LEO's Chime In

I have never heard of such a requirement.

Good Ol' Boy said:

There seems to be a normal thing when referring to police firearms skills that many are simply not into guns and don't shoot much at all other than the couple/few times a year they have to "qualify".

I recently read a post in a thread on this forum where a LE said that his department was required to practice twice a week.

I'm just wondering if this is SOP for most agencies or if it's specific to each dept.

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Not that I ever heard.

And I was a firearms instructor for my agency and met many others.

When we did qual with revolvers,we actually shot once a month.

The dept R.O's did the reloading so it was free to us.

Now its yearly,and it is true that FAR too many LEO's are not shooters and would not ever shoot if not forced.

Before retirement I was a RO at a NJ county agency where we were required by law to qualify twice a year. A majority of officers only shot during these times .Some departments allotted extra ammo for officers to practice but it was rarely ever used.A few officers along with myself shot on a regular
basis.In my heyday when shooting competitive hanndgun and rifle I sometimes fired somewhere in the area of 1000 rounds a week. Did wonders for my social life!

I recently read a post in a thread on this forum where a LE said that his department was required to practice twice a week.

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Logistically impossible for us, with about 1,900 sworn officers, and a grand total of 40 lanes to run them on. A small agency with it's own in house range I could see. For instance a local adjoining agency has 12 full time sworn. If they had their own range (nothing fancy say 2-3 lanes, out to the 25 yd line) it'd be easy to have folks shoot for 30 mins twice a week. Large agencies, or those without their own range's that'd be almost impossible.

We have mandatory qualifications once a year. Several years ago, the then chief instituted mandatory monthly shooting (1 hour practice). The patrol guys loved it, the brass never came. The mandatory part was a joke, we never broke 70% attendance across the department at best. When we started to run another mandatory class, we had to stop the monthly practice, and we haven't been able to start it back up. We have big cadet classes now (close to 100), and they eat up the range for a month at a time with their training.

Overall we've got about 5-10 officers we see with weekly regularity, and maybe another 20 or so with monthly regularity. Again this is out of 1,900 sworn, and we provide rounds for pistol, rifle, and shotgun for free. I used to shoot somewhere in neighborhood of 500 pistol, 500 rifle, and about 150-250 shells of shotgun a week. Then I went to work at the range and if I shoot more then 200 rds a week I'd be surprised.

-Jenrick

In the Academy, we went to the range (required, of course) 2-3 times a week. I wonder if that was referred to...

Post-Academy, quals are each quarter, with practice (on your own time) as ammo availability allows.

In my experience, the folks that don't need to practice, do so because they simply enjoy shooting and take that part of the job seriously. Those that could really benefit from practice, do not, and put off their qual date until the last few days of a quarter because they loathe the impending failure.

My brother has to demonstrate proficiency each quarter and do a full-blown qualification each year. He gets some paid range time and ammunition is provided by the agency.

The Secret Service Presidential detail shoots twice a week, or at least they used to.

We qualify twice a year but practice every month.

Interesting. If an officer wants to practice on his own time, do any departments provide ammo? To encourage it?

9MMare said:

Interesting. If an officer wants to practice on his own time, do any departments provide ammo? To encourage it?

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We do not provide ammo.....

Qualify and that is all many guns get touched....the jail guys touch theirs every day...to put it in the locker, then out again.

It is a shame.

You have to think of the expense....little departments usually have little money, shelling out even 50 rounds per month gets expensive very quick.

I never heard of any agency that required shooting twice a week.

I was a LEO for over 30 years. Nearly all of that time a firearms/tactics instructor.

The police department I worked qualified twice a year. That's what the state required and that's all the chief would do. He also bought the cheapest reloads available with expected results. We qualified with only our duty handgun. No off duty gun qualification.

I went to the a Federal job and it was much different. We qualified 4 times a year with everything we carried including rifles, shotguns, and subguns. The agency gave every agent 100 rds a month for practice. Some duty stations had a range to use whenever we wanted but most didnt. They discontinued this practice when they found some guys had several thousand rounds in their filing cabinet.

