Full story at:
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2325024


Dec. 29, 2003, 6:48AM

Police shootings spur calls for more training
Use-of-force drills urged after teens' deaths
By LISE OLSEN
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
The recent shooting deaths of two unarmed teens by Houston police officers underscores the need to ramp up officers' training in the use of force, say law enforcement experts and senior members of the department.

Experts with experience in such training say the officers involved in the two incidents seem to have made the kind of mistakes that can be reduced with regular and rigorous drills on when to use guns or alternative weapons in stressful situations.

But such "tactical training" is not regularly required by the state of Texas or by the Houston Police Department, except for rookies in the police academy.

"That bothers me a lot," said Raymond Teske, a police officer and professor at Sam Houston State University. Teske's own research in the 1970s led to the first firearms standards for Texas police after he found virtually no training or firing range requirements in departments statewide. Some officers' loaded guns had literally rusted from lack of use.

Yet the state's current standards, now more than 20 years old, involve only minimal familiarity with firearms, Teske said. No ongoing tactical training is required, though the state forces officers to take other subjects such as diversity training, asset forfeiture and identity theft.

"It's a joke," he said

Hrmmm  I thought perhaps this was due to the large number of Cops who were shot lately. Training in protecting themselves.

Aviator

Take the guns away from the cops, they dont need them to write traffic tickets.

Give the pricks pointed sticks for all I care

Training?? They hit him did'nt they?

More training is always a good thing.

They would just wind up sticking some baby by mistake, better make that blunt sticks, yeah, blunt sticks.

More training means taking Officers away from their regular duties. While the Officers are away from their regular duties and in training, other Officers have to fill in for them, most often on overtime.
Lobby your local Govt. and tell them that you want to pay higher taxes so you can pay to have better trained Police Officers.

Typically this is true.

However, if you have a quality training program, often you can get officers to do the courses on their own time. One way to help that along is set something up with the local community college, so every course is worth credit towards a degree.

I've donated hundreds of hours of my own time to attend training. It's worth it becuase it makes me a better cop, gives me college credit, and gives me marketable skills in case I lateral, or to use when I retire at 50 and start over with another agency.

The longest course I did on my own time was 3 days, but I know guys who have taken two weeks vacation time to go to certain very desirable courses off the clock.

If you want better trained Cops pay for them.

Training is such a double edged sword to the fact its not funny.  Spend a wad of cash to get your people trained the correct way or leave yourself (and them) open to the American dream that is civil court?

On the other hand you can train a person for countless hours and they may still make a wrong decision.  

I'm an instructor and I think good training is invaluable.  According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report 1 law enforcement officer is killed/injured every week.  

In my mind that is unacceptable.

And Oklahoma's firearms training is worse than Tx's.  There are people in my department that only fire their weapon at quals and barely qualify.  Firearms training is very bad.  I do have to admit we have doubled our training.  We went from one day a year to two.  


[grenade]  waiting to happen

We are required to shoot for score a minimum of 12 times a year.  We are allowed to shoot for score up to 730 times a year (which would be 26,280 rounds of ammo)  I suspect I am the only person in my agency who ever maxed out, and wore out three new SW autos doing so.  Now I carry a glock and shoot for score alot less, about 110 times a year.

Listen up boys and girls.  I live in Houston and this story is [b]not[/b] about "more shootings."  It's about the fact that more Hispanics have been shot recently - [i]because they are comitting more crimes.[/i]

A small group of Hispanic "activists" are raising cane because HPD shot a few Hispanic teenagers within a short period of time (all of these teens of course were up to no good but tht's not mentioned in the article, is it?)

This is just more race card crap being thrown up that will ultimately only [b]hinder[/b] law enforcement abilities in the Houston area.

In a nutshell:

- kids get into trouble and committ crimes
- cops draw and shoot
- [i]cops are reprimanded and restrained[/i]

See the problem?  This is only going to get worse as the "minorities" raise the race card when their kids get into trouble.

CMOS