shooting skills of the police
Most cops don't shoot very well because they aren't that interested in guns or shooting and they don't practice. Period.
In my state new recruits get 40 hours of firearms training and shoot 750-1000 rounds in entry level training. The basic training cirriculum that we use is pretty good, but it's BASIC. There is no state standard here on how often officers have to qualify or requalify once they're on the job, although many/most states have some kind of modified PPC that all officers shoot on once a year to measure marksmanship skills. My department shoots handgun quarterly, about 150 rounds per session. That's about enough to keep officer's skills at the same level they graduated recruit school with, in most cases. We don't have the time or the money or the staffing to do much more firearms training than that.
I've got about 3 cops (out of 40) that always have trouble qualifying. They're all smaller females with limited grip strength, limited upper body strength and small hands. Going to a weapons platform with a thinner grip and a shorter reach to the trigger helps somewhat, but they still struggle. I had to do coaching and requal on a couple of these individuals two weeks ago. I think these women came to the range hoping that I could coach them and give them the "secret" that would magically transform them into competent shooters. Well, I did. As we all know, the secret is PRACTICE. I told them to buy 50 or 100 rounds of .40 practice ammo every payday and go shoot. I gave them a list of simple drills to do. I promised that if they followed that program, when our next session of inservice training starts in September, they would qualify with no problem.
Of course, I did some remedial instruction with these same individuals last summer and again this last spring, and told them the EXACT same thing and gave them the EXACT set of practice drills to shoot, and they didn't follow through on it. Not that I was surprised or anything . . .
I've been a cop since 1980 and a firearms instructor since 1982, and I shoot occassionally in PPC, IPSC and IDPA (usually about 4 matches a year).( I'm a "marksman" in PPC, upper C class in IPSC in "production" class and high edge of "sharpshooter" in stock service pistol in IDPA. So, competent but not outstanding or exceptional or anything.)(I personally shoot about 250 rounds a month in practice with my primary duty gun.) All of my non-police competitive shooting friends expend a LOT more ammunition in practice and when shooting in matches than any cop I know, other than myself and members of the local tac team. Of course they're better -- they have a recreational interest in shooting and they PRACTICE. And when they practice, it just isn't some aimless expenditure of ammo, they have drills they shoot to develop specific skills.
There are a lot of cops who have a mild interest in shooting and go out and practice once in a while. There are many others who at least go shoot in practice a little bit before they have their next qualification, so they fire a better score. The majority of cops just sort of bumble along and get by. And many who do practice don't get full value out of it because they don't have any plan to what they're practicing. At the least, keep shooting the mandated qualification course until you can consistently get a high score under all circumstances. Just following that course will give some kind of structure to your practice routine.
Of course, marksmanship skill isn't the only issue to survival. Tactics and situational awareness are citical.
And shooting isn't the only skill that cops need. Once skill I find sadly lacking is writing skills. The work product of the police officer is a written report (in that way they're just like a newspaper reporter). I find a lot of cops (MANY on my department) who have awful writing skills and they're always getting reports rejected by the supervisors or by the DA's office. At least where I work, they need to implement MUCH higher standards on reading comprehension and writing skills for new employees, to avoid these problems.
And the cops need to be able to be proficient in emergency vehicle operation, and defensive tactics, and elementry interrogation and investigation and keep up on changes in the law & procedure and maintain an acceptable level of physical fitness and . . . so marksmanship isn't the ONLY skill they need nor the only thing the PD needs to train on. But, to be a professional, you need to be able to perform competently on ALL that stuff, and a police officer's level of marksmanship skill and gunhandling is one way to evaluate their personal professionalism and commitment to the job.
The good cops will make the effort to be competent on all those skills, even if they don't have a particular personal interest in some of them.