Better shot than law enforcement?

M

Metellus

New member
Who here gets warm fuzzies at the range when you shoot better than the federal agent, local police, or sheriff in the lane next to you? Not sure if I should be proud or worried! ;)

The following not meant to disrespect law enforcement.

I was at the range one day out shooting an agent (maybe a cadet?) armed with a M4 with my glock. Then i switched to my AR-15 and shot the center out of a target while she missed man sized targets at 15 yards... with her rifle.

The next day i was shooting my glocks and 1911s and blowing center of the targets out at 7 yards while a LEO (maybe a cadet?) was occasionally missing a man sized at 7 yards. He said he needed to get good in a month because he already failed qualification.

Yet another day a girl with a police cadet shirt and a guy with a police instructor were shooting. They looked very serious and she seemed stressed out and shot horribly. The funny thing is that he was giving her all this instruction yet... he wasn't that great.

I'm glad I learned to shoot over time for fun. Having your job on the line based on how well you shoot must be stressful.

I guess the bottom line is nobody is a born shot no matter what their profession is.
 
Probrobly due to most members of the police not being related to Rambo or Braddock. There is quite a good variation of skill between officers. Further down there are some stats and so on discussing studies down on police shooting skills and so on and they are not too hard to believe.
 
Most law enforcement officers carry a gun because it comes with the job, not because they like to shoot. A fair amount of those who don't really care about shooting learn to shoot well and never have a problem, but there are always those few who come out and always slip by with barely passing scores. Otherwise they might be exemplary officers. You have to remember that most people (thank God) who come into law enforcement are not looking to shoot anybody, and won't in a 20 or 30 year career. Even if you are working one of the high speed/low drag areas (drugs, robberies, car theft task forces, etc.) you do a lot more pointing, yelling and threatening than shooting at people.

A lot of smaller PD's and SO's also have miniscule firearms training budgets. I have seen some that get only 50 or 100 rounds per year to qualify officers, and that's it. Even if you're good, you have to practice.
 
I get worried when I see joe blow pumping round after round at the target and can barely hit it, or they have more hits in the 2x4 target supports. Or they empty a mag as fast as they can pull the trigger and are lucky if they hit the ground.

So you've come across a few people that have no firearm sense. I see lots of them everytime I go to the range.
 
From talking with many LEO's, I'd say range time/practice is pretty far down the ladder of importance. They have a lot of paperwork to do and various other responsibilities that eat up their time. Many just want to head straight home after work.
 
What follows is a true story. The DC area is overrun with law enforcement personnel (I do not mean this critically or negatively, but there are many LEOs and innumerable local, state and Federal agencies). My local ranges has quite a few LEO members, but it also gets lots of “one month members” who practice before formal handgun qualification.

About two years ago, a young, female Capitol Police officer was practicing next to me with her issued autoloader (as I recall, it was a .40 Smith of some sort) and she couldn’t hit squat. Further, she expressed her concerns to the Range Master and to me because her periodic (semiannual, I believe) qualification was scheduled for the next week. I tried to help her with the very basics, and it was clear she was really “pulling” the trigger, causing numerous “seven o’clock” misses. I was practicing with my Ruger GP100 (KGP-141 with a gold dot front sight).

After several minutes of help, she was doing somewhat better and she started watching my slow, deliberate SA revolver target practice. She then asked about my Ruger, and I explained it was a revolver. She said, “Oh, I’ve heard about them, but I’ve never seen one”. Obviously, I showed her the revolver, let her shoot it, etc.

I was astonished, however, that a Capitol officer would be such firearms novice that she had never even handled a revolver, no less fired one, or having marginally proficiency with one.
 
Went to a 3 gun shoot in MD a couple months back - 2 DC SWAT members were in attendance. One of them had an M4 with a 100 rd Beta, he emptyed the Beta shooting at targets in the 50 yard range, missing all of them. The other SWAT member did much better, 2 - 30 round mags and he didnt even go dry on the first one before he took out the 5 - 50 yard targets.

Meanwhile in a recent IPSC tournament, there was a either a military or policeman - who scored 2 hits in the "A" range on 9 targets (including a combat reload) in under 11 seconds. Bad Ass!
 
Boy, this is a subject I could talk about for a while. First my observation is that police officers are much better shots than the AVERAGE citizen, they received training on proper techniques and have to meet a minimum standard to stay on the job. While I consider our course of fire to be a low standard I have been present at a few concealed carry classes and the AVERAGE CCW holder doesn't hold a candle to our officer's. I also shoot on public ranges occasionally and am rarely impressed.

Now with that being said, I believe the typical gun enthusiast especially an IDPA/IPSC competitor is a much better shot than the AVERAGE OFFICER. I have been the top shooter in my department of 66 officers for the past 8-9 years, yet I know of many non-police who can out shoot me at the drop of a hat.

