Old Bakersfield PD qual

[John Hearne]

John, how do you feel about the accuracy/par time standards for an in service qual? I still have concerns about time efficiency when running large groups of people, but also about realistic standards with patrol officers today using modern guns and holsters.
For example, I'd be wildly ecstatic if we could get everyone to qual on this course with a full 50% added to the par times....

I shot it from my duty rig which an ALS-only holster and open top magazine pouches. The only time I felt pressed for was the first stage.

I'd offer that officers should be able to keep rounds on the legal paper. If you miss the 7" circle every time, you're just down 10 points. If you lose 20 points for time, that's five seconds to add to the par times. That's 70% easily available and some rounds should be able to land in the 7" circle for some wiggle room.

This qual has two things going for it. First, it sets a very reasonable standard for performance for those who care. 80% seems like a reasonable goal for those with a little dedication. Second, it is a historical standard so it has credibility. People used to be held to these standards, with old guns and holsters - why can't you?

Regarding running larger groups, I'm not sure what larger means. When I run our quals on a shot timer, I call the stage & strings and then move from shooter to shooter. I don't brief everyone of them. For instance, ours starts at the three yard line with three rounds in three seconds. This is repeated twice. I walk up to a shooter, ask if they're ready, and then trigger the timer. Repeat for the second three rounds. Then I move to the next shooter. You can qualify a decent number of folks like this while maintaining high accountability for time.

If it's a lot of folks, the have two folks with timers. Start on on the far left and the second in the middle. Alternate "turns" and shift to the right after a shooter finishes.

[AMC]

I shot it from my duty rig which an ALS-only holster and open top magazine pouches. The only time I felt pressed for was the first stage.

I'd offer that officers should be able to keep rounds on the legal paper. If you miss the 7" circle every time, you're just down 10 points. If you lose 20 points for time, that's five seconds to add to the par times. That's 70% easily available and some rounds should be able to land in the 7" circle for some wiggle room.

This qual has two things going for it. First, it sets a very reasonable standard for performance for those who care. 80% seems like a reasonable goal for those with a little dedication. Second, it is a historical standard so it has credibility. People used to be held to these standards, with old guns and holsters - why can't you?

Regarding running larger groups, I'm not sure what larger means. When I run our quals on a shot timer, I call the stage & strings and then move from shooter to shooter. I don't brief everyone of them. For instance, ours starts at the three yard line with three rounds in three seconds. This is repeated twice. I walk up to a shooter, ask if they're ready, and then trigger the timer. Repeat for the second three rounds. Then I move to the next shooter. You can qualify a decent number of folks like this while maintaining high accountability for time.

If it's a lot of folks, the have two folks with timers. Start on on the far left and the second in the middle. Alternate "turns" and shift to the right after a shooter finishes.

Larger groups for us would be 20 shooters at a time on the line for a qual. We use shot timers on drills and exercises in In Service Perishable Skills training, and for Basic Academy stuff. Our Qual is a typical "X number of rounds in X number of seconds at the Y yard line" type of qual. Currently 37 rounds (full duty load out). We have made incremental changes to the time and accuracy standards, but the whole thing just isn't serving anyone well.

@JCN, yes, we do have turning targets. Only issue there is you can't just deduct points for going over par. It's a miss now. Also, our "Upgraded" Meggitt AA2 Target systems software only allows full seconds on the timer. The old program, which is still on the hard drive, allowed .25 second increments. Not sure what'll happen if we reload the old program. Have to give Meggitt...or Inverys or whatever they are now a call.

I have some ideas about how we can implement some of the concepts here, but I wanted to see what some other folks thought. Thanks for the input guys.1

[WobblyPossum]

If you don’t mind my trying to help:

Could you do it with turning targets that only present within a certain amount of time in order to have multiple people at the line?

Is there a requirement to run everyone completely through a qual before moving onto the next person or could you run 50 people through the 10 foot string, then move everyone to the next distance, etc?

If no turning targets could set an over time par buzzer and remediate anyone not making that time with an individual time scored HF. Might motivate them to not get called out (but could get you in trouble in this HR world for making them feel badly about themselves).

This wouldn’t really work with turning targets because the scoring allows shots over the par time. Shots you didn’t get off within the par would not automatically lose full value scoring. Increasing the time the targets face the shooter to allow overtime shots would cause a different issue because then you couldn’t account for which shots were overtime. This would work fine with turning targets if you changed the scoring and any shot fired after the par time counted as a 0/miss.

