There’s an old adage about the two things that people hate most in this world: the way things are and change. Even departments that consider themselves progressive and forward-thinking struggle with change. Officers, administrators, supervisors and instructors are more comfortable dealing with what they know, rather than the discomfort of facing something new.

It is normal to be uneasy about the unknown, but there are too many people who fear change. Not the kind of fear that makes them shake in their boots or wet their pants, but even if the current situation isn’t ideal, they feel real anxiety about new ways of doing business or different ways of thinking. Introducing uncertainty and the possibility of negative outcomes makes people hesitant to embrace change. There’s comfort in the routine. People find familiarity and established patterns comfortable, so even if things could be better, the “way things are” can feel safer than change.

When it comes to training law enforcement officers, the way things are isn’t good enough. Officers need to be better and safer. Our communities deserve to be served by officers who are better trained and equipped to respond to their needs. And our families deserve the peace of mind knowing we are equipped with the right physical skills and emotional resilience to do our jobs well and return to them at the end of the shift. We need to embrace change in training to accomplish these goals.

Do better

According to multiple studies over the years, the annual hit-rate averages of law enforcement gunfights have typically ranged from 18% to 52% over the past five decades. As a matter of fact, a recent study analyzed 149 officer-involved shootings recorded over a 15-year period by the Dallas, Texas, Police Department and found 35% of the rounds fired during an OIS hit the intended target. In other words, more than six out of 10 rounds fired were misses. In nearly half the incidents, officers firing at a single suspect delivered “complete inaccuracy.” That is, they missed the target entirely.

The researchers, Dr. Christopher Donner and Nicole Popovich of the Department of Criminal Justice at Loyola University in Chicago, note that “although the amount — and quality — of firearms training received by officers over the last century has increased considerably, there appears to have been little improvement in shooting accuracy.”

I’m just a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal firearm instructor and not a university researcher, but I would argue that the quality of firearms training hasn’t increased. We have been doing the same things in the same ways for the past 125-plus years. The only difference is, today, we have ballistic Tupperware in the form of polymer striker-fired semi-automatic pistols, ballistic nylon and Velcro.

We like to pat ourselves on the back and talk about how much better we’re doing compared to yesteryear because we’re using marking cartridges in force-on-force training. However, in 1944, during World War II, when training ammunition was hard to find, officers from the Chicago Police Department were handloading cartridges with wax bullets and shooting at each other in training. But by all means, let’s keep pretending what we’re doing today is cutting edge.

It’s hard work

It’s easy for instructors to continue doing what they know year after year without updating their material. However, it’s incumbent on instructors to continue updating their skills, techniques and tactics. I see far too many instructors attend training and then continue doing things the way they’ve always done them. Instead of practicing something new in class, they use the same techniques and skills they already teach. When you go to a class, practice the skills in the way the instructor presents the material. If you want to continue doing things the same way you’ve always done them, don’t go to training. Stay home and practice. Training and practice are two different things.

Equally important, experienced instructors should rely on and trust their newer colleagues. Providing experienced leadership and mentorship to the newer instructors means giving them the opportunity to improve our training programs. Just because they haven’t “paid their dues” doesn’t mean they don’t have information that could benefit our officers. If you’re an experienced instructor, take advantage of the new guy’s enthusiasm and passion. Put them to work. Just because it isn’t the way you would do it doesn’t make it wrong. There’s enough kingdom-building and selfish politics in our profession. Don’t let it invade your training programs when our officers’ lives are on the line.

Research and technology

If you’re an instructor, it’s your responsibility to seek out information that benefits your training program and students. This means more work. You can’t just sit back and expect the information to find you. You must find the information. Do your research. Why are we teaching the same thing in the same way on the same schedule? What does the research tell us about adult learning and retention? If you’re not using adult learning principles on the range, all you’re doing is check-the-box training. If you’re still training in blocks and silos, you’re not equipping officers with functional, long-term skills. Most of the time, training in blocks and silos is done because it’s convenient for the instructor and not because it’s effective.

Instead, be creative and figure out ways to interleave training topics. Interleaving is a teaching technique that mixes up topics or concepts to help students learn and retain information. It’s more effective than blocked practice for developing skills, problem solving and decision-making training. Interleaving leads to better long-term retention and improved ability to transfer learned knowledge between topics such as defensive tactics and firearms.

I’m not much of a computer and technology guy, but instructors can leverage technology to provide more training and better learning retention. For example, virtual reality provides firearm instructors with the opportunity to give students a lot more repetitions at a much lower cost compared to the live-fire range. I’ve been using the ACE Virtual Reality Shooting System for the past two months and fired nearly 12,000 virtual shots. I’ve worked on target transitions, threat assessment, accuracy, sight acquisition, target discrimination, working around vehicles and barricades, as well as shooting at a wide variety of static, reactive and moving targets. That amount of live-fire would be impossible for me to schedule, let alone afford. This doesn’t mean that simulators and virtual reality are going to replace time on the live-fire range, but they can maximize our training time and provide better outcomes than live-fire training alone.

Why?

In April 2010, the Below 100 initiative was born during a dinner at the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA) Conference with the goal of reducing line-of-duty deaths to below 100. Even with advancements in emergency medicine, safety features in vehicles and ballistic body armor, we haven’t been below 100 since 1943. We’re averaging around 150 officers killed per year over the last 10 years. In the U.S., every 58 hours, a police officer is killed in the line of duty. Tell me again how much better we’re doing. Tell me again we don’t need to change the way we train.