![]() We hope this information will assist you and your SWAT team leadership in structuring training, buying equipment and planning deployments. It has also helped dispel several misconceptions. The data in this report gives administrators, snipers and team leaders a clearer picture of real-world sniper operations. Many more operational circumstances are recorded and quantified as well. You will see how often shots passed through intermediate barriers, as well as how many passed through their intended target. The breakdown shows how many occurred in daylight, as opposed to low light. Instead, we have compiled data and relevant anecdotal information that will prove useful in understanding how snipers have been employed over the past three decades.īeyond knowing the average distance of police sniper shootings, readers will find other, more important operational information – for instance, the longest and shortest distances encountered. The finished product is not a dry recitation of numbers and boring bar graphs. A comprehensive study of the use and effectiveness of police snipers in the United States exists for the first time in history. This project was ambitious at the outset and arduous in execution, but we were proud to finally produce the “Police Sniper Utilization Report.” This report was a significant accomplishment and is unprecedented in its scope. We spent hundreds of additional man-hours searching newspaper archives in attempts to find details about many of the documented incidents. Many of the agencies contacted in the initial phase were re-contacted to clarify vague or conflicting information. (Photo/American Sniper Association)Īfter the data-collection phase of this project was complete, we spent time verifying the information gathered. The American Sniper Association initiated a project to gather statistical data about police snipers’ use-of-force engagements. This led to a more comprehensive survey by reaching teams that otherwise would not have been included. The result of this process was that, although our initial contact pool was limited to agencies known to have SWAT teams, many agencies beyond the scope of that group voluntarily participated in the survey after direct contact with ASA personnel. In these cases, we followed up by directly contacting the involved agencies to obtain information. By monitoring national news and wire services, we became aware of sniper-related incidents that occurred around the country during the survey periods. As a result, agencies contacted ASA to request forms. We also published notifications on our website and in “Sniper,” the quarterly newsletter of the advocacy and training organization Snipercraft.Īrticles explaining the survey process and its objectives were published in several major tactical and law enforcement magazines. After we advised them of the survey and explained our goals, we gave interested attendees survey forms to complete. The National Public Safety Information Bureau annually publishes the “National Directory of Law Enforcement Administrators,” which provides a complete listing of local, county, state and federal agencies from around the United States.Īgencies outside our initial contact schedule were made aware of the survey process through presentations by ASA personnel at tactical conferences, sniper schools, seminars and competitions nationwide. To call and/or write to each SWAT team, we also needed some general information about each agency. The Justice Department’s annual report “Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, Data of Individual State and Local Agencies” provided an alphabetized listing of 897 agencies to contact. The first thing we needed was a current listing of agencies around the country that maintained SWAT teams. Then, using the labor of a group of dedicated volunteers, we went to work. We established the parameters of our survey field around the agencies involved, time span to be covered and the types of engagements that would qualify as sniper shootings. We developed a survey that asked the questions we felt were of most interest and importance to sniper teams and administrators. We initiated a project to gather statistical data about police snipers’ use-of-force engagements. Realizing this information had never been collected, ASA seized upon this as an opportunity to impact the sniper community in a positive way.
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