The case for the assessment pause

[mmc45414]

This is a general trend of humanity. Karl Rehn has told us that most CHLs have little training at all beyond a state mandated class. So I would hazard the average officer has more training than the average CHL.

Yes, I hope my post did not imply I thought otherwise.
What gets me is how people perceive themselves after being passed through some type of qualification. A friend's daughter did the Ohio CHL and posted up on FB about now being "prepared"...

I shoot, now, twice a month - used to be three times. So many thousands of rounds down range. Trained with many of the respected folks here.

At your own expense.

Higher standards for police seems to be the issue.

Another human nature thing seems to be that once somebody has been paid to do something they tend to expect to get paid when they do it.
I don't go shoot every weekend because I think I need to, I do it because (for me) it is a ton of fun. And we have several LE folks in our informal group, but they seem to be folks that enjoyed shooting before they became cops. So seems many LE folks expect to be on the clock if they are doing something we do for fun. And BBI has mentioned they are no longer even allowed to use their PD range on their own time, so improvement (probably outside SWAT) is not being encouraged or accommodated.

And this might go back to our other discussions about par times, qualifications are all based on par times. There is no competition, no incentive to improve beyond the standards (not even just for bragging rights), the par times are considered good enough to be qualified. So maybe in an actual use case the 5.0 second skill sets gets deployed in 0.5 seconds, ten times, without success.

[BehindBlueI's]

BBI, I don't think you can, given the parameters.

Is it even solvable for those who don't have the drive to train hard?

Agreed. It isn't solvable in this context. Everyone is wired differently and everyone responds differently, but without training it's going to fall back on how you're hard wired more than anything, than tack on how you imagine things to be prior to. So many people are stuck on 2 things in this thread. That it's LE specific and that git gud is always the answer. I won't bother re-emphasizing why that's useless in a conversation strictly about how to approach overall theory for untrained and semi-trained people, but it is completely unsolvable and I get that. The question is simply which mitigates the risk the most for that group: shoot until the threat stops or pre-plan an assessment pause.

Untrained people still have some mental image of what they imagine their gun fight will look like. Police training eventually filters to the gun culture at large via magazines and modern equivalent. So I still think "which answer is less shitty" is a valid question even if we understand it is not likely to *fix* the issue as much as nudge the needle in the right direction.

[mmc45414]

This results in a shit ton of misses.
...
Mag dumps occur with magazines of all sizes, but bigger mags result in higher round count mag dumps which result in even more misses.

The question is simply which mitigates the risk the most for that group: shoot until the threat stops or pre-plan an assessment pause.
...
So I still think "which answer is less shitty" is a valid question even if we understand it is not likely to *fix* the issue as much as nudge the needle in the right direction.

I recollect that part of the old double-tap idea was ensuring that even with a miss you would have at least hit half the time. Perhaps modern hit ratios have not supported that optimism, and maybe 5-6 taps is the new normal.

[TGS]

@BehindBlueI's

You've mentioned that cognitive overload presents problems with assessing while shooting. I think there's an inherent flaw in the idea of requiring a LEO to fire two rounds and reassess (or X number of rounds at all) given that cognitive overload prevents most individuals from being able to count rounds fired during a gunfight. I don't mean to sound like I'm advocating for "blue welfare" as an excuse to improving the system, but we'd only be setting LEOs up for certain failure if that were made an expectation that they'd need to perform to in actual shootings. That's a lose-lose situation, and LEOs coming out on top (fight wise, legally, or civilly) would likely become the exception instead of the norm as they'd be expected to perform to an artificial, capricious standard which isn't consistent with known limitations of human cognitive performance.

Personally, I feel that LAPD Metro Division's "shoot at assessment speed" is the best mix. After sitting out to let this thread develop for a while, I'm confident that what my agency teaches is actually assessment speed shooting given that many here equate shooting to the ground with mag dumping, or at the very least mag dumping being a default in training, which has never been a feature taught in our curriculum. You can still shoot someone to the ground while shooting at assessment speed and firing accurately, and the concepts are not mutually exclusive.

[HCountyGuy]

Agreed. It isn't solvable in this context. Everyone is wired differently and everyone responds differently, but without training it's going to fall back on how you're hard wired more than anything, than tack on how you imagine things to be prior to. So many people are stuck on 2 things in this thread. That it's LE specific and that git gud is always the answer. I won't bother re-emphasizing why that's useless in a conversation strictly about how to approach overall theory for untrained and semi-trained people, but it is completely unsolvable and I get that. The question is simply which mitigates the risk the most for that group: shoot until the threat stops or pre-plan an assessment pause.

