LAPD Officer shows how inept she is with her gun

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Red Bull

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I was watching a great show last night on the Discovery channel (I think) called "Insiders" which featured a documentary about the LAPD.
An Officer was killed during the show, very sad, by an ambush to his car on a routine call. He was shot through his door into his head from the back as he rolled up to another call.

Anyway, a couple days after the shooting the featured Officers of the show went to qualify with their handguns. The featured Officers were a male and a female who drive together. Keep in mind, this is the LAPD, and these guys pull guns a few times a DAY on really really bad guys, and they just had an Officer killed. These cops pull their guns out and point them in low ready at car loads of people on ROUTINE traffic stops if the car looks like it contains gangster type people. So, in other words, they rely on their guns a lot more than most cops in other areas. You would think these guys would take their sidearms seriouslly.

The qualification was just about a joke (as we all know), especially considering that the female Officer PASSED even with her pathetic performance. Her groups, (when she got her gun to fire) were about 12 inches at what looked like about 7 yards. Her groups were very much low and to the right of COM, obviously a sign of anticipating recoil....even using a low recoiling full sized 9mm Berreta.

This is how her performance went:
She went up to the line. She drew her gun, (apparently before any buzzer?) and pointed it at a target. She pulled the trigger...and nothing happened (except that she jerked the gun down a bit in anticipation of recoil). She got that look on her face we have all seen when someone forgets to disengage the safety. She then disengaged her slide mounted safety and pointed the gun back at the target (keep in mind that this is supposed to be similating a life threatening situation where she is defeding her or YOUR life from a bad guy). All this time the timer is running and she is trying to "qualify". She points it back at the target and *click"* it goes again! Oops, she forgot to put a round in the chamber! She says "oops" and racks the slide and gets a round in the chamber. (Clock it still running, and she or YOU are still getting killed while she cannot figure out how to run her gun). She then points it at the target, and gets a shot off....and her gun jams!
I am told that the full sized Berreta's are tough to jam so this is amazing that she accomplished this. And yes, it was her fault and she admitted it. She said "that is what you get when you never clean your gun" with a chuckle.
After all this, she still qualified even with the huge groups she shot.

This is an officer of the LAPD. Officers around her pull their guns several times a shift. Another Officer was just killed, so you would think they would take their guns seriously after that. She does not even know to remove the safety, she can't remember to load the gun, and she keeps her gun so dirty that when she finally gets it to fire, it jams. All this, and she can barely hit a full sized sillouette target and she STILL passed her qualifier.
This just shows how pathetic some/most Police Officers are at gun handling. I would imagine that gun handling skills are better at the LAPD than at most places due to that fact they actually have to use their guns whereas many Officers never even pull their gun for months or years at a time.

And...after all this and her gun jams, they show her putting her gun back on, saying with a chuckle that she "needs to clean it sometime", and she goes on apparently on her shift! She has no concern that her gun is so dirty that it jams, and she is going to go to work that way and clean it later (someday?)!

So....if anyone uses Police Officers as a standard of how we are supposed to perform in shooting situations, keep this scenario in mind. Cops in general are NOT a very good example of how any decent shooter will perform with a gun.

I have cops in the family, and I see cops at the range, and I am not kidding when I say that my wife shot better than these cops on the very first day I taught her. "Pathetic" is how I describe their shooting skills.
 
Red Bull,

Sad, very sad...
And there are other officers like her out there. One can do an incredible amount of damage to the image of so many others, often without even realizing it.

I wonder why the producers of the show chose to 'showcase' this particular officer?
What's their particular agenda?
LA certainly doesn't need any more publicity right now.

Kinda like the comforting thought that somewhere out there is a physican/doctor who graduated last in his class and a patient (maybe you or me) has an appointment to see him today... :eek:

What a way to start off a Monday morning...




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...defend the 2nd., it protects us all.
No fate but what we make...
 
Now this isn't a flame against Ladies/Cops or Glocks.
A female LEO near the end of her training was at my Club.
A LIFE SIZE silhouette target at 7yds...
First 2 shots MISSED !!! :(
*****
Case 2....
A male LEO in training was told to load his Glock 22 (.40cal,15rnds) & fire at his target.
30 secs later the RO is called by him to be told that he was finished shooting.
"Strange" the RO thought, "I haven't heard that many shots fired..."
He looks down & on the floor are SEVEN UNFIRED ROUNDS !
The LEOs here in Brisbane Australia are being taught to handle their Glocks with NO BULLETS .... :(
Thus they have to rack the slide & CLICK
Rack the slide & CLICK.
So what the LEO did was bang, rack, bang, rack - You get the picture... ;)
So crappy training isn't just in your local are my friends, it's a world wide epidemic! :(


