My kind of America

[Nick_W]

I think I am seeing the disparity here, military versus civilian law enforcement. Nick and King, are you guys looking at this from the basis of your military backgrounds?

I am to some degree, and I do understand the difference between the two.

I'm also coming at this having spent a brief period as a firearms instructor for a police department (I won't name names). It really bothered me how low the standards were, and how few officers really took it seriously. Most of them saw it as something they just had to do. Another check in the box. So when I see these shootings where hundreds of rounds are fired I can't help but think of those guys that came through and how they were actually probably lucky to have "only" missed 42 times.

I also have a hard time with the idea that a SWAT team can do something that could get a Marine dragged off to The Hague for a war crimes tribunal.

 

[adurso]

If a person finds themself in a situation where they are unable to fire accuratly, they should take a covered position, calm down, regain their composure, and then fire accuratly. There is never any excuse for firing a shot that may not be accurate. All that is doing is endangering lives.






For example, this SWAT team.

I'm not a robot. I'm a person who received very good training and then stuck to it when the situation called for it. Had I not done so I would expect my superiors to not defend my actions. People make mistakes. Just because the people who make those mistakes are wearing a uniform doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. If you're carrying a firearm and have the authority to use that firearm in a public setting you should be held to the highest standard possible when it comes to the use of that weapon.

Unless your individual experiences are universal they have no place in training or debriefing except as atypical anecdotal parables.



That was a different situation in which the individual was firing at the officers involved. Again, I see no mention in this Florida case of the suspect firing at the SWAT team.



Actually, my honest question was not in any way an appeal to authority. It was an honest question as I didn't feel you did enough in your first post to establish your ethos. I wanted to make sure I was talking to someone who actually knew what they were talking about based upon experience rather than what they have read in a book.

What you're doing now though is getting dangerously close to what is called "talking down to people" and I usually don't take to kindly to that.

No offense intended, my writing style is somewhat formal and stilted so that it makes me sound like a stuffed shirt snob type person.

In a perfect world cover should be secured and safety prioritized, but as was pointed out by Kingpatzer cops generally are undertrained and responses vary.

Good training should create a set of responses to a given situation that override thought. In response to critical situations police officers (in a perfect world) would be trained so well that all would respond in the same fashion. The reality is that most departments do not have the time nor the funding for this type of training. And few officers will practice on their own.

Although the person in the Florida situation was not shooting at the officers the threat was there, the man was armed, he had demonstrated his willingness to use the weapons, he met the criteria for deadly force.

Police officers respond to threats based upon a use of force continuum, they need not wait to be fired upon or wounded to respond with deadly force, the whole idea is to be ahead of the bad guy.

It sounds as though you are responding from a military rather than LE background.

 

[Nick_W]

Were you a Recon Marine or did you just work with them?

Yes I was.

 

[Nick_W]

No offense intended, my writing style is somewhat formal and stilted so that it makes me sound like a stuffed shirt snob type person.

In a perfect world cover should be secured and safety prioritized, but as was pointed out by Kingpatzer cops generally are undertrained and responses vary.

Good training should create a set of responses to a given situation that override thought. In response to critical situations police officers (in a perfect world) would be trained so well that all would respond in the same fashion. The reality is that most departments do not have the time nor the funding for this type of training. And few officers will practice on their own.

Although the person in the Florida situation was not shooting at the officers the threat was there, the man was armed, he had demonstrated his willingness to use the weapons, he met the criteria for deadly force.

Police officers respond to threats based upon a use of force continuum, they need not wait to be fired upon or wounded to respond with deadly force, the whole idea is to be ahead of the bad guy.

It sounds as though you are responding from a military rather than LE background.

Trust me, I understand the lack of training for officers, there are only so many hours in a day. If this was just your regular Joe cops who were responding in this incident, I probably wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. But this was a SWAT team. They are supposed to be better than that.

Oh, and I didn't actually take offense. I was just pointing out that things seemed to be getting a tad uncivil and I wanted to make sure that wasn't the case. No reason we can't all be friends here.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Well, I was just a lowly dogface medic. I guess I was good at what I did. I brought myself and most of the men from my fire teams home and in one piece, from Panama and Gulf Games I.

