Targets: Please tell me this is a joke

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Don't read too much into it.

You're a cop. You're faced with a pregnant lady pointing a gun at you. What do you do?

Substitute pregnant lady with old man, young boy, whatever you want. They're not teaching cops to kill kids and pregnant ladies. They're teaching cops to stay alive by taking appropriate action (firing) on appropriate targets (armed subjects pointing a gun at YOU).

"It's ok that my husband was killed. The shooter was a young boy" See how silly that sounds?


Sgt Lumpy - n0eq
 
That's OK...some guy at the range printed out photos of our nations leaders including 2 prominent California ladies..... and EVERYONE was hitting with uncanny accuracy............
 
NWPilgrim said:
Searching the LE Target web site I could not find any that have men or women holding a badge and a gun. Of course the No More Hesitation line is on their site, but not linked to in their menu system either.
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If you were able to get past their home page -- which has changed since yesterday, and now features a big target with pictures of the "Minnesota state bird" -- you had better luck than I did. This notice is now at the top of that page:

Due to high traffic, we are experiencing difficulties with our servers. We apologize for the inconvenience if you are having a difficult time accessing any of our pages. Thank you for your understanding.​

I haven't been able to get any other pages to load... :cool:
 
Years back, I took an LFI-1 class from Mas Ayoob. In that class, Mas used one of the original "Shoot / Don't Shoot" videos used in law enforcement training. (Hmmm, it must have been a 'film' when it was first produced, being late 60s or early 70s vintage. It was a videotape the year I saw it, and probably digitized by now. Weird...) The film came from law enforcement training, but obviously, LFI was using it to show armed citizens some possible scenarios & decisions they might face.

Anyway. On that film, there were several different types of shoot situations, including one with a child who looked to be around 10 years old who first shot someone else, then started shooting toward the viewer.

That was a "shoot" scene.

It shook me up.

But -- is someone less dead when shot by a child rather than adult?

The youngest multi-victim school shooter was 11 years old.

pax
 
pax said:
Anyway. On that film, there were several different types of shoot situations, including one with a child who looked to be around 10 years old who first shot someone else, then started shooting toward the viewer.

That was a "shoot" scene.

It shook me up.

But -- is someone less dead when shot by a child rather than adult?

The youngest multi-victim school shooter was 11 years old.
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It's human, and a good thing, to be shaken up by that.

But there's a "teachable moment" here, I think, and it has to do with our tendency to classify people, a priori, as "good guys" or "bad guys."

It's sort of a giveaway that Blaine Cooper, in that phone conversation, expresses outrage that the people shown on the targets are "real gun owners:" he's basically assuming that people who don't fit some stereotype are automatically "good guys," and that it's wrong to train cops to overcome their own stereotyping in this regard.

Many of the posters in this thread are making the same assumption. We might try turning this on its head by picturing the sorts of people we do think it's OK to put on targets. People who are dressed in certain ways, perhaps? (Think hoodies here...) People of color, perhaps, especially Arab-looking people?

Again, I realize I'm on delicate ground with this, but I think there's a lot of unconscious racism and classism underlying the outrage over these targets.
 
We might try turning this on its head by picturing the sorts of people we do think it's OK to put on targets.
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Hmmm. That is a fascinating little side trip, right there! Thank you.... :)

You know, there might be another use for mug shots of convicted murderers.

pax
 
I fear that...

... We are training to shoot someone just because they have a gun. I would like to see "no shoot" targets of these same people that have guns in their hands as well.

If I am defending my home and police officers enter and see me with my shotgun, carbine, or handgun are they allowed to kill me? If they have been trained to not hesitate and shoot me just because I am holding a gun are they to be given a free pass?

I would like to see a shoot house training situation where both good guys and bad guys have guns. This is a far more difficult test of determining shoot - no shoot than just automatically shooting a target because it has a gun. Imagine the police killing the 12 year old who recently defended himself and his sister from home invaders with an AR15 just because the kid had a gun in his hands.
 
This is from the DHS website:

Active Shooter: What You Can Do Course

DHS has developed an Independent Study Course titled Active Shooter: What You Can Do. This course was developed to provide the public with guidance on how to prepare for and respond to active shooter crisis situations."

"Recognize potential workplace violence indicators"

I'm sorry but I thought the Department of Homeland Security's job was countering terrorism. I don't view workplace violence as terrorism.
 
My instict after seeing some of these 'targets' is to be outraged.

Ok, I get it, anybody can go all kooked out and be a danger to LE and civilians alike.

The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?

Somebody else said these targets are intended to desensitize officers to the idea of shooting civilians. I'm beginning to think that may be a huge part of it.

