SWAT TRAINING, IPSC STYLE Karl Rehn, A-9640 Austin, Texas "Why don"t more cops shoot IPSC?" It"s a question I"ve asked lots of officers over the years. There are lots of reasons, including: concerns about learning bad tactics, lack of free time on weekends, and worries about getting beaten by a bunch of civilians. For years our local clubs have talked about making a focused effort to draw more police officers to our matches. One idea we had discussed many times was the idea of hosting a law-enforcement only match in which the club members would act as range officers and match officials and allow the cops to compete amongst themselves. Thanks to the Travis County SWAT team we got that opportunity in February 1997. I was recently introduced to Rory McGahan, the firearms instructor for the Travis County SWAT team, by a local range owner. He had read about IPSC shooting but had never competed in a match, and wanted to learn if any of our knowledge and training methods would be useful to the team. Another Sheriff"s department officer had been competing in local matches and was encouraging other officers to get involved. Both Rory and Craig mentioned their interest in IPSC shooting to Lt. Beck, who runs the SWAT team, and at Rory"s request I put together a proposal for the Hill Country Practical Pistol Club to run a sample IPSC match for the SWAT team during one of their regular training days. Lt. Beck liked our ideas so we set a match date and I started getting things organized. The master plan for the event was to run the 14-person team as a single squad through a series of increasingly complex stages. In between each stage we would explain the motivation and specific skills tested by each course of fire. Because the focus was on training for "the street" the course designs mandated use of cover and used lots of no-shoots and moving targets. After I had the stages drawn up I reviewed them with Rory to verify that the tactics taught by the courses were compatible with their policies and previous training. We ended up selecting 7 stages which gave us a 150-round match. Since most police training is done on fixed time, the first concept I wanted to introduce was Comstock scoring. In order to keep it simple to start with, I wanted a basic drill that had one target, freestyle, with no movement and no reloads. Stage 1 was 3 strings of Bill Drills at 7 and 10 yards. The first two strings were shot on open targets, the target for the third string was blocked by a no-shoot. Everyone shot the same pace as the first shooter, until Craig (the veteran IPSC shooter) came up and knocked 2 seconds off the pace -- and also showed how misses, "D" hits and time trade off in Comstock scoring. Stage 2 was a fixed-time, two target acquistion drill. With a par time of 5 seconds, each shooter was to engage T1 and T2 with one round each as many times as possible (moving back and forth between T1 and T2). We repeated this drill for 4 strings: 2 strings with one round per target, and 2 strings with 2 rounds per target. This gave them a chance to work on increasing their target acquisition speed under time pressure. For stages 1 and 2 the shooters had been allowed to stand in the open; for the rest of the day almost all shooting was done behind cover or on the move. Stage 3 was shot from behind a barricade, with targets to be engaged from the left and right sides. We ran this one as two strings, requiring them to shoot left-to-right on one string, and right-to-left on the next. Stage 4, "Shoot and Move" was the first field course. The shooter started in the open, back to targets, both hands holding a clipboard. On the start signal the shooter was to turn, draw and engage a stationary target and a popper which activated a bobbing target. After engaging that array the shooter moved to the barricade and engaged the remaining targets. Stage 5, "Door Jam", was a 21-round field course. The shooter started from behind low cover, and engaged targets from both sides of the low barricade. The shooter then moved to a doorway that had fault lines protruding from either side of the opening. This forced the shooter to engage the targets beyond the doorway from the sides, rather than stand directly in the open. After engaging all the targets visible from both sides of the doorway the shooter then ran to the barricade and engaged a few more targets, including a dropper and a bobber. Stage 6, "My Partner is a Dummy", required the shooter to start kneeling in the open, leaning over a dummy (we improvised using a weighted duffle bag), checking for a pulse. This simulated an injured person who was to be moved to safety. On the start signal the shooter picked up the dummy with the weak hand and engaged two targets strong-handed while moving to cover. The dummy was then left safely behind cover and the shooter moved into an open area and engaged all visible targets, including lots of no-shoots and falling steel. In order to see all the available targets the shooter had to move within a large shooting area. It was impossible to stay behind cover and engage all the required targets. After engaging all the visible targets from the large shooting area the competitor stepped behind a wall downrange and transferred the handgun to the weak hand to engage two poppers and two targets hiding behind the wall. Transferring to the weak hand was done to simulate the potential incapacitation of the strong hand that could occur from engaging targets while in the open. For the last stage, "Pure Hosing", we added a few more targets to the previous stage setup, and ran them through without the dummy or the weak hand shooting. This gave them a chance to have some fun after the the previous stage, which was the most difficult of the match. As a result of our volunteer effort team members are now planning on doing more IPSC-style training as well as shooting local matches and competing in our upcoming charity match for the Make-a-Wish foundation of Central Texas. Many thanks to Lt. Jim Beck and Sr. Deputy Rory McGahan of the Travis County Sheriff"s Dept. SWAT team for their enthusiasm and interest in IPSC, to Tom Schaefer of the Schaefer Training Academy for donating the range facility, and to Roy Stedman, Bruce Ryder, and Don Davis of the Hill Country Practical Pistol club who donated their time and effort to build props and run the match.