Read about how trainers are changing their attitudes toward delivering head strikes to officers in training and using creative solutions to safely replicate the effects of such an attack. Unfortunately, this change in mindset comes too late for Norfolk (Va.) Police Department recruit John Kohn whose death may have been caused by head strikes he received during a ground fighting exercise.
Like the De Kraai tragedy, the saddest part of the Kohn incident is that the recruit's death—if it was the result of head strikes in training—could have been easily prevented. In this month's cover story on training safety, two well-respected law enforcement subject control and defensive tactics instructors discuss how to simulate a nasty blow to the head in training without inflicting possible concussions on the students.
Some training accidents are indeed unpreventable. There is, after all, a human element to even the most disciplined and well-planned law enforcement training. And in order to provide actual value to the trainees, instructors must strive for realism, which means some degree of hazard.
Thankfully, smart and experienced instructors know how to expose their students to stress without crossing the line into real danger. More importantly, they know where the danger lies in their programs, and they seek every means possible to prevent it. That's why well-run force-on-force training programs emphasize multiple inspections of the students before class begins and after any break.
As our publisher Leslie Pfeiffer wrote one year ago, more and more law enforcement agencies now view training as a luxury, not a necessity. That means that city and county administrators are constantly looking for an excuse to cut back on training. Training accidents—even when they aren't fatal—result in agency liability and lost work hours, and they give bean counters the ammunition they need to kill the programs.
