Friday morning after I got off shift I reported over to the indoor range to run a make-up firearms qualification for a few officers. One was a woman who was just coming off maternity leave, and who had missed the last three in-service sessions. The other was a guy who had been employed as an officer in the Milwaukee area, and just quit his PD to move to Madison to attend the Law School here full time. He got hired as a part-timer by one of the suburban agencies, and his intention is to keep his certification active by working there three or four times a month, at least until he is finished with law school and has some idea where his life & career are headed.
The firearms portion of quarterly in-service training for the Suburban Group this time was a 50 round basics course for a score, followed by a 60 round course that involved low light and flashlight assisted shooting, one hand only shooting, and one stage where the officer has to draw weak hand only, engage the target weak hand only, reload weak hand only, and then re-engage the target weak hand only. The instructor is to explain and demo all the component parts to the drill prior to the student shooting them, and there is no time limit and this time it is not a scored exercise.
The female had a little trouble, mostly because she hadn't shot since last spring sometime and because her hand is just a little small for her Glock 17. But after a little coaching and some extra practice, we got her through.
The male officer had a Glock 22. His weapon handling was excellent. In two stages of the basics course, dummy rounds were loaded into the magazine to create a failure to fire malfunction. His malfunction clearances were correct and positive and fast. His drawstroke was smooth and fast. His reloads were really fast. He looked REALLY good.
Unfortunately, HE COULDN'T HIT THE DAMN TARGET! I worked with him for over an hour, and he never fired an 80% passing score on the basics exercise so he could progress to shoot the second, somewhat more difficult course.
He explained that at his prior PD there was a great emphasis on timed exercises, and on how fast you could clear the holster and shoot. According to this officer, almost all the training they did was a 5 yards and closer, because the training staff felt that it was statistically unlikely that an officer would be involved in a shooting incident at a greater distance. They did quarterly training and it seems that they fired a lot of interesting drills and tactical scenarios, BUT THEY NEVER FIRED A TRADITIONAL MARKSMANSHIP COURSE FOR A SCORE. EVER.
This officer had been training for the last 5+ years to be fast, but the targets were NEVER ever scored or evaluated. They just shot the drills, cleaned their guns, called it "training" and went back on duty.
I was able to determine that he didn't use the sights AT ALL when he shot. He just pointed the gun at the target and pulled the trigger the appropriate number of times, really fast. Inside 5 or 7 yards, he was capable of shooting a raggedy but acceptable group. Beyond that, he missed the target most of the time.
I don't think this guy was giving me excuses when he described the training program that his previous PD used, but I'm going to try to follow up on that because I'm curious.
(At various times, police firearms training goes through fads. When I started in 1981, most of the shooting we did were modified PPC courses (usually out to 25 yards) on B27 or B27 targets. (I still think PPC can be a useful way to learn the basics). As time went on, the time limits got tighter and the targets got smaller. We started with revolvers, and by 1990 or so nearly all the agencies around here were using auto pistols. We went from PPC based courses to IPSC based courses of fire.
Then in the early 1990s somebody decided that keeping a score in order to measure a shooter's basic marksmanship ability was in some way a liability issue, so some departments went to pass/fail scoring, or did away with evaluation entirely. Rather than shoot traditional courses of fire, we began shooting drills or "task oriented qualification", where an officer would be evaluated pass/fail on a certain skill to a certain standard. (For example, one task might be "Shoot 6 rounds, perform a mandatory reload, shoot another 6 rounds, total of 12 rounds in 20 seconds with 75% (9 hits) in the A zone of a TQ-15 target") Firearms training consisted of a bunch of tasks like that scored go/no-go. Either you met the standard for that drill or you didn't, and if you didn't, then you got some remedial training. Which wasn't necessarily a bad way to conduct training, but you still have to look once in a while to see if the student is even hitting the target!)
I have this guy scheduled to some back on Tuesday morning. I told him to bring 150 rounds. I'm going to try to re-teach him how to use the sights.