Untrained people still have some mental image of what they imagine their gun fight will look like. Police training eventually filters to the gun culture at large via magazines and modern equivalent. So I still think "which answer is less shitty" is a valid question even if we understand it is not likely to *fix* the issue as much as nudge the needle in the right direction.

For my greater focus on this being an LE problem, I will state that it stems from we usually see/hear/read about errant rounds more in LE shootings vs private-citizen Bob. Granted there are other factors that go in to that (number of good actors present), but it does seem (granted that’s an assumption I haven’t gone data-digging for) that generally Joe-Bob’s DGU results in less rounds (and potential misses) fired per good actor than LE. But again I’m making an assumption, but one that I’ll try to correct by looking at incidents later on.

As for your specific question now, which of the two options seems to be less problematic towards unneeded extra shots/misses would definitely be the built-in assessment pause. However, I would say that’s even a less desirable practice vs getting people to work on assessing at-speed via drills like the one involving different colored lasers mentioned previously.

[blues]

Frankly, I think it's back to "don't outrun your headlights" with headlights being what you see / process...at every stage of an encounter.

(The rest of it is working on skill sets...which go beyond just shooting and fighting to knowing how to deal with people and defuse situations before they jump off, where possible.)

Which gets back to the kinds of people that get selected to wear the badge. (Which doesn't solve BBI's problem of dealing with folks already on the job.)

This is an incredibly important and complex topic.

[wvincent]

@BehindBlueI's
Personally, I feel that LAPD Metro Division's "shoot at assessment speed" is the best mix. After sitting out to let this thread develop for a while, I'm confident that what my agency teaches is actually assessment speed shooting given that many here equate shooting to the ground with mag dumping, or at the very least mag dumping being a default in training, which has never been a feature taught in our curriculum. You can still shoot someone to the ground while shooting at assessment speed and firing accurately, and the concepts are not mutually exclusive.

Having shot your course of fire, my experience was that racing it did not yield the positive results I was searching for. Using most of the time allotments was much more favorable. I don't know what the lead up to your qual course of fire is, but the qual itself teaches excellent cadence. Since the qual is shot from concealment, and I know all you folks in your Agency are snappy dressers, rolling around in bespoke Seville Row suits, I was only able to shoot it in my Graduation/Wedding/Funeral Men's Wear House Country Hic Sportcoat. Sweeping that heavy garment is an artform itself.

As we discuss assessment and cadence, I can't help but keep looking at Toni Mcbride's OIC, the one that got her all hemmed up, as a great example. I thought she did very well, including NOT flipping the switch from street/work mode to gamer mode.

[ssb]

I've seen a few reload and dump all their fucking mags like an assembly line for smoke and noise.

If I understand what you're saying, the break caused by reloading isn't sufficient to make them "snap out of it" and realize that shooting a bunch really fast isn't achieving the desired result?

[Erick Gelhaus]

Agreed. It isn't solvable in this context. Everyone is wired differently and everyone responds differently, but without training it's going to fall back on how you're hard wired more than anything, than tack on how you imagine things to be prior to. So many people are stuck on 2 things in this thread. That it's LE specific and that git gud is always the answer. I won't bother re-emphasizing why that's useless in a conversation strictly about how to approach overall theory for untrained and semi-trained people, but it is completely unsolvable and I get that. The question is simply which mitigates the risk the most for that group: shoot until the threat stops or pre-plan an assessment pause.

So, I don't think it's a cop specific problem. And, asking non-dedicated people to "git gud" isn't the answer.

I have my thoughts on what "this" would look like in the field. I have my thoughts on how to teach, train it.

@BehindBlueI's I'm still curious as to what you think it this looks like when performed? Or are we going for no extra rounds fired? Very few extra rounds? What is the desired end state?

[DDTSGM]

As we discuss assessment and cadence, I can't help but keep looking at Toni Mcbride's OIC, the one that got her all hemmed up, as a great example. I thought she did very well, including NOT flipping the switch from street/work mode to gamer mode.

I did not know that she got 'hemmed up' over the shooting.

It's kind of coincidental that when I read the OP, I thought of that incident.

At the time I thought she assessed pretty good but had been taught incorrectly.

What I saw was 'he's still moving, I'm still shooting' instead of 'he's still moving AND he is still trying to...' which is a key thing to process before using further lethal force.