P1 First Person: Pandemonium in the training room

By Sergeant Joseph Hawes
Horry County (S.C.) Police Department

I’m sure those of you out there who are defensive tactics instructors have struggled with some of the same issues that I see regularly while teaching classes. No matter how fresh and new a particular technique is, or what problem an officer may encounter this technique addresses, after a few repetitions practicing it some officers in your class begin to “mail it in” and just go through the motions.

Now don’t misunderstand what I mean by that. The officers in question aren’t being disruptive or disrespectful, they just aren’t putting the effort into the muscle memory sets required to truly become proficient in the new material. Seeing this scenario play out virtually every class caused me to back up and reevaluate myself as an instructor.

I began asking questions of my students and intently watching body language of the officers participating in my training. Over time the primary issue the cops in question had with the training was brought to the surface — realism. Answers I would receive from officers about why they weren’t putting out the appropriate effort usually went like this:

“I dunno... I mean, I feel like this stuff would work, probably, if I had to use it... but doing it like this isn’t really realistic.”

Being a pretty realistic person myself, I had to agree with them.

The typical training scenario in our region is fairly routine and much like what I expect the average agencies spread around the country do (if anything!) for defensive tactics training. Our officers are lined up face-to-face in pairs. One of them plays the role of “bad guy” while the other practices the DT technique at hand. We can’t afford expensive protective training suits that may allow practice of the skills at a more ballistic pace — not to mention having a mandate from command staff that there will be “absolutely no injuries!” incurred during our training evolution.

So, with that in mind I put serious time into trying to create drills — or add aspects to my drills — that could create a much-needed degree realism in our training without increasing the number of injuries sustained.

One of the weapon disarming techniques I teach makes frequent mention of what I call the cognitive thought process principle. Meaning disrupting the bad guys thought process or adding something to it so that they have more “gears” spinning in their head and less brain cells free to think about pulling the trigger on our officer or engaging the officer in a fight.

Part of this technique is speaking to the bad guy (who has the drop on our officer with a handgun) in hopes to engage their thought process, thereby adding another split second of reaction time. As the instructor I thought if I truly believe this principle will work on bad guys, then why wouldn’t it work to add a small degree of realism to police officer training?

Where these training techniques have really seemed to be most beneficial has been in weapon retention training. While having officers execute the moves in repetition many times we reach the point where the instructor just yells “GO!” and the students execute the retention at their own pace going through the entire technique. This is where I typically see officers going through the motions and dismissing the value of our training. My response to that sounded something like this the first time:

“Alright, officers close your eyes. You are allowed to open your eyes to execute the technique but only on the command of GO... bad guys, hand on the weapon... GO!”

Things got real serious real fast. Because the officer is wondering what their particular bad guy is doing when their eyes are closed, and especially wondering what their favorite instructor is doing while their eyes are closed, they aren’t remembering exactly how to execute the technique.

When “GO!” is shouted, invariably a large percentage of the class has complete brain lock and cannot execute because their cognitive thought process as been totally interrupted by a very unexpected event. At this point there’s always a very noticeable change in the feeling of the class. Instead of the usual step-by-step-by-step, “thanks-Sarge-I’m-outta-here” mentality, the intensity and focus of the whole class is turned up several notches.

Initially throwing in the occasional eyes closed command worked well, but as we all know with teaching adults, the ante must be upped occasionally in order to keep their attention. The next thing I implemented was math problems.

You heard me right— math. It went like this:

“Officers! Eyes closed! Your starting number is 25, times four, divided by two. GO!”

Instant pandemonium in the training room.

More than half the class was laughing out loud at their inability execute a technique that they had just successfully practiced dozens of times. Mixed into the laughter where a lot of concerned looks and mumbled expletives also. It didn’t help any when I pointed out an officer and asked them what the final number was and they had no earthly idea. Not because they where bad at math, but because their brain had just been thrown off of the cognitive tracks.

Granted, this training method is not something that would (or should) be used for multiple repetitions on the same technique. A student will begin to just ignore the distraction and complete the steps of the drill. But, it has proven to be invaluable for me in assessing my officers’ potential to execute certain core techniques when I know their mind is not specifically focused on the task at hand. I look at it as something of a surprise attack from the instructor. It has allowed our training to take on a certain degree of realism without adding any of the risk associated with more dynamic training techniques.

I call this Cognitive Thought Process Training (CTP) and would love to discuss it with any other DT instructors out there who are interested. Add your comments below or send me an e-mail at sergeanthawes@gmail.com.

Never give up!