In the second quarter of 2026, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office (SMCSO) in California transitioned their duty sidearm from the SIG P320 Carry packaged with a 3 MOA dot Romeo1 Pro RDS to a Glock 45 with an Aimpoint COA 3.5 MOA dot.
In Part 1, we covered the move to the new sidearm, the required training to make it happen, and how to instill confidence in sworn personnel to be able to de-escalate situations, knowing they can protect themselves and the public if needed.
Through dry fire, live fire and virtual training, deputies have the confidence to engage a suspect and concentrate on de-escalating situations instead of dwelling on whether they can accurately take a shot if absolutely needed.
How is this confidence instilled? Through expert firearms and de-escalation training using the latest best practices. An important skill is to recognize your weaknesses and train to address them; and I’ll start with that.
Some of what is written below may seem controversial or go against your training. Changes to the best practices you may have learned came from watching thousands of hours of BWC video to see what works and what can be improved.
Shoot no faster than your skills allow
Lt. David Weidner, the previous SMCSO rangemaster, told me that no matter what sidearm the deputy is carrying, the main focus of the agency’s firearms training program is to ensure deputies are confident in their shooting skills and can respond to public safety incidents professionally and within policy.
Deputies are taught to focus on the A zone and to overdevelop their skill set so they default to their training during an encounter. This approach allows deputies to focus on de-escalating the situation at hand rather than listening to the voice in their head repeating over and over, “Am I good enough if I need to draw my firearm and shoot?”
Deputies know they can protect residents and themselves in nearly any scenario because they are run through advanced drills pulled from real-life situations, such as hostage and active shooter incidents.
Some drills use barriers or vehicles, while others have deputies putting on a tourniquet before returning fire. Par times for each drill are determined by the average times of deputies shooting it cold.
Two videos nearby show the difference between shooting to your skill level and shooting above it, with Lt. Weidner running through the same shoot / don’t shoot / shoot / transition drill at two speeds. Note that he shot these drills cold, using his Aimpoint ACRO-equipped Staccato P DUO.
First, he shoots it as fast as he knows his training will allow (2.95 seconds), followed by running it a literal eyeblink faster (2.81 seconds). The time difference is just 0.14 seconds, the lower end of an average eyeblink.
Note the difference in the hits. Both drills would be considered a passing score, but when he slows down to his training, his groups get smaller and his last two shots nearly touch with around a quarter of a second between them.
The next drill Lt. Weidner showed us is shoot 3 / reload / shoot 3, using a factory-new Glock 45 pulled from the armory, and again without practice.
Comparing the two videos, the moral of the story is to shoot no faster than your skill supports but shoot at the speed that is required for the situation at hand. There might be only a few tenths of a second difference, and you want to make every shot count.
Hostage Drill Speed: Lt. Weidner shooting the shoot / don’t shoot / shoot / transition drill faster than he knows he can be accurate. Gun is his Staccato P Duo.
Hostage Drill Accuracy: Lt. Weidner shooting the shoot / don’t shoot / shoot / transition drill at the speed he knows he can be accurate. Gun is his Staccato P Duo.
Good old-fashioned hard work
There are two sayings Lt. Weidner hears from other range instructors across the country that he believes to be dangerous to law enforcement: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast” and “Slow down to get your hits in a critical incident.”
He believes there is no such thing as slowing down to get your hits in a critical incident, rather he says slow is slow and fast is fast and to achieve speed and accuracy you must train for speed and accuracy.
There are no shortcuts and there are no tricks to helping you improve. It takes good old-fashioned hard work to create and maintain those neural pathways which will make your motions automatic. This process, known as neuroplasticity, allows for the strengthening of pathways through repetition and focused practice. How much practice? He recommends dry fire every day, like all competitive shooters do, and says 15 minutes is the right amount of time. Learn to focus on your target and practice proper dot presentation on it. Doing this will pay off in huge dividends when you go into the range and do live fire.
Learning from the experts
The SMSCO range staff check their egos at the door and are eager to learn from the best. They bring in industry experts to improve both skills and teaching methods. This time the travelling Staccato training team was in town to teach armorer and range classes.
As a volunteer with the SMCSO and for the purpose of this article, I attended 4 days of training at the range; the Staccato V2/V3 Armorer’s class taught by Staccato master armorer Christian Vandestreek; the two-day Staccato Pistol Performance class taught by Staccato Director of Training Randy Tweedy and Staccato Training Group member Chris Palmer; and the SMCSO’s Glock transition class taught by SMCSO range staff Deputy Alex Ruiz and Detective Alyssa Lorenzatti.
