Handling Weapons in Training

I am sure everyone has heard of the story of the officer who trained weapon disarming techniques with his spouse on a regular basis. Ever time he disarmed her of the training weapon he handed it right back to her in order to perform another training repetition. As the story goes he was actually in an incident on the street where he disarmed a subject and handed the gun right back to him. I have heard a few versions of this story and am not sure if they are true or just urban legend.

Regardless of the truth of the story it is certainly a consideration for training. We want to ensure we train officers to follow up with appropriate tactics following a disarming and avoid training officers to disarm a subject of a knife or a gun and then hand the weapon back to them.

I have seen a number of things that concern me in attempts to avoid this programming of officers during training. There are two of those ‘solutions’ I would like to address, both of which fall into the category of unintended consequences of well intentioned training:

1. I have seen officers taught to state “For training purposes only.” while they are handing the weapon back to the ‘subject’.. If we are truly concerned that we will program the officer to immediately hand over the weapon on the street following a disarming then in this case we have trained the officer to not only hand the weapon back but say “For training purposes only” while they hand the subject back the weapon. This is less desirable.
2. I have seen officers who have been trained to throw the weapon on the ground and have their partner pick it up as a way to avoid training them to hand the gun back. If we follow the logic behind this drill then the officers have just been trained to disarm a subject and throw the weapon on the ground at their feet rather than retain the weapon and eliminate the threat. This is less desirable.

In the early stages of the training where the officers are learning the components to the skill they will need to hand the gun or weapon to their partner at the end of a set number of repetitions. As law enforcement professionals they will have to handle firearms on a regular basis anyway so simply teach them how to hand a weapon to someone in a safe and professional manner.

Once they get to the stage where they are completing the disarming then have them follow through with the appropriate tactics, then reset the drill and simply change roles. The officer who has the gun then switches to the role of the subject and points the weapon at their training partner who will complete the disarm and follow through.

Take care and commit to excellence in training.