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"The Gun from Down Under !"
http://www.para1911fanclub.w3.to/
E-mail hotshot_2000@hotmail.com
Alternate E-mail
HS2000@ausi.com
 
And posters here doubt the high miss rate and the fact 9 out of 10 dead cops never touch their gun? It is worse than LAPD. Shooters can posture all they want, but the Diallo shooting was a pristine affair compared to most and more dismal performances are in the wings waiting to surface.
When you have hundreds of shooters to train as we do you soon learn you can't get into the fancy stuff like the gun rags show you. That isn't realistic nor logical. You have to come up with something SIMPLE. The officer mentioned wasn't a rookie. Imagine what she came out of the academy like. The old cliche "we resort to our training" sure falls flat doesn't it?
 
I agree with you pluspinc that Officer training apparently needs to be simple and easy because they are not going to get a lot more paid instruction into their budgets anytime soon.
But, what they really need is practice.
The point is, she already knew how to get the safety off! She already knew how to rack the slide! But, she has practiced so little that she is clueless in operating the gun. She already has had the instruction on how to operate her gun, but what good is it if she does not even practice enough to have the basics down?
This is a classic case to show that using Police Officers to represent "how shooters perform" is not a good comparison. You cannot apply your "fright syndrome" here. She was not afraid. She just doesn't know what she is doing in the first place, just like many Officers. She was a fool with a gun from the start. You put her in a real shooting and how is she going to perform? (we all know the answer).
This Officer is not a product, IMO of bad training, but instead of little training and NO practice. You can only resort to your training if you practice it in the first place. If she can't even get a round in the chamber and the safety "off" on her gun, from the holster, then can we even imagine that she has put in even one solitary hour a year of practicing on how to use her gun?
If even a small percentage of Cops are this bad at gun handling, then we can guess they they do not just practice "a little"...they don't practice at all, period. It is no wonder they fall to pieces when they need to use the gun for real.
 
Interesting thread, but it is absolutely appalling that someone who is required to carry a weapon as part of their job is so inept and a danger to herself and all around. And of course as a taxpayer, I'm absolutely thrilled to think that I'll have the opportunity to chip in to pay for her stupidity and ineptitiude when she finally screws the pooch.

I find pluspinc's comments particularly telling, though. I have a good friend and former neighbor who just retired from the US Secret Service. He's a very senior guy whose responsibilites included investigating any shooting incident that involved a SS agent. Some of the stories he shared are just WILD, with 10, 20, 30 shots fired, NO HITS, some with hits in the strangest places and in the strangest patterns, etc. I would point out that these were incidents involving Secret Service agents, who are highly trained and must qualify monthly, and although the good guys generally came out on top, it was dumb luck as often as not. I learned two things from my friend - simple stuff works best, and when TSHTF, all bets are off.
Stay safe, y'all, M2

[This message has been edited by Mike in VA (edited February 28, 2000).]
 
Some of the stories he shared are just WILD, with 10, 20, 30 shots fired, NO HITS, some
with hits in the strangest places and in the strangest patterns, etc. I would point out
that these were incidents involving Secret Service agents, who are highly trained and must qualify monthly, and although the good guys generally came out on top, it was
dumb luck as often as not. I learned two things from my friend - simple stuff works best,and when TSHTF, all bets are off.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Interesting what the "best" do. But you still have doubters as to the 92% miss rate. The gun rag heads won't give up believing everything is just wonderful out there.
It isn't much better with civilians.
 
Apparently the female LEO passed the police
academy which had a set of STANDARDS. She also probably passed frequent qualification
tests. What I have tried to get fellow LEO's
to do is practice on their own to keep their
skills up. I have seen officers spend 40hours
in an intense training session for firearms
and a few months later not know how to take the gun apart. This is not lack of training
but failure to identify the need for constant
retraining.

Most ( not all of course ) manuel of arms
training can take place w/o going to the
range. things as simple as dry firing your
waepon increases strenghth and familiarity.

The responsibility for the officers ability to survive ultimately rests w/ him/her.
 
Some stories to contrast:

Saw a number of local cops, both genders, shooting from retention starting from the holster and hitting very FAST and reliably. I would have to fight against them even with initiative on my side.

Also talked to a tiny Vietnamese girl working for minnesota INS about her Beretta 96...turns out she's quing the dept. for requiring her to use that particular gun even though her hands are too tiny to grip it or to reach the trigger. St. Paul PD also quired full or mid-size .40 Glocks and if officers can't handle them they don't work there.

Takes all kinds...
 
I've seen the show in question several times- it makes me shudder each and every time.

