Holiday Gift Suggestion?: Is there anyone in your life who would enjoy
an autographed copy of my book? They are shipped by Priority Mail and
should still be able to get there before Christmas. (I currently have
just over a dozen copies and was recently told by Paladin Press that it
was in backorder status.)
http://www.spw-duf.info/book.html
---
From John Farnam:
12 Dec 06
Last weekend, I conducted a Patrol Rifle Program in the Midwest with the
able assistance of several close colleagues. My personal rifle for the
Course was my Beretta CX4, as I wanted to see how it compared with the
various 223 and 308 rifles brought by most of the other students. We
were on an outdoor range, and temperature hovered in the high thirties.
All of us were dressed appropriately. I was wearing a heavy parka.
My CX4 (like my RA/XCR) is equipped with an EOTech, and it is sighted
in, dead-on, at forty meters with Cor-Bon DPX 140gr 40S&W. However, I
noticed at closer ranges, particularly when we did brain-stem shots at
three meters, my impacts were biased to the right. When I aimed for the
center or the forehead, expecting the bullet to strike the center of the
nose (allowing for the close-range offset), the holes kept appearing to
the right of the nose. Going back to forty meters, I confirmed that the
EOTech was indeed still delivering bullets dead-nuts.
It took one on my colleagues to solve this mystery by pointing out the
obvious. My heavy parka caused me to mount the rifle canted
counter-clockwise. It was not perfectly vertical, but from the
shooter's (my) perspective, the tilting was not obvious. I thought I
was holding the rifle straight ventricle. When shooting wearing just a
shirt, this dilemma rarely manifests itself, but the parka invariably
causes me to cant the rifle, even though I didn't realize I was doing it.
The lesson here is that we need to insure our rifle is straight vertical
when sighting it in, and we must also insure it is straight vertical
when holding high in order to compensate for the bore-line/sight-line
offset when shooting at extremely close range.
The other lesson is that we need to run our gear in all kinds of
environments, so that we become aware of issues associated with extremes
in temperature, wind, at al. I, for one, do too much shooting in
comfortable places!
/John
(Spell-check strikes again! I believe John meant "vertical," not
"ventricle." The higher the sight over the axis of the bore, the more
the bullet will be diverted when the rifle is tilted. Generally, rifles
with sights on carrying handles, such as AR-15's, will be the most
vulnerable. My rifle students generally have one exercise in which they
fire the rifle held horizontally.)
14 Dec 06
Excellent optics advice from my friends and colleagues, Fred Blish and
Pat Rogers:
"The issue of rifle optics fogging/frosting at inconvenient times can be
address simply by using your binocular vision. When trying to look
through a fogged, optical sight, just open both eyes. Your brain will
superimpose the illuminated reticle on the downrange area, even though
the optic itself is blocked. This trick works with EOTech, Aimpoint,
and most of the others with illuminated reticles. In fact, it is
nothing new. First generation Trijicons (OEG) harnessed this same
principle. It takes some practice, and not everyone can do it, but it
is a critical skill and one of which we all need to be aware.
Modern, fighting optics enable us to see more, and see more precisely,
than do iron sights. However, they have no effect on the trigger, so
they won't make us shoot any better than before they existed. Thus, all
of us must first learn to shoot well! We should learn the art of rifle
shooting on iron sights (at a point in our lives while our eyes are
still sharp!). And, even when we migrate to optics, particularly those
requiring batteries, defaulting to iron sights should always be fast and
well practiced. With serious rifles, iron sights should never be far away!"
Amen, amen!
/John
(Good advice for those who have normal binocular vision - not all of us do.)
From Force Science Research Center:
Force Science News #61
December 15, 2006
=======================================
The Force Science News is provided by The Force Science Research Center,
a non-profit institution based at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Subscriptions are free and sent via e-mail. To register for your free,
direct-delivery subscription, please visit www.forcesciencenews.com and
click on the registration button. For reprint clearance, please e-mail:
[email protected].
=======================================
In this issue:
I. NEW FINDINGS ABOUT SIMULATION TRAINING AND THE STRESS OF
POST-SHOOTING INTERVIEWS
II. IS NYC INVESTIGATION HEADED IN A QUESTIONABLE DIRECTION?
=======================================
I. NEW FINDINGS ABOUT SIMULATION TRAINING AND THE STRESS OF
POST-SHOOTING INTERVIEWS
A new study that measured the body-alarm reactions of officers during
and after an armed encounter underscores the value of simulation
training and the need for treating shooting survivors with sensitivity
during OIS investigations.
The study confirms that participating in a realistic training scenario
can deliver close to the same emotional and physiological wallop that
would be expected from an actual shooting, and reveals that recalling
what happened in a life-threatening encounter even hours later during an
interview in a safe setting can be nearly as stressful as experiencing
the danger in the first place.
