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Paladin wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 7:22 pmThe author seems to be hard at work on the problem. In my experience instinctive techniques like Krav Maga and COL Applegate's methods are quick to learn and reasonably retained. The law enforcement style unarmed techniques I was taught by LEO's seemed like mostly poor techniques designed to avoid legal liability.

I have not studied Krav Maga or many of the other methods. I got lucky and the agencies where I was employed or training at all had specialists for the subdue/control/defense techniques.

I agree that most police methods are not that well taught nor are they well retained. But the problem with many methods for police vs. citizens is the end goal of the technique. If you are a regular citizen studying Krav Maga to protect yourself, it may be very well suited for that. But police are not studying self-defense, they are studying subdue and control techniques. They not only have to defend themselves, they morally cannot walk away from the attacker. A good cop must defend himself, subdue the attacker and take him in to custody, all without causing unnecessary injury. Citizens who are attacked only need to worry about surviving. They may try to avoid unnecessary injury to the attacker but it is not really required other than going way overboard (at least in Texas, other states are not nearly as enlightened in this area).

As an example of the difference, many of the techniques I was taught were taught by the military. Most of these are also not allowed for police loss. In 1975, I was attending Marine Corps PLC training at Quantico. I remember writing home one day (my father was a former Marine) that we had an interesting class where they taught me eight different ways to kill a man without using a weapon. In 76, going through the Army MP school, I was taught "come-alongs" using the club (such as the figure 4 stranglehold - the club goes across the suspects throat and then into the crook of your other elbow; that hand comes around the club and presses on the crown of the suspects head while the club is being pulled back into his throat) that were very effective but stood a good chance of killing the suspect if you did it wrong. Most of these are now forbidden for the police.

While I support the change in police tactics, I understand the problems it causes in teaching unarmed combat to potential officers. And then the fact that most officers never practice once they graduate the academy makes this even worse. Texas requires officers to qualify with their weapon once a year and take 40 hours of training every two years. The basic academy is now only required to be about 4-1/2 months long (696 hours). Our training may be among the best in the nation but it is woefully inadequate in many areas, not just unarmed combat. This is one reason I believe that we need to move to a program where the officers are immersed in a training class for four years that includes earning a college degree. As of my writing this, there are 78,634 peace officers in Texas (not counting any jailers). If we figure that the average police career is 25 years (my personal guesstimate), that means we need about 3,150 new officers every year just to stay where we are at. That would mean, if we used one campus, we would need a training center the size of UTD for my proposal with a probable cost of $300,000,000 per year. That does not include uniforms or any salary you pay the trainees like they do at West Point.

There are solutions to the problem and mine is just one proposal that may or may not work. I believe that my proposal would result in more professional officers overall and would be a benefit, but that is my belief and not a guaranteed program. I am sure there are other solutions too. And I agree that if we do not do something, we will have larger problems than we do now.

Paladin wrote: ↑Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:06 pm This is written by a well regarded law enforcement firearms instructor:

Police Training Fails Everyone

Missing from the public discussion on this issue is an 800 pound gorilla in the room: The way police are trained and qualified for use-of-force is not effective.

Recent peer-reviewed studies conducted by the Force Science Institute have vividly confirmed this. What limited skills are developed during Academy training rapidly disappear afterwards. In some skill areas, the average officer’s performance has been shown to barely exceed that of an untrained civilian.

This is a well known problem in law enforcement training circles and is constantly discussed. The problem can be stated as how do we take a 21 year old kid that has never been in a fight in his life and teach him how to use physical force to subdue a resisting subject so that it stays with him for longer than the academy, and do it in 4 to 7 months? That is the length of the academy. Anyone who has learned ANY martial art knows it takes years of study and practice to really keep it as a habit. Cops, like most people rarely study or practice their skills when not in a classroom setting. Violence on the streets, even as simple as a fist fight, for a cop is still an extremely rare event.

You can try to hammer it into them, but after years of teaching the concept that there is no such thing as a "routine event", I (and many other police instructors) will still say something like it was a routine traffic stop when we talk with other cops. When something happens, you will hear the official spokesman say that "it was a routine domestic call that went bad" or similar language.

I do not have an answer for this. Closest I can come up with is making police training a four or six year program taught in specialized colleges (six year program would actually start in high school), similar to what we have for military academies. But it has to be for every officer, not just the leaders. And the cost for this idea is pretty much prohibitive.