While I do not own a tinfoil cap I cannot help but wonder if the DHS is indeed getting ready for a civil uprising.
 
dajowi said:
I'm sorry but I thought the Department of Homeland Security's job was countering terrorism. I don't view workplace violence as terrorism.
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The Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet-level department that was put in place after 9/11, it's true, but countering terrorism was never their only mission. Several formerly independent agencies were placed within DHS, from FEMA, to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (!), to Customs and Immigration (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- ICE is such an awesomely cool acronym :rolleyes:). It's not clear that all, or most, of these changes were for the better.

I haven't looked at the course you mention yet, but I did watch the video on the DHS site on how to protect yourself from an active shooter. It's all pretty good advice on hiding, evacuating, and how not to get shot by police arriving on the scene. But it mentions "challenging the shooter" as strictly a last resort, and shows a guy in a white shirt picking up a truly fearsome-looking pair of scissors from his desk... :cool:

Twmaster said:
The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?
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Just think of her as a Desperate Housewife.
 
Twmaster said:
The one that bothered me the most is the woman in a robe with a handgun. The impression I get is she's defending her home. LE's are supposed to 'not hesitate' and just shoot her? Really?
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Vanya said:
Just think of her as a Desperate Housewife.
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Plenty of people caught up in a domestic violence cycle turn around and attack the responding officers.

pax
 
pax said:
Plenty of people caught up in a domestic violence cycle turn around and attack the responding officers.
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Just so; victims even have been known to "defend" their abusers by doing so.

And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.
 
Just so; victims even have been known to "defend" their abusers by doing so.

And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.
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What I'm worried about is the rationale of these situations being packaged with "gun owners" or "civilians" in general.
 
I find these targets disturbing. I do not believe that the subjects depicted on the targets represent a large portion of what LEOs see in their day to day lives. There is only one race of people, and that aside, how many pregnant women/little boys/ and older sisters are actually active shooters that engage in a firefight with LE? Not many I believe. Rare occurrence. These targets just don't feel right to me.
 
And while we may admire the courage of an officer who, for instance, talks down a child who's wielding a gun, and so defuses the situation, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the officer is putting his or her own safety at risk by choosing not to shoot. Police have every right to put their own safety first if someone is pointing a gun at them -- as do we.
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In this age of home invasions I can understand a LEO breaking in a door of a house and facing the homeowner with a gun. Is that homeowner a criminal or a person exercising his right to self-defense? Of course the assumption is the LEO has announced who he is and has requested access to the home. If it is just a bust the door down entry then I would hope the homeowner would take this threat down. Remember these LEOs do wear body armor so it is not an absolute threat from the law abiding citizen. My God man how could you live with yourself shooting a pregnant woman or kid?
 
North East Redneck said:
Rare occurrence.
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That's the point. These aren't the people police expect to be pointing guns at them, but that doesn't mean that they're any less threatening if they do. An officer who hesitates when confronted with a harmless-looking geezer with a shotgun may not go home that night.

Let me rephrase my earlier question, or exercise: if you (plural you, I'm not singling anyone out) believe that it's OK for police to train with targets showing realistic photos of people, what are acceptable characteristics (age, gender, race, clothing, grooming, attractiveness..) for the people depicted to have? How would police know that they're not "regular gun owners" who shouldn't be shot?

And for the sake of argument, let's assume that one of the purposes of this is to train for "rare occurrences."

C'mon... I dare you all to answer.

Or do you think that training with realistic targets is never OK?
 
if you (plural you, I'm not singling anyone out) believe that it's OK for police to train with targets showing realistic photos of people, what are acceptable characteristics (age, gender, race, clothing, grooming, attractiveness..) for the people depicted to have?
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They should all be depicted as clowns, because we all know clowns are evil and trying to take over the world.

Seriously though, I think a good training variation would be realistic/photo targets of all types, from people(of all types) just standing there, to people holding objects, to people pointing guns as depicted by the targets in question, as well as people with guns, but not raised/pointed at the shooter. The random object and just holding guns would be no shoots, guns raised/aimed would be shoot targets.

It seems that one thing some people are over looking is that these images are not just of people holding guns, they're of people pointing guns at the potential trainee.
 
Evil clowns... yes. :D

It seems that one thing some people are over looking is that these images are not just of people holding guns, they're of people pointing guns at the potential trainee.
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I don't think anyone is overlooking that. The point of the targets is clear from the name the company gives them: No More Hesitation targets. The purpose is to train police not to hesitate to shoot when anyone is pointing a gun at them.

The company now has a statement on their home page that includes the following:

We apologize for the offensive nature of our "No More Hesitation" products. These products have been taken offline due to the opinions expressed by so many, including members of the law enforcement community.

This product line was originally requested and designed by the law enforcement community to train police officers for unusually complex situations where split-second decisions could lead to unnecessary loss of life.​

However, there's still a pregnant woman target available. She's also pointing a gun at the viewer, but... she looks sorta whacked. :cool:
 
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