How AUFire Fills The Law Enforcement Training Gap That Kills
In a 1910 interview on gunfighting, famed frontier lawman Wyatt Earp summed up just about everything an individual needed to know in order to win a gunfight. Given that gunfights tend to be notoriously unkind to the 2nd place finisher, any and all who could conceive of themselves needing to draw down on another man would do well to heed his words. He succinctly stated that when in a gunfight, “Fast is fine, but accuracy is final. You must learn to be slow in a hurry.” He went on to explain that in all his experience, the winner of gunplay was typically the man who took his time.
During my 17-year career as a Los Angeles Police Department veteran who spent my entire career specializing in South Los Angeles gangs, I can personally attest to Earp’s wisdom. In 2001, I found myself face to face with an L.A. gang member armed with a 12-gauge firearm and he was indeed fast. He pulled the trigger that should have taken my life, but alas, he was not accurate. The actions of myself and fellow officers were both accurate and, as Wyatt Earp succinctly summed up, they were final.
While I am grateful for the training that I have received, I can testify that an egregious gap in law enforcement training exists, and we are losing some of our finest as a result. If you are involved in the law enforcement process in any manner, with your permission, I’d like to take a few minutes and not only expose the gap but propose a solution.
An Identified Lethal Gap In Law Enforcement Training
Most law enforcement officers in America will play out their entire careers without having so much as fired their weapon in the line of duty even once. Yet, it takes just one gunfight to change someone’s life forever. In the law enforcement community, we do well to prepare officers for that day through range training, immediate action drills, and weapons tactics. In my case, where the suspect sacrificed speed for accuracy, that training was sufficient. Yet, for officers across this nation who find themselves the recipient of both fast and accurate fire, we fail them.
We prepare officers for everything involved that leads right up to the moment of an Officer Involved Shooting (OIS), and we teach them what to do if they are wounded in that fight through Tactical Medicine (Tac-med) and self-care. In between OIS and Tac-med training, there exists a lethal gap that our law enforcement communities fail to address. We are failing to prepare officers who are wounded, and yet, the fight is still on.
Famed Marine Corps General James Mattis often mused that you could declare a war over all you want, but the enemy gets a vote. If the suspect who just wounded you votes that the engagement is not over, it is not over. Unfortunately, we are not training officers to remain accurate when wounded, and their panicked speed which gives way to inaccuracy is costing them their lives. We must train for the gap, especially now that the technology to train for this exists in a manner not seen before. It is morally irresponsible to do anything other than prepare our officers for the day they dread most. That is to give them the confidence and accuracy they need to survive and, though wounded, return home to their loved ones at the end of the day. It is a moral imperative and every police officer from sea to shining sea deserves as much.
Poor Training Leads To Poor Confidence That Leads To Poor Decisions
I’ll confess that before I had to pull the trigger in the line of duty, there were doubts that existed in my mind as to whether or not I would rise to the occasion. This is common among officers, though they don’t readily admit it. On the other end of the spectrum, there exists false bravado and wishful thinking about what one would do when faced with a life-threatening situation. The truth of the matter is that none of us know for sure until we are faced with that scenario.
What I do know to be certain is this discernible truth. When faced with such a crisis, we will not rise to the occasion. Rather, we will fall to the highest level of our training in those moments. You will only act in a manner of which you have diligently prepared. In that moment, it is as if there are two competing trains of thought. The first one will remind you of everything you don’t know and how you failed to prepare for this moment, and sheer terror will envelop you if this thought wins out.
The second one will recall everything you have learned, every hour you put in at the range, and every real-world experience that brought you to this moment and if that train of thought wins, you will be decisive and most important, accurate. As they say, if two dogs are in a fight, the dog you feed most is going to win. If you are not actively preparing to boost your confidence in your ability to return fire AFTER you have been hit, that first train of thought is going to win.
We must feed the confidence of our police officers knowing that this will lead to better policing and better decisions prior to pulling their firearm. It is fear and a lack of confidence that drives an officer to pull a gun on an 85-year-old holding a mobile phone. It is fear and a lack of confidence that leads an officer to pull a gun on a kid holding a toy gun because they are panicked. Look, the confidence we are talking about building by addressing this training gap is not just about ensuring an officer comes home after they are shot. The confidence we are talking about building leads to better policing and saved lives within the general public. Again, addressing this training gap is a moral imperative.
The AUFIRE System Fills The Lethal Gap
In law enforcement and military circles, leadership does its best to simulate real-world scenarios to build confidence. Young recruits at Marine training will endure the gas chamber, Naval Aviators will simulate crashing into the ocean and escaping underwater, and Army paratroopers jump from towers to simulate the experience before they jump from a plane. Yet, what we all do to simulate injury in combat or on patrol has been a joke up to this point.
Now, to be fair, prior to 2021, there wasn’t any system capable of doing so with real-world value. That is no longer the case. The (AUFIRE), short for Accuracy Under Fire, is now on the scene, and the clock for law enforcement agencies to embrace the moral imperative of this training is ticking. I feel this moral imperative more than most, as my wife was also a Los Angeles Police Officer injured on the job.
