A recent headline in this paper proclaimed "Taipei police in need of training for marksmanship." The article went on to detail the results of last year's handgun qualification test for the Taipei's police force. The results were grim: 8,000 officers participated; 1,924 failed. Basically one out of four officers cannot meet extremely minimal standards for handgun accuracy.
This is not the first time that the police have made public the overall low quality of their pistolcraft. In fact, it is a repetition of last year's results. And like last year, high ranking police officials have vowed to "do something" to raise the level of pistolcraft. Most likely, like last year and the year before that, there will be a lot of discussion and no sustained action towards solving the problem.
The public might well ask: "Why should we care? It's a problem for the police." I will tell you why you should care. I will present my own formula based on my 15 years in the criminal justice system. It is: cops + guns + inadequate training = dead cops + dead civilians + escaped suspects.
A police officer with a loaded gun who has not received good, ongoing training and practice is a mortal danger to every person on this island. I am not attempting to exaggerate the danger. The police have shown on a number of occasions their incompetence with firearms. This incompetence will continue until an ongoing training and mandatory qualifications are put in place.
Because Taiwan is not a "gun-owning country," unlike the US for example, the Taiwanese public and perhaps many police officers don't really have a very clear and realistic idea of the danger that guns pose. For better or for worse, Taiwan, again unlike the US, does not have a "gun mentality."
An ill-trained and unqualified cop with a gun is a danger to everyone around him or her. He is a danger to himself because on a very basic level he is unable to defend himself with his firearm. Likewise, he cannot defend others. The fact that the police officer is carrying a weapon that he is unable to effectively use increases significantly the chances of being shot at and killed by an armed criminal suspect. When a criminal suspect sees that the police officer is armed, it tends to cause the suspect to resort to whatever lethal force he has at his disposal. If the cops can't shoot effectively in their own defense, then the cop gets shot and perhaps dies.
In addition to being a danger to himself, an ill-trained and unqualified cop with a gun is a danger to bystanders. If the police officer is forced to draw on a suspect but does not have the necessary skills, then any and all civilian bystanders or fellow police officers are in danger of being hit by stray shots. This is a particular problem in the densely-crowded cities of Taiwan.
The basic rule is if you are going to carry a firearm you had better know how to use it. The National Police Administration seems oblivious to this basic rule.
Police with guns raise three interrelated training and qualification problems. They are the issues of "gun retention," pistolcraft and "decision shooting." When newspapers talk about "marksmanship" they are generally referring simply to the basics of pistolcraft. Pistolcraft is the set of skills necessary to clear the weapon from its holster, aim, and fire accurately under combat stress. It is important to note that police pistolcraft involves far, far more than mere target shooting.
Equally important for a police officer are the other two areas. Gun retention involves the set of skills necessary to retain control over your firearm when involved in close "hand to hand combat" with a suspect. It is an often overlooked fact that in the process of physically restraining a suspect, the suspect can and sometimes does get the police officer's gun or the gun discharges in the struggle. Gun retention is closely related to the grappling martial arts such as chin-na or aikido.
The most difficult of all the police firearms skills to develop is decision shooting. Simply put, this is the skill of knowing when to shoot and when not to. Given the fact that this decision has to be made almost instinctively, in a fraction of a second, usually under the worst of conditions, it is the most difficult and demanding of all police skills. Ironically enough, it frequently is the least-drilled aspect of police firearms training.
All three of these skills are equally important. Any police officer that carries a firearm ought to be trained and qualified prior to being allowed to carry that firearm. In my analysis, pistol qualification must meet these minimum criteria:
1.The testing must be done on a national level. The reason for this is to ensure that qualification scores are not "influenced" by local factors such as the chief of police being your personal friend and so he just "signs you off" as being qualified regardless of whether you are or not.
2. The testing must be conducted yearly and each officer must re-qualify each year.
3. The testing must involve and test the following eight points: decision shooting, reduced-light shooting, moving targets, use of cover, non-dominate hand shooting, alternate position shooting, reloading drills, and malfunction drills.
4. The qualification scores should be in the 70 percent and above range.
The police officers of Taiwan place their lives at risk for us every day. They deserve professional firearms training and should be held to professional firearms testing standards. A well-trained officer who is qualified with the weapon he or she carries makes for safer streets for us all.
Brian Kennedy is a member of the boards of Amnesty International Taiwan and the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
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