1. Trevor S. Thrasher
High Threat Systems
Highthreatsystems.com

2.  Reality of police shootings
 Most Use of Force is Reactionary
 Stress Response To The Pointed Gun
 Defensive Response First
 Closing On A Threat
 Counter-Attack
 Shooting Under Duress
 Offensive Response

3. Most police shootings involve close range, high
stress situations that are often completely different
than what an officer experiences on the range
 Spontaneous
 Close Range
 Reactionary
 Life Threatening Duress
 Little Time
 Complex Environments
 Decision Making

4.  Most police use of lethal force is reactionary in nature
even if it is officer initiated
 This especially applies to deadly force incidents due to the
rarity of the event in similar situations- traffic stops,
warrant service, hold up alarms, etc…
 This even includes most situations involving SWAT or
times when officers are pro-active and initiate the contact
with guns drawn but haven’t already made the decision to
shoot
 Officers often give a verbal warning, many times when it is
not legally required and places them in greater jeopardy.
This most often give the suspect the first shot and makes
the officer’s shooting reactionary

5. Police officers, and more recently most soldiers, are
conditioned through repetition and expectation to be
hesitant. It is the nature of their work.
 Good nature requirement for employment
 Expectation of good relations with populations
 Requirement to use minimal or reasonable force
 Precision environments with no to minimal collateral
damage
 Hesitancy for political, occupational, and legal survival
 Multiple repetitions in similar circumstances without
resorting to deadly force

6.  A gun held in the hand can be directed toward an officer and fired
from any position within a quarter of a second
 This is so fast that most of the time an officer with an aimed in gun
will not be able to get off the first round
 Even in the rare case that an officer can get off the first shot, one
round is not guaranteed to stop a threat
 If the situation is in any way complex, this reaction time is greatly
increased
 If the officer waits until a weapon is seen, the time it takes to
see the weapon will allow the suspect to shoot first or at least
point the weapon at the officer before the officer can fire
 At close range, this creates tremendous survival stress on the
officer

7.  Short on time and information
 Driven by the need to survive
 Square to a threat
 Crouching
 Target lock on the threat
 Loss of near vision
 Loss of fine motor skills

8.  Instinctive- genetically hard wired; near instantaneous low brain
response; simple gross motor actions and skills
 Intuitive- learned stimulus-response; very quick; low to mid-brain
response; can involve complex motor skills
 Deliberate- taking time to weigh several options; relatively slow; high
brain activity; can involve attempts at fine motor skills
Key Concept:
 Anticipation- knowing ahead of time what action you are going to take;
having time to plan a certain response- (certainty, time, knowledge)

9.  Instinctive actions are almost unavoidable against a sudden threat
unless there is sufficient anticipation and over-training of a
response
 If no intuitive trained response is available due to lack of relevant
training/conditioning or emotional control, the officer will be
stuck with an instinctive response for an extended period of time
 Conditioned responses tightly matched to instinctive responses
will occur more quickly
 Deliberate actions need time/anticipation and lower levels of
duress and aren’t available until the officer has cycled through
instinctive and intuitive responses
 In real life circumstances, sighted fire is a deliberate action
 Conditioning/Training reduces the amount of time that it takes to
get through each type of decision making

10.  In a high stress, spontaneous police encounter, when a gun is pointed at
an officer before the officer can fire, the officer will be in an initial
defensive-reactive situation
 The pointed gun will immediately be registered as a threat
 An officer’s body alarm system (amygdala) will react through the low
brain and subconscious pathway first because it is quicker
 Due to physical reaction time, the officer cannot fire first(fight) once the
threat is realized
 Absent a initial “fight” option to prevent the attack, the first reaction will
most often be defensive (flight)
 The initial reaction will be instinctive/intuitive similar to the startle effect;
officers will most often flinch and move away from the danger
 Officers will move through the instinctive response into an intuitive and
deliberate response based on their training/conditioning and level of
duress

11.  Gabe Suarez- “A gunfight is 50% shooting and
50% not getting shot; not getting shot is the
most important half”
 It is rational, reasonable, and instinctive to try to
survive
 Instinctively people do not want to move
towards a threat or stand in place facing an
oncoming bullet or other threat
 This initial instinct is nearly impossible to
overcome absent some specific situations

12. 1. Generally moving away from danger
2. The flinch (first and foremost)
3. Stopping if closing on a threat
4. Dodging the muzzle, especially at face to face
range
5. Moving behind cover if it is near
6. Moving laterally to avoid fire
7. Moving away from danger
8. Pushing away danger- at extremely close range
(often swatting at the weapon with one hand)

13. Movement towards a threat can occur when:
 The threat has ceased, is not immediately oriented on
the closing person, or is in flight
 The perceived threat is lower (expected, longer range,
less intensity, confidence to deal with it)
 Momentum carries the person forward
 The person is close enough to physically attack and is
“primed” or conditioned to attack
 The person is experiencing rage, suicidal intent, or has
no other alternative
 Has time to make a deliberate decision to advance or
fight regardless of the threat

14. Closing will often be a shuffle step as the body tightens
with the combination of fear under duress
This can also create “the stress dance” where a person
constantly feels the need to move their feet during a
shooting, possibly fighting the urge to flee
Closing on an oriented, ready threat will most often get
an officer working within restricted rules of engagement
and expectations of good social behavior, wounded or
killed, unless there is an overwhelming advantage in
capability of at least 3 to 1. This does not apply if the
threat is hesitant or choses not to fire.