There are many reasons on why police don't shoot better, among them is the fact stated above that for most, the gun is another tool, like mace, handcuffs and the ink pen, they are not gun enthusiasts. They will shoot their qualification course and, if they pass, probably won't shoot at all until the next qualification. If they are a weak shooter they may shoot 100-200 rounds prior to qualification to "sharpen up".

I would love for all officers to be +90% shooters but that isn't going to happen. The constraints of budgeting and interest (for both the officer and the department) probably won't ever allow it. While we are passionate about our hobby, they (the typical officer) do not share that passion.

There are many attributes that are desired of an officer that are prized above marksmanship. Courage, integrity, the ability to deal with the public, to thoroughly investigate an incident and write a report that conveys all the key information all take priority. They need to use good judgement on the street and if they make an arrest, to be able to gather evidence and information and see the case through trial and give honest, unbiased testimony. An officer will catch much more heat for low performance in these areas than for shooting a low qualification score.
 
There are many attributes that are desired of an officer that are prized above marksmanship. Courage, integrity, the ability to deal with the public, to thoroughly investigate an incident and write a report that conveys all the key information all take priority. They need to use good judgement on the street
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I agree in principal, but when the sh*t hits the fan and I have to count on an officer to save my life, all the courtesy, judgment, and integrity isn't going to be my main concern. They better be able to shoot well.
 
The ability to deal with the public is generally more important in my opinion. It would cut down on alot of shootings and taser actions in the first place and seems to be something that have been missing that was present in the past. The authorative figure (of course it didn't work too well during the 50s-70s at times). Of course the more and more complex paperwork they been seeing doesn't help, especially when they have to fill out 2 hours of it for an arrest.
 
Limey...

The ability to deal with the public is generally more important in my opinion. It would cut down on alot of shootings and taser actions in the first place
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I have to take issue with this. Following this logic... all the police would have to do is deal with the public better to cut down on shootings. Well, if a police officer shot somebody and all he had to do was talk to him to solve the situation... it would be an un-justified shooting. They only shoot when there is grave danger. Not when a PR agent is needed. The PR agent is needed after a good cop shoots a bad guy because people are too over sensative.
 
Perhaps I didn't express myself very well in my original post. The need for shooting skills is critical for surviving a lethal threat encounter and I believe that the record reflects that police win far more than they lose. However the police administrators tend to place marksmanship way down the priority chart.

In dealing with the public I was talking about police/community relations and treating people with as much dignity and respect as they will allow you to. That type of conduct does not apply to those who would kill an officer or citizen.

But to keep this on topic let me summarize my comments. 1. I believe a typical officer is a better shot than a typical non-officer. 2. A firearms enthusiast, especially one who shoots in competition, is going to be better, perhaps much better than the average officer. What will it take to change that? More mandatory range time and higher standards, neither of which I see coming because of who holds the purse strings (the elected officials and the administrators).
 
I took a class at Sig Arms Academy the same time a group of SEALs was doing some training there. Obviously we had no interaction with them but when someone inevitably asked the instructor how the SEALs' shooting skills were, he said there was nothing superhuman about it and they actually see a lot of civilians who are better marksmen.

Of course, he went on to say the SEALs have a totally different mindset and popping off a few hundred rounds during a weekend class is a lot different than what they're training to do....
 
at my academy range week....

We had everyone pass qualification....at least in my range group. We had 20 in my group and I'd say that the breakdown was probably something like this:

90%+ 8
80-90% 8
75-80% 2

75% was the lowest qualification level. It was nice to see one of the officers (a female) go from shooting in the 40's on day one, to qualifying at 79 (i think). Granted that's not a great score, but loads of improvement in her in TWO days. (we only did the range mon-wed). If anyone cares what I shot, check the sig,and guess. :D
 
If you want to save more officers' lives with the least amount of resources, you should increase driver training and decision-making skills. Given the distances that most shootings take place, being a "good" marksman isn't very high on the list of police survival skills. Nor should it be very high on the list of "saving someone else's life" skills. I can't think of many situations where a cop realistically saved someone's life because they were a superior, or even average shooter. On TV maybe, but that's about it....
 
I dunno, not so long ago an LAPD officer sniped a hostage taker using a .45 ACP. Pretty long shot for a handgun too, if I recall. If I was the hostage, I'd certainly hope the officer has better than average skills.

However, I tend to agree with your point about a priority being placed on additional skills.
 
well, I don't have any empirical knowledge of how well cops shoot. I do know that with almost every reported story , the police seem to hit an average of 10% or so of shots fired. NYC paid about 3 million to the family of Amadou Diallo. Four Undercover Cops emptied their Glock's at him, and "only" hit him about 14 times. Lets see, 4 cops, each with a 17 round Glock, means they connected with about 20% of their shots from point blank range.
No, cops dont really shoot well at all. If I was carrying as part of the job, and knew that I could well be involved in a life or death situation, I would darn sure practice more then they seem to.
 
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