I see this as a multipart issue but it’s not that complicated.
While there are some instances of the grip, particularly the support side thumb, literally blocking the slide that is relatively uncommon in OIS videos. I can only think of two within the last year or two, one was in a hospital emergency room in Ohio and the other, possibly from Arizona involving a P320.
Let’s start with your basic premise: an officer involved in a “startle” gun fight. In studying these type of OIS videos we see three basic reactions. At one end of the bell curve are officers who get startled and stay in that mode throughout the encounter, these are the guys going “full retard” dumping mags to no effect, not assessing etc. They are training goes out the window.
In the middle of the bell curve we see the majority who have an initial startle response including a burst of (usually) ineffective fire followed by their training kicking in resulting in moving / getting to cover and /or assessing their effectiveness. If the threat doesn’t flee they regain emotional control, default to their training and get effective hits. At the other end of the Bellcurve are what I call the “nerd assassins,” usually those with high levels of training. They either maintain emotional control or regain it quickly and immediately apply their training resulting in effective hits.
Most of the “mystery malfunctions” occur in the startle response period of group 1 and 2. There appear to be several factors at play. First their emotional and motor control is impaired due to the natural startle response. Second, in most of these encounters one of both (usually both) parties are moving.
Most cops are not highly trained in grip and draw techniques. Unless they seek out additional training on their own they are trained just well enough to pass their agency qualification which is usually not very challenging. So the odds of them getting a good grip while going so fast they “outrun their headlights” under stress are low. The fact that they are trying to do so while moving laterally or backwards when the majority of their grip and draw training and practice is done while stationary aggravates the situation.
Let’s come back to the fact that all this is happening while moving. Scott JedLinsky does an exercise with students in the early part of his class where he has them flex their whole body like Hans and Franz from Saturday night live and then try to do a jumping jack while under tension. The result is you can’t without relaxing. Scott is usually talking about the body being faster when relaxed but it does make the point that the body needs to be relaxed in order to move especially to move efficiently.
Many law-enforcement pistol qualifications include a stage where officers shoot from standing and then transition to kneeling. For years I would see officers shoot well in the standing position and then completely fall apart sometimes missing the entire target from kneeling. They were shooting from the same place at the same distance so what changed?
For me, the lightbulb on this came on during the Spencer keepers class. The answer is they had to move to go from standing to kneeling and even for this minimal movement, they went from the firm grip and isometric tension in their body to relaxed state in order to move to kneeling. If they did not either maintain their grip for re-grip the gun in the kneeling position there accuracy would degrade. I’ve seen and experienced the same thing in USPSA and IDPA. Shooters do well in their initial shooting position but suffer degraded accuracy or malfunctions as they try to shoot on the move or while getting in and out of subsequent positions as quickly as possible. And that’s just relaxation movement under competition stress.
So you have officers whose grip and draw is ok at best, who only practice that skill while stationary who are now suddenly trying to perform this skill while startled and moving. They are either moving in a jerky spazzy fashion due to stress or they relax allowing them to move more effectively. While effective for movement, relaxing is contrary to the majority of their training and experience shooting while stationary.