Threat management interview on Ballistic Radio
John Johnston of Ballistic Radio and I spoke on the air last weekend about Threat Management.
Threat Management is a topic that is woefully under-represented in most people’s skill set. Going to the range occasionally only helps develop the shooting skills. In contrast, how much time do folks spend on the skills that lead to ‘non-shooting?’ A short list would include, but is not limited to:
Verbalization,
STOP! Don’t come any closer!
Making the shoot/no shoot decision,
And adversary identification
Learning and practicing those skills can help us keep a situation under control before shooting and hopefully prevent a shooting at all.
Here’s the permalink to the interview. http://content.blubrry.com/ballisticradio/140824_BALLISTICS.mp3
Understanding the risk of violent aggression
I couldn’t believe it was happening. It didn’t seem real.
–a common statement by victims of criminal violence
The first presentation I attended at Paul-E-Palooza 2 was The 5 Ws of Risk (of Violent Aggression) given by William Aprill of Aprill Risk Consulting. William is a criminal psychologist who gives the most in-depth look into the criminal mind of anyone in the training industry. Frankly, at times, it’s rather creepy hearing how crazy criminals can be.
His presentation used the classic 5 Ws; Who, What, When, Where, and Why to structure a discussion of how risk can develop and aggregate for the Private Citizen. Using that structure allows us to look at the ways we can put ourselves at risk and, conversely, how we can reduce our risk.
Beginning with Who, he explained the value of “pre-need planning.” Then he explained his concept of a ‘risk envelope.’ This concept describes how varying circumstances we put ourselves in can increase or decrease our risk of being victimized. The levels of aggression displayed by potential Violent Criminal Actors are the flip side of ‘Who.’
What explained the difference between being a target and a victim. The concept of ‘advantaging for dominance’ was also included among various factors.
The key point of When was “not at a time of our choosing.” This unpleasant fact resounds throughout the training community. Sage support for this comes from several sources.
- “When it’s least expected, you’re selected.” –John Farnam
- “You don’t choose when you’ll need your gun; someone else does. And they will typically only inform you at the last moment.” –Tom Givens
- “Initiative Deficit – A criminal will stack the odds in his favor and usually only initiates action when there is a high probability of success.” –SouthNarc
The Where component emphasized that “there are no ‘good’ neighborhoods” where crime does not happen. Criminals prefer to choose the location of ‘highest yield.’ He also discussed the limitations of thinking that by avoiding certain situations or locations we can eliminate our risk.
William’s explanation of Why is where he gets into the inner workings of the criminal mind. He detailed the difference between ‘Instrumental Violence’ and ‘Expressive Violence.’
There were numerous concepts and explanations that he used to expand the 5 Ws explanation.
- Primacy of pre-need decision-making.
- Preparation failures
- Response failures, e.g., “I couldn’t believe it was happening. It didn’t seem real.”
- And my favorite about relying on ‘gut instinct’ “Remember, your gut has shit for brains.”
William and I will be teaching a Decision Shooting Course on September 27, in the New Orleans area. This course will introduce participants to some of the unaddressed realities of violent criminal aggression and effective defensive responses. He will be covering the 5 Ws and their implications for the Armed Citizen. My portion will be about consciously thinking while being armed, which is the exact opposite of ‘muscle memory.’ It consists of: 1) assessing one’s own skills in relation to the situation, 2) weighing the legal justification for using deadly force, and 3) consciously making appropriate decisions in the presence or absence of justification.
For more information and to register, visit the event website.
Why I hate the -3 zone
There is no substitute for knowledge.
-–W. Edwards Deming
One of the things I enjoyed most about my time at the elite Rogers Shooting School is the intellectual caliber of people I met there, both instructors and students. There were a fair number of highly educated people who came to the School on a regular basis. One said he came every year ‘to get his speedometer reset.” Some of them continue to stay in touch and I enjoy those conversations.
I recently received an email from a physician, who is an annual student, relating to some target design work I had been doing. He sent along his analysis of the IDPA target, based on the “ANTHROPOMETRY AND MASS DISTRIBUTION FOR HUMAN ANALOGUES,” which is the medical profession’s way of saying the dimensions of the human body.
