Citizen shot while ‘role playing’ during police training

[HCM]

This the Taylor, MI police department's auxiliary department. It looks like they are 35 volunteers and not sworn officers. According to the TPD website, they are there to help the 97 sworn officers in tasks like home checks, business checks, etc. Is it normal for an auxiliary volunteer group to do force-on-force training? If they can afford this type of training for a volunteer force, I wonder what training opportunities must provide for the real cops.

I don't believe this is FOF training by/for the auxiliaries, rather, pursuant to their support function they were serving as role players / OPFOR for the sworn officers. Most federal agencies national academies (FLETC, Quantico etc) hire role players for these functions.

Even if the training was for the auxiliaries it would likely be run by the regular LEO instructors / training staff.

Regardless, this is a failure by both the instructors running the training and those participating, one of whom introduced the live weapon.

I consider FOF training more dangerous than live fire training because as @AMC and @Dan Lehr and others have said people get sloppy, consider themselves too cool for proper safety procedures etc.

I've also been through the FLETC UOF and NLTA classes. In addition to the lassie-faire attitude towards safety, the other issue I see is understaffing. As @Coyotes Fan mentioned running FOF properly is a lot of work. In addition to the instructors running the evolutions, you need at least one maintaining site security / sterile environment and one handing FOF weapons and ammo, loading/issuing mags etc.

[octagon]

This the Taylor, MI police department's auxiliary department. It looks like they are 35 volunteers and not sworn officers. According to the TPD website, they are there to help the 97 sworn officers in tasks like home checks, business checks, etc. Is it normal for an auxiliary volunteer group to do force-on-force training? If they can afford this type of training for a volunteer force, I wonder what training opportunities must provide for the real cops.

I worked at a neighboring agency to Taylor and we also have auxiliary officers. 30-40 at any one time of volunteers. Ours do the same basic stuff as theirs but do carry guns and get as much or more firearms training as regular officers. The difference is they do the job part time and for free so they train most times they meet to keep their hours up. We used ours as assists for house checks and patrol with a sworn officer or when two Aux were together they just did non enfocrement work. They also helped out with large events as extra eyes/ears or parking/traffic control. When I was rangemaster I had to train them once a month on firearms and they did the same CAPS, Simunition FoF and live fire training we did monthly and 40 hrs of in service a year.

Our aux officers and more often police explorers were the role players.

[LittleLebowski]

These happen far too often.

Yup. Completely preventable.

[HCM]

One time at SWAT school we had another agency Officer going through who was a FoF instructor for his agency which was a lot larger than ours. He put a 9mm round between his toes then put his socks and boots on. He dinged us for our simunition search in the class after-action review because it wasn’t found. We kind of shrugged whatever but it shows what some people do.

We had a number of Sims instructors who had been through the week long school. We had to be searched going in initially and any time we left the training area and came back. We used yellow crime scene tape as a marker to show you’d been searched. There were usually two people at the sims station taking care of issuing the guns and ammo. We had dedicated blue Glock 17s and M4s. It was definitely a lot of work to ensure safety.

It is a lot of work to ensure safety in FOF which is part of the reason it's not as common or frequent as it should be.

Re: the jackass with a round between his toes, hopefully someone clued his agency into his behavior as such petty "gotcha" / "winning" attitude is a bad fit for an instructor. That or his agency was shocked they were no longer welcome at training...

Along those lines, a few years ago I attended a mixed (local/state/federal) Active shooter instructor course. One student, a local LEO who runs firearms' training business on the side displayed a particularly poor "too cool for school" attitude which culminated in him intentionally shooting a clearly marked Instructor / observer with sims during a FOF evolution over a personality conflict. Suffice to say my only criticism of the class was the fact this individual was not removed from training for cause.

Keep in mind, this is an instructor school designed to teach you how to teach active shooter tactics to the lowest common denominator LEO. This individual was so fixated on "winning" and showing off he completely missed the point of the training.

[RoyGBiv]

I worked at a neighboring agency to Taylor and we also have auxiliary officers. 30-40 at any one time of volunteers. Ours do the same basic stuff as theirs but do carry guns and get as much or more firearms training as regular officers. The difference is they do the job part time and for free so they train most times they meet to keep their hours up. We used ours as assists for house checks and patrol with a sworn officer or when two Aux were together they just did non enfocrement work. They also helped out with large events as extra eyes/ears or parking/traffic control. When I was rangemaster I had to train them once a month on firearms and they did the same CAPS, Simunition FoF and live fire training we did monthly and 40 hrs of in service a year.

