NCJ Number
203152
Journal
Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine Volume: 27 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2003 Pages: 56,58,59
Date Published
November 2003
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article discusses officer-involved shootings (OIS's) occurring at 21 feet or less.
Abstract
In the vast majority of OIS's, there is no cover available to the officer. Because of this, movement is an essential element in any gunfight. OIS's are rapid, traumatic events that happen so suddenly a large percentage of officers involved in them say they were caught off guard. When this happens, the officer falls victim to the action vs. reaction phenomenon, playing catch up to the suspect’s actions. The way to turn this around to the officer’s advantage is to move and move quickly. This forces the bad guy to play catch up to the officer’s action or movement. When involved in a shooting, the officer is going to respond by moving and running the same way he or she has been doing it all his or her life, with the feet shoulder width apart. Nationally, the average hit ratio for law enforcement officers, standing static shooting at a paper target, is 90-plus percent. Yet when an officer becomes involved in an OIS the hit ratio is somewhere around 12 to 18 percent. Some of the loss in accuracy can be attributed to stress and the fact that the officer is firing second in reaction to the shooter. But a large percentage of the difference can be attributed to the fact that an officer’s instinctive reactions directly oppose the way he or she has been trained. Some instinctive reactions in a fight are bending the knees slightly and bending forward at the waist. This is due to the body preparing to fight. During an OIS, an officer will automatically protect the windpipe by lowering the chin. Another natural instinctive reaction is locking the arms and wrists straight out in front. In most cases officers are trained in some type of static line sighted shooting-not shooting on the move. When the shooting starts, the officer is going to want to move and move quickly. Officers should be trained that way. Almost 95 percent of officers that are able to reach cover in a shooting survive the incident.