He included a diagram of issues with the IDPA and IPSC Metric targets in relation to the actual size of the average male American. His diagram resonated with me because, for a long time, I have called the -3 zone of the IDPA target “the lawsuit zone.” The reason I say that is that the target is so large by that point that no part of the person’s body is actually going to be there. So a bullet striking that area would, in fact, just sail off into space. Most likely, it will strike “a busload of nuns and orphans being followed by a limousine full of personal injury lawyers having a conference call with the District Attorney.”
The anatomical analysis he did caused me to do some further research in the anthropometry document to create my own diagram. As I did so, it confirmed another unusuality of the targets; they have no neck. The head zone is not too bad of a match for the area of the male head from the eyebrows to the tip of the chin, especially if he has a jaw like Clutch Cargo, but there’s just no neck.
Visual indicators tend to convey information best, so I created a target image with colors to demonstrate the issues I noted.
Disregarding the head aspect, there were several things to be observed.
1) The -3 zone, or the D zone of the USPSA Metric, on the sides of the target is basically where a man’s arms are when they’re hanging by his side. A man holding a weapon at or near eye level would not have anything there below a line approximately even with the middle of the -0 zone. I marked this area in red on my target depiction.
2) The area of the -3 zone below the -1 zone very closely aligns with the area of the male body below the waist. I’m unenthused about that as a targeting area for reasons that will become obvious further on. That area is shaded in pink on my target image.
3) From about two inches above the bottom of the -0 zone down to the bottom of the -1 zone corresponds generally to the area from the xyphoid process to the waist. Emergency room physicians have told me that they consider this entire area to be an abdominal wound and not nearly as serious as a wound in the torso above that line. The yellow striped area on my image shows that zone.
4) Finally, by process of elimination, the area I shaded in orange is where all the “good stuff” is, as one physician put it to me. This is the area of the torso where a bullet has the best probability of quickly stopping a deadly threat to one’s life. Note that this area goes all the way up to the neckless chin.
My image is really a ‘best case’ example. To get an idea of what a true anatomical overlay would look like, my surgeon friend subsequently sent me a couple more images. Since he’s a physician, they’re much more illustrative than my drawing is. He overlaid them on the IPSC Metric target, but for the purposes of this discussion, the -3 and D zones are interchangeable. Note also that the -1 zone or C zone is no great shakes as a targeting area, either.
Note on the gross anatomy target that my yellow striped area corresponds to the infamous “gut shot.” While a serious wound in the long term sense, its ability to stop criminal action quickly is quite suspect.
Several articles have been written describing the geometry necessary to figure out where the vital organs are. Running a geometry problem in my head while someone is trying to do me serious bodily injury seems a bit much. However, I think an understanding of what actually constitutes the “high center chest” is useful. This is especially true since the IDPA and IPSC Metric targets are very commonly used in training classes.
And that’s why I hate the -3 zone. When I ran the Georgia State IDPA Championship for several years, I painted black over the -3 zone of all the targets so hits there would be scored a miss (-5). It caused a certain amount of grumbling but I really think people need to be confronted with the realities of personal protection.
Teaching the Snub Nose Revolver
No possible rapidity of fire can atone for habitual carelessness of aim with the first shot. —Theodore Roosevelt, (26th President of the United States) The Wilderness Hunter, 1893
Last night I taught my ‘Introduction to the J Frame Revolver’ class. It’s probably the last time I’m going to teach it; the market just isn’t there anymore and it’s hard to get much enrollment.
However, I’ve been teaching the snub heavily since before 9/11 and think I’ve evolved a very workable program. There are still many people who have snubs and some of them may be interested in knowing what they’re doing with it. To that end, I’m going to post my entire Program Of Instruction for anyone who wants to use it. The live fire portion is exactly 50 rounds. What I found was that casual shooters of the snub tend to experience a noticeable dropoff in performance after 50 rounds, so I cut it down to that.
Course Overview – A skill builder short course particular to 5 shot revolvers.
The intent is to show basic techniques and give a methodology for subsequent practice. “I cannot make you an expert in three hours but I can show you what to do and how to practice to increase your skill.”
Methodology
• Explanation of strength and weaknesses of the snub
• Demonstration of proper grip for revolvers. Some modification may be necessary based on an individual’s hands.
• Show different kinds of grips that can be installed on a snub to better fit a person’s hands.
• Explanation of sighting techniques and how range affects them
• Disciplined learning exercises, including ball and dummy and dryfire
• Ball and dummy is achieved by opening the cylinder after a few shots, spinning it, and then closing it without looking where the fired case(s) end up. Do this once or twice per cylinder.
