What s the training?

[DGF]

I'm a bit puzzled. Hundreds of rounds were fired in Watertown in a shootout with the bomber brothers, in the middle of the street, at night. One of the brothers had many holes in him I know, but where did the rest of those rounds fired by the police go? Does anyone know? What does the training tell us? Just keep firing and hope you don't hit innocent civilians? What? We know that on the streets of New York the police don't seem to care how many civilians are hit.

Some of us load our shotguns with birdshot so as to not penetrate a neighbors house. What are the police trained to do? Does "hold your fire" until you have a target make sense, or is spray and pray and to hell with the civilians the way to go?

[Timothy]

There are reports of many homes and business's with new holes in them!  It's being downplayed by the media...

[JLawson]

Nothing but pure speculation here... but if we say 25 officers responded to the scene and each fired only 4 shots... that would be 100 rounds from the good guys.  Each officer could show good restraint and still the combined effect would look like spray-n-pray.

[jnevis]

The major problem, as I've mentioned here in other threads, is that most officers now are not "shooters" so they only fire enough rounds to qualify every six months to a year.  There is no iincentive for them to shoot on thier off time.  Additionally, law enforcement training takes time (money) to change.  If a forward thinking instructor wants to add a new course of fire, say night "practical" shooting (movement, reactive targets ect) he has to get approval from the department, which usually has to ask the state if it's required.  If the department is in an anti-gun state it's a prettty good bet that the state level administrators are going to freak about anything "tactical" that requires more shooting so the answer is NO.  Even is they say they can fire it, they have to get the money for extra ammo and the targets.  Then the department gets blamed for stockpiling for war.  Most larger departments have better ranges, but they are also predominately "square range" with very limited ractive targets or anything steel.

There are departments that have 'Got it" and started taking courses of fire from IDPA and USPSA so officers have "seen" a multi-dimensional shooting problem before they hit the street.  Similar to Top Gun and Red Flag were pilots "fight" a war so when they're in the real thing they can react to it.  Shooting sports may not be 100% accurate training, but it along with SImunitions can greatly affect the outcome in a real world shoot out.

So an officer (or soldier for that matter) , under pressure, at night, with returning fire, with MINIMAL training is probably not going going to hit CRAP.  An officer that has a little more training, better mental preperation is going to have better shots.  He'll still miss, but he'll miss smaller less.  

The first goal is for everybody to go home at the end of the day.  Try and avoid ANY casualties.  All well and good until the shots are coming at you; then it's get your head down, try and get HIS head down, don't hit anything you don't want if you can.

[tombogan03884]

I'm a bit puzzled. Hundreds of rounds were fired in Watertown in a shootout with the bomber brothers, in the middle of the street, at night. One of the brothers had many holes in him I know, but where did the rest of those rounds fired by the police go? Does anyone know? What does the training tell us? Just keep firing and hope you don't hit innocent civilians? What? We know that on the streets of New York the police don't seem to care how many civilians are hit.

Some of us load our shotguns with birdshot so as to not penetrate a neighbors house. What are the police trained to do? Does "hold your fire" until you have a target make sense, or is spray and pray and to hell with the civilians the way to go?

Oh come now, you make it sound like they get to do this every day.
Opportunity only knocks just so often.
You need to make the most of you opportunities.

[Sponsor]

[GASPASSERDELUXE]

Oh come now, you make it sound like they get to do this every day.
Opportunity only knocks just so often.
You need to make the most of you opportunities.

Tom you know thats not funny, but I had to laugh anyway.

[twyacht]

The vids of the "shootouts" lead me to believe that standard LEO tactics are saturation fire and hope they score hits.

Yet, if civilians do it, it's random spray and pray overkill.

And they were cheered as they drove their armored cars thru Watertown....

[locnload]

"There is no iincentive for them to shoot on thier off time."

I believe Jeff Cooper once said something about competative shooters working harder at perfecting their skills to win a trophy than most cops do to learn skills that can save their lives.     

[Solus]

Another part of the problem is that an "attitude" is growing among government agents.

That is that there are two kinds of people, Us and everyone else.

They do,  however, divide everyone else into two categories:  perps and suspected perps.  Or, perhaps, perps and collateral damage.

Everything from Ruby Ridge to Waco to Watertown and most of what I've seen on "cops" type reality shows demonstrates that attitude.

[Strider]

jnevis is correct. Most officers practice sparingly and only as much as needed to make sure they qualify per policy. Many see it as a chore. The average hit rate (last I checked) during confrontations was right at 35-40 % nation wide. Though the standards have improved, most departments have VERY easy qualification courses. Most C class USPSA shooters are much better than the average street officer.