My wife, Kristina Ripatti, was shot and paralyzed in the line of duty by a robbery suspect. She was an amazing officer, as good an officer as they come, and never one to shy away from her duty. She was well trained by the department and spent countless hours training on her own. Yet, no one prepared her for the day and moments that occurred after the first bullet struck her. I feel the moral imperative, and it was remarkably out of her recovery process that the AUFIRE was born.
While assisting my wife in her recovery, I was helping her through physical therapy using (E-Stim) Electrical Muscle stimulation on her legs to tightly contract muscles and help fight off muscle atrophy. Before putting it on her, I placed the E-Stim device pads on my bicep, and while trying to figure it out, I hit the button, and it instantly contracted my bicep muscle, locking it into a contracted cramp, and wow, I felt like I had been shot. My arm seized up, and if anyone had been recording, the video would have gone viral. Thankfully, that painful experience and my wife’s sacrifice will not be wasted. In this experience, the AUFIRE concept was born, and it is now our life’s mission to fill a lethal LE training gap.
How Does AUFIRE Work?
AUFIRE provides hyper-realistic experiences beforehand, developing new layers of stress inoculation and confidence in those who are expected to fight through worst-case scenarios potentially.
AUFIRE is unique; it is not VIRTA's Threat-Fire or SETCAN's Stress Vest. Those have been around for a long time; they are good, but they are also limited to simple static-shock feedback alerting the trainee with a distracting sting of static shock that they are being hit by simulated gunfire. Still, they do not physically incapacitate limbs or muscle groups and do not force the trainee to adapt physically under pressure.
AUFIRE is very different; it is remote-controlled Electrical Muscle Stimulation (66v of physical therapy E-Stim) used to contract muscles instantly.
When triggered, the effect is immediate, totally disabling, intensely distracting, and totally out of the trainee’s control. The system safely causes involuntary muscle contractions on targeted muscle groups (at the trainer’s will via remote control) to simulate injuries like a gunshot wound, a knife cut, or a blunt force impact. It can be used to incapacitate the arm, leg, or even the abdomen to simulate the traumatic injury to the trainee in a force-on-force scenario.
AUFIRE is a standalone system
Instructors can use the handheld remote control in conjunction with any visual simulator, laser based/ projector screens, (VR) Virtual Reality, or (AR) Augmented Reality. AUFIRE triggering can also be incorporated into the digital codes of the video simulators, so the simulator triggers the AUFIRE receiver units on the trainee. This requires some backend work and agreements with the simulator companies, but it is a feature we will see developing in the near future.
The AUFIRE can also be used for man-to-man, force-on-force combat training with projectile training ammunition such as UTM or Simunitions. AUFIRE is perfect for training indoors or outdoors on high-risk vehicle stops, building searches, and active shooter scenarios.
AUFIRE is the only training product in the world that can safely allow trainees to experience and practice acclimating to the stress of violent confrontations gone wrong. Trainees can safely find their natural reaction to getting shot, then quickly train their way into a better, more survivable response.
It is not Bluetooth based, it uses a ZigBee radio which communicates very well inside buildings, and by the line of sight, so the instructor’s remote can reach and touch the trainee receiver at any distance where they can see each other.
AUFIRE Enables Law Enforcement To Answer The Moral Imperative
AUFIRE allows trainees and officers to practice their worst-case scenarios before it is a matter of life and death. I’ve demonstrated the AUFIRE with SWAT, Navy SEALs, Rangers, and more. They genuinely dread getting hit by the shock of the AUFIRE, and that’s why they love it. Real people who have done God’s work in the dark corners of the world tell me this is as real as it gets before actually getting shot.
What’s more remarkable is watching their progress as they go through round after round of training. The first time the AUFIRE lights them up, they almost always turn and look at the source of their pain/discomfort while taking their eyes off the threat. By the end, the AUFIRE might drop them, but not before they’ve got rounds on target to stop the threat. They can then practice clearing weapons malfunction, remedial actions, and tac-med while simultaneously under the pressure of the simulated intensity of being wounded. Most importantly, AUFIRE prepares officers to take a hit, fight back, stop the threat and still make it home and tuck their kids in at night.
That’s why AUFIRE exists. To give officers the confidence to do what must be done so that they can come home at the end of their shift. To give officers the confidence that they can operate effectively under worst-case scenarios and remain accurate.
It exists so first responders have more confidence in chaotic high-stress situations, not to draw down on innocent people out of fear. AUFIRE exists because law enforcement agencies have a moral imperative to address this training gap. AUFIRE exists because my wife and I are on a mission to fill the lethal training gap that we have personally experienced.
Look, if you have made it to the end of this article, I thank you for your time, and I pray that you found value. Please don’t leave this article without assessing your own moral imperative to prepare your officers for the day they may dread most. Consider doing everything you can to give them confidence that they WILL come home at the end of their shift, regardless if the suspect strikes first. Head over to Aufire.com, and we’ll answer the moral imperative together.
