Just a quick comment for all the "needs to have been there done that to be MY instructor" people.
First, why do you need police or military credentials to coach shooters? I do one-on-one with new shooters just to get smaller groups in target shooting then point them to other instructors if and when they get beyond my area of expertise for instructing. I've never been on the police force nor in the military.
Second, those of you in a hand to hand martial art, do you require your teacher to be an octogon fighter or underground blood sport participant? Learning to use firearms as a defensive/offensive discipline isn't much different from Krav Maga "self-defense" classes.
To follow up, I've taken classes from police officers and there isn't much their experience adds to teaching the introductory defensive use genre a majority of Americans would find useful and actively seek. People need to start somewhere and more people will start the learning process than those that will continue on to higher education, so to speak (partly due to the high cost of firearms training).