...Here’s the dirty little secret about police training…it rarely happens. If the common citizen knew how poorly trained the average cop is there would be complete anarchy. Most agencies have a wholly inadequate firearms training program. In talking to cops around my state as a firearms instructor for the last 15 years, I’ve found that most departments do very little firearms training. Shooting more than 100 rounds per year is unusual.
In Ohio, officers only have to pass a 25-round ridiculously easy “qualification test” one time per year. Beyond that, the state requires between one and four hours (depending on the year) of continuing education training. None of that has to be firearms related. Because the state doesn’t mandate in service firearms training, lazy police executives often say “The state says 25 rounds a year is all we need to do, so that’s all we will do.”
Here’s another part of the equation: with few exceptions, office-bound police administrators almost universally hate shooting. It’s an arena where they can be shown up by the low ranking patrol officers. It makes them feel inadequate. It’s easier to sit in an air conditioned office with bars or eagles on their shoulders pretending to be competent than it is to actually acquire the firearms competency they need. In training police officers all around the country, it is rare for me to see anyone above the rank of Sergeant shooting in my classes.
I had one chief (who wasn’t a bad shooter) actually tell me: “Guns are loud and dirty. I don’t like them.” How diligent do you think this chief will be when it comes to making his officers train with their pistols?
Cops in Ohio don’t have to shoot in low level light. All stages of the current qualification are shot in full light conditions. Since the state doesn’t require officers to demonstrate their skills, most departments don’t train them.
If the departments do train in low light tactics, they shoot a few rounds at a stationary target after some remedial instruction on flashlight shooting techniques. The officers fire a magazine or two using their flashlights and then promptly forget the skill until a few years later when the cycle is repeated.
In this type of low light training, there is no stress. There are no demands placed on the student and there is no scenario-based element whatsoever. Officers need to learn to shoot in the dark, but they also need to learn how to search in the dark, handle people in the dark, handcuff suspects in the dark, and cover their partners in the dark. That training is exceedingly rare.
Besides a lack of a state mandate and “budgetary concerns” the other significant problem in police training is the instructor training/certification process. In my two-week police firearms instructor course, the lead instructor made the statement:
“Every one of you was sent here by your department. Your chief must think you will be a good instructor or he wouldn’t have sent you. Who am I to disagree with his assessment? I trust your chiefs. Everyone will pass this course.”
So we have an “instructor” course taught by a man who was so fat that he couldn’t even demonstrate some of the required firing positions, with absolutely no standards, that everyone automatically passes. The class was worthless.
But that is all the “training” that most of the police instructors get. They think it’s the pinnacle of their education. It isn’t. Any commercial shooting school will yield better firearms handling skills and shooting abilities than most police “instructor” schools. Yet few cops will spend their own money to seek out better training on their own.
The result ends up being that well-intentioned, but poorly trained “instructors” get minimal training time to pass on what little knowledge they have to officers who know (and often care) even less.
Is there any wonder why we have negligent shootings? It’s not the fault of a flashlight switch. It’s the result of non-existent or completely inept training...
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