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Chattanooga: Sniper training teaches accuracy under pressure

By: Jacqueline Koch
(Contact)

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Jim Hedrick

For a sniper, hundreds of hours of training end in one split second — the decision to pull a rifle’s trigger or not.

Chattanooga police officer Jim Hedrick understands that pressure. As a member of the department’s tactical team, he responded to a hostage situation in the city in the mid-’90s. The suspect had pointed his gun at police, who held their fire. But when the gun was pointed at a hostage — locked in a chokehold — a police sniper killed the suspect, he said.

“Training is paramount,” said Officer Hedrick, who under police rules cannot name the sniper involved. “You go on auto-pilot. ... It’s just the mindset that you’re doing it to save someone else or yourself.”

Officer Hedrick, along with other Chattanooga officers and a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department deputy, is serving this week as an assistant instructor at a free, week-long basic sniper observer course. Hosted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the course is taking place at the Tennessee Army National Guard Volunteer Training Site in Catoosa County, Ga.

Twenty-eight officers from agencies in Southeast Tennessee, Northwest Georgia, West Virginia and Kentucky are spending the week firing at targets, practicing observation skills and covert movements and learning about intelligence gathering and ballistic calculations.

“It’s a chance for the FBI to give back a little bit,” said Agent Ed Galloway, supervisory agent for the FBI’s Chattanooga office. “We often use the resources of state and local law enforcement.”

The course — taught annually — also creates points of contact between the FBI and various officers at smaller agencies. After officers complete the basic training course, they attend an advanced course later in the year, Agent Galloway said.

While snipers seldom fire shots in real life, they should know when to take a shot and the extent of their abilities, Officer Hedrick said. Most law enforcement situations involve targets at 100 yards or less, he said.

Instructor Bob Bissell, who has taught the course for 17 years and is a special agent with the FBI’s Chattanooga field office, said many officers never have had the training offered by the course and progress steadily from the first day through the fifth.

To simulate high-pressure situations, instructors will yell at officers, drip water on their necks as they shoot at targets or make them run a quarter of a mile before firing, Agent Bissell said.

“This is a risky shot,” he told officers as they prepared to fire at a target simulating a gunman with a hostage. “You can either be the man of the hour or facing the biggest lawsuit you’ve ever faced.”

Knowing when not to shoot is as important as knowing when to pull the trigger, Agent Bissell said.

Officers must be able to justify taking a shot that ultimately may kill someone, Officer Hedrick said, and you don’t know what you’ll do in a situation until you’re in it.

But snipers primarily serve as observers, the eyes and ears for officers in command centers who can’t survey entire scenes.

“In reality, snipers are used more as intelligence gatherers,” he said.

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