One thing that’s nice about being an editor is you get to write about stuff and put things in the magazine that always pushed your buttons; that’s a nice way of saying, “pissed you off.” One of my “buttons” is unrealistic training, better known as just training to most agencies. Some places do it right but most don’t and it’s a real disservice to cops. What should we do about it?

Let’s start off with a qualifying statement to set a foundation upon which to build: Cops are competitive people. There, it’s out. Now aren’t you glad you laid down those 20 bucks for a subscription. That little gem of enlightenment alone makes it all worth the money. I know you’re saying to yourself, “Wow, this guy has a tremendous grasp of the obvious.”

Force-On-Force Training

Simunitions are a good step toward turning pretend training into something meaningful. But there are a few problems needing to be tweaked before we can deem it excellent. First is the cost. You need the conversion kits for the guns. They make a great assortment of conversion kits but the cost is daunting especially if your department authorizes a number of different firearms for duty use. This usually results in the, “just give him the Glock” solution. “So what if he usually carries a Beretta 92D? At least the Glock will be easy to use and it’ll launch the marking capsules,” is more often than not the refrain. That’s not realistic training. Students need to train with their gun, with controls in the right places and the same “feel” as the gun they carry in their holster every day.

Another impediment to realistic training is the instructors. Remember our qualifying statement — cops are competitive? That goes to about the sixth magnitude when you’re dealing with instructors. Really guys, it’s not a valuable training exercise when the student is in the FI stance talking to a “victim” role-player and eight instructors fast-rope out of the ceiling, lunge from closets and crash through the doors and start pummeling the student with 2,000 sim rounds from select-fire ARs. The only thing accomplished is making the student look like a big strawberry or plum depending on the color of paint being used and maybe a little “pay-back” for that guy who left you with an empty gas tank and a flat spare at the beginning of shift a few months back. Scenarios need to be well planned, realistic and well acted. Some say they need to be winnable. Some are and some aren’t. It’s kinda the way life goes sometimes. But above all, winnable or not, the scenarios must have a learning point to them. It shouldn’t be a shoot-’em-up. The rounds are too expensive.

Whether using Simunitions, other marking cartridge systems, paint balls or Airsoft, part of the training value is gained by delivery of a pain penalty. The damn things hurt when you get hit. I still have scars on my hands from taking sim rounds. Seems most students fixate on the gun and when they actually do hit — that’s where you get it — right on the fingers.

Today we don’t even let our kids play a game of checkers without a helmet, wrist, elbow and knee guards, eye protection, sunscreen and a protective cup. If we’re going to train, let’s train. Keeping safety in mind, we do need to protect certain areas of the body. Face, eyes, throat, boobs and genitalia are things most of us don’t really want to loose — especially when it’s just training. But the trend lately is to dress students up to look like the Michelin Man. Heaven forbid they might get an owie. Somebody needs to slap the agency lawyers when they come up with all these safety mandates and explain to them real police work is dangerous. Loading the student down with too much protective gear impedes movement and reduces the student’s ability to react thus diminishing the effectiveness of the training.

Patrol Theory Exercises

Many agencies conduct mock-dispatch scenarios for academy students. In my state they’re mandated and rigidly scripted in presentation. We’d gather all the recruits in a building and issue each one a handy-talkie. The recruits are called on their radio and dispatched to a given location in the mock village just like a normal radio call — “Unit 31 bravo, take a report of a possible sexual assault on a child at 4507 Cowley Way, Unit 1D.” We’d monitor the recruit on their ability to actually listen to the radio, appropriately respond to the location and advise the dispatcher when they arrived on scene.

Once there, a team of role players interact with the student following a script and an evaluator grades the recruit on the way they handle and resolve the call. Did they ask the correct questions to establish a crime had been committed? Did they appear empathetic? Did they take a report and properly interview the victim, witnesses and possibly the suspect? Did they give the victim proper information for follow-up contact and information on community-based services?

The scenarios would run the gambit from the one described to a flat out ambush usually on some innocuous “take a report of a car prowl” call.

A weapons inspection is always held prior to the recruits “hitting–the-field.” Two major issues are evident. First, they’re carrying their service pistols — real service pistols — the kinds that make a really loud bang and hurt people (read instructors and other students). Secondly, when they do get into situations where they need to initiate or return fire, if we were prudent in our inspection, their guns would go “click.” Follow up shots, in some cases, required an immediate action drill to cock the hammer or striker — not realistic training and dangerous.

It becomes a game for the student. During an ambush scenario, after I shot at a recruit with a cap pistol, in frustration he threw his gun down leaned up against the cruiser and yelled, “Damnit, you shot me, I’m dead.” I was incensed, “Never give up, you’re not dead until I tell you you’re dead. You’re wearing a vest even if you’re hit someplace else you can still fight back.” But it had become a game for both of us and had little if any training value at all by that point.

A live firearm has absolutely no business being inserted into a training scenario with the exception of an actual live-fire, on-the-range, one-on-one instructor-to-student ratio controlled environment — period. So what’s the answer?

Maxsell Corporation is one of the largest distributors of blank-firing replica guns in the US. Their guns pretty much duplicate any duty pistol available. They fire a blank cartridge creating enough noise, flash and recoil to realistically emulate an actual gunfight — safely. They even use them in the movies. The guns are the same weight and have the same controls as the recruit’s weapon and best of all there’s no way to get a live round in the chamber. It’ll just jam if you try. That equals safety for the instructor staff and for the students. It also equates to a valuable training exercise.

The recruits are already pretty amped up and stressed. Adding a realistic blank gun can create tunnel vision, auditory exclusion and the huge adrenaline dump associated with the fight or flight response. Officers learn to work through the symptoms and learn how to prevail. It inoculates them from the stress associated with an armed encounter.

It’s A Duty

The challenge for law enforcement training is to keep it fresh and real. We owe it to students and recruits to keep up with new trends and techniques and to deliver innovative realistic training.