I've always found too much emphasis on speed to be counter-productive, whether the students be police/military/security or beginning shooters or IPSC/IDPA competitors, or whatever. You have to be able to hit a single target in a timely manner on a square range before you can progress to doing more difficult and dynamic exercises on multiple targets.
The firearms portion of quarterly in-service training for the Suburban Group this time was a 50 round basics course for a score, followed by a 60 round course that involved low light and flashlight assisted shooting, one hand only shooting, and one stage where the officer has to draw weak hand only, engage the target weak hand only, reload weak hand only, and then re-engage the target weak hand only. The instructor is to explain and demo all the component parts to the drill prior to the student shooting them, and there is no time limit and this time it is not a scored exercise.
The female had a little trouble, mostly because she hadn't shot since last spring sometime and because her hand is just a little small for her Glock 17. But after a little coaching and some extra practice, we got her through.
The male officer had a Glock 22. His weapon handling was excellent. In two stages of the basics course, dummy rounds were loaded into the magazine to create a failure to fire malfunction. His malfunction clearances were correct and positive and fast. His drawstroke was smooth and fast. His reloads were really fast. He looked REALLY good.
Unfortunately, HE COULDN'T HIT THE DAMN TARGET! I worked with him for over an hour, and he never fired an 80% passing score on the basics exercise so he could progress to shoot the second, somewhat more difficult course.
He explained that at his prior PD there was a great emphasis on timed exercises, and on how fast you could clear the holster and shoot. According to this officer, almost all the training they did was a 5 yards and closer, because the training staff felt that it was statistically unlikely that an officer would be involved in a shooting incident at a greater distance. They did quarterly training and it seems that they fired a lot of interesting drills and tactical scenarios, BUT THEY NEVER FIRED A TRADITIONAL MARKSMANSHIP COURSE FOR A SCORE. EVER.
This officer had been training for the last 5+ years to be fast, but the targets were NEVER ever scored or evaluated. They just shot the drills, cleaned their guns, called it "training" and went back on duty.
I was able to determine that he didn't use the sights AT ALL when he shot. He just pointed the gun at the target and pulled the trigger the appropriate number of times, really fast. Inside 5 or 7 yards, he was capable of shooting a raggedy but acceptable group. Beyond that, he missed the target most of the time.
I don't think this guy was giving me excuses when he described the training program that his previous PD used, but I'm going to try to follow up on that because I'm curious.
(At various times, police firearms training goes through fads. When I started in 1981, most of the shooting we did were modified PPC courses (usually out to 25 yards) on B27 or B27 targets. (I still think PPC can be a useful way to learn the basics). As time went on, the time limits got tighter and the targets got smaller. We started with revolvers, and by 1990 or so nearly all the agencies around here were using auto pistols. We went from PPC based courses to IPSC based courses of fire.
Then in the early 1990s somebody decided that keeping a score in order to measure a shooter's basic marksmanship ability was in some way a liability issue, so some departments went to pass/fail scoring, or did away with evaluation entirely. Rather than shoot traditional courses of fire, we began shooting drills or "task oriented qualification", where an officer would be evaluated pass/fail on a certain skill to a certain standard. (For example, one task might be "Shoot 6 rounds, perform a mandatory reload, shoot another 6 rounds, total of 12 rounds in 20 seconds with 75% (9 hits) in the A zone of a TQ-15 target") Firearms training consisted of a bunch of tasks like that scored go/no-go. Either you met the standard for that drill or you didn't, and if you didn't, then you got some remedial training. Which wasn't necessarily a bad way to conduct training, but you still have to look once in a while to see if the student is even hitting the target!)
I have this guy scheduled to some back on Tuesday morning. I told him to bring 150 rounds. I'm going to try to re-teach him how to use the sights.
I've always found too much emphasis on speed to be counter-productive, whether the students be police/military/security or beginning shooters or IPSC/IDPA competitors, or whatever. You have to be able to hit a single target in a timely manner on a square range before you can progress to doing more difficult and dynamic exercises on multiple targets.