Our aux officers and more often police explorers were the role players.

We get to do a lot of that as volunteers here, except for a hard NO on carrying any weapons (pocket knife is ok).... I'd jump at the chance to be "auxiliary" in some more formal way, just for the opportunity to qualify for LEOSA (assuming that would be an option as an Aux officer). I expect there's more to it than I know about.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

At the old NTI, we were thoroughly searched. No knives of any type. Even crenelated flashlights were not allowed. Only smooth edges ones. Of course, we couldn't bop each other with them. I did bop a 3D dummy though. Contact was not allowed. If you chose to seize a gun - Sims or Code Eagle, you had to touch it and yell a code word (which I forget). The gun holder had to give it up. No retention H2H. This led to a few arguments about whether you would really have gotten the gun. I did that once, got the gun and proceeded to shoot the bad person. That started a discussion about why I would shoot an 'unarmed' person. My rationale was that the bad person was reaching to get the gun back and there was an ongoing terrorist attack. My refereee (a state trooper) said that worked for him.

Those 'practice' rounds do hurt as I'm sure folks know.

[Coyotesfan97]

Those 'practice' rounds do hurt as I'm sure folks know.

You know when someone’s done a lot of acting when they put on two pairs of gloves. Sim rounds on knuckles hurt! I had a pair of motocross gloves I’d use when I was an actor.

[Coyotesfan97]

It is a lot of work to ensure safety in FOF which is part of the reason it's not as common or frequent as it should be.

Re: the jackass with a round between his toes, hopefully someone clued his agency into his behavior as such petty "gotcha" / "winning" attitude is a bad fit for an instructor. That or his agency was shocked they were no longer welcome at training...

Along those lines, a few years ago I attended a mixed (local/state/federal) Active shooter instructor course. One student, a local LEO who runs firearms' training business on the side displayed a particularly poor "too cool for school" attitude which culminated in him intentionally shooting a clearly marked Instructor / observer with sims during a FOF evolution over a personality conflict. Suffice to say my only criticism of the class was the fact this individual was not removed from training for cause.

Keep in mind, this is an instructor school designed to teach you how to teach active shooter tactics to the lowest common denominator LEO. This individual was so fixated on "winning" and showing off he completely missed the point of the training.

I remember our SWAT Commander dealt with it pretty pointedly but IIRC he was allowed to continue. I’m pretty sure he spoke to the guy’s supervisor too. Jackass is a good description!

[DDTSGM]

One time at SWAT school we had another agency Officer going through who was a FoF instructor for his agency which was a lot larger than ours. He put a 9mm round between his toes then put his socks and boots on. He dinged us for our simunition search in the class after-action review because it wasn’t found. We kind of shrugged whatever but it shows what some people do.

We had a number of Sims instructors who had been through the week long school. We had to be searched going in initially and any time we left the training area and came back. We used yellow crime scene tape as a marker to show you’d been searched. There were usually two people at the sims station taking care of issuing the guns and ammo. We had dedicated blue Glock 17s and M4s. It was definitely a lot of work to ensure safety.

Others have already addressed this moron.

I'd just like to add something that I tried to make sure our administrators understood - safety protocols are designed to protect from carelessness, cluelessness, and just plain accidents. They will not prevent an intentional overt action.

Our protocols involved re-searching any time you were out of eye contact of what we called the scenario officer or the safety officer. We searched folks into the sim issue room and they stayed their under our armorer's supervision until they left with the scenario officer to go through their scenarios. The safety officer was with the role players, who were treated the same way.

Getting role players to stay on script all day was a chore, especially the first time they helped. The tendency was to want to add something that they thought helped the scenario more than becoming cop-killers.

Since I've retired the funding source changed and the Academy has sufficient funding that they were going to start hiring roleplayers like they used to do at FLETC. Don't know if that has been accomplished.

[jnc36rcpd]

I read "Training at the Speed of Life" by Ken Murray (inventor of Simmunitions) some years ago. My reaction was that the safety protocols were overly elaborate and largely unnecessary. The more experience I gained attending and providing force-on-force training, the more I realized how right Murray was.

I do think the magnetometer is one's friend. It provides a fast efficient way to screen officers for most forgotten threats.

I would agree that the screening process is intended to catch the forgetful, not the ill-intended. If you have a case like the arrogant idiot smuggling a cartridge in between his toes, I'd point out to him and others that the screening process is not intended to catch prisoners entering super-max. I'd also ask him what he thought he was proving and to whom. I'd also mention that he was delaying the time officers could break for lunch or secure for the day.