Target Selection
What targets do you use for practice, qualification, and teaching classes? Does it matter? I believe so. Saying that it doesn’t discount a lot of research, experience, and anatomical factors in defensive shootings. These are a few of the studies I thought were particularly relevant, but there are dozens more to wade through: A Methodology to Examine the Effects of Individual and Target Characteristic Factors on Marksmanship Task Performance Based Upon a Structural Shooting Model [...]
Large Scale Event Prep For The Individual Officer
Most communities have hosted a festival, Fourth Of July weekend, a car show, or a marathon race - some multi-day event. Many bigger cities that have major league or college sports teams that have won a major championship have experienced a large-scale event at which its officers have needed to [...]
Code 3 vs. Pursuit Driving: Is There A Difference?
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure most of us became cops so we could drive fast legally. Who can deny the attraction of having droves of people get out of your way while burying the gas pedal into the floor in conjunction with the bright lights a-flashin’ [...]
Competitive Shooting — Dangerous Diversion or Practical Pastime?
Nothing says training can’t be fun. Action-based competitive shooting is both derided as the province of silk pajama-wearing game players, and praised as the single most important exercise you can do to improve your shooting. They’re damned as a superb way to ingrain habits that will most surely get you [...]
REALITY CHECK | Step-Up
Training is a constant adaptation of using what resources you have to teach what you want your students to know or be capable of doing. The “doing” process in the field or in fighting needs to be rigidly flexible as fights are never the same from one day to the [...]
What’s Your Hurry?
Let me be the first to admit — I’m guilty. We’re all guilty of it. The “it” I’m referring to is stupid or perhaps more aptly, arrogant driving. This term covers a broad spectrum of misdeeds sometimes committed by the average cop. The kind of driving I’m talking about includes [...]
Shooting in Virtual Reality
Scenario-based training in my academy class involved role players – often more than one - and evaluators spread out across the grounds of the academy. In addition to those people were the scenario coordinators, a dispatcher or two, and additional support staff. All that starts to get intensive human resource-wise. [...]
Self-Defense
The term "self-defense" means different things to different people. To a police officer, self-defense differs significantly from defensive tactics or DT, as it is known in the law enforcement training community. From a civilian perspective, "self-defense" may be synonymous with martial arts. While others may believe self-defense means using a [...]
Like a box of chocolates – vehicle stops and approaches
“Life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what you’ll get until you bite into one.” Whether pro-active policing is still a thing or not, working street cops will make traffic stops. Most of the time, the officer has no idea who is in the vehicle and [...]
Review – Active Shooter Response Training: Lone Wolf to Coordinated Attacks
Once again, Active Killer events are back at the forefront of everyone's mind. While there are a lot of questions, there are not always enough well-researched and thoughtful answers. This article reviews author Scott Hyderkhan's Active Shooter response manual. It is a revised second edition from July 2020. The first [...]
CIVILIAN INVOLVED DEFENSIVE SHOOTINGS | Be Fair, Be Honest and Be Clear
Civilian who uses deadly force may suffer post-shooting trauma and civil litigation, and will most certainly be subjected to widespread, mostly unqualified second-guessing. The civilian usually has no standing legal immunity, and no agency, union or other support network in place. It behooves police not to needlessly add to those [...]