When LAPD Officers Can’t Shoot Straight

The cop was struggling out there, looking jittery as she aimed her pistol at the cardboard target and popped 30 rounds, trying to prove she could shoot straight.

She couldn’t.

At least two of her shots plunked down way to the left of the silhouetted man on her target. Others also missed the mark. The Los Angeles Police Department requires only 70% accuracy to pass this marksmanship exam. Still, she had flunked. Angry, she grabbed a fresh box of ammo and headed out to try again.

A friend grabbed her arm--to console, yes, but also to chide. “What if that had been the real thing?” asked the friend, who had aced her own shooting test. “What if that guy had been holding me hostage?”

Los Angeles police officers know they need their guns. They know they need to shoot well. They also know that many in their ranks have trouble passing basic tests of marksmanship. And that scares them. “You don’t want to work with someone who can’t get you out of a jam,” Det. Mike Kearney said.

A recent audit turned up 31 LAPD officers who repeatedly failed the shooting exam yet were still assigned to field jobs, semiautomatics tucked into their holsters. And the so-called Chronic 31 may not be alone.

An internal study a few years ago found 361 officers who repeatedly failed the pistol test, according to police sources.

Capt. Gary Brennan, the commanding officer in charge of training, said most of those poor shooters received remedial classes and can now handle the pistol exam the LAPD requires six times a year. But he acknowledges that “we have not completely solved the problem.”

Indeed, on the last few days of every month, the department’s shooting ranges are crowded with officers struggling to pass their qualifying exams on schedule. Some have to make a day of it, cycling through three or four times until they finally rack up a passing score. A few dissolve in tears. Others plead for remedial help from trainers so busy with recruits they have no time to work with veterans.

“They’re afraid to shoot and they can’t shoot,” senior firearms instructor Steve Estrada said. “They think we’ll take pity on them and wave them through.”

The overwhelming majority of LAPD officers pride themselves on shooting quick, straight and right on target.

To graduate from the Police Academy, recruits must pass day and night pistol shooting, and demonstrate skill with a shotgun and a backup handgun. For their first 20 years on the force, they must requalify with 9-millimeter pistols every other month. If they fail, they face discipline ranging from a note in their personnel files to suspension. The most veteran officers must pass pistol tests only twice a year.

To encourage good shooting, which takes plenty of practice even for the best, the LAPD rewards expert marksmen with pay bonuses of up to $128 a month. The department also fields a world-champion pistol team.

But plenty of lesser marksmen sweat it out each time their qualifying exam approaches.

“We have close to 200 people on the force who are extremely weak shooters,” senior firearms instructor Officer Lawrence Mudgett said, raising his voice over the clatter of target practice. “Now out of 8,000 officers, that’s not many. But still, we shouldn’t have one. They’re a potential embarrassment to the force and also a tremendous liability.”

The weak shots share common mistakes.

They squeeze the trigger too fast. They fire before aligning their sights. They lift their head after each shot to check how they’re doing--a habit dubbed “turtling” because the bobbing motion resembles a turtle scoping out the terrain then withdrawing into the shell.

Because of their smaller hands, women tend to have more trouble with the semiautomatic Berettas used by the LAPD. Even reaching the trigger can be a stretch; many women have to slip their hand around the side of the gun so their finger extends far enough to fire off a shot. The position is not only awkward, but also problematic--the unbalanced grip can jerk the gun off course unless the shooter makes an extra effort to brace it.

The academy is now evaluating a smaller Beretta that could prove easier for small-handed officers to manipulate.

Once women figure out how to reach the trigger, they face another obstacle: The act of squeezing the trigger requires strength and muscles that women have often not developed.

“In every class, we have several women who can’t pull the trigger even once,” Mudgett said. “How are you going to teach them to shoot if they can’t even make the gun go off?”

A five-week head start program for women entering the academy teaches them to build up finger power by squeezing a grip exerciser daily. Most have to keep at it throughout their careers.

Officer Kathy Bell, who took two tries to qualify with the pistol last month after a year on maternity leave, said she works out her fingers every other night. If she lets up, the gun starts popping up when she fires, because she lacks the strength to keep it level.

“I try to get out to a range to practice,” Bell said, flexing an index finger still red and creased from her afternoon at the targets. She needs the practice, she added, because “it’s not every day we shoot someone.”

Indeed, only two-thirds of LAPD officers will ever fire their guns on duty. Thousands make it through 30-year careers without ever using deadly force. “The thing about a gun is, you may never use it, or you may use it only once in your life,” Mudgett said. “But if you ever need it, you need it real bad.”

Over his 22-year career on the force, Mudgett said, he has known about a dozen officers who died in shootouts because they could not hit the bad guy even after discharging multiple bullets.

Incompetent shooters tend to compensate for their weakness by firing early and often, on the theory that they need more bullets to hit their target, Mudgett said. That haste can be disastrous.