They still were pretty free with practice ammo though.

As far as LEOs being shooters in my agency I found about 10% being guys who were in to guns and shot whenever they could. 20% were good shooters who who practice occasionally. They also qualed with rifle, shotgun, and/or subgun. They shot max or near max scores.

60% would only qualify with what they were required to qualify with. They shot okay but you didn't find really great shooters here.

There were the 10% that were the problem children. Barely qualified and had no interest in getting better. Some did not qualify and required retraining every quarter.

The argument that cops don't shoot enough is really not a valid point. NYPD, who keeps better records of gunfights than any one else, found out long ago how well a cop does in a gunfight has no correlation to how well they do on a range or in qualifications.

I'm not advocating LEOS shouldn't practice. Shooting skills are really only about 5% of gunfighting.

fpgt72 said:

We do not provide ammo.....

Qualify and that is all many guns get touched....the jail guys touch theirs every day...to put it in the locker, then out again.

It is a shame.

You have to think of the expense....little departments usually have little money, shelling out even 50 rounds per month gets expensive very quick.

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Sad, but I see that point. However liability and paying out in civil suits is pretty expensive also.

Gambling.....

Interesting. If an officer wants to practice on his own time, do any departments provide ammo?

IIRC, Seattle provided a box (50 rounds) per month to each officer who wanted it.

If I was a cop, I think I'd practice a lot, but then I like to shoot. People tend to beat up on cops for their marksmanship, but I dunno. On one hand I like the police to have very good marksmanship skills - it might save their life, and it might save innocent lives (both bystanders, and an officer who is confident in their marksmanship just might wait that additional split second to see that the guy is pulling out his wallet, not a gun). On the other hand, though, if you're an officer and can budget one hour a week to personal training, should you spend that time in the dojo or at the range? That's a hard question, I think.

I've been in LE for 18+ years and I've never heard of such a requirement.

We are only required to qualify once a year, but a few times a year we have an "informal" range day where several officers will get together. Aside form that, it's left to the officers to practice.

Some departments may give a box of ammo per month, but that's rare. A neighboring department has a very nice indoor range in their basement. I think it has 10 lanes, but hardly anyone uses it. I'd die to have such an opportunity to have a range in my department!

When one of my grandkids was becoming a cop he hit me for 200 rds of 45---next trip 250 rds of 45 & 100rds of 223
he brought back 100 rd of 45 & 75 rds of 223 ( he don't like 223 & don't carry one-lucky me)
He is a full cop now & I never see him anymore ( lucky me)

9MMare said:

Interesting. If an officer wants to practice on his own time, do any departments provide ammo? To encourage it?

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My agency will provide rifle and pistol ammo to anyone who wants to practice on his/her own time.

1.) What department can afford shooting that much?

2.) What department can afford to have that many cops off the street to practice all the time?


I believe that most police departments are under 90 police officers, so their budgets most likely wouldn't allow this.


My friend works Federal security covering places like Social Security Offices, court houses, and such. I know they qual once a year and if you fail after your like 2-3 chances you're done. He said a guy who had been a model employee for 7 years failed qual this year and was fired. They also had a new hire who couldn't qual and they were fired also. This is crazy because their background process is longer than most police departments.

I like to shoot as much as anyone, but being in the sun all day loading mags, running drills, picking up brass, and cleaning guns when it's all over becomes much more like work than pleasure after the first couple of times. We shoot three times per year, all day sessions with night shooting as well. When your hobby becomes work it can take a little of the enjoyment out of it.

Retired here from a dept up north. When I was on the job it was semi annual qualification. Those that did poorly were scheduled for retest. Fail the retest and you got a walking beat for 3 months.
The dept provided all practice ammo. Interseting how the poor shooters were motivated to get better.

Back in the day, we qualified quarterly in the Army CID.

I worked for a state agency in NYC that followed the minimum state requirements, i.e., qualify once a year. No additional practice ammo, no additional practice time. We used an upstate county park range for outdoor shooting, and a NYC commercial range for indoor shooting.

If someone had suggested giving away free ammo and paid practice time they would have laughed.