My Department exceeded the state minimum for passing the AZPOST qual course.
My Department exceeded the state minimum for passing the AZPOST qual course.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
The SO I am retired from had a pretty aggressive stance towards firearms qualifications and firearms training in general. The state agency I have worked for the past 8 years is a joke and with the current administration I dont see it getting any better. Our current firearms proficiency office (FPO) comes from a small agency with no firearms training and barely meeting the TCOLE standards. I have been pushing for a red dot policy and transition course for the past year, he says we dont need one. This past April he shows up to qualify with a Glock 45 with a Holosun 507C and had not zeroed or shot the pistol prior to that day with the optic. I sat there and watched him put a couple magazines through the pistol trying to zero the optic and then just giving up, he still carries the pistol with the optic though. Me I am just the old guy that ask a lot of questions and sometimes act like a smart** but have been a firearms instructor since 1997. I try and keep up with what's going on with TCOLE and agencies around my area just to stay relevant if nothing else.
NC Training & Standards (aka POST) has been in the process of changing its entire BLET (Basic Law Enforcement Training…aka police academy) for about two years…and they’re pushing it HARD. So hard that agency heads are pushing back because the changes are nonsense.
For instance, when this first started, the new director sent all firearms instructors the proposed changes. When asked how this would translate over to in-service he stated that they didn’t really think about that. It’s has since been changed but we were told to maintain our FI certified we would need to attend an update class, which I attended. The *new* eastern firearms instructor for the State taught the update and began the class with “don’t kill the messenger”. I sat there with ~40 other instructors in disbelief as we listened to the changes. Not all were bad but the real rub is that they’re refusing to listen to the roughly 1500-2000 firearms instructors from across the state on other issues…they’re listening to people that are “yes men”.
It’s supposed to start January 2025…and it’s going to be interesting.
@CWM11B
I taught one of the pilot programs. It is horrible. Very little is not bad. What is bad borders on criminal. If it survives the election, I very well may never teach BLET again.
Why does everybody care so much what "the qual" is?
I'm not asking specifically about this thread (I'm not even in Georgia), but really in law enforcement circles in general. I think most competent trainers agree that qualifying is not training, so does it really matter what the qualification looks like? All it is doing is establishing a standard that I think by pretty much any measure, is arbitrary, and proving that the standard can be met. I understand the sentiment behind using police shooting statistics, but even then, I have never seen a qualification course that looked anything like an actual police shooting. And yet every time I take a class that includes officers from multiple states, the side talk becomes about the various qualification courses. How about we talk about what we're doing to train our people? That is obviously where the rubber meets the road. Except that in a lot of places, that training does not exist, barely exists, or is really just shooting different drills and standards and calling it training.
I've been a police for a little over 20 years. I have seen four or five state mandated day courses and two state mandated night courses in that time. I'm sure I'll continue to see a new one every 4-6 years until I retire as the next lead instructor or academy director (the state academy is the certifying body here) wants to leave their mark on.
At the risk of contradicting myself, if I was king for a day and could set these standards, I would design several of them and they would look a lot more like USPSA classifiers (particularly some of the newer ones that are built more like small stages). I would set high hit factors for them and develop some sort of classification system. I would require that each officer classify at a certain minimum (and at a higher level to be an instructor) and that the agencies rotate the courses of fire used periodically. It wouldn't need to be as stringent as USPSA HHFs, but there would be some requirement to demonstrate actual shooting performance in an environment that potentially includes movement, multiple targets, multiple shooting positions, decision making, etc. It takes our agency about 30 minutes to run a handgun qualification from the time the first instruction is given until the course is done, targets are replaced, mags are reloaded, and they are ready to shoot again. I submit that you could run a one at a time classifier type qualification course for 12-15 people in the same timespan if you were decent at resetting the range.
Because the majority of LEOs will only perform to the level required by the qual.Originally Posted by DaBigBR
So if you make the qual even worse, your guys will become even less proficient with their firearms because that's what's required of them and they've got competing priorities in life. Regardless of however awesome you try to make your training on top of the qual, this will occur.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Then my question would be, what are your metrics? If the only way you are measuring your people is a minimum standard qualification, how do you know what their actual capabilities are? What are you doing to actually train them to be better shooters?
There is zero question that you'll have people that are only going to go the absolute minimum, and probably with assistance at that. There are also people that are going to do everything they can to be best. Then there are the people in the middle.
I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, but it seems like for my agency, when we give people a chance to compete a little, engagement and performance goes up. We've started building and running a hit factor stage or two at the end of a range day and tracking scores. The stage(s) are designed to directly relate to the material of the day. The scores get put out at the end of the week.
It has resulted in more engagement in a couple ways: first, more people care about their performance. They want to hear their score and how it compares. They want to understand where they were weak and where they were strong. Next, they watch and analyze each other and they see things that their peers are doing well and not so well. Even some of our crotchetiest people enjoy it.
Now if I could just get them to come to a match.
1) what scale / agency size are you doing this at ? What is viable in a 50 officer department may not be viable at a 500, 5000. or 15,000 officer department.
2) Qualification is a test and a CYA for the agency, not training, but IME when things go to court "test scores" are the primary (often the only) metric. When push comes to shove your only as good as your worst / least committed shooter so where you set that bar matters.
This is the crux of the issue, right here. What is achievable in a small agency, with leadership dedicated to improving professional standards, and a training cadre who actually has the knowledge and ability to carry it off, is very different from the experience in the vast majority of LE agencies. I'd also submit that the huge 'middle' of your officer population are the ones who just want to do the minimum, because that's what is expected. Your dedicated shooter population is very small, as is the group who can't be bothered to even show up.
Success in this field is totally dependent on two factors: your ability to properly select your instructor cadre, and the support of command to improve performance and standards. Most places have neither of the two. Some have one factor but not the other. A vanishing few have both factors necessary for success. Realistically I could probably count the total number of such places on my fingers, with digits to spare.
I've been out for 2 years now, and my contacts with those outside my own agency are now very limited, but I'd say change has been a mixed bag. Some places I'm aware of are definitely going in the right direction, while others (like my old place) turned around 180° and are sprinting backwards. If you're in a truly progressive spot, count your lucky stars, my friends.
85 sworn divided over five days, twice per year. We do not have our own range, so we lose an 60-90 minutes to travel time (a past practice that I cannot get changed), an hour to lunch, and about an hour to range cleanup and weapons cleaning. It makes the training day more like five hours long. We generally see as few as 8 or as many as 20 officers per day and run 3-5 instructors.
I would generally reject the thought that the department size is a controlling factor and agree more with some of the things that @AMC suggests as the big factors. You need a range staff that has the knowledge, ability to articulate, and time and patience to get it done. You need leadership that is willing to support that staff. You need access to the right supplies. Ultimately you need somebody with passion to push it forward and the people above them to enable them.
I have been very, very fortunate to be supported at least as far as being given some freedom in lesson plan creation. Pushing our program this way has required considerable personal time and expense in attending classes, personal skills development, and material procurement. When I wanted to integrate vehicles, it took paying out of pocket to have junk cars towed in and out to show the benefit to the point that the agency would pay for it next time. When I wanted to shoot steel and then B8s and then USPSA silhouettes, it took paying out of pockets for the first range session or two worth. A lot of that probably seems minor, but stringing together some of those wins is how a program changes.
And again, if you let people compete a little bit, you may be surprised at the increase in engagement.
Sorry for the continued thread drift...
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