Training: life or death for BBR police

Most police officers, especially in quiet semi-rural areas like Sisters and Black Butte Ranch, can go their entire careers without having to draw their weapons in the line of duty.

But if it happens, the officer had better be prepared — because his life and the lives of innocent bystanders may be on the line.

That thought hovers in the back of the mind as three officers step up to the firing line at Central Oregon’s police range in the sage flats near Bend. All the Black Butte Ranch (BBR) Police officers turned out for their quarterly firearms qualification on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 10-11.

The qualification course is simple and straightforward: a series of shots at varying distances from 15 yards to point-blank range, some using plastic barrels to simulate “cover.”

The exercise has time constraints and all shots must land within the borders of a human silhouette target for the shooter to qualify.

BBR Police use Kimber Model 1911 semi-automatic pistols, a more refined version of the venerable .45 caliber pistol that served as the U.S. military’s official sidearm through both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, until the 1980s when the military adopted the NATO-standard 9 mm Beretta Model 92.

According to Police Chief Gil Zaccaro, his department chose the Kimber .45 because it is accurate and reliable and the .45 caliber round has plenty of stopping power but does not over-penetrate a target.

That’s important for police, who need to control where all their rounds go to avoid endangering bystanders in a shooting incident.

Qualification is more rigorous than it used to be, adding time pressure and varying ranges.

“When I first started all you did was stand in front of a paper (bullseye) target and shoot,” said BBR officer Lester Brush, who serves as Rangemaster.

Brush, a 12-year law enforcement veteran, attended an FBI firearms instructor course in 1996 to qualify as a Rangemaster.

Brush is the first to acknowledge that the qualification course is a minimal check of competence with a firearm — a bureaucratic check mark rather than a training benchmark.

“The thing most agencies expose themselves to (in terms of liability) is ‘failure to train,’” Brush said.

Qualification demonstrates that an agency has at least a minimal training standard in place.

However, Brush said, “it doesn’t train an officer to stay alive.”

To do that, Brush has designed more challenging firearms courses that officers run through after the official “qualification.”

“I train people to move their feet,” Brush said.

Firearms training involves reloading drills, moving to cover and shooting under pressure.

In the Tueller Drill, an officer must draw and fire on his target before a runner starting 21 feet away and parallel reaches the shooter and taps him on the back. This simulates the putative 21-foot distance within which a suspect can reach an officer before he can draw and fire his gun.

Police officers never have a “free fire zone” to work in. Just as important as recognizing a hostile threat and reacting to it is the ability to recognize a non-hostile presence and not react to it.

For that purpose, officers train on “Shoot-Don’t Shoot” scenarios featuring surprise targets and target identification at different ranges.

Time pressure, split-second target ID, noise and other outside stressors help make training as realistic as it can be under controlled conditions. If officers can learn to react with speed, skill and precision in training, they are more likely to survive in the clutch, when the stakes are literally life and death.