A Note About Restraint

Patrick Cahalan in reply to damon says:

Damon:

> I’d assume that those stats are for a given amount of training,
> and that level is training is the required minimum amount to
> still be on the force, or for some “average” of cops on the force.

The PDF that I linked to up here includes breakdowns by job duty and age, but not time-on-force, although you can kind of gather how that works out by looking at the numbers. Typically, it’s younger cops and patrol cops… but of course in most departments patrol cops are more likely to be younger cops and older cops are more likely to have preferable assignments, which would presumably include “beats where I don’t get shot at much”.

> I would also expect that frequent, continuous training
> improves those odds, because, with better / more
> training, skill level usually goes up.

You would assume that, but the evidence that I’ve read points to the converse. That is, training in combat scenarios is of marginal value in comparison to actual combat scenarios. It’s just not possible to “train” realistic combat scenarios. Basic good form and range discipline are training tactics that are more of a “negative outcome reducer” than a “positive outcome enhancer”: good training means you’re less likely to shoot yourself in the foot or try to fire off a round with the safety on. But when it comes to shooting at live persons, increased training actually produces vastly smaller returns for increased investment (there is also an applicant pool problem). Navy SEALS have a lot of enhanced live fire training that produces better results, but they’re drawing from a teeeeeny applicant pool.

There’s actually some literature that shows that increasing training may actually be correlated with higher rates of non-righteous incidence (sorry, don’t have the link handy, but I’ll try to dig it up)… the theory being the more you train to use your weapon, the more of an extension of your arm it becomes, and the more likely you are to use it.

> So I really think that, with some effort, that percentage
> can be increased–and it should.

It actually pretty much doesn’t go up significantly, across all police populations everywhere (that I’ve seen, anyway… if you can provide a reference pointing in the opposite direction, I’d be glad to read it). This is one of those times when intuition doesn’t match empirical data.

> I have personal knowledge of a woman, who had never
> handled a firearm before, who took her states police
> pistol qualification course that same day, and passed it
> on the first try. I don’t think she’s particularly lucky or
> skilled, I think difficulty of the test is set rather low.
> (This is for the standard non stressful, no shooting
> back test.)

Sure, but this is just not generalizable.

Part of the problem (I’ll readily admit) is certainly back to the applicant pool. However, the applicant pool we have… is the applicant pool we have. It’s like the public school teacher problem: yes, if all the cops were better shots, or all the teachers were better teachers, we’d have better outcomes. But even supposing there was no union or labor difficulties in getting rid of the poor shots or the marginal teachers, the problem is that you have to replace them with somebody.

And really, there just aren’t that many people who have cool heads under enormous amounts of stress, in good physical condition, who have a strong sense of justice and a willingness to put themselves at risk daily, and are smart enough and have good enough people skills to meet the personnel demands of the modern police state. Our choices are: reduce the need for cops, or deal with the cops that we have.

And unlike most civil liberties nuts, I don’t think the police are, en masse, a bunch of bad guys (I think the system doesn’t do enough to weed out the bad guys, but that’s a different story). Drawing down on a human being and pulling a trigger just isn’t easy.Report