Time, Money, & Resources

In the news we hear about police actions that cause the public to lose faith in their officers. One such event is a bad shoot. Do we blame the officer for not seeking further skill development with firearms or do we blame the annual department provided minimal training and low level qualification? There is another situation where the best decisions were made and a negative outcome still occurs. Not every cop is a gun enthusiast. Not every cop likes to shoot. Not every cop will still shoot or train in inclement weather. Blaming the officer is usually the answer, so let’s look at the agency side.

The qualification shoot is established to protect the agency. This shoot shows the officer has basic skillsets to handle and operate a firearm in a safe manner and meet whatever standard (however high or low) the department has set. The qualification is a minimum standard.

Department provided firearms training for the most part is a check the box session to ensure officers can pass the qualification shoot. If it were possible to send and complete this training by email or make it a PowerPoint, it would have been done already… long ago – like deescalation or proper windshield wiper use. The training is minimal and doesn’t get very far past a certain level because of time, budget, and officers not willing to hone their skills to a level where they can fix malfunctions on their own without needing to stop everything and having an instructor fix it for them.

If firearms skills were rated from one to ten and ten is highest- most department provided LE training rarely passes a 3 or 4. This is due to a majority of the officers struggling to reach that level, with only a few officers seeking improvement beyond the rest. Due to this struggle, programs can’t go any higher/further and the officers looking to improve quickly become bored and lose interest because department training is stuck in safely loading and unloading firearms as the training (this is an exaggeration).

The truth many do not understand- firearms are not the most frequently used tool in an officer’s arsenal. Communication and deconfliction skills are. This does not mean firearms are not important – it’s the opposite. Firearms are hugely important- the infrequency of their use has lessened their importance with officers who don’t look beyond their own existence. This is how shoddy gear (like problematic holsters) can be held in high regard – they are worn but not used. A lot of officers are playing the odds they won’t be involved in a shooting.

For most cops, firearms training is in a sterile environment facing static targets with everyone standing in a firing line in the open. If this is all an officer trains with, when they encounter a location with things like furniture and moving threats- how well are they prepared? One recent observation shared by Will Petty of Centrifuge Training in a VCQB course was along the lines of – the officers are doing what they were trained to do. If you don’t see officers making use of cover immediately available, do you think it might because during their training it wasn’t provided or addressed? We can point out these glaring issues after the fact with little effort and call that officer stupid. I bet that officer wants to live, wants to win the fight, and does not want to be shot or stabbed.

It’s easy to point fingers. It takes more understanding to recognize root causes. It takes all of the above, plus time, money, and resources to fix it.