Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

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Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Baronvonrort » 17 Dec 2018, 10:03 pm

Had an interesting chat with NSW police today about firearms

I told them QLD police get to fire 60 rounds a year to maintain accreditation then asked how many rounds do they get to shoot with their pistols a year, the answer was none they don't get any range time.

The young officers even said they would be prepared to pay for their own ammo to get some practice.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Member-Deleted » 17 Dec 2018, 10:19 pm

Now begs the question Baronvonrort how much training did they get to be allowed to carry their gun ?
I would have thought they would have ongoing training to keep themselves familiar with it for safety reasons especially with
all the hooohaar we have to go through to maintain our licence
I suppose some would have grown up with guns and are quiet capable with them but not all some would need extra training to get them
up to par with the rest after all they use them in the public arena most times
So from what you are saying they're not allowed to use their gun at a range even at their own expense ?
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by deye243 » 18 Dec 2018, 12:18 am

Number one reason why they should not be armed
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Chinballs » 18 Dec 2018, 4:04 am

Baronvonrort wrote:asked how many rounds do they get to shoot with their pistols a year, the answer was none they don't get any range time.


Were they sworn officers or telephone monkeys at Firearms Registry? If they were sworn officers then I don't know what thhey were smoking but they are wrong. NSW police used to use the pistol club I was a member of in Northern NSW and still do according to my mate who is still on the committee. It is a nice earner for the club as they hire the range regularly ie almost every month.

Every police force in the country requires their sworn staff to requalify with live ammunition every year.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by bigfellascott » 18 Dec 2018, 7:37 am

Did anyone see that video going around of the cop trying to euthanase a roo that had been hit by a car? Funniest thing I'd ever seen, Ol mate would be flat out hitting a 10m x 10m square standing 1/2m in front of it. :lol:

I reckon he had close to 10 shots and I think he might have managed to hit it once or twice and was only standing a few mtrs from it. :D

https://www.news.com.au/national/south- ... b31e099fe3
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Gaznazdiak » 18 Dec 2018, 8:37 am

Chinballs wrote:
Baronvonrort wrote:asked how many rounds do they get to shoot with their pistols a year, the answer was none they don't get any range time.


Were they sworn officers or telephone monkeys at Firearms Registry? If they were sworn officers then I don't know what thhey were smoking but they are wrong. NSW police used to use the pistol club I was a member of in Northern NSW and still do according to my mate who is still on the committee. It is a nice earner for the club as they hire the range regularly ie almost every month.

Every police force in the country requires their sworn staff to requalify with live ammunition every year.


Dead right.

My sister lives within 1500m of the range at Goulburn and the police use the pistol club there for training and practice as well.

Most still couldn't hit the broad side of a barn though.

Many years ago I considered pistol shooting, and went several times to the club to "try it on for size".

After the Po-po had been in, there was ploughed ground, virtually from a meter or 2 from the stalls all the way to the targets, and a couple of the members had a running joke about how many new holes they'd find in the benches and dividers and whose turn it would be to put a new patch on the roof as negligent discharges were apparently common.

Does make you wonder about the double standard that allows a police member to shoot dead a member of the public armed with a knife and get congratulations compared to the treatment that elderly Victorian farmer was subjected to last year for bailing up an armed home invader with his unloaded .22.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by JWD40 » 18 Dec 2018, 8:40 am

An ex police officer that i occasionally catch up with at the gun range said they are required to do one shoot a year and admitted that that was insufficient. He also mentioned that most police officers feel they are inadequately trained to use a firearm and are nervous about having to use it one day.

He also mentioned that some stations have their own range.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by marksman » 18 Dec 2018, 11:02 am

JWD40 wrote:An ex police officer that i occasionally catch up with at the gun range said they are required to do one shoot a year and admitted that that was insufficient. He also mentioned that most police officers feel they are inadequately trained to use a firearm and are nervous about having to use it one day.

He also mentioned that some stations have their own range.


this is very true for Vic as well, some have told me in the past they dont want guns and dont see a need for the public to have them
a lot of range time by police is from the SOG or CIRT who train and respond not your every day copper
they have a wish list but the budget rules for them
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by pomemax » 18 Dec 2018, 11:24 am

When i was doing ipsc training 3 blokes were bagging out the cops REAL bad pigs this pigs that one other bloke was getting a big aggro.
I thought Hes a cop the instructor saw it too.
he asked any serving police, all 4 of them put their hands up .
so he asked why they were all doing the raining some said general interest but mainly they didn't feel they had enough training
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by bladeracer » 18 Dec 2018, 11:57 am

marksman wrote:
JWD40 wrote:An ex police officer that i occasionally catch up with at the gun range said they are required to do one shoot a year and admitted that that was insufficient. He also mentioned that most police officers feel they are inadequately trained to use a firearm and are nervous about having to use it one day.

He also mentioned that some stations have their own range.


this is very true for Vic as well, some have told me in the past they dont want guns and dont see a need for the public to have them
a lot of range time by police is from the SOG or CIRT who train and respond not your every day copper
they have a wish list but the budget rules for them


In Perth our range was on permanent hire every Wednesday for Police and military training. I don't believe GD officers trained there, but they may have. It was primarily Tactical Response Group and the like.

Stations usually have, somewhere in the building, a 200-litre drum full of sand for them to clear their firearms...that invariably have bullet holes in them
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Macross » 18 Dec 2018, 12:10 pm

When I was dating my wife, she lived with her best friend who was a female coper. She had another female coper over visiting, and they warned my then girlfriend to not walk past the hallway for a little while. Her flatmate was in with the other coper teaching her how to load and clear her service gun... as she was having trouble. I thought the story was far fetched... until just now reading this thread :o
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by wanneroo » 19 Dec 2018, 5:50 am

One thing clear to me is that Australian cops know almost nothing about firearms and can't shoot worth a damn. Why the pollies use them as a go to for firearms laws I have no idea.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Sergeant Hartman » 19 Dec 2018, 7:21 am

No general duty cops don't have enough skills as an elite marksman. Actually unfortunately not enough training and regular training is given to them.

And like most buerocrats are good at passing the buck and don't know the intricacies of firearms laws thus better to say I don't know ask the DFO than say or advise something wrong.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Blr243 » 19 Dec 2018, 7:02 pm

I think on duty an officer would be lucky to have to remove a gun from its holster once in thirty yrs. most of the time they are talking to people and sometimes manhandling people. And diffusing situations I would rather they are well trained to do what they are most likely to be doing I don’t care if they can’t put tens shots in a fifty cent piece It’s not like they need to be shooting somebody beteeen the eyes every second day I m all for them being armed. They have dangerous lunatics to deal with sometimes
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by Sergeant Hartman » 19 Dec 2018, 7:23 pm

^^^^you are absolutely right. Most general duty cops day is spent dealing with domestic distorted or spousal abuse...in rural areas that's likely 90% of their time.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by zhuk » 20 Dec 2018, 6:15 am

Gaznazdiak wrote:
Chinballs wrote:
Baronvonrort wrote:asked how many rounds do they get to shoot with their pistols a year, the answer was none they don't get any range time.


Were they sworn officers or telephone monkeys at Firearms Registry? If they were sworn officers then I don't know what thhey were smoking but they are wrong. NSW police used to use the pistol club I was a member of in Northern NSW and still do according to my mate who is still on the committee. It is a nice earner for the club as they hire the range regularly ie almost every month.

Every police force in the country requires their sworn staff to requalify with live ammunition every year.


Dead right.

My sister lives within 1500m of the range at Goulburn and the police use the pistol club there for training and practice as well.

Most still couldn't hit the broad side of a barn though.

Many years ago I considered pistol shooting, and went several times to the club to "try it on for size".

After the Po-po had been in, there was ploughed ground, virtually from a meter or 2 from the stalls all the way to the targets, and a couple of the members had a running joke about how many new holes they'd find in the benches and dividers and whose turn it would be to put a new patch on the roof as negligent discharges were apparently common.

Does make you wonder about the double standard that allows a police member to shoot dead a member of the public armed with a knife and get congratulations compared to the treatment that elderly Victorian farmer was subjected to last year for bailing up an armed home invader with his unloaded .22.


This is also true at my club (Sydney) where the police use our facilities every week. The baffles we installed at the Registry's insistence are constructed so that nothing .38cal and under will penetrate (obviously)

Every week there are new holes straight through, some quite high up on the baffle...considering they are shooting at 7m its hard to even imagine how that is possible (but at least we get to charge them for the cost of repair)

And yes I've had the experience of walking down to the backstop to staple up my targets and found multiple gouges/striations in the ground, like it had been raked with a huge fork. A club official explained that the police instructors don't know how to teach properly and that the gouges and holed baffles are due to the shooters battling to control/resist the .40cal recoil, which any probationary civvie novice learns is something that is impossible - you allow the sights to rise and fall back down to settle for the next shot. The police obviously don't know and are not taught this.

Our (ex) President also instructed in pistol shooting as part of his day job and occasionally took on police for an afternoon of coaching ...in 2 hours he would have ironed out all their issues, so it's obviously an institutional instructional problem. I also know of a top IPSC Production shooter who is also a cop and who has offered a few times to become a formal police firearms instructor - but his offer has been refused by the training branch. I can only think that the organisation doesn't want to be shown up as being so lacking; logically why else would they refuse.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by unusedname » 23 Dec 2018, 3:46 pm

The nsw police have a purpose built training range up at port macquarie, they also have about 10 days a year at the taree range. It would be fair to say that the police are a mixed bag, there can be bad shooters and good shooters. I know of an inspector that shoots f class and is good enough to win queens. I know of another one that can shoot his glock at 25m and get a 500/600, which sure is c grade, but given most pistol shooters are d grade is very reasonable, lets put it this way, of 60 rounds at human sized targets at 25m would be all 60 on target and at least 40 headshots.

In my pistol club we do make jokes at the expense of the police, we say if you have to run away from them, then run straight, don't zig zag because they might actually hit you. This is because as a rule, most police are bad shots. It's not as simple as practice, sure that's a bit of a reason, but consider the LA police in the 1970's had a 50% accuracy rate when using revolvers, but when they switched to semi automatics it dropped to about 20%. Same people, different gun.

The glocks the nsw police shoot have a heavy trigger, and a low weight high recall balance, which means that you have to grip hard, and pull the trigger hard, which means you push and pull the trigger (technical terms to say you don't hit the target). I had a glock for a while, and man was it hard to shoot it well, it did the rounds at our club and no one could shoot it well, i had to spend about $1200 upgrading it to get it to shoot a 500/600. You can make them shoot well, but out of the box, if you aren't someone with good grip strength, then you are going to be a bad shot with it. I had limp wristing issues (yes that's a pistol term) I'm sure there is some rule about not modifiying your service weapon, so basically the glock is a gun that requires a heavy investment in practice with people that don't practice enough. I don't want you to think the glock is a bad gun, it's a beast if it suits you, but not every gun suits every shooter, but the police have a one size fits all policy, which is the stupid bit.

Like I said before it's going to be a mixed bag, some police are going to be really good shooters, and some are going to be really bad. I have this sneaking suspicion the police shooting of two innocent bystanders down in hornsby a few years ago was probably the trigger pull. In stressful situations you lose fine motor skills, and the police shooting the gun probably pulled or pushed the trigger because the trigger weight was too heavy, and the grip too tight, even if they practiced a lot they might have still done it, it doesn't mean that the accidental shooting wouldn't have happened, I think it means that that might have not been the right trigger pull for that officer.

I for one want them not to practice, if they practice a lot, they will adopt the mindset of shoot first ask questions later, I would prefer the first tool they use when they come to my place is their brain not their gun, and if they adopt a heavy training american style then they will depend on their guns more.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by JWD40 » 24 Dec 2018, 9:10 am

unusedname wrote:I for one want them not to practice, if they practice a lot, they will adopt the mindset of shoot first ask questions later, I would prefer the first tool they use when they come to my place is their brain not their gun, and if they adopt a heavy training american style then they will depend on their guns more.


I'm not after an argument, but i couldn't disagree with that more. Lack of training is not a solution to appropriate choice of force.
The Americans shoot first, ask questions later because they are in constant fear that everyone has a gun.
The Aus police force have the luxury of rarely having to worry about that. To the point where we could probably leave the choice to the individual police officer. If they don't feel comfortable, they shouldn't have one.

I'm in favour for them carrying, but only if they choose to, and only if they pass more rigorous and more frequent training.
If i was forced to pick an arbitrary number for frequency... Seeing as civilians need to do six target shoots per year, and given that police will be shooting at people, potentially with bystanders close. I'd be expecting them to do somewhere around 24 shoots per year.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by wanneroo » 25 Dec 2018, 1:59 pm

I think people should understand there are two skills or training modules when it comes to shooting skills for defensive or offensive purposes. One of which is strictly marksmanship training and practice to improve accuracy. The second is force on force training which is focusing on decision making and performing on your feet in whatever defensive or offensive scenario might come your way.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by zhuk » 28 Dec 2018, 7:28 am

Definitely wanneroo. Unfortunately the latter aspect is something that the ordinary beat cop doesn't really get training in (detectives are a different matter)

It's a shame that in order to participate in something like IPSC which although not perfectly suited (IDPA would be better) would at least give practice at shooting under more adrenalin-fuelled situations with movement and fast decision making involved, very few police quite understandably go to the trouble and expense of obtaining civilian licences.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by brett1868 » 28 Dec 2018, 10:07 pm

zhuk wrote:Definitely wanneroo. Unfortunately the latter aspect is something that the ordinary beat cop doesn't really get training in (detectives are a different matter)

It's a shame that in order to participate in something like IPSC which although not perfectly suited (IDPA would be better) would at least give practice at shooting under more adrenalin-fuelled situations with movement and fast decision making involved, very few police quite understandably go to the trouble and expense of obtaining civilian licences.