• Concludes with a Qualification Course because everyone should have a benchmark of where they are. Shooters should also be able to demonstrate in court that they have a measureable degree of competency.
Snub Revolver Intro Class Practical Exercise (single relay)
Six Circle w/dot target (5 yards)
1) Demonstrate how to load with loose ammo and explain why that’s important.
2) Explanation of Spot shooting and how to pick a spot on your target
3) On top left row, fire a 5 shot group.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/5) (Spin cylinder 2X)
4) On center left row, from high ready, fire 1 shot 5 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/10) (Spin cylinder 2X)
5) Explanation of proper drawstroke
6) On bottom left row, draw and fire 1 shot 5 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/15) (Spin cylinder 2X)
7) On top right row, from high ready, fire 2 shots 2 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (4/19) (Load with four plus fired case, spin cylinder)
8) On middle right row, draw and fire 2 shots 2 times
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (4/23) (Load with four plus fired case, spin cylinder)
9) On bottom right row, from high ready, fire 5 shots 1 time
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/28)
Tape hits outside of circle (this wasn’t necessary because the class was hitting pretty well)
10) On top right row, fire a 5 shot group, strong hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/33) (Spin cylinder 2X)
11) On middle right row, from high ready, fire 1 shot 5 times, strong hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (5/38) (Spin cylinder 2X)
12) On bottom right row, fire a 2 shot group, weak hand only.
a. Dryfire
b. Livefire (2/40)
Change targets [B-27]
13) Shoot the LAPD Retired Officer Qualification Course
a. “The starting position for this qualifying course of fire will begin at the 7 Yard Line. When the target faces, the shooter will draw and fire 10 rounds at a single silhouette target. A score of 70 percent is required to pass the qualification. All rounds impacting anywhere on the body and head will receive full value and rounds impacting upon the arms are half value.” (10/50)
b. I chose the LAPD Retired Officer Course because the LAPD is a respected law enforcement organization, known for its emphasis on firearms proficiency. Since the LAPD considers this Course sufficient for its Retired Officers to demonstrate their ability to defend themselves, I think it’s a good choice for Armed Citizens, as well.
14) Record Student Performance on Qual Course.
15) Show various types of speedloaders and speed strip, where to get them, and how to use them. Explain strengths and weaknesses of each type.
a. HKS
b. Safariland
c. Jet Loader
d. SL Variant
e. Dade
f. Speed-Strips and Tuff-Strips
16) Explain idiosyncrasies of pocket holsters and how to use them correctly.
Adjourn to classroom to award certificates.
Pass out Armed Citizen Legal Defense Network booklet What Every Gun Owner Needs to Know About Self-Defense Law
Conclude with the message that we are more likely to be injured or killed in a car wreck than by a criminal. Mention that a Defensive Driving Course costs only $35 in Georgia and auto insurance companies are required to lower your insurance premium by 10% for taking it.
Some of the coursework is shown on the Personal Defense Network DVD Fundamental of Snub Nosed Revolvers for Defense
Lessons for the Armed Citizen from the Dorner Incidents
A defensive gun use (DGU) by an Armed Citizen is a balance of doing the right things, doing things right, and not doing the wrong things.
Christopher Dorner was a former LAPD Officer who went crazy in February 2013, murdered several people, and eventually committed suicide when surrounded by the authorities. During the manhunt for Dorner, two mistaken identity shootings by police occurred in the Los Angeles area. One shooting, by Torrance Police Officers, occurred near a checkpoint and the other in the vicinity of a LAPD Captain’s home. The home was being protected by a detail of LAPD Officers because the Captain may have been a specific target of Dorner’s.
A recent settlement for the Torrance Police shooting has revived commentary about the ‘trigger happy police,’ etc. I will be the first to admit I wouldn’t want to be downrange during such an episode but there are also lessons to be learned from the mistaken identity shootings. And those lessons don’t just apply to the law enforcement community.
First of all, note that both shootings occurred during periods of limited visibility, i.e., early morning. Humans have a natural apprehension of the dark. Couple this natural fear with the possibility of dealing with a dangerous criminal and our emotional trigger mechanisms can get stretched pretty tight. In the case of the LAPD shooting, the Officers had been on station for several hours already. They had also been recently informed that Dorner had engaged two police officers nearby and murdered one of them.
