I wrote this nearly a year ago for another forum, but it fits very well with this discussion.
Law Enforcement Qualification
I recently had the misfortune of being invited as a "Guest Instructor" to the qualification range of a police department here in Wisconsin. This came after long talks with the head instructor for this department about firearms, training, and qualification standards. Now, I am not a cop, but I have been through most of the training that they go through.
While at the range, I noticed a few things that really made me angry. For starters, their equipment (Including the glock 23s) was in terrible shape. There was one officer that had a firing pin that jammed all the way out after every shot, and the primer on the follow up round knocked it back into place. This was met with an "Thats nothing to worry about" attitude. If that was not bad enough, all of the officers had new polo's, and hoodies, and things of that nature. They even made it a point to hand out new screen printed glasses with the department logo on them. (I have one that now sits on the back of my stove with bacon fat in it, no pun intended) As a business owner, I can tell you that embroidered and screen printed promo items are not all that cheap.
Then I helped count up scores, and at the end of the day there were several officers that had failed miserably with their standard duty sidearms, and their squad weapons (870, and AR-15). Not that I could imagine how someone could possibly fail to qualify with a 12 ga at 7 yards, but I just shook my head and kept looking over scores. So instead of putting a black mark on their record and making sure their training was up to standard and then making them re-qualify, they were set out on the firing line again, and all of them shot the course of fire again without even cleaning their weapons. after 3 officers (of a 12 officer department) failed several times that day, they were sent to the range house to clean their weapons so that they could come back the next day and fire the course again. No training, no nothing. One of the officers that was "Instructing" brought out his AR, and we popped a few rounds off at a clay pigeon at 100 yards. But that was interrupted by an officer coming up and asking how to clean his weapon.
I proceeded to show him how to field strip his gun, and when I got the slide off it looked like it had mud and molasses inside of it. (I was so horrified and impressed that the gun still functioned that it made me want a Glock) And this officer who worked the road alone asked me what he needed to do to clean it.
I returned the next day to see how things turned out with this guy, and I realized that he was scared of his guns. I watched his eyes snap tightly closed with every round he fired (12 GA, .223, and .40). He jumped sharply and jerked the trigger, I was truly amazed that this guy hit the target at all, and after trying to qualify 3 more times for a grand total of 7 times, he finally passed.
Maybe I am picky, but I know for a fact that every criminal justice school in America teaches you about the use and care of firearms. And I know for a fact that every branch of the military does the same thing. So I am wondering if this kind of "Qualification" is standard practice.
It seems to me that something like that is nothing more than gambling with the lives of the people that are supposed to be at the front of the pack with things like this. I mean I have known for a long time that LE qualification standards are a bit lax, but this is ridiculous. This is the kind of thing that gets innocent people killed. And it really makes for a bigger concern if you ever have to call 9/11 and tell them that you just had to defend yourself. Or even have to have police contact while you are carrying. This is frickin scary man...............