Police Weapons Training
The varied and often dangerous situations that confront law enforcement officers makes it more important than ever to engage in weapons training that goes beyond standard weapons handling and target shooting. Training facilities throughout the country train police officers in various techniques that have been developed to save their lives and that of the public from violent offenders.
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Spontaneous Lethal Attacks
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Officers are often in close contact with those with whom they communicate. Surprise attacks in close proximity are the primary reason for violent deaths of the police, and officers are trained to spontaneously react to them. They must draw and fire their weapons from various close quarter positions, and they must be able to retain them in a struggle and survive repeated physical strikes from their adversaries. In close-quarter fire fights, the traditional two-handed weapon's grip may expose officers too much to return fire and they must therefore be trained to use their weapons with only one hand. In stressful situations, they must also know how to quickly and correctly reload their weapons and clear them of any stoppage that may have occurred.
Multiple Threats And Innocent Bystanders
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Many police situations involve multiple assailants. Officers must quickly determine such threats and react to them accordingly. When innocent bystanders are present, officers must protect them as well as themselves while firing onto multiple adversaries. Training of this type is especially important to officers who respond to domestic disturbance calls where innocent family members may suddenly take sides against the police and become adversaries as well. Repeated training on a shooting range equipped with multiple targets that are mixed between assailants and innocent bystanders at different locations and distances from the shooting officers teach those skills.
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Arrest Techniques Aand Control of Firearms
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Docile subjects can become violent and deadly when officers transition into arrest mode after questioning them. Officers are trained with test subjects and practice dummies to react to subjects' change of behavior while holstering their weapons and readying their handcuffs, for instance. Responses to attacks must be quick and decisive to prevent injury or death to officers and they must prevent flight of the subject and endangerment to bystanders. Different techniques are taught to include the arrest and extraction of violent criminals from buildings. Officers are trained to perform tactical building entries, hallway navigation, room clearing and confrontation with their adversaries while keeping their weapons at the ready. These skills are taught in specially outfitted test buildings where officers learn survival skills for indoor, close quarter combat.
Multiple Officers And Cover Teams
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Police officers trained to act decisively and safely to armed confrontations must train to do so with multiple officers on the scene. They must remain alert to all armed threats while simultaneously staying aware of fellow officers' positions from where they are shooting. Weapons training professionals consider "muzzle awareness" a primary function of keeping officers from shooting each other. In highly stressed tactical situations, officers must quickly learn the other officers' tasks, intentions and lines of travel while they continue to shoot, reload and reposition themselves.
Low Light Skills Training
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Many confrontations occur in dimly lit or even completely darkened environments. Officers are trained to use their flashlights to quickly assess situations, reveal and identify their targets, and effectively use their weapons to fire on their assailants. They are taught in darkened "shoot houses" to fire and reload their weapons inside buildings while moving from room to room. To train for low-light, outside confrontations, they train on darkened "urban" shooting ranges while keeping innocent bystander-targets from being shot.
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References
- Photo Credit police image by Horticulture from Fotolia.com