How does this apply to the Armed Citizen? Think about how you might feel if you hear a crash in your home in the middle of the night. Likely, you will have been awakened from sleep, you will not know what the situation is, and very probably your spouse will be providing you with a sense of urgency to determine and fix the problem. If you are like most people, your interior lights are not on, so you are operating in conditions of limited visibility. Now throw in the possibility of a heightened sense of danger, for instance, having a daughter who has recently obtained a Protection Order staying with you for safety reasons. The possibility is high that you will not have the same sense of ease and self-control you do when you go to the indoor range and casually prepare to practice shooting some rounds at a bullseye target.
Second, the Police do not train very much to work in groups larger than two. This point was made very succinctly by my Battalion Commander when we were practicing riot control in the National Guard. Watch any multi-officer takedown of a criminal and it’s obvious they do not operate with a sense of military coordination. Police Officers spent almost all of their time working independently, not as part of a team. Only SWAT units generally are trained to work in groups larger than two.
What does the lack of teamwork have to do with the Armed Citizen? Just as the Police don’t spend much time practicing teamwork with each other; neither do Armed Citizens tend to spend much time practicing teamwork with their families and friends. The probability that your spouse and/or children are not going to do what you want them to or what you tell them to do is high. So don’t be surprised if an incident involving more than one potential victim turns out to be a complicated problem to solve.
Third, communications among the Officers left something to be desired. In the case of the Torrance Police shooting, the victim had been identified as a non-threat just a few seconds before. Unfortunately, this had evidently not been communicated to Officers right down the street. When I conduct training for couples, one of the main concerns they express is their ability to communicate during a criminal encounter. The couples I work with tend to already be ‘switched on’ so this is an area that deserves considerable emphasis in our personal practice.
All this is not to defend or justify the mistaken identity shootings. The LAPD Board of Police Commissioners found the LAPD Officers’ actions ‘out of policy’ and rightly so. Rather, it is to point out that a defensive gun use (DGU) by an Armed Citizen, just as by a Law Enforcement Officer, is a balance of doing the right things, doing things right, and not doing the wrong things.
When we take a gun into our hands for defensive purposes, we have a goal in mind, that being to avoid death or serious bodily injury. At the same time, there’s a good possibility we are threading our way through a series of physical and emotional obstacles while trying to reach that goal. Just as soldiers whose objective is on the far side of a minefield must work their way through the minefield carefully, we, as Armed Citizens, must be cautious of our paths and moves, as well.
The full report of the Los Angeles Police Department Board Of Police Commissioners is available here.
Spot shooting
“Do you want it in the belly or in the teeth?” –my father, to a would-be robber, who suddenly remembered a previous appointment.
My dad’s eyesight was pretty bad by then, so he couldn’t aim at the eye. However, the teeth remained a viable aiming point for him. At age 83, he and I took the training to get our Nevada Concealed Handgun Permits. He outshot everyone in the class except me. One reason was he knew to aim at something.
One of the biggest problems I see in current training methods is the concept of “aim for center of mass.” Coupled with the blank targets used, it’s no wonder that people have a hard time learning to hit anything. That’s the equivalent of what’s called an “area target” in the Army. Area targets are best engaged with some form of area weapon, such as a machinegun, grenade launcher, mortar, or artillery. However, we don’t carry area weapons for self-defense.
One of the greatest handgun shooters ever, Ed McGivern, was asked how he could hit playing cards so quickly and with such tight groups. His answer was “I’m not aiming at the card, I’m aiming at a spot on it.” Ed established some speed records that have never been broken, so this is does not have to be a slow process, either. The idea that aiming at a spot on a target is too slow is a common misconception. It does require practice, though.
To facilitate this when I am dryfiring, I have targets with spots on them. The one I am using now has a variety of spots on it. There is a face, a cut out area of the IDPA -0 zone with a spot in it, and a series of circle and dots on the back. When I’m shooting IDPA, I do my best to pick out a spot on the target to aim at, such as a paster or group of pasters. So, I’m not aiming at ‘center of mass,’ I’m aiming at a spot.
When I explain this concept to students in my Defensive Pistol classes, I reference the Internet meme “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” Whenever I hear that meme, I ask “What are the elements of your plan?” I have yet to receive any meaningful response; it’s just a platitude that people repeat to sound like they’re ‘switched on.’ I tell my students that one element of my plan is that as soon as I meet someone, I pick out the spot on their body that I am going to aim at, should it become necessary to shoot them. Then I describe to each person in the class what the aiming point for them would be. This tends to generate considerable discomfort but makes the point very clear. Most of the class is shot on dot targets. Only when the students shoot the qualification course do they shoot at a silhouette, which has a discernible aiming spot on it.
