Friday, December 07, 2018

Not exactly confidence-inspiring, is it?


They looked at hit rates in two ways, “incident level” and “bullet level”. On an “incident level” basis, they found that officers got at least one hit, regardless of the number of rounds fired, in about 54% of the shootings, just barely over half of the time.

However, on a “bullet level” basis, they found that out of 354 shots fired, there was only a 35% hit rate. One half of all officers missed with every shot they fired, including one officer who fired 23 misses and no hits. This means that six out of every ten shots fired was a miss. How does this happen?

Let’s look at this “amount-and quality- of firearms training” in Dallas, which is actually a very representative sample. Officers qualify with their firearms once per year. That’s right, once. The course of fire they “qualify” on is a joke, essentially a sobriety test for anyone with any skill at all with a gun. I, or any other competent private sector trainer, could take a brand new shooter, with no prior training or experience, and have them pass this course of fire at the end of one day of range training. DPD officers receive “firearms training” once every two years, consisting of 50-100 rounds of firing in exercises and scenarios. That’s it.
Unfortunately it's a Bookface link, but if you can it's worth reading.



2 comments:

Jerry The Geek said...

This reminds me of an incident I posted about several years ago, regarding the accuracy of policemen in one of the major cities in the PNW.

Two officers on patrol in a Major City in this area came upon a drunk, passed out in the doorway of a downtown commercial location.

They kicked his feet in an effort to wake him up (it was after midnight), and he responded with a belch.

Considering this an assault on their authority, these two stalwart uniformed officers drew their Glocks and unloaded both guns at the comatose offender.

They missed with every shot. (They did manage to shoot out all the glass in the store-front)

The drunk belched again, but the officers were out of ammunition, so they wandered off to defend their city against less intimidating threats to society.

I recall having blogged about this at the time, but I'm too embarrassed to look up the original commentary.

I'm pretty sure I was not able to provide a follow-up to describe the castigation which the watch commander must have levied against the incompetent officers. Certainly, their fate was not published ...

Firehand said...

That's... I can't think of a good word, 'horrendous' is the closest. On several levels.