At lunch break on the second day of Staccato training, I asked Randy if I could post a video of what he considered to be the most important skill builder he teaches. He came up with the same recommendation as Lt. Weidner — a dry fire drill, which he had Chris demo for us.
When drawing from holster, officers should not need to search for the dot after the weapon is presented; it should be visible and on target the first time, every time.
This drill is designed to deliver the pistol from the holster to the shooter’s eye target line. Also called developing your index, it ensures that your hands, your eye, the weapon and the target are in the proper relationship every time your sidearm is drawn. Note how Chris engages the safety every time he comes off target, even if he doesn’t holster.
Any readers want to guess the first skill builder taught by Deputy Ruiz and Detective Lorenzatti for the Glock transition class? After rebooting each deputy’s “index the dot” skills due to the grip angle difference between SIG (18 degrees) and Glock (22 degrees) — they ran nearly the same dry fire drills that Randy and Lt. Weidner say are so important.
The transition skills class had somewhat different steps, each practiced individually:
- Defeat holster safety(s)
- Draw and bring support hand to grip
- Escalator to index on the target
- Put 2 and 3 together
Each step has a par time of .5 seconds but as long as the shooter is able to get the dot indexed on the target in 1.5 seconds, the stage times are flexible. Some students may be able to draw faster and some may be able to index faster.
Grip and trigger manipulation — it’s the same skill
After multiple dry fire drills, Randy moved to live fire. The purpose of this skill builder is to teach each student how to build a grip that results in consistent dot behavior that becomes predictable.
In the past, I was taught to grip my pistol as tightly as possible with my support hand to minimize recoil then to pull the gun back down quickly while prepping the trigger, all without causing the gun to shake.
Randy and the SMSCO instructors tell us that one grip doesn’t fit all, and the required grip will vary from shooter to shooter based on hand size and strength. Each student must learn and practice their personal grip.
The three keywords for this skill builder are consistent, stable and durable.
- Consistent: Your hands are in the same place on the pistol every single time, and no matter when and how you draw your pistol, your index is consistent and correct and your dot is on the target.
- Stable: Setting pressure on the gun that never changes while shooting.
- Durable: Your grip should be the same before the first shot and after the last shot, even with a long shooting string.
The exercise teaches that your finger pulling the trigger is part of the same skill as a consistent, stable and durable grip and isn’t a separate skill. No matter how you interact with your trigger, your grip pressure shouldn’t change, and your gun should not move during dryfire. With enough good reps, your gun will remain stationary whether the trigger is prepped (slack taken up), rolled (finger resting on the trigger but not taking up slack) or even slapped, starting with your fingernail touching the inside front of the trigger guard.
Instructors incorrectly blame a shooter’s “trigger press” when they have accuracy problems, even though the problem is shooters moving the gun at the same time they are pressing the trigger.
Students can see how their grip and trigger manipulation skills are progressing by using the Dot Drill exercise, shot from 3 or 5 yards, with each line using a different type of trigger pull. Students must shoot within the circle before moving to the next dot. Holdover due to parallax is important at these distances.
To get a better idea of how trigger manipulation is part of your grip, see this YouTube video by Matt Pranka.
A live trigger during dry fire
Most dry fire drills require resetting the trigger for the next iteration. Often, an instructor will rack the slide just enough to reset it or let the student do it. The downside of a student resetting the trigger during dryfire is they may be tempted to do the same when they transition to live fire, tossing live cartridges on the ground.
If the sidearm supports it, a standard DryFireMag can be used to emulate a live trigger, allowing for multiple dry fire drills, including learning proper grip and trigger control without manually resetting the trigger.
Managing recoil automatically
After learning the grip + trigger skill, the next step is managing recoil without thinking about it. This one-shot return drill video by Ben Stoeger shows the two wrong ways and one right way to manage recoil.
Wrong:
- Don’t fight recoil but let the muzzle go up as high as it wants before bringing it back down to your target.
- Put maximum squeeze into your grip to try and prevent it – then over correct so the dot goes below your target before coming back up to it.
Right:
- Keep your eyes on the target, not the dot.
In this skill builder, students start out with their practiced dot indexing, grip and trigger discipline to shoot an 8” circle at 7 yards. With all three skills together, the gun seems to return to the target without any assistance from the shooter as they automatically re-index the dot after each trigger pull – just like they first index when they initially draw their sidearm.