15.  What happens next will be based on the officer’s mindset, emotional control, level of
anticipation, and stimulus-response conditioning in similar situations
 If the officer has been well conditioned, the intuitive brain will quickly take action
and turn the initial defensive response into a tactically sound action that can include
shooting
 If the officer has no well-trained, confident, conditioned response for the situation
at hand, the officer will freeze, or be stuck with instinctive actions for an extended
period of time
 Control of stress and stimulus-response conditioning will outweigh raw
marksmanship skill in most spontaneous situations
 Deliberate (choosing between several alternatives) action will only take place with
sufficient time past the instinctive and intuitive phase
 A good decision can be made if the officer can control their level of duress and has
trained available options
 If the officer lacks the will to aggressively kill another human being, the officer will
wait until it is too late, will choose not to fire, or will only fire after another officer or
person fires.

16. Shooting back defensively will be far different from what most officers are
trained to do on the range:
 The instinctive need to see the threat will keep the officer from bringing
the gun up fully into their line of vision, because this would block the
view of the threat
 They may perceive that they do not have time to use their sights
 The effects of stress will reduce the effectiveness of fine motor skills, like
pulling a trigger carefully, and may reduce the ability to use near vision
(see the sights)
 Once officers decide to fire, they will often fire nearly as quickly as
possible due to being behind the reactionary curve
 This, along with situational factors, will sometimes cause an officer to
fire one handed if they have not already drawn their weapon
 Time competitiveness and body balance will be a major factor in
shooting one handed from the draw

17.  Officers are rarely taught to shoot like this and will now be performing an
unfamiliar action which will increase stress
 In spontaneous close range encounters, officers will most often point shoot,
pulling the trigger quickly and without fine motor precision immediately after
or while taking defensive action
 This will degrade accuracy well below static, range-based expectations
 Most “Stand and Deliver” range training (the majority of training that now
takes place) is useful only in offensive situations where the officer has an
advantage, or in situations that allow extra time. It is wasted in the majority
of situations.
 This has all been confirmed by medical studies, scientific experiments, gunfight
statistics, reproducible stress and reality based training, and large collections of
real world video
 Some people will not believe this even though they cannot offer similar contrary
evidence; they will base their beliefs on the range, stories, anecdotes, or a small
sample. (DOGMA)

18.  If an officer is mentally and emotionally primed
to attack, has good control of stress,
anticipation, and is properly conditioned to
attack through stimulus-response training, an
officer may react offensively
 Anticipation/Deliberation (Time and Knowledge)
 Lower Duress/Stress Control
 Proper Conditioning
 It is difficult for officers to make the switch to
offensive fire unless they are conditioned to fire
offensively in specific situations.

19. Most often occurs when
1. The suspect is fleeing (has become the prey)
2. The suspect is not pointing a gun or firing
directly at the individual officer
3. The officer has an extended amount of time and
anticipation (knife attack at longer range)
4. The officer catches the suspect by surprise and is
“primed” to shoot immediately

20.  Most pistol training should include:
 Point Shooting as the most likely and heavily trained method
 Precision Sighted Fire when possible under certain trained conditions
 Initial Flinch or other movement prior to shooting most of the time
 Conditioned use of lateral movement, dodging, and use of cover most
of the time
 Appropriate use of commands with dedicated training on when not to
give commands
 Multiple officer shooting together at one threat
 Hard Targets and targets that illicit stress
 Targets that are sometimes facing away from the shooting officer
 Decision Making
 Complex and Cluttered Environments
 “Stand and Deliver” should be a very small amount of the training past
initial stages

21. Type of Encounter
 Spontaneous or Non-Spontaneous
 Close or Long Range
Initial Defensive Response
 Flinch, Immediate Stop, Dodge, Backward Move , Lateral Move, Use Of Cover
 Shuffle stepping, “Stress Dance”
Advancing on Threat
 Threat reduced
 Threat Stopped Shooting
 Threat was shooting at someone else
Shooting technique
 Point Shooting (certain, probable, unknown), or sighted fire
 Rapid Fire
 One Handed Or Two Handed
 Stand and Deliver Used
 Offensive Shooting Conditions that could have allowed deliberate sighted fire