There is a gentleman in Victoria that has a very nice private shooting range, and he organizes formal and informal shooting classes and practice sessions, including the hosting of John Farnam every spring and fall. When he sets up one of these courses, he solicits donations from the attendees to fund one or two police officers from the Victoria PD and the Sheriff's office, so we usually have at least a couple cops in the class -- once had a DPS trooper. In addition we often have self-funded officers. Once I attended a non-Farnam class instructed by a Victoria PD officer, which also had a number of other county and city officers in it (was the first time I got to shoot a full-auto M-4. Fun!)seamusTX wrote:I'm not that easily offended.LaserTex wrote:Please don't take offense...if I were a Police Officer, I would take a personal responsibility to be proficient with my weapon.
Ideally, every police officer should be able to shoot, drive, run, wrestle, jump fences, etc., like a champion. Never having worked for a police agency, I don't know what the reality is except what I have heard and read over the years. Some forces send certain officers for advanced training. That kind of thing is expensive, and an officer who is at the low end of the pay scale may not be able to take a week off and pay for training that costs a good chunk of $10,000 when all the fees and travel are added up.
Where is Excaliber when you need him?
- Jim
The policemen were universal in saying that in general cops don't practice near enough, and most of their brethren were not particularly good shots, nor very familiar with the tactical use of their weapons. The Victoria guy ran us through his department's handgun qualification course, and frankly it was trivial to pass -- way below what we had done in class. Another cop I know told me that when he took over his department's qualification tests, he finally got an officer in that had managed to dodge the annual (annual!) qualification course for years. The officer was unable to draw his revolver from his holster -- it wouldn't budget. They finally cut away the leather holster from around the gun and found it had worn through the leather to a steel reinforcing strip, and had rusted itself to the steel -- it had been that long since he had taken it out of his holster. One of the other cops at a course I attended said one his fellow officers came to an annual course some years before and was unable to get the trigger or cylinder on his revolver to budge -- just would not move. They eventually figured out that when he was in a divorce with his wife six months earlier, she had superglued his revolver and he hadn't noticed until qualification time.
All these cops were pretty much in agreement that keeping up one's proficiency is an individual initiative and responsibility, you can't just meet department standards and expect to be any good at it. And they said it was often the case that the department provided free ammo to practice with, just most cops would not take advantage of it. (Remember the case in NYC of the lieutenant in the police station who ran to her office to call 911 when a guy with a knife came into the station because she didn't have her gun with her? Think she practices much?)
Then there are the statistics that turn up in NYPD's annual SOP 9 report...*
On the positive side, I haven't kept a detailed count, but it seems to me that the San Antonio PD has had good results when shooting at BGs.
As for the officers in the OP, I have no idea how much their general proficiency and how much the general confusion contributed to the "12 shots no hits," but it is a at least a reasonable hypothesis that they might need more practice.
elb
*NYPD tracks hits and misses from their shootings... their hit rate runs around 30%