The case for the assessment pause

[Lester Polfus]

Body cams is going to change the way LE shoots. 15 rounds to take a shooter down probably isn't going to play very well when the police dept is sued for excessive force.

Not saying I know how it works but it's real time but that's what I see on YT.

I've had occasion to watch a couple of body cam videos lately where rounds were still being fired at the suspect long after they were down on the ground and not moving for a length of time that I think someone could certainly make a rationale argument that the officer should have assessed that the suspect was no longer an immediate threat and they should have stopped pulling the trigger and sending rounds into the crowded shopping center parking lot.

I think that's the sort of thing an attorney could pounce on and honestly, be Not Wrong.

[mmc45414]

If we're seeing something like 3 for 17 as a fairly common mag dump hit rate...is that faster trigger pulling helping you?

The adage that was hammered into me was Shoot As Fast As You Can Hit, and this was just as applicable to competition. Funny thing is when I started doing this and quit trying to shoot fast I eventually started shooting rather fast, probably faster than would be appropriate in a DGU. Things like the Bill Drill are supposed to be for practice and confirmation of technique, not a tactic.

The mag dump standard began before the GWOT, so we can't blame the mil guys for that attitude.

I agree, this probably has more to do with Instagram than GWOT.
Way back in the way back you could probably count the number of people that were not LE or MIL that were making their living their being good with guns on one hand. Now there are new posts every day boasting on split times and such from people that need to keep posting every day to maintain their livelihood. Then people actually tasked with protecting society (that might only shoot twice a year when they are forced to) expect to shoot as fast as that smoking little hottie on the www who is shooting at steel targets the size of Sasquatch.

[Trooper224]

In 1983 I can remember at my first academy the oft repeated mantra to be aware of and avoid becoming a victim of "Tombstone Courage"...and while I think it's true that many of us need to learn that the badge is not a shield which you can stand behind, it remains vital that those wearing a badge are willing to do what is necessary to protect both the public as well as their partners...often at grave risk to themselves. It's a fine line.

Indeed it is. But, we seem to have devolved from making calculated risks through critical thinking, to going from 0 to 100 on the panic meter as a standard response.

[HCountyGuy]

I don't think the shoot/assess and shoot until the threat stops are mutually exclusive. Why not both, in what we've come to refer to as shooting at assessment speed? I don't necessarily think the officers doing mag dumps are being taught to go for barely legal splits, but rather they've received the absolute minimum training needed to pass a qualification then never doing anything else with the gun and going "condition black" when it comes to shooting. In that group, I would ponder how many of those officers never had exposure to firearms before being made to carry one professionally.

[Half Moon]

I agree, this probably has more to do with Instagram than GWOT.

There are folks much more qualified than me to validate or invalidate that but I'm not sure either of those are true. A shooting in the news that stuck in my memory happened in the early 90's before all that. Group of big city PD officers blockading a mentally ill knife wielder in a 7-11 parking lot. Knife wielder lunges towards officers and the officers go all cyclic mag dump with pistols and shotguns. All told around 200 bullets and pellets fly for like 3 hits. Which leaves the question of where all the rest of those shots went and a strong desire to never be downrange of that PD. Anecdote but adrenaline dump and firing to slide lock goes back a ways.

[Elwin]

I don't think the shoot/assess and shoot until the threat stops are mutually exclusive. Why not both, in what we've come to refer to as shooting at assessment speed? I don't necessarily think the officers doing mag dumps are being taught to go for barely legal splits, but rather they've received the absolute minimum training needed to pass a qualification then never doing anything else with the gun and going "condition black" when it comes to shooting. In that group, I would ponder how many of those officers never had exposure to firearms before being made to carry one professionally.

I had a similar thought. I’m not LE or anything high speed, but I do have some training that’s occurred all in the past eight years or so which means I seem to be falling in the time period being discussed. What I’ve learned, right or wrong, is shoot until the threat stops and if the guy is falling to the ground, follow him to the ground with your SIGHTS, not more bullets, to confirm that he’s actually done fighting and not about to fight from the ground. So this would be the “assess without breaking to low ready” others have mentioned. Caveats apply for if there are multiple threats, etc. I can at least say the people I’ve learned from weren’t teaching a robotic process - it changed based on context.

I did learn a lot of fast and high volume predictive shooting to rather generous scoring areas and agree with others that a smaller vital zone and more reactive shooting should be emphasized. That and actually shooting at assessment speed when we’re talking about assessing things. Those two points are huge influences on my more recent practice that I got in large part from people on this site.

[JCN]

It’s part of what I’m really enjoying about IDPA this year.

You have 10 round capacities in most divisions and stage plans mean you typically only have one extra round on tap for emergencies.

And you really need to hit the -0 without missing in order to do well.

But you can’t do it too slowly.



For range practice, I like something like a Bakersfield target where the center and the immediate surrounding ring are good hits and not “misses.” That’s the ideal training scenario where you can explore the edge of the 10 ring and 9s are also good hits.

[blues]

Indeed it is. But, we seem to have devolved from making calculated risks through critical thinking, to going from 0 to 100 on the panic meter as a standard response.

I can't disagree based upon the plethora of videos I've been watching over the past several years.

The officer or agent who coolly and calculatedly handles his business is both a rarity and a refreshing change from the usual fare.

[BehindBlueI's]

In no particular order and not quoting individuals:

1) BWC haven't changed this, however the outcomes for those officers have sometimes changed.

2) I get the ideal is people who can shoot fast and make decisions fast and hit fast. If you can do that, do it. It's an unrealistic standard for large numbers of untrained to semi-trained shooters and they are not simply going to "get good". So what do you teach them to do? How do you mitigate their lack of technical skill and/or their lack of stress inoculation? How many really good technical shooters have EVER worked doing it while also making decisions in real time in a complex, uncertain, rapidly changing lethal scenario? Will those excellent shooters end up putting lots and lots of rounds in a very small area of a downed corpse then have a lawyer explaining reaction times, selective attention, etc. to a jury afterward?

3) I think you'll find the hit rate with the first couple of rounds remains largely unchanged across the decades. As the shooting goes on, people are moving, cover is attained, panic sets in for some, etc. that's what's driving overall hit rates down as each bullet fired has a lesser chance of hitting than the one fired before it.


4) We've largely stopped training people to tase someone over and over, and case law says to not to. We're now teaching not to punch someone over and over, and case law is probably moving that direction. If you've done X for multiple iterations and it's not working...why do you keep doing X? You aren't assessing just to see the effect, you're assessing to see if you need to do something different. Maybe you're getting hits but he's got concealed armor you failed to notice. Is putting 5 more in the same spot going to help somehow? An assessment gives you the chance to recognize why your actions have been ineffective.

5) What DB has referred to as fear biting, but can more charitably be called lack of exposure to stress while making deadly force decisions. Combine with #4. The brain knows doing X hasn't got you killed yet, so let's keep doing X. We need *something* to give more chances for these guys to reset and use their forebrains to make decisions again.

[blues]

Good to have you back, BBI. I've missed your input.