When 'less is more' in police training - Ed Flosi

The statement, “One can become a jack of many trades, and a master of none” applies to law enforcement defensive tactics training as well as it applies to anything.

An officer can be taught dozens of techniques—handcuff a suspect, apply control holds, disarm a suspect, use a baton as an impact weapon—and after being exposed to these multiple techniques, the officer may have not truly learned any of them unless he/she is given the appropriate amount of time and repetitions to make the technique “mindless.”

There is a temptation as a trainer to design a new and very different solution to every variant of the same basic problem. If the trainer falls prey to this temptation, it might lead to a curriculum including multiple technique “responses” for the same problem.

Officers learn in basic academy how to respond to a situation where a suspect pulls a handgun on them at close range. However, under a real-life situation, it is unrealistic to expect him/her to go through the “card catalog of techniques” in their mind to select the appropriately specific response.

Unless the officer has mastered the technique to the point that it becomes an automatic response, too many technique choices may increase the time lag in the decision-making process of the officer, thus creating a dangerous stall point where the officer becomes vulnerable.

About one year ago my training partner went to a week-long train-the-trainer ground fighting school. This class was advertised as a “law enforcement” class to learn techniques that would be applicable to law enforcement officers while on the ground with resistive/combative subjects.

In this 40-hour school they learned more than 80 different ground fighting techniques or about two techniques per hour or sixteen techniques per day. How realistic of a goal can it be to learn and retain 80+ different techniques in 40 hours to an end-user level, let alone an instructor competency level?

There are training systems that teach several — if not dozens of — ways to strike with a baton as an impact weapon. Some of these techniques look very pretty when practiced on the mat with little or no stress but have little application in a real-life setting.

We have to be honest with ourselves — as an impact weapon, the law enforcement baton is a stick, not a sword or other mystical ninja weapon. The baton is designed to hit other people with. Teaching officers several different impact weapon strikes using overly complicated skill techniques is not an efficient way to spend your training hours.

Those officers may be able to perform the skill in the sterile environment of the mat room after several hours of practice. However, when put under the stress of a real fight, they will most likely use the baton as a stick.

Many skilled and competitive martial artists will tell you they have learned hundreds of different techniques in their art. They will also tell you that when they compete, they only have three and five “go to” moves. These are the techniques that they have mastered and feel most confident in.

Defensive tactics training is an important part of any law enforcement officer’s duties. Keep it simple and keep it effective.

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