Las Vegas Police Train to Fire Rifles at Elevated Targets

Las Vegas police have implemented a new, specialized rifle program that trains qualified patrol officers to take aim and fire at elevated targets.

The program is only available to those who have been rifle-certified for at least two years, and the first version was launched in the months leading up to the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting. But after many officers covering the Oct. 1, 2017, festival found themselves unable to take on the killer during the attack, Metropolitan Police Department firearms trainers implemented a new curriculum from scratch.

 “Before it was just, ‘Hey, we’ll do some elevated shooting and some distance shooting.’ Things they don’t normally get,” said Sgt. Shawn Romprey, who heads the department’s firearms training unit. “Well, after Oct. 1, we revised that program to, ‘We need more elevated shooting. We need more distance shooting. This happened, and we need to be ready for it.’”

Romprey told the Review Journal the new program includes a “re-creation shot,” modeled after the shot an officer would have needed to take to hit the gunman from the festival grounds.