By Chief James J. Gerace
“Back up, back up, back up!”
That statement, quoted directly from the bodycam of one of three Colonie Police officers, demonstrates the life-saving shift in tactics now being taught in our Shooting at Moving Vehicles Risk Mitigation Program. The coordinated change in behavior by all three officers, from a potential confrontation as the driver prepared to speed away, to moving out of the vehicle’s path, is the direct result of training designed to reduce high-liability risks for law enforcement.
Legislating use of force policy
Shooting at moving vehicles is a high-risk area for law enforcement agencies nationwide. For decades, the best practice has been for officers to move out of the path of a vehicle instead of shooting at it, because firing at a moving car is generally ineffective and can endanger both officers and the public. These protocols have become departmental policies for numerous agencies, but now state legislatures are getting involved, reflecting growing public concern.
For example, the New York State Senate bill S4470, which was passed by the Senate in June and referred to the Assembly, would mandate policies and training for officers on discharging a firearm at a moving vehicle. This isn’t just about New York; it’s part of a larger national push to legally codify use-of-force policies. Many legislative bodies believe that relying solely on police department policy can lead to inconsistencies and may not be enough to prevent what they view as dangerous or unjustified shootings. By passing state laws, legislatures are aiming to create a uniform standard for all law enforcement officers within their states.
The proposed NY law directly cites a 2021 New York Times investigation titled “How Police Justify Killing Drivers: The Vehicle Was a Weapon.” That article’s findings, and the high-profile case of Danroy “DJ” Henry, are offered as support for the law’s necessity. In 2021, then Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah announced she was ordering an independent review into the 2010 shooting death of Henry. In her 2023 final report, Rocah and her team concluded that while they found no legal basis to convene a new grand jury, Henry’s death may have been avoided with better guidelines and more specific training. The report specifically mentioned that training could have resulted in the officer using techniques other than stepping in front of a moving vehicle and drawing a firearm. This statement directly aligns with the intent of the new legislation.
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Why existing policies are not enough
Experienced trainers and police leaders may be quick to point to their existing policies on this issue and call it done. However, the problem continues to persist. As noted in an article in The Atlantic in 2021, titled “Why Do Police Keep Shooting into Moving Cars,” which acknowledges departments have been saying this for years but the issue continues and has defied easy one-and-done policy solutions.
Legislative training mandates, no matter how well-intentioned, are bound to confront an unfortunate reality: most police training is rooted in obsolete and counterproductive practices long ago abandoned by educators and other professional communities.
It is without question that police agencies across the country should be proactive in updating their training protocols for these evolving legal and professional standards. The emphasis should be on teaching officers to mitigate risk by changing their tactics, prioritizing moving out of the way to avoid a threat rather than using deadly force against a vehicle.
Researchers have found that during high-risk situations officers are unlikely to have time to analyze and evaluate alternative courses of action. It is understood that stressful conditions preclude an orderly effort to generate and assess different options. Quick, intuitive decision-making is often the order of the day in these situations, a reality that necessitates a training program grounded in the science of motor learning to build ingrained behavioral responses.
Agencies must take a hard look in the mirror and ask what actions they have taken to prepare their officers beyond mere policy declarations.
In the video below, you’ll see how recent training concepts are being put into practice — from foundational drills to real-world application. The clips highlight officers refining their skills, supporting one another in dynamic scenarios and demonstrating how effective training translates into safer outcomes in the field.
Building a new training mindset: The program in action
A fundamental obligation of trainers is ensuring that training is retained and transferred. Knowledge must transfer to actual operational environments. This is supported by recent research which defines the true measure of learning as the ability to apply skills “adaptively to perform faster, more accurately, and with less effort under a wide variety of situational constraints and demands.” The Shooting at Moving Vehicles Risk Mitigation Program is designed to meet this fundamental obligation.
Convincing them it could be them
The first step of the program is to build officer receptivity by bridging the gap between what an officer believes they would do and what they actually do under stressful, time-compressed incidents. Many officers watching bodycam footage of a peer taking a high-risk action, such as jumping on a moving car will say, “I would never do that.” Yet, when asked after a similar incident, officers who have taken such an action often admit they never thought they would either.
This disconnect highlights that our traditional training methods have fallen short. Throughout police academy range training, officers build the “threat = draw my gun” equation to a level of automaticity. Officers are conditioned to draw their firearms when they perceive lethal force is coming at them. For any shooting at moving vehicles mitigation program to be effective, officers must confront the reality that their instinctive reactions may not be ideal and be willing to replace them with life-saving tactical responses. To be effective our new training was constructed to facilitate motor adaptation and recalibration of an officer’s motor plans, which the research identifies as the key to replacing less-than-ideal behaviors.
The next step in increasing officer willingness to change is building urgency for that change. Physical risk had not persuaded them in the past, so our program began to recount the potential for criminal liability for officer conduct. For an initial case study, we chose to focus on a case that resulted in criminal charges for an officer during an encounter for a shoplifting call, a typical and routine call in our jurisdiction. The take-home message was clear: your instinctive response may fail you, and the consequences for shooting can be severe.
The concept of looming and rear wheel slip
A critical component to convincing officers they could fall victim to their instincts is explaining what researchers and force experts believe may be happening in these moments. A phenomenon often cited is known as “looming,” an illusion that occurs when an officer is standing in the path of an approaching vehicle.