[JCN]

@JCN, yes, we do have turning targets. Only issue there is you can't just deduct points for going over par. It's a miss now. Also, our "Upgraded" Meggitt AA2 Target systems software only allows full seconds on the timer. The old program, which is still on the hard drive, allowed .25 second increments. Not sure what'll happen if we reload the old program. Have to give Meggitt...or Inverys or whatever they are now a call.

I have some ideas about how we can implement some of the concepts here, but I wanted to see what some other folks thought. Thanks for the input guys.1

My thoughts were along the lines of:

Part of what made Bakersfield viable was the competition aspect where you got people’s pride and ego into wanting to get better in front of their peers. I don’t know if you can do that in today’s touchy feely era, but if you can do it in a nice way what I envisioned was:

Run 10-15 people on first string with turning target set to par plus a little grace wiggle room.

Anyone who fails to make time gets put into the “individual timed pool.”

Run the remaining on the subsequent strings, culling out the people who didn’t make time into the individual time pool.

So you could test all the high functioning people together en masse and only have to do individual time testing for the people who can’t make time.

On subsequent quals, you group all the high functioners together and try and motivate the culled individual people to practice so they can get into the high functioned pool.

Maybe that’s unnecessarily complex. But if I were in the individual times pool, I’d have enough pride that I’d practice to try not and get singled out the next time.

Just spitballing trying to help.

[JCN]

This wouldn’t really work with turning targets because the scoring allows shots over the par time. Shots you didn’t get off within the par would not automatically lose full value scoring. Increasing the time the targets face the shooter to allow overtime shots would cause a different issue because then you couldn’t account for which shots were overtime. This would work fine with turning targets if you changed the scoring and any shot fired after the par time counted as a 0/miss.

See below.

Basically if you make time you can stay in the group.

If you miss time then you go to the “you repeat the string and shoot by yourself on a timer while everyone watches you so we can score your overtime shots.”

It’d allow you to group shoot a bunch of people at once and only individually overtime timer a small group.

[JCN]

Say you have 20 people on the line for string one and give them 2 seconds of turning target exposure.

Everyone makes time except for shooter #4 and 6.

They get pulled aside and wait.

The other 18 go on to string 2. Everyone makes time except for shooter #2.

He gets pulled aside and waits with #4 and #6.

You do string 3-5 and shooters #7, 10, 12 fail to make time.

You make a squad of shooters #2,4,6,7,10,12 and run them through the whole COF timing individually.

Next quarter for qual,
You keep #2,4,6,7,10,12 in a separate group to time individually and hope that they practiced at home in the meantime so they could make time this time.

If they do, then they can join the top group on the next qual.

[AMC]

@JCN....thanks for the input. Some interesting ideas there. I like the out of the box thinking. Sometimes you need to hear from folks who've done it for years, and sometimes it's good to hear from folks who've never done it, if only to ask "Why not?"

[WobblyPossum]

@JCN I like the idea after you provided a little more detail. It would work with turning targets that way. It would also provide a lot of pressure for that second group which is lacking from quals. I’ve found that forcing people to perform in front of their peers adds more pressure than they’re likely to see in almost any other kind of training.

[JCN]

@JCN....thanks for the input. Some interesting ideas there. I like the out of the box thinking. Sometimes you need to hear from folks who've done it for years, and sometimes it's good to hear from folks who've never done it, if only to ask "Why not?"

@JCN I like the idea after you provided a little more detail. It would work with turning targets that way. It would also provide a lot of pressure for that second group which is lacking from quals. I’ve found that forcing people to perform in front of their peers adds more pressure than they’re likely to see in almost any other kind of training.

I think in the current climate, the key would be to motivate rather than humiliate and for the remedial group to give them a path to improve (like showing them dry fire apps and writing a small dry fire program for them to improve).

If you guys can use any help designing dry programs I’m pretty good at that and would be happy to help.

[jlw]

I was at the range today working with a pre-service cadet and during a break decided to make a run at the Bakersfield qual. We already had some of my TxT targets up; so, I just shot it on that.

All of the rounds hit in the 4x6 rectangle.

I was using a Comp-tac paddle holster; thus, no retention. I was over by .01 on the first string but beat all of the other times to the point that I would have gotten them from a duty holster, easily. For example, the 2-reload-2 string in six seconds at 30 feet was completed in 4.53.

For the rank and file, I think the time could get sporty when using level-3 retention holsters.