Use of force training integration

With all that we see reported in the mainstream media today about prisoners being injured or killed while in police custody it is glaringly obvious that, at some point, our actions won’t be attacked as much as our policies and procedures. All of those items are affected by our training and where use of force is concerned, we certainly can’t afford to skimp. On the other hand, budgets are still super tight and training is often the first thing to be cut simply because it’s unsafe to cut operational budget items. So, how do we defend our training policy and procedures when the training budget is usually worn-out-shoestring thin?

We can’t. What we have to do is find a way to restructure our training programs so that we’re training more than one knowledge or skill objective at a time. The ugly reality of this solution is that it will decrease the instructor-to-student time and put the onus of practicing on each officer on their own time. The further downside of that is that if they are failing to perform a given skill properly, or optimally, there is no instructor to correct them—so they’re practicing and reinforcing an incorrect skill.

Wait, is that what we’re already doing? Let’s think about this. For literally decades we’ve trained new officers to become proficient in individual skills, i.e. handcuffing, using a baton, shooting, using chemical weapons, etc. Every one of those individual skills is tested and, for the agencies that can afford it, the whole of use-of-force skills may be tested in scenario based training; when a student officer is given training tools that encompass the entire use of force spectrum and then put into a scenario designed to test whether or not the correct use of force is selected and used properly.

That’s a good idea and efficient for when we’re starting out a new rookie officer who doesn’t know how to open a friction lock baton, much less swing it, jab with it, etc. It’s great for teaching a rookie recruit about OC Spray or how handcuffs work. It’s awesome for teaching an officer cadet basic marksmanship and the essential bits of knowledge necessary to decide when to pull the trigger. Once we get the new recruit through the basic academy though, once the rookie is on the street and working, once they’re using the knowledge and skills we’ve taught them for use of force—why would we continue to teach them those basic skill sets?

From a time management perspective, rather than constantly—hopefully annually or more—teaching or reteaching those individual and basic skills, wouldn’t it be more prudent to simply test them first and then retrain the skills they demonstrate a deficiency in? And if an officer goes through testing and demonstrates proficiency with all of the tools and in the decision making process, why spend unnecessary hours training them at all?

Perhaps of greatest concern, given today’s news media climate (the apparent bias against all things law enforcement related), shouldn’t we be training and testing our entire use-of-force spectrum all together? Doing research for new force selection models, I’ve seen use-of-force guidelines that listed up to as many as ten force options to include:

• Disengagement
• Presence
• Dialogue
• Verbal Commands
• Soft empty hand
• Hard empty hand
• Chemical weapons
• Electronic Control Devices
• Impact weapons
• Less Lethal Projectile weapons (rubber ball, pepper ball, etc)

Lethal Force

When was the last time we trained all of them together and tested all of them together? I know. Theoretically we do that any time we have scenario based testing. The role-players are choreographed to (hopefully) draw out the responses that the instructors expect to see. Our challenges are, once again, time and money. All too often we use scenario based training to test only lethal force, i.e. shoot/don’t scenarios. How often do we put officers through shoot/don’t shoot scenarios but also provided them training OC spray, padded batons, training electronic control devices and handcuffs?
While I’m well aware that some agencies and programs around the country are providing such advanced levels of training and evaluation, the challenge I have is that it’s considered “advanced.” Given the growing rate of challenges we face over our on-the-street use of force, I submit to you that we have to increase—to 100 percent—this use of training and testing protocol.

What is proposed is this: in the first week of the police academy, the recruit gets issued his/her gunbelt along with all of the tools to go on it. For the first few weeks, the electronic control device can (and should) be a “blue gun;” a blue (or whatever other color) plastic inert chunk shaped correctly. The same think should be done with the handgun and a radio. The OC spray should be inert. The handcuffs, flashlight, gloves and baton should be real.

As part of the day to day curriculum, the students should be subjected to a call for a given use of force. Upon the call, i.e. “lethal force!” the student officers should be required to present that level of force in the proper manner and with the proper verbal commands. Additionally, for each tool being used, the student officers should be taught proper protocols such as stance, seeking cover, using the reactionary arm as protection, etc.

\This approach presents two large challenges: one realistic and one fictional, but often called out. The first, and real, challenge is the wasted time and money. Every police academy has a certain percentage of early failures/dropouts. Why would we waste the time training them? The answer is that you’re not. They get the time invested in parallel with every other recruit. With the exception of the small amount of direct instructor/student contact a single student might get, there is no wasted time. The money is not wasted because everything issued is also returned; so unless it’s destroyed or returned in an unserviceable condition, no dollars are spent that wouldn’t normally be spent issuing gear anyway.

As to the second fictional concern—there are those who always say, “We don’t want to teach our use-of-force skills early in the academy, because then the dropouts go out and share it all with their buddies on the streets and all the hoodlums know what we’re doing.” With every law enforcement reality television show that’s been on…with the ever growing popularity of MMA…with the number of retired officers that are teaching self-defense and use-of-force programs…if we think we have any secrets left to protect, we’re likely deluding ourselves.

So, issue all the gear up front. Teach proper presentation of each tool, stance, targets, point of aim, etc. Teach use-of-force in the first week of the academy and reinforce it daily throughout the entire rest of the academy program. Where firearms are concerned, if you’ve taught the recruit—in the first week of the academy—how to draw, seek cover, issue commands, use a proper grip, understand and development proper sight alignment and proper sight picture, then when you get to the actual range all you have to teach them is breath control, trigger press and follow through. That time spent in the classroom and other academy settings saves time on the range. Additionally, since “other academy settings” can be virtually anywhere, student officers can be drilled on reacting to a threat in nearly any environment.

This type of daily drilling can be done for firearms, impact weapons and electronic control devices (TASER/PhaZZer). It could be done with inert OC weapons, but that would tend to get messy if deployed. Then again, “accidental” deployments would identify those recruits who had control issues under stress. The gain is that by using this type of daily drilling throughout the academy you empower the recruit, with early basic training and daily emphasis/conditioning, to react properly given a specific threat and in various circumstances/locations.

Then, when the time comes in the academy curriculum to test the recruit’s use-of-force judgment skills, the recruit is already proficient in the delivery with all levels of force. The recruit has been equipped with an inert example of each level and trained accordingly. The judgment tests can then be simply that: tests of judgement; not tests of judgment heavily impacted by lower levels of familiarity and competence and a new circumstance of saturation in all use-of force-options. We train individual options all too much and the integration of all options far too little.

As a final note: This type of training, integrated use-of-force skills, can be easily tested throughout the career of every officer and modified for various assignments. The key is to train all use-of-force options from as early in the academy as possible in whatever way your budget can manage.

Training each use-of-force option separately and never testing integrated use-of-force options only results in an officer who is potentially overwhelmed when the stress and compressed time frame of a real-use-of force encounter occurs. Integrated use-of-force training shouldn’t be what we get during our field training portion of our rookie year. It’s what we should be doing from as close to day one as possible.