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CPD firearms
program takes aim at 'real life' police scenarios
By Mike Berger
Citizen Staff
The new
paradigm of firearms education developed by Canton Police Lt.
Tom Keleher, Jr. does not end once a police officer completes
recruitment training. Every spring, each officer — from the
police chief down to the intermittent officers — must either
pass a firearms test or complete remedial training.
 The Canton
Department’s firearms range is located at the Canton Fish and
Gun Club, but the department also has an informal shooting range
in the basement of the new police station for use in the winter
for special air-soft weapons. All the officers recently
completed their spring firearms training, which checked stance
and the mechanics of firing a shot.
According to
Keleher, who supervises the firearms program for the department,
each officer passed 50 rounds of handgun tests and 25 rounds of
patrol rifle scoring — many with exceptional scores.
But training
does not end in the spring — or on the firing range. In the
fall, Keleher moves the CPD’s firearms education into the
classroom, where officers are taught how to react under pressure
in a variety of potentially volatile situations — including
motor vehicle stops, domestic violence situations, room
searches, hostage incidents, bank robberies, or home break-ins.
Each
situation presents its own challenges, said Keleher, who started
these “situational classes” when he became a lieutenant several
years ago. Like his father, officer Tom Keleher, Sr., who
supervised the firearms program for the department before he
retired, the younger Keleher has a keen interest in firearms and
decided to take the program a few steps further with situational
incident discussions.
“What we had
before was important, no doubt,” he said. “But I felt we had no
sense of additional training in real life situations and what to
do with firearms in all those situations. You hope every day you
are an officer that you don’t have to use your firearms. But you
have to train for every situation, both physically and
mentally.”
Keleher said
every call made by a police officer is a potential threat. “An
open door to a B&E, to a domestic, to a bank robbery situation —
you have to prepare for that,” he said.
Keleher
estimates that an officer needs to go through 3,000 hits on the
firing range every year, just to get his stance and hands in the
right shape. Keleher himself works on the range at least twice a
month. In the classroom situation, he tries to make each officer
make good, sound decisions for each situation. “Stress is good,”
he said. “It makes you think on the use-of-force scenarios. We
try to promote good decision-making in each case.”
He noted
that some officers have even more training. Detectives take
specialized drills dealing with drug investigations, and officer
Scott Brown, a member of the area Metrolec Squad, is a SWAT team
officer with Canton Police Chief Ken Berkowitz.
Besides
Brown, Keleher has other officers who are interested in firearms
and help with the program, including Sgt. Rob Gooley, a former
U.S. Marine, officer Bill Branca, who transferred from the
Martha’s Vineyard Police Department and has extensive firearms
experience, and officer Glen Piro, who recently completed two
tours of service in Iraq.
Keleher
praised the support of Chief Berkowitz who, through his budget
recommendations, has provided the department with the most
up-to-date firearms and equipment.
July 3, 2008
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