Spot shooting is a fundamental part of the instruction at the elite Rogers Shooting School. There is always a spot on the body plates at the School. When practicing recoil control via the ‘Bill Drill,’ aiming at that spot is key to firing a good group.
What we are trying to achieve when aiming at a spot is not necessarily to hit the spot but rather to get our bullet very close to it. As I explain to my students, our groups are always going to be larger than what we are aiming at. This is true because guns are not generally capable of putting all the bullets in the same hole, nor are we Terminators who can hold and press the trigger exactly the same way every time. However, by aiming precisely, we minimize the amount of error induced by mechanical tolerances and our human fallibilities.
This is the fundamental problem with ‘aiming at center of mass.’ In that philosophy, the entire silhouette is the target. So if the group is larger than the target, misses become an inevitable part of the result. Throw in poor trigger manipulation and you end up with a 20% hit rate.
Try this out the next time you go to the range, I think you will notice a difference.
What Strategies should we train (or train not to)?
“He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears.” — Proverbs 26:17
In my analysis of The Armed Citizen column, two things that I noticed have broader implications than ‘skills,’ although there are both skills and tactics involved in their execution. To me, they are strategic considerations about what to do vis-à-vis how to do it. I’m not hung up on the strategic/tactical terminology, so call it whatever suits you.
Intervene in another’s situation 15%
Hold at gunpoint until police arrive 12%
As many of my friends know, I’m not a fan of intervention in others’ affairs. I won’t say I would never do it, but I would need a really good reason. Even some police agencies, such as the LAPD, discourage officers from taking ‘enforcement action’ when they are off-duty.
Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners’ Findings
Although it is preferred that an off-duty officer refrain from taking enforcement action and instead act as a good witness, the rapidly unfolding circumstances warranted immediate intervention to preserve life.
Therefore, it was reasonable for Officer A to take immediate action to safeguard the lives of the public.
Even when the LAPD BOPC finds an officer’s “use of force to be in policy, requiring no action” in such a situation, it sometimes recommends additional training that the officer must undergo to remedy tactical deficiencies noted.
Board of Police Commissioners’ Findings
A. Tactics
The BOPC found that … Officer A (7 years, 8 months service) would benefit from additional tactical training at the Training Division (formal training) level.
In one incident that took place in the Atlanta area 3 years ago, the person who intervened was shot in the back and killed by a seeded backup man in the liquor store. There were a whole series of tactical and marksmanship issues and errors associated with that tragic incident.
In addition to the tactical considerations, Andrew Branca’s excellent book The Law of Self Defense discusses a number of legal considerations about intervention. For example, if a weapons carrier intervenes of behalf of someone who is not innocent in the encounter, then neither is the one who intervenes.
Intervention opens a big can of worms and I’ve never been much interested in fishing. Many years ago, Evan Marshall, a very savvy and experienced Detroit street cop, espoused a philosophy of being a good witness until “they start searching people, making people get down on the floor, or herding people into a back room.” At that point, he felt gunfire was in order. I haven’t come across anything I find more apropos, so that’s the personal strategy I have in mind.
The risk/reward aspect of ‘Hold at gunpoint until police arrive’ is a separate and involved topic that we’ll discuss in the future.
What skills should we train and practice?
“What is the best use of my time right now?” —How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein
As many people know, I like to read The Armed Citizen column of the NRA Journals in detail each month. Years ago, I did a Five Year Analysis of The Armed Citizen to give me an idea of what actual incidents really looked like. Revisiting that concept appealed to me, so I did a short version for the first six months of 2014.