While a confident marksman may wait to see whether a snarling suspect is really reaching for a gun or just tossing away a bag of dope, a more nervous shooter may let bullets fly at the first suspicious movement. Lacking confidence, a poor shooter may also keep a finger on the trigger in violation of department policy, increasing the risk of firing accidentally.

Recognizing the importance of self-assured shooting, Officer Eric Jones said he often invites new arrivals in his department to join him in a few rounds of target practice. He’s not trying to bond, but to check out their aim. An expert marksman himself, Jones has no use for officers who fail their pistol tests.

“What happens at 3 a.m. in Pacoima when . . . the bad guy pulls out a gun?” Jones asked. “What are you going to say then? ‘Sorry, I can’t play this game, I didn’t qualify this month?’ No. You’re going to die and your partner’s going to die. Either that, or you’re going to shoot wild and hurt an innocent person.”

To head off such tragedies, Sgt. Lou Salseda and his firearms training staff developed a new Police Academy curriculum in 1990 that spells out every step of the shooting process.

Even such a basic movement as removing the pistol from the holster has been broken down into five components and drilled into the recruits. Turns out, grabbing the gun isn’t simple after all--Salseda has seen recruits shoot themselves in the hand because they whipped out the pistol and fired before making sure all 10 fingers gripped the weapon.

Instructors trace many such blunders to the influence of television, where heroes and villains race around firing from impossibly dangerous stances.

Ducking behind a concrete post, Mudgett mimicked an LAPD officer who took shelter behind a barricade in a tense confrontation some years back. The rookie stuck his gun out and blindly popped off six rounds--wounding two police officers and an innocent civilian he never saw coming. “Did he learn that at the Police Academy?” Mudgett asked. “No. He learned it because Eddie Murphy did it.”

Since more than two-thirds of cadets entering the Police Academy have never before shot a firearm, instructors spend 30 hours teaching mechanics in the classroom before ever taking their charges to the shooting range.

At more advanced levels, the cadets practice tactical combat shooting. They stride through a stage-set town and take on a mock bank robbery or gang brawl. In a split second, they must decide whether to fire on the seedy-looking character who pops up from behind a bush (and who may later turn out to be an off-duty officer approaching to help or a nosy reporter grubbing for a scoop).

Others gather for a computer simulation drill. In one, a short film clip puts cadets in the driveway of a suspect’s house. With a heart-stopping bang, the front door flies open and a crazy-eyed man bolts out, waving a shotgun as children dash across a nearby lawn.

Would you shoot? Hold fire? Take cover? Run?

The cadets in one recent class decided to let the bullets rip.

“In immediate defense of my life, I shot him, sir,” one told the instructor, trying hard to make her hesitant voice sound crisp. A computer tracking her aim at the movie screen registered six lethal shots. A fellow cadet had pumped in 11 fatal slugs. Neither had harmed the children.

“If that doesn’t take care of the problem, nothing will,” said teacher Joe Johnson, who approved of their decision.

Such adrenaline-revving exercises introduce cadets to the dramatic side of police work. To be good officers, however, they also need plenty of duller drills--simple exercises like pointing the gun and letting the trainer pull the trigger, so they can concentrate on the pure act of aiming.

While firearms instructors are proud of their varied curriculum, they worry that too many marginal shooters are starting to slip through the academy.

They blame a hiring blitz, part of the mayor’s pledge to add 3,000 more cops to Los Angeles streets, which has bumped up class size dramatically. Nearly 100 cadets enter the academy each month, compared to fewer than 60 each month from the fall of 1991 through the fall of 1994.

Cadets are supposed to spend 96 hours studying firearms in a busy curriculum that includes 86 hours of human relations and 83 hours of Spanish instruction. Out on the range, however, they have to double up--one critiquing while the other shoots. Officer Luis Torres estimates that each recruit spends less than 25 hours actually firing guns before graduating.

To veteran trainers, that’s not enough.

They well remember that most of the Chronic 31 poor shooters graduated during a similar hiring drive that started in mid-1987 and lasted three years.

“You [can] see the system breaking down,” Estrada said. “Our program is starting to go backward instead of forward.”

The LAPD’s command staff insists that the recent hiring boom has not affected the quality of training. “We don’t have a problem,” Deputy Chief David J. Gascon said. “Our recruits are not lower in any way.”

At the academy, Capt. Brennan acknowledges that the push to train ever more recruits has strained the department’s resources. But 10 more firearms instructors are on the way. So is a hand-eye coordination program to help rookies shoot straight. In any case, Brennan insists that the curriculum is so solid these days that the academy will never turn out another crop of officers like the Chronic 31.

“Our intent is not to graduate experts,” Brennan said. “Our intent is to graduate recruit officers who are fundamentally sound and have the basic skills, ability and knowledge so that they will be able to develop in the field. I’m absolutely confident we’re getting the job done.”