imported post
FAS and Marty/Gila provide excellent training.
However, the sad reality is that cops in the state of Washington do not get more training time, per se, than your top shooters or serious enthusiasts. In fact, it is far less. Ask any instructor and they will tell you they wish they had more time available to get their people into live fire training. When a majority of officers are not gun saavy, do not practice sufficiently off duty ad do not even carry off duty, you have administrator who mirror the same. Firearms training, while improving, is still lacking in quantity, if not quality as driven by administrators.
Many smaller agencies do not have budgets to train or shoot more than the once a year by law qualification. A local agency had less than $1500 for their entire training budget. An agency of about 15 FT & reserve. Completely unsat. Yet the county that this agency resides in qualifies every other month and just built a top notch indoor range because they recognize the value of firearms training as integrated into the life.
I struggle with the ideas that agencies can build grand facilities, outfit their patrol cars with all of the latest and greatest gadgets, state of the art emergency ops centers, send officers to anything but firearms training, then kevtch about the cost of firearms training. I am lucky, in a way, that my agency has been relatively committed to the idea of 4 times yearly for live fire. But that has been a dog fight when administrators have pushed for three or as little as two live fire session per year to save on training dollars. So far, my chief has been supportive of that and I appreciate it. But I also recognize that because we are involved in so few OIS (officer involved shootings) that there is a mentality in the council that more training really isn't necessary.
Tack on so few officers taking firearms qualifications and training seriously and you have have problems. How about this: say you have free access to a local indoor range (all you jave to do is show up, sign in, and get a lane), paid for by the PD. Say you get issued 50 rounds of handgun ammo per month and far more for rifle. Would you say, "Hell yeah!" and use it to you maximum? Most of us would. Yet 5% of my officers take advantage of this.
Yep, 5%.
The excuses for not training off duty range from "I'm not getting paid for this so I won't do it" to "I'm an excellent shot and therefore don't need to practice."
Sorry, long winded response but I want to make sure citizens understand the frustrations firearms instructors in this state feel. At the yearly conference the state instructor's association hosts, instructors regularly comment on how they are being forced to train more with less (not because citizens demand less, but because training resources are being diverted to other HSLD things like gangs, WMDs, IED and ICS (as examples)). I also want the shooting community of Washington to understand why stats like hit percentages to rounds fired are the way they are. The shooting fraternity that used to exist in cop shops in the 50s & 60s just don't exist anymore. How many agencies do you know of that have department sponsored, sanctioned or approved pistol or shooting comp teams?
Best to all and fight for your rights.