What I was looking for this time was the skills and techniques that were used by The Armed Citizens to solve their problems. Each incident was looked at from the perspective of skills that could or might be taught in an entry level to intermediate level firearms training class. Here’s what the list and usage rates ended up looking like from 10% up and 0%:
- Retrieve from Storage (handgun) 32%
- Move safely from place to place at ready 22%
- Draw to shoot 20%
- Challenge from ready 15%
- Intervene in another’s situation 15%
- Draw to challenge 12%
- Engage from ready (handgun) 12%
- Hold at gunpoint until police arrive 12%
- Retrieve from Storage (unknown) 10%
- Shoot with non-threats downrange 10%
- Retrieve from Storage (rifle) 0%
- Reload 0%
How often do we, as firearms trainers, ask our students to bring their home storage containers to class with them? Probably not 32 percent of the time. Or do we at least provide some kind of drawer for them to get their roscoe out of to show they can do it safely? I know a lot of people keep their chamber, or even the gun, empty when it’s off their person, so do we make them demonstrate loading it safely? Something I really like about the NRA Defensive Pistol I Marksmanship Qualification Program is that it includes those type of skills and incorporates both a time and accuracy standard for performing them.
How about moving safely from place to place with a loaded gun in hand, especially with innocents around? This is one of the biggest challenges that new IDPA and USPSA shooters encounter. Almost inevitably, a new shooter will run around with finger on trigger and then is taken to task about it by the match staff. While they’re not training, those shooting sports are providing a lot more realistic practice on a critical skill than most training classes are. Does that mean that the shooting sports are more relevant, at least in that aspect, than training classes are?
Challenging criminals is another skill I see rarely. John Farnam emphasizes it in his classes but I don’t see verbalization prior to using deadly force in many other classes. I personally think the concept “the gun isn’t coming out until I decide to shoot” is one of the most ill-considered ideas in the firearms community. But I still hear it quite a bit. If we can convince a criminal that the victimization has gone South and turned into a conflict, the chances are quite good they will break off. If they break off the attack without us firing a shot, I consider that a big WIN. Verbalization is another skill that is included in the NRA MQP. But a number of my students have found it hard to do without considerable coaching.
We’ll discuss the other skills in the future, but I want to draw attention to the percentage of reloads involved in these incidents, to wit: ZERO. As I mentioned in a Personal Defense Network interview, I’ve completely de-emphasized reloading in my classes for Armed Citizens. It’s a useful exercise for practicing good gunhandling but as a tactical skill, I just don’t consider it important anymore. Some folks spend a lot of time on thinking about how much spare ammunition to carry, how to carry it, and how to reload quickly. I think that time and effort would be better spent on practicing to make a good first shot, which is a skill many people need a lot of practice on.
Interesting things in the NYPD Annual Firearms Discharge Report
Another shooting incident resource that I have added is the NYPD Annual Firearms Discharge Report. The 2012 Report, which is the latest, provided some interesting information. The thing about any of the big reports is that you have to actually read them to see what’s in them rather than just skimming. Nancy Pelosi research methods don’t work well here. Some nuggets are small and easily missed. Sometimes, you have to do a little number crunching on your own.
Distance
The distances that officers shot it out was interesting. 0-5 yards – 18 (41%), 6-15 yards – 15 (34%), 16-25 yards – 5 (11%), 26+ yards – 6 (14%). page 21
Contrary to popular opinion, over half (59%) of NYPD gunfights took place at six yards or more.
Unintentional Discharge
There were 21 unintentional discharges in 2012. This was a large increase from 2011. The increase was due to unintentional discharges during ‘adversarial conflict.’
Of the 21 firearms that were unintentionally discharged in 2012, 13 (62%) were the officers’ service weapons. Of the 13 service weapons involved, 4 (31%) were Glock 19s, 6 (46%) were Smith & Wesson 5946s, and 3 (23%) were Sig Sauer P226s. p 37 Current NYPD service pistols are all “double action only.” The NYPD uses 124 grain hollow-point bullets. p 49
IOW, there were more NDs with DAO pistols than with Glocks. Unfortunately, I have no way to quantify the percentage of Glocks v. DAO guns owned by NYPD officers. I’m willing to bet the preponderance is toward Glocks, though.
Rounds Fired
Another thing I found interesting was the difference in number of rounds fired in relation to the subject’s injury. p 55-56
The mode (most common) number of rounds fired per Fatality was one. For Injury, it was two. The median (middle point of the dataset) for Fatality was 1.5. For Injury, it was six. And the average rounds per Fatality was three, but for Injury, it was nine. Another counter-intuitive result; death of the subject resulted, generally, from less rounds being fired, rather than more. I wonder if that might have something to do with marksmanship.
Incident summaries
NYPD only gives incident summaries when the ‘Subject’ is killed. Unlike LAPD, NYPD does not appear to discourage enforcement action when an officer is off-duty. There was an interesting incident involving an off-duty officer. It just wasn’t a good day for anyone involved. As John Hall, a former head of the FBI Firearms Training Unit, observed years ago, “There is an element of chance in every encounter.”