 

[Captain Walt]

Well sincerely thank you Nick W for your service.
Fire discipline! It would not matter how many targets. 110 rounds down range think about it. How many operators in that SWAT team? I am "guessing" if you brake it down each team member did not shoot more than 15 rounds on target. One shot one Kill is for a sniper. When you go hot it is on.

 

[Captain Walt]

That was fun I want to do it again.

 

[adurso]

I am to some degree, and I do understand the difference between the two.

I'm also coming at this having spent a brief period as a firearms instructor for a police department (I won't name names). It really bothered me how low the standards were, and how few officers really took it seriously. Most of them saw it as something they just had to do. Another check in the box. So when I see these shootings where hundreds of rounds are fired I can't help but think of those guys that came through and how they were actually probably lucky to have "only" missed 42 times.

I also have a hard time with the idea that a SWAT team can do something that could get a Marine dragged off to The Hague for a war crimes tribunal.

I see now; then you should understand the disparity, but you may not be aware of the mindset involved in the civilian ROE so to speak.

You are dead bang on in your experience with the police range, most are like that. The rangemaster in my old place carried a .38 caliber pencil to bring the bosses' scores up when they were doing annual qualifications.

The LE mindset that leads to spray and pray is based in part on a lack of training and part on a lack of preparedness and part on the job itself. Police officers spend 99% of their time doing things that do not call for confrontation or deadly force, .5% of their time involves confrontation. Many officers never are called upon to use deadly force. Many police officers were never in a fight prior to joining the police department and many were never in the service.

New officers are hammered with the liability idea, if they make a mistake they get sued, this makes many reluctant to act, it makes others overreact. This short circuits responses so that the responses do not appear to make sense outside of the context. The bottom line is that law enforcement folks are put in the position of being angry, frustrated, sometimes injured, then called upon to use force, up to and including deadly force, then providing first aid to the bad guy they injured. This creates a set of responses that sometimes make little sense.

My first day on the job we went to the range to qualify with our .38 revolvers. I was wearing a USMC t shirt and was told by the rangemaster that he had "never seen a Marine shoot a pistol worth a..." so I shot a perfect score for him.... many of us had a difficult time changing our responses to threats, real and percieved...

In order to familiarize the recruits with the effects of CS gas the class was seated on a set of bleachers, the rangemaster walked behind the class and pulled the pin on a CS grenade, when he let the spoon fly I was off the bleachers and behind a berm, there were a couple of us sharing space behind the berm because we knew at a gut level what a spoon flying presaged......

The point is that military responses and civilian LE responses really are vastly different, and it would be great to have civilian officers trained to the level of Recon Marines, but the funding and manpower are not there and the missions are so fundamentally different that there will be a difference of opinion on what the desired outcome should be


Semper Fi

 

[Nick_W]

Well, I was just a lowly dogface medic. I guess I was good at what I did. I brought myself and most of the men from my fire teams home and in one piece, from Panama and Gulf Games I.

Are you kidding me? Some of the toughest, and possibly craziest, guys I ever met were corpsmen.

There is no lowly job in the military.

Well sincerely thank you Nick W for your service.
Fire discipline! It would not matter how many targets. 110 rounds down range think about it. How many operators in that SWAT team? I am "guessing" if you brake it down each team member did not shoot more than 15 rounds on target. One shot one Kill is for a sniper. When you go hot it is on.

You may be right. But I don't know what the size of the responding team was. That, combined with the comment that they fired everything they had just paints this picture of a bunch of guys firing blindly at anything that moves.

The concept of one shot, one kill should not be limited to only snipers. The main point of that concept is that you should never fire a round that doesn't have an intended target.

Of course you should also never say never, but that's another thread.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

Are you kidding me? Some of the toughest, and possibly craziest, guys I ever met were corpsmen.

There is no lowly job in the military.

I resemble that remark! HOOAH!!!!