum, wheel, or pyramid they must deal with.

    So, how do we train it? With millennials its hard. They are the ‘give everyone a trophy’ generation. Very few have real world experience with real life hard knocks…and its my generations fault. I was born in the early 70’s and at age 9 I started barning tobacco. If you have never done it just know that there aren’t many jobs that are much harder, especially for a kid. These were long days out in the field during summer months where fights were common place. There was not a week that went by that we were not fighting at the end of a tobacco row…and as long as we didn’t knock over a tobacco stalk the farmer didn’t care. Compare that type of growing up with what millennials have become accustomed to now and you start to see why these people are so soft. They think that no matter what they should be rewarded. They have never been defeated either on a football field, tobacco field, or in life because their parents were there to pick them up. In essence, they’ve never been punched in the face. And believe me, when they are, they get stuck in the middle of the OODA loop. Somewhere along the way my generation thought it necessary to protect the millennials from everyday life, and it shows.

    Now we expect trainers to train into these new people how to respond to body language they’ve never seen and actions they’ve never experienced. Recently we had a recruit in training who was roadside on a traffic stop with their FTO. The rookie can be seen on video just standing there with the suspect not on alert for the suspect to do anything but instead watching the FTO search the car. Guess what happened… The suspect became aggressive and the FTO had to effectively thwart the aggression while the recruit stood there with the deer-in-the-headlights look. The FTO told the recruit that if that’s how they wanted to be they should get out of law enforcement. The recruit stated that it all “happened so fast” and “they just weren’t expecting it”. No shit.

    Another issue is that agencies are more interested in “checking a box” instead of hiring a person that can actually do the job. This is a true story with every agency in the country, especially those that adhere to CALEA, which is the biggest sham ever thought of by agency administrators. These hires have no desire to get involved in any altercation and would avoid it rather than deal with it. Every year we must train with various levels of force and every year you can see these officers who have never had to fight go onto a training scenario they are ill-prepared to deal with. Gone are the days of the “warrior” and the “warrior mindset” because it scares the shit out of administrations. I’ve even read that administrations are now preferring to use the term “Guardian” over “Warrior” …What a crock of shit.

    /end rant.

  4. #24
    CWM11B
    Member
    CALEA. Dont get me started. One of the best "talking to" events I got was when, after some brass whiz was excitingly giving us the news about being "reaccredited" I announced yo the room "for all of you who dont know what this means, the check cleared." Totally worth it.
    Last edited by CWM11B; 09-24-2019 at 09:17 AM.

  5. #25
    Well said KeeFus!

  6. #26
    Site Supporter 41magfan's Avatar
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    I found it beneficial to try and instill in every officer a sense of understanding, instead of them just being informed and aware.

    With that in mind, I developed my own lesson plan based on the elements of lawful self-defense instead of using traditional continuum or application charts; Innocence, Imminence, Proportionality, Avoidance and Reasonableness. I modified these elements to make them applicable to a LEO exercising his authority to use force granted by statue and established law.

    I won't bore you with details, but using the element of Innocence (in a LE context) as an example;

    For a citizen, this provision of law means a claim of SD is limited (or nonexistent) when you are the initial aggressor. For a LEO, this can be analogous to mean your initial contact/engagement with a citizen must itself be lawful. If the contact itself is unlawful, how much lawful force can you use in an unlawful police action? Obviously, the answer is NONE ...... and no amount of articulation will make it lawful.

    As I mentioned in my previous post, officers don't get themselves or their agency in trouble over the little nuances of UOF law, they fall over cliffs in criminal and civil liability they don't even know exist. Officers that can grasp the core principles of self-defense/UOF law are better able to apply them to real situations .... assuming they can keep their emotions in check.
    Last edited by 41magfan; 09-24-2019 at 09:39 AM.
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