On October 24, at 1837 hours, in the 46th Precinct, an off-duty officer was sitting in a parked vehicle with a friend, when he saw two men rob another man at gunpoint on the other side of the street. The officer got out of his car and approached the men. As soon as he identified himself as a police officer, the subject, one of the individuals involved in the robbery, turned and fired one round at the officer, striking him in the chest from about ten feet away. The men then fled on foot, while the officer went back to his vehicle, clutching his chest. The officer’s friend tried to drive away, only to get stuck in traffic behind a white Mustang which was stopped in front of them. The Mustang sped off and crashed up the street. Three individuals, including the subject, fled the Mustang. When the officer saw them, he pursued, still clutching his chest. The officer ordered bystanders to get down for their safety, and while taking cover behind a vehicle, fired eight rounds at the perpetrators, striking the subject once in the head and causing his demise. The other individuals who participated in the robbery were apprehended later. The subject had two prior arrests, for Robbery and Criminal Possession of a Weapon. p 54
The officer did not die as a result of his wound.
It’s hard to make that kind of stuff up, which is yet another reason I prefer to read the real reports rather than dreaming up my own scenarios.
Sources of information about deadly force incidents
I’ve been interested in gunfight analysis since I was a teenager. My Dad had a Guns and Blammo magazine with an article about the shootout between the Hamer posse and Bonnie and Clyde. Once I read it, I was hooked.
Many people like to ‘wargame’ situations that could happen to them and I am no different. However, I rarely dream up scenarios for playing ‘what if’ mental games unless I’m asleep and actually dreaming. There are several forums where people think them up but I prefer to look at real incidents. In many cases, truth is stranger than fiction.
There are several websites that aggregate various news reports, such as GunsSaveLives. I read The Armed Citizen column in the NRA Journals every month. Some people have commented that the NRA ‘cherry picks’ the reports they include in The Armed Citizen but, through independent research, I have found it largely representative of the overall activities of Armed Citizens.
The problem with news reports is that they don’t usually go into much depth about the specifics of the incidents. Frequently, the information has gaping holes in it or is wrong. A much better source is the online records of police deadly force incidents. A number of larger departments put all their Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) on their website. The level of detail varies but almost all of them give more than a news article. When looking for information that’s pertinent to me, I focus on the off-duty OIS because off-duty officer incidents have many situational and equipment parallels to an armed citizen.
The oldest source of information is the annual FBI Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report. The Bureau has been producing the report for many years. Back issues since 1996 of LEOKA are available online. As I pointed out in an article for Personal Defense Network, when using LEOKA, we have to be careful how we interpret the data. The part I find most useful is the Summaries of Officers Feloniously Killed. Instead of data tables, the Summaries provide a narrative about the circumstances of each officer’s death. It’s difficult reading, emotionally, but as I’ve told every Law Enforcement class I’ve taught, “If you haven’t read the Summaries, you haven’t read the report.”
One of my favorite sources is the Los Angeles Police Department Categorical Use Of Force reports. The LAPD Board Of Police Commissioners’ webpage has a detailed summary of every use of deadly force by LAPD officers since 2005. They are meticulously explained and analyzed with the Board’s findings at the end. There are many off duty incidents included in the database. Often, we hear the saying that “data is not the plural of anecdote.” However, when we have access to all the anecdotes, I think that becomes a source for evidence. The BOPC evaluates LAPD officers on three different areas; tactics, drawing/exhibiting, and use of force.
The Chicago Police Department Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) publishes an online summary of all OIS by Chicago Police Officers. The IPRA reports are also very detailed. It issues a finding only regarding the use of deadly force by the officer(s).
Late in 2013, the Philadelphia Police also began publishing summaries on each OIS. These are not as detailed as those from Los Angeles and Chicago but still contain useful information.
Another source of information is the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Office of Internal Oversight. The online reports provided by LVMPD are very detailed. They contain District Attorney Decisions, Force Investigation Team Reports, and Office of Internal Oversight Reviews.
A colleague of mine, John Hearne, coined the term “Ninjas coming from the ceiling.” When I read or hear of what some people are concerned about, that term usually comes to mind. I think it’s much more interesting and useful to think about what really does happen and then wargame that.
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