Soccerdad1995 wrote:I was at the range recently shooting next to an off duty LEO (he checked in in front of me and showed his credentials to shoot free that day, and also had his duty belt on). The poor guy was very inaccurate with what looked to be his Glock 17. He sprayed rounds all over the torso sized target, and off the target, at 7 yards. This was slow, aimed, fire. The poor guy looked young so maybe he was still in training? It made me happy that this range allowed LEO's to shoot free so they can get practice if needed, but it was also very scary.flowrie wrote:I also remember reading somewhere (don't remember where) that 30% of LEO's can shoot, 30% are about like your average civilian, and the other 30% should not be allowed to carry any weapon. No disrespected intended, I love all of our LEO's.
Maybe lack of practice, perhaps due to budgets.
But in any case, this one looks like bad judgement.
The amount of firearms training LEOs receive is limited to say the least. I don't know if it's changed since I went through the academy, but we got one week of combined range and classroom instruction, very little actual tactical training, and only one evening of night firing, one day of shotgun, and no rifle training at all (no one carried rifles in patrol cars then) After that, most departments don't require officers to qualify but twice a year. I hope the LEO you saw does get more training, I took additional training courses while a LEO, and practiced a lot on my own. The good thing was you just had to let the department range master know you wanted to use the range and you only had supply your ammo. While in the academy there was no actual score keeping, on the range, but to qualify as an expert marksman, with my department, I had to hit 90% or more every 6 months. To pass qualification you had to hit 75%.