"These preliminary findings have profound implications for trainers and
investigators alike," Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force
Science Research Center at Minnesota State University-Mankato, told
Force Science News.
"They help us better understand how best to prepare officers to meet the
mental and physical strain of violent confrontations and how we should
approach them afterward to best mine their memories."
More new discoveries are expected to emerge as data collected during the
study are more thoroughly analyzed this winter.
The study is part of a broad-based investigation underway by FSRC into
how officers process and remember life-threatening events. It was
conducted at a training facility near London, England, with funding from
the Constables' Branch Board of the London Metropolitan Police
Federation. The Board approached FSRC about collaborating on a series of
practical research experiments related to street performance after
failing to find any sources for such critical studies in England.
Last October, under Lewinski's direction, and with coordination by
Branch Board representative Dave Blocksidge, 48 male and female
volunteers from London's armed response teams, SWAT unit and diplomatic
protection group were fitted with heart-rate monitors by Justin Dixon,
head of the exercise physiology lab for the Met force.
Divided into teams of 3 and armed with Glock 17s loaded with Simunition
blanks, they were assigned one team at a time to participate in the same
scenario: an armed robber had been shot and was in a hospital setting;
they were to respond to his bedside as a protection-and-containment unit.
As each team entered a simulated hospital lobby, filled with patients
and visitors, they unexpectedly witnessed a verbal altercation in
progress between a receptionist and a man who claimed to be the brother
of the wounded bandit. He was adamantly insisting on seeing the suspect;
the receptionist was standing firm that no visitors were allowed.
The male role-player kept escalating the situation, even grabbing the
receptionist if that's what it took to provoke the officers to
intervene. (This was so realistically staged that during one enactment
when Lewinski was playing the receptionist, he was dragged across a desk
and broke his glasses!)
As officers responded to calm the conflict, another "brother" of the
armed robber unexpectedly popped out of a room off the lobby, wielding a
sawed-off shotgun and holding a female hostage. He fired Simunition
blasts out of both barrels into the floor, then pointed the gun at the
officers and started to make loud demands that his wounded brother be freed.
As soon as officers responded--invariably by shooting and controlling
him--the scenario ended. (Interestingly, the volunteers were highly
enough trained that even though they had never worked together before,
each team automatically split its areas of responsibility so that while
2 officers dealt with the receptionist squabble one stayed alert to the
surrounding environment. "As a result," Lewinski recalls, "the response
to the suspect with the shotgun was so fast he never got a chance to
fully voice his demands.")
Immediately after the scenario, the officers, still wearing their heart
monitors, were divided into different groups. Some conferred with other
team members on what they had just experienced, which Lewinski says is
standard after-action practice on London Met. Others were not permitted
to confer. Then each of these groups was further divided. Some wrote
reports of the incident and some were interviewed.
The interviews were conducted by trained investigators who had undergone
refresher sessions on cognitive interviewing techniques before the
scenario. Again, cognitive interviewing, a specialized technique in
which all an officer's senses are explored in an effort to enhance
memory of a stressful experience, is standard practice on London Met,
Lewinski says. (The refresher training, in this case, was provided by
Dr. Amina Memon, a psychologist with the University of Glasgow and a
recognized expert on that interviewing style.)
Finally, the officers were subjected to aerobic fitness tests during
which Dixon measured their pulse rates and oxygen levels.
"The results are being tabulated in fine detail and will be analyzed
extensively but early emerging patterns already appear important,"
Lewinski says. He elaborates on 2 of these:
1. Pulse rates among the officers spiked to 160 bpm once the shooting
started. "That's roughly double the normal heart rate for a reasonably
fit person," Lewinski says.
No matter how fit an officer was proven to be by the physical test at
the end of the experiment, his or her pulse rate shot up to about 75% of
his or her maximum heart rate during the sudden, intense psychological
stress of the simulated shooting threat.
"This validates the value of simulation training," Lewinski explains.
"It confirms that realistic scenarios do produce extreme stress arousal
that is at least in the range of what a real-life situation would
provoke. And this, in turn, helps acclimate an officer to respond well
under high psychological stress conditions on the street," where
decision-making and skill performance would generally deteriorate
without that training "inoculation."
To achieve that benefit, however, Lewinski emphasizes that exposure to
training scenarios has to be more than just a one-time "demonstration."
A department "needs to use simulation training on a repeated,
consistent, sustained basis and the scenarios need to be constantly
freshened in order to remain unpredictable and provocative."
In any encounter, Lewinski says, "confidence undergirds competence. The
more genuinely confident you are in your performance, the better your
performance will be.
"By participating in simulation scenarios, you gain confidence that
transfers to the real world. You get used to performing under high
levels of stress and are less likely to react to it with fear or anger.
Instead of being alien territory, stress actually becomes your friend,
When you're accustomed to it, emotional intensity fuels great
decision-making and great performance.
"The study findings regarding body arousal suggest that trainers who
advocate simulation training for these reasons are on the right track."
2. During the post-scenario interviews, when participants were asked to
recall details of the threat encounter, heart monitors recorded jumps in
the officers' pulse rates up to 135 bpm, about 60% of their maximum
heart rate.
"This was less than the spike that occurred during the scenario itself,
but still significantly above normal and surprisingly close to the
impact of actually experiencing the confrontation," Lewinski says. "In
other words, vividly 'reliving' the event in your imagination and
talking about it can produce essentially a secondary stress assault.
"The implication of this is very profound," Lewinski declares. "The
interviews took place one to three hours after the simulated
life-threat, but a strong stress arousal was still produced just by
recalling the experience.
"From this, there's no doubt that officers need to be treated with
sensitivity after being in a shooting. Not that they need to be unduly
coddled, but they do need time to decompress and allow the stress
response to abate somewhat so they're not handling the most difficult
interview of their life while in the midst of emotional turmoil.
Expecting them to be RoboCops and immediately report all pertinent
information factually and completely is not realistic.
"We know from other research that stress hormones tend to interfere with
how memories are formed. Stress affects how memories are consolidated
and recalled. So re-inflicting a stressful mental state by asking an
officer to recount the event before he has had a chance to process it on
his own is not likely to be helpful in getting as full and accurate a
picture as possible. The clarity of his thinking and recall is going to
be significantly impaired if he's pushed into giving a statement too soon."
How long a report or interview should be delayed and what preliminaries
might be helpful (such as a walk-through of the scene) were not part of
this phase of the bigger study, Lewinski says. But he does expect that
other important findings about memory will yet emerge from the recent
experiment.
Three cameras, as well as audio equipment, recorded the scenario so that
what actually was said and done can be compared to the officers'
memories of what took place. Among other things, the researchers will be
analyzing the effect that officers conferring with their teammates had
on their recollections.
Initially, Lewinski reveals, it appears that allowing officers to confer
produced a significantly fuller and more accurate account of what
happened, but that impression is yet to be precisely quantified from the
data.
Force Science News will keep you updated as more information becomes
available.
II. IS NYC INVESTIGATION HEADED IN A QUESTIONABLE DIRECTION?
Despite FSRC findings to the contrary, some law enforcement sources
still regard spent shell casings as immutable pieces of forensic
evidence and seem prepared to rely on them to judge the truthfulness of
officers' accounts of controversial shootings.
Consider a New York Times report on Dec. 8 about the investigation into
the high-profile New York City case in which a prospective bridegroom
was killed in a 50-shot fusillade from police officers after he
exhibited threatening behavior outside a strip joint.
Reporters Al Baker and William Rashbaum stated that "ballistics evidence
will paint a picture of the shooting that prosecutors can use to help
gauge the accounts of potential witnesses, including the five officers
who fired into [the suspect's] car, killing him...and injuring two of
his friends."
They then quoted an anonymous "law enforcement official who has
investigated several police shootings" as saying this about the
"valuable information" spent shell casings can provide at a shooting scene:
If an officer is moving while shooting, "you're going to have almost
like a trail of breadcrumbs, or clusters if he moves, stops, fires and
moves again. If he stands and fires, there will be a big pool of brass."
In other words, you can reliably mark a shooter's location by where his
brass lands.
Don't be too sure. FSRC experiments have demonstrated conclusively that
casings can end up virtually anywhere, depending on how a handgun is
being held when fired.
"If you don't know how a gun is being held and manipulated at the time
the shell is ejected, the presence of a casing in any given spot will
only tell you that a gun was fired at the scene," says Dr. Bill
Lewinski, FSRC's executive director who led the Center's ground-breaking
studies on ejection patterns. "Depending on how you hold the gun, you
can put brass into a pool, for example, from any point on a 360-degree
circle around the pool."
FSRC began investigating this subject several years ago after a motor
officer was brought to trial in Arizona on murder charges by a
prosecutor who believed that a shell ejected from the officer's pistol
proved he was lying when he said he was in the path of an oncoming car
at the time he decided to shoot the driver.
For details on the Center's findings, see: Force Science News
Transmission #1 [9/28/04] found at:
http://www.forcesciencenews.com/home/detail.html?serial=1
and Transmission #20 [5/31/05] found at:
http://www.forcesciencenews.com/home/detail.html?serial=20
================
(c) 2006: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints
allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail:
[email protected]. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of
The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at
Minnesota State University, Mankato.
================
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