The rapid rate of growth in the visual field can make an officer believe they have no time to leap clear. Each time the gap between the officer and the oncoming car closes by half, the space occupied by the image of the vehicle in the officer’s visual field roughly doubles. This illusion can trick an officer into believing they are out of time, causing them to choose to shoot at the threat rather than attempt to leap clear.
This danger is compounded by another phenomenon documented by researchers like Dr. William Lewinski. His work shows the true danger officers face when standing on the driver’s side near the B-pillar of a vehicle. When a driver of a soon-to-be fleeing vehicle cranks the wheel hard to the left, officers are at risk of being run over if they remain in that position. This rear wheel slip has been documented in officer statements as giving the feeling of being “sucked under the car,” again presenting officers with what they believe to be a lethal threat and their instinctive “threat = draw my gun” response taking over.
Only by understanding these instinctive reactions can officers recognize the problem, begin to change, and override less-than-ideal behaviors with a trained, tactical response.
Identifying high-risk scenarios
Once officers accept the need to replace their ingrained instincts and can relate to the scientific concepts above, the training program provides them with practical tactics for the specific scenarios where these incidents are most likely to occur. Our department has focused on these key areas:
- At the end of a vehicle pursuit.
- Approaching a parked occupied vehicle from the front in a high-crime area. The officers’ “boots grow roots” when their verbal instructions to exit are ignored and they remain in a vulnerable position, oftentimes directly in front of the vehicle
- During a traffic stop when the occupants do not comply with verbal commands to exit, then attempt to put the car in gear and flee. Here, again, we find the officers’ “boots grow roots”
Teaching through scenario-based training
With receptivity and an appreciation for the high stakes now motivating our officers, the program transitioned to scenario-based exercises to build better responses. Trainers and leaders should understand that intuition is nothing more than pattern matching. We want our people to recognize familiar signs, and this can be trained. If we want them to size up situations quickly and accurately, it is our fundamental duty to expand their experience base. Good scenario-based training allows us to stop the action, rewind, and put many trials together.
“Step back” drill
The first scenario-based training was a simple exercise to begin building a movement response: step back from the rear wheel slip danger area in response to a cue, such as when the driver shifts the vehicle from park to drive. The cues were easy and the scenario was a basic traffic stop, immediately preceded by a classroom discussion and video breakdowns on the dangers of shooting at moving vehicles. Our training unit estimates that less than 10% of our officers moved on these threat cues. They continued giving verbal commands for the driver to put the car in park and stop.
When the driver then cranked the wheel hard, putting officers at risk of being struck by the rear tires, less than a quarter of officers moved out of the danger zone. Most officers couldn’t believe that even after spending an hour in a classroom setting and under very mild stress, they didn’t get out of the way. After each officer had an opportunity, all other officers were allowed to watch their peers, a technique rooted in the value of observational learning. They were now convinced that, “Hmm, maybe this could happen to me, and my instinctive response needs improvement.”
Officers continued practicing a basic movement pattern to “step back” to simple cues tied to scenarios identified in the high-risk areas.
Making change last
It became very clear after the first training delivery that this issue was going to have to be a continual process that had to be incorporated in several in-service training deliveries spaced out throughout the year. Video breakdowns continued in delivery 2, and basic movement scenarios were interspersed during regular scenarios, when officers were not told in advance that the scenario was associated with this topic. Throughout the year, performance began to improve.
Further deliveries incorporated not just the primary officer but also a focus on instructing backup officers that they do, in fact, have a duty to intervene and prevent harm. One such scenario involved a backup officer arriving on the scene of a call where a fellow officer had called for backup while checking a parked vehicle in the lot of a high-crime motel. When the backup officer arrives, he sees his fellow officer standing in front of the vehicle, gun drawn, yelling commands. The intent of the drill is to see these situations from a different perspective and to take steps to get your partner to get out of the way rather than have his “boots grow roots.”
Key lessons for safer responses
Based on our experience, implementing a successful training program that mitigates the high-liability risk of shooting at moving vehicles requires a fundamental shift in approach. Here are the key principles we learned:
- Create an impactful program name, such as “Don’t Just Stand There, MOVE!,” that will resonate with officers and serve as a constant reminder.
- Use case studies and video analysis to convince officers that their instinctive reactions can fail them and carry severe consequences.
- Recognize that changing deeply ingrained motor patterns requires a long-term, years-long program with repeated, interspersed scenario-based training to ensure skill retention and transfer.
- Expand training beyond the primary officer to include backup officers, teaching them their duty to intervene and create safety for their partners.
- Focus on teaching officers to move out of the danger zone at the first sign of a threat, recognizing that intuition is nothing more than pattern recognition and it can be trained and expanded through continuous experiences.
About the author
Chief James “Jay” Gerace is a seasoned law enforcement leader with 26 years of police service and the Chief of Police for the Colonie Police Department in New York. He has extensive experience in developing and implementing evidence-based training programs for officers, including a special focus on scenario-based training to mitigate high-risk situations. His work has been published in respected law enforcement trade publications, including the IACP’s Police Chief Magazine and the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. He has presented in front of leading organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