Shooters must keep their eyes on the target and not on the dot. If the dot is followed, the gun will not re-index. For students having problems re-indexing, blue painter’s tape across the front of the sight can help force them into target focus.
Some instructors tell students to follow the dot as they pull the gun back to the target. Try this method and see if your speed and accuracy improve after multiple practice sessions.
Additional knowledge sharing
Like the SMCSO trainers, Staccato trainer Randy Tweedy tells us students need to learn the difference between target and defensive shooting. One ragged hole says the student is shooting too slowly.
Randy wants students to shoot as soon as the dot is in the window and on the target. He uses an 8” circle at 7 yards and has his students shoot as fast as they can while staying inside. An A zone rectangle also works.
I got some other tips from Randy and the SMCSO range staff to pass along to Police1 readers.
- Wear your standard duty uniform at the range, including a load-bearing vest if you use one. Cops who practice draws and reloads from a battle belt when their duty holster is mounted higher or lower and their mags are on their vest will be grabbing at air when under duress on the street.
- Look your magazine into the magwell when reloading. Yes, I learned to keep my eyes on the threat too, but when the adrenaline is pumping your eyes will help you get that mag into the gun without fumbling. Get off the X if you can while doing a reload.
As you insert the mag, you can hit the slide release with your thumb or do an over-the-top slingshot as you bring your support hand back to the grip. Staring at the threat is not useful if you can’t do anything about it because you’re fumbling a reload.
Don’t bring your gun to your face when doing a reload. Your hands should be about the same place as you hold your phone when texting, which is a more natural position. After dropping the empty mag, pull your new mag from its pouch and shift focus to the magwell as you bring the two together. You can see this in action in the shoot 3 reload drill video.
Shoot 3 Reload Drill: Lt. Weidner showing a tactical reload in 2.54 seconds using a new Glock 45 pulled from the armory without warm-up. Typical par time is typically around 3.5 seconds for experienced shooters, with beginners often taking 6–8 seconds. Note the new best practice of looking the magazine into the magwell (filmed using the Shooters Global Timer 2 and Drills mobile app).
Staccato teaches a step-by-step dry reload drill to learn this new behavior.
- Start with an empty magwell and your support hand near your gun as if you just removed it from the grip. Grab the mag and bring to the magwell, but do not insert it. Repeat until you are smooth.
- Start with the mag at the magwell. Insert, then drop the slide with your support thumb sweeping up against slide release on its way to the grip then go back to the threat. Repeat until smooth.
- Practice with 1 reload 1 live fire, always pulling the replacement mag from your front or primary pouch. Repeat until smooth.
- Many cops like to insert new mags as hard as possible so the slide lock releases on its own. Staccato research has shown that if a mag is inserted with too much force, inertia can cause the slide to go right over the top cartridge and not strip it into the chamber. Insert the mag purposefully, but not violently.
- Type 3 (double feed) malfunctions also have a new recovery method, developed about a year or two ago. If the gun doesn’t fire and the slide is not locked back due to an empty mag, then tap, rack, shoot. If no bang, then rip mag, reinsert, rack once, shoot. If this doesn’t work, go for cover and figure it out later. Quite different from putting the removed mag under your arm and racking three times, right?
Palmer Indexing Drill: Staccato Training Group member Chris Palmer breaks down the learning process for an accurate and repeatable draw and index on target using dry fire.
Summary
A confident officer does everything he or she can to de-escalate a situation. This confidence is there because the officer is so well-trained that there isn’t a voice in their head asking if they can respond quickly and accurately in case the situation still goes bad.
Rangemasters need to budget for firearms training staff to attend classes by master instructors, either independent or employed by firearms manufacturers. And firearms training staff need to be open to learning new teaching methods and changing what they teach based on new best practices.
Watching BWC video to see what works and what doesn’t can inform experts to keep or adjust current training recommendations.
De-escalation training is not just a nice to have add-on. It needs to be an integral part of every street officer’s education, preferably using de-escalation simulators to make the training as realistic as possible. De-escalation and firearms skills are both perishable and annual sessions most likely are not enough.
Finally, if your agency transitions to a new firearm or optic, ensure your budget also includes the training required to get your range staff and your officers comfortable and effective with the new gear.
Following the above recommendations, your officers can protect and serve with the best possible skills and professionalism.
| RELATED: Beyond choosing the gun: How to manage a duty pistol transition