Even my wife, who is nowhere close to being interested in guns, got a look of puzzlement of her face the first time she saw it.
 
What are you all griping about????????
If you have ever worked in LE you know that the brass picked the MOST PC officer they had for the show. Dont tell me that you really believed they would let you ride along with "Butch", a 6'4'' white guy who loves to shoot, works permanent midnites in the worst part of town, is more than a little jaded about his work at times, and has a reputation with the scumbags as being tough. No, no. We'll show them a caring female officer that had reservations about pointing that instrument of death at another living creature. The LAPD is not stupid.
 
Not at all surprising. Many cops aren't into firearms like the members of TFL are. It's just part of the job/uniform/etc. From what has been described, she is not the worse - at least she didn't point the gun at the rangemaster!

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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt
 
There are more like her out there. And as many or more hims.

We had one, just recently retired, who when her pistol was fitted with tritium sights still couldn't qualify at night. I told her to use her sights. She said she couldn't see them at night. I told her they glowed in the dark. She looked and said, " 'SOB', they do glow in the dark!"

Another time she had problems loading her magazines because she insisted on putting the
cartridges in backwards.

I have more stories.



[This message has been edited by bruels (edited March 01, 2000).]
 
LAPD officers are required to qualify every other month with their handgun. In Jan and July they qualify with the shotgun. There is a minimum score needed to qualify. If an officer fails to qualify due to a low score he/she usually gets back in line and tries again. And this continues till they do shoot a qualifying score. If they fail to and the month goes by, they get disciplined with a formal admonishment (unless you are a member of the brass, in which case you are not punished at all...can you say double standard?) If this is not their first time they might get a 1 or 2 day suspension. But the the subject as to why they failed to shoot well enough is never brought in play unless the officer brings it up as a defense. I you fail to qualify, no matter how many times, you are allowed to immediately return to the field and continue with your cop duties. Can you say city liability?

LAPD has a lot of outstanding shooters on their training staff (some are world champion shooters and this includes the OIC of the Firearms Training Unit) and all you have to do is ask for help with your shooting and they will help you. But hardly no one asks...too proud to ask I guess.

One of the problems is that very few officers especially the females officers have any interest in firearms. And the LAPD brass (not the Firearms Training Unit!) do not allow enough time to be spent on training in this area. They would rather spend it on teaching Spanish and human relations. Never heard of any officer getting sued for not knowing Spanish.

FWIW

NRA
SAF
VHA
CRPA


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So I wasn't the only one who saw this show. I found it interesting that her partner said afterwards, some thing to the effect that their guns should be well maintained because we rely on them everyday. If I was her partner, she would have been field stripping and cleaning her weapon and my weapon before leaving that range. Or she would've been bussing it back to the office. I think officers should be given time off of a shift once a week to go and shoot at the range. A couple of hours a week every week. It's sad to know that most only fire their weapons once or twice a year.
 
Can't argue. I tend to forget that most officers don't realize that competency with their weapon is a big part of GOING HOME. I try to shoot atleast once a week, and I always shoot at the 25-yrd mark. If the range went to 50, I'd shoot there. Funny though.... Everyone gives me greif about being a 'gun nut', but who do you think they want there when it breaks bad?
Unfortunately, anti-gun hype is strong in law enforcement. Shooters are harassed and insulted by other officers because of their interest. Bad, very bad...
 
ARshooter: just exactly what score is required to qualify? The reason that I ask is that I've been practicing point shooting, and find I can keep about 40 to 45 shots in the K5 zone at 7 yards doing double taps. Would I pass?

(Pluspinc: I've been trying this on a darkened range as your course suggests. I was amazed that it works, but it does)


Thanks,
Dick

Thanks,
Dick
 
Rob43 mentioned some "PC" intentions behind the choosing of this officer. I think he probably is right to some extent, but don'tt you think they could have chosen someone who was at least not inept?

Here's a question: Do the various Dept's, like LAPD offer free range time for the officers? Do they have to pay for ammo, time, targets, etc?

I know I would sure as hell be cleaning my gun and practicing a lot if my life depended upon it, regardless of whether I had to pay for it myself.
 
We have a privately owned range in my hometown and the police department pays membership dues so that their officers may practice in our facilities. It is unfortunate, but true, that most of the damage in our range (ie. bulletholes in the lights, walls, and ceiling) is caused by police officers. I have witnessed several incidents that tell me that many police officers are not only incompetent with a firearm, but down right dangerous.
 
Is this another inditement of cops and women? Or will we all admitt that ALL of us [regardless of occupation] needs more Practice when it comes to firearms shooting and handling and saftey?
 
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