ABSTRACT

The success of the less lethal munitions program for a police department is strictly dependent on the personnel chosen to oversee it. This undertaking comes with a great amount of responsibility for the instructor and program manager to provide useful and practical information to their students. An instructor may be passionate, experienced, and understand that less lethal options can be a tremendous asset, but also a liability if deployed improperly. Poor applications can impact individual officers, their departments, and even the communities they represent. It is crucial that the instructor

Selecting the Right Trainers 171 Accountability 172 Addressing Department Needs 174 Platform Selection 175

Know What It Does 178 Thoughts on Incapacitation 179

Student Exposure 179 Live-Fire Training 181 Trajectory Degradation and Targeting 184 Skip-Firing: Warning! 186 Breaking Firearm Habits 187 Rubber Grenade and Flashbang (NFDD) Training 189

Evidence Collection 191 Assessment and Scenarios 192 Crowd Control and Crowd Management 194 Staying Current 195 Documentation: Will Save Your Bacon 195 References 199

be willing to share information and be open to new ideas on how to train, apply, and document the use of these weapons. This person or persons should attend more than one “instructor development” training course to help explore different approaches and learning methods. Trainers must heavily stress in their curriculum lessons learned from good and bad less lethal applications from their own agency and others. Excellent instructors absorb and distribute information from many disciplines, styles, and philosophies, helping to cultivate successful programs with limited negative outcomes and associated litigation.