I've had way too many dealings with the local Police over Christmas (Long story and not for here or now) and was surprised at how many were shooters, a couple were even IPSC competitors. Several of them bemoaned the fact they couldn't do any private practise with their service firearms even if they paid the range fees and ammo costs themselves. In my opinion the chances of them using a firearm in the execution of their duties is pretty slim but if they had to then I'd want them to be well practised. Shooting is a perishable skill that needs constant practise to maintain proficiency.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by wanneroo » 29 Dec 2018, 1:56 am

zhuk wrote:Definitely wanneroo. Unfortunately the latter aspect is something that the ordinary beat cop doesn't really get training in (detectives are a different matter)

It's a shame that in order to participate in something like IPSC which although not perfectly suited (IDPA would be better) would at least give practice at shooting under more adrenalin-fuelled situations with movement and fast decision making involved, very few police quite understandably go to the trouble and expense of obtaining civilian licences.


Is there any IDPA matches in Australia? I would imagine not.

I shoot in IDPA and there is some stupid stuff in it that I would not use in an actual fight, but it does force you to think on your feet, draw, shoot and move through scenarios. You have to reload under stress and you learn what gear works and what doesn't.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by zhuk » 29 Dec 2018, 6:32 am

wanneroo wrote:
zhuk wrote:Definitely wanneroo. Unfortunately the latter aspect is something that the ordinary beat cop doesn't really get training in (detectives are a different matter)

It's a shame that in order to participate in something like IPSC which although not perfectly suited (IDPA would be better) would at least give practice at shooting under more adrenalin-fuelled situations with movement and fast decision making involved, very few police quite understandably go to the trouble and expense of obtaining civilian licences.


Is there any IDPA matches in Australia? I would imagine not.

I shoot in IDPA and there is some stupid stuff in it that I would not use in an actual fight, but it does force you to think on your feet, draw, shoot and move through scenarios. You have to reload under stress and you learn what gear works and what doesn't.


Nope, youre right absolutely not here. One officer who does shoot IPSC at my club is allowed to draw from his duty thigh holster, and tries to take advantage of cover when going through stages, but as you say, it's far from ideal.

Apart from a yearly mandatory re-qualifying shoot, and if police don't draw their weapon on duty (hopefully not!) there is no chance of actual "practice" to be had. I've had health issues over the last 2 1/2 years and have only shot twice in that time (both competitions) and I know how rusty I felt, and that is after years of constant regular practice. The cops don't stand a chance with their level of training.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by wanneroo » 29 Dec 2018, 12:50 pm

zhuk wrote:
Nope, youre right absolutely not here. One officer who does shoot IPSC at my club is allowed to draw from his duty thigh holster, and tries to take advantage of cover when going through stages, but as you say, it's far from ideal.

Apart from a yearly mandatory re-qualifying shoot, and if police don't draw their weapon on duty (hopefully not!) there is no chance of actual "practice" to be had. I've had health issues over the last 2 1/2 years and have only shot twice in that time (both competitions) and I know how rusty I felt, and that is after years of constant regular practice. The cops don't stand a chance with their level of training.


I would imagine if I tried to introduce IDPA matches to Australia or even set a one off one up, there would be heads exploding all over. Heck, the media would probably even get involved, among others. Of course here in the USA, IDPA is oriented towards the concealed or open carrier who carries a pistol for defensive purposes. People being able to defend themselves in Australia is a foreign concept now.

My wider concern with countries like Australia, being our allies and all, is that once society loses marksmanship skills, they typically don't fare as well in battles and wars and certainly will not fare as well with any societal disruption.
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Re: Chat with NSW Police today on how much practice they get

Post by sungazer » 29 Dec 2018, 12:54 pm

wanneroo wrote:
zhuk wrote:

My wider concern with countries like Australia, being our allies and all, is that once society loses marksmanship skills, they typically don't fare as well in battles and wars and certainly will not fare as well with any societal disruption.


Dont worry too much mate there are still plenty of very skilled rifle shooters both in competition events and on the farm. We did alright at the latest F class world titles came home with some silverware. Also fared pretty well in the